A COMPARISON OF 2 MAJOR EARTH RADIATION BUDGET DATA SETS

The Earth radiation budget data obtained from the Nimbus 7 Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) and the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) spacecraft missions are compared for several overlapping months during the period November 1984 to January 1986. The Nimbus 7 WFOV shortwave sensor reads about 2.5% higher than the ERBS sensor, while the Nimbus 7 total channel reads about 1% below the ERBS channel near midnight and about 1% above it near noon. A comparative study of the time- and space-averaged data products for April, July, and October 1985 and January 1986 shows that the Nimbus 7 ERB global averages agree in the mean with the combined ERBS/NOAA 9 scanner values to within 0.16% in the outgoing longwave radiation and 0.03% in the albedo. -from Authors