Sampling the diurnal and annual cycles of the Earth's energy imbalance with constellations of satellite-borne radiometers

Hocking, Thomas; Mauritsen, Thorsten; Megner, Linda

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-7077-2024

Articles | Volume 17, issue 24

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-7077-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-7077-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 24

Research article

|

18 Dec 2024

Research article |

| 18 Dec 2024

Sampling the diurnal and annual cycles of the Earth's energy imbalance with constellations of satellite-borne radiometers

Thomas Hocking, Thorsten Mauritsen, and Linda Megner

Data sets

CERES and GEO-Enhanced TOA, Within-Atmosphere and Surface Fluxes, Clouds and Aerosols 1-Hourly Terra-Aqua Edition4A NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC https://doi.org/10.5067/TERRA+AQUA/CERES/SYN1DEG-1HOUR_L3.004A

Model code and software

Scripts for simulating wide-field-of-view satellite measurements of top-of-atmosphere radiation fields Thomas Hocking https://doi.org/10.57669/hocking-2024-sampling-eei-cycles-1.0.0

Python sgp4 library B. Rhodes https://pypi.org/project/sgp4/

Short summary

The imbalance between the energy the Earth absorbs from the Sun and the energy the Earth emits back into space gives rise to climate change, but measuring the small imbalance is challenging. We simulate satellites in various orbits to investigate how well they sample the imbalance and find that the best option is to combine at least two satellites that see complementary parts of the Earth and cover the daily and annual cycles. This information is useful when planning future satellite missions.