The validation of the GEWEX SRB surface shortwave flux data products using BSRN measurements: A systematic quality control, production and application approach

The NASA/GEWEX Surface Radiation Budget (SRB) project has produced a 24.5-year continuous record of global shortwave and longwave radiation fluxes at TOA and the Earth's surface from satellite measurements. The time span of the data is from July 1983 to December 2007, and the spatial resolution is 1° latitude×1° longitude. The inputs of the latest version (Release 3.0) include the GEOS Version 4.0.3 meteorological information and cloud properties derived from ISCCP DX data. The SRB products are available on 3-hourly, 3-hourly-monthly, daily and monthly time scales. To assess the quality of the product, we extensively validated the SRB data against 5969 site-months of ground-based measurements from 52 Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) stations. This paper describes first the characteristics of the BSRN data and the GEWEX SRB data, the methodology for quality control and processing of the shortwave BSRN data, and then the systematic SRB-BSRN comparisons. It is found that, except for occasional extreme outliers as seen in scatter plots, the satellite-based surface radiation data generally agree very well with BSRN measurements. Specifically, the bias/RMS for the daily and monthly mean shortwave fluxes are, respectively, -3.6/35.5 and -5.2/23.3 W° m−2 under all-sky conditions.

► Performed quality-control on 5969 site-months of BSRN data as of August 2011. ► Primary BSRN variables include shortwave and longwave fluxes. ► Computed 3-hourly, 3-hourly-monthly, daily and monthly means of BSRN data. ► Validated the GEWEX SRB shortwave fluxes against their BSRN counterparts. ► Generally good agreement is achieved.