Impact of reflected shortwave anisotropy on satellite radiometer measurements of the Earth's energy imbalance

Hocking, Thomas; Megner, Linda; Hakuba, Maria; Mauritsen, Thorsten

doi:10.5194/amt-19-1643-2026

Articles | Volume 19, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-19-1643-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-19-1643-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 5

Research article

|

06 Mar 2026

Research article |

| 06 Mar 2026

Impact of reflected shortwave anisotropy on satellite radiometer measurements of the Earth's energy imbalance

Thomas Hocking, Linda Megner, Maria Hakuba, and Thorsten Mauritsen

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

Idealised wide-field-of-view synthetic satellite measurement data for the Earth's energy imbalance, 2001⁠ – ⁠2005 Thomas Hocking et al. https://doi.org/10.17043/hocking-2026-eei-shortwave-anisotropy-1

Model code and software

Scripts for simulating anisotropic shortwave reflection for wide-field-of-view satellite measurements of top-of-atmosphere radiation fields Thomas Hocking https://doi.org/10.57669/hocking-2026-eei-shortwave-anisotropy-1.0.0

Short summary

The imbalance between the energy the Earth absorbs from the Sun and emits back to space gives rise to climate change, but measuring the small imbalance is challenging. The Earth surface reflects sunlight more in some directions than in others, as with e.g. ocean sunglint. We simulate satellites to investigate how this uneven reflection impacts estimates of the imbalance. We identify orbits that cover all directions well, so that the impact is small.