Earth's Energy Balance From Space: A 35 Year Perspective

Details Earth's Energy Balance From Space: A 35 Year Perspective Earth's Energy Balance From Space: A 35 Year Perspective

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufm.a11d..04w&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #A11D-04

Physics

3305 Climate Change And Variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513), 3310 Clouds And Cloud Feedbacks, 3311 Clouds And Aerosols, 3359 Radiative Processes, 3360 Remote Sensing

Scientific paper

The Earth's radiative energy balance is the most fundamental driver of long term climate. Changes of 1% or less are sufficient to cause major climate change. Earth orbiting satellites provide the optimal platform to observe this energy balance, and efforts began with Nimbus 3 in 1969. Prior to satellite missions, the Earths reflected and emitted radiation were estimated using earthshine from the moon, or by a radiative transfer calculation using surface observations of aerosol, cloud, temperature, humidity, and ozone. Observing the earths radiation balance from space is an 8-dimensional sampling problem, with a requirement for extremely high accuracy and stability to directly observe climate signals. The challenge is especially severe for decadal changes in aerosols and clouds. A perspective is given on the dramatic progress that has occurred in measuring radiation in space, from Nimbus 3 in 1969 to current CERES global and GERB geostationary observations. A vision for future advances in these observations as part of the global climate observing system is also given, including new ways to use the data in unscrambling the effects of aerosol indirect effects as well as cloud feedback in the climate system. These last two issues provide extraordinary challenges in climate forcing and climate sensitivity respectively.

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