Clear-sky top-of-atmosphere (TOA) fluxes are important in estimating the impact of clouds on our climate. In this study, we quantitatively compare the clear-sky fluxes measurements of the Clouds and the Earths Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument to clear-sky fluxes from two reanalysis, NASA's Modern Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Application (MERRA), and the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast Interim reanalysis (ERA-Interim). In the first comparison, we compare observed fluxes from individual cloud-free field-of-
views to the reanalyses. In the second comparison, we compare monthly averaged observed clear-sky fluxes to those from the reanalyses. Monthly clear-sky fluxes are
calculated by averaging fluxes from cloud-free regions.
In both comparisons, the fluxes generally agree within +/- 10 W/m^2. Finally, we show that, while the differences between the fluxes of observations and the reanalyses are several W/m2, the inter-annual anomalies agree much better, with zonal and global average inter-annual anomalies typically agreeing within 1 W/m^2. The longwave clear-sky anomalies show excellent agreement even when comparing individual grid points, whereas the shortwave clear-sky anomalies are generally smaller at individual grid points.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2011-12-10555 |
| Date | 2011 December 1900 |
| Creators | Verma, Abhishek |
| Contributors | Dessler, Andrew E., Yang, Ping, North, Gerald R., Chang, Ping |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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