OFFSHORE RADIATION OBSERVATIONS FOR CLIMATE RESEARCH AT THE CERES OCEAN VALIDATION EXPERIMENT

A New "Laboratory" for Retrieval Algorithm Testing

NASA's Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System program is performing high-quality surface radiation monitoring in support of climate change research on an ocean platform off of Virginia's coast.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) project is observing the radiant energy leaving the Earth's atmosphere. CERHS produces an archive of the radiation budget, from the bottom to the top of the atmosphere, with high temporal and spatial resolution for multiple years, with an accuracy necessary for climate change research (Wielicki et al. 1996). One …