Downward short-wave irradiance at Earth surface Measurements Made by Earth Observation Satellites

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Downward short-wave irradiance at Earth surface

Measurement Definition*: Flux density of the solar radiation at the Earth surface - Physical unit [ W/m2 ], Accuracy unit [ W/m2 ]

Thematic Links
ECV Earth Radiation Budget

Instrument	Status/ Accuracy	Instrument Description	Measurement Technology	Timeline
ABI Advanced Baseline Imager	Operational	Detects clouds, cloud properties, water vapour, land and sea surface temperatures, dust, aerosols, volcanic ash, fires, total ozone, snow and ice cover, vegetation index.	n/a
AMI Advanced Meteorological Imager	Operational	Continuous monitoring capability for the near real-time generation of high-resolution meteorological products and long-term change analysis of land/sea surface temperature and cloud coverage.	n/a
AVHRR/3 Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer/3	Operational	Measurements of land and sea surface temperature, cloud cover, snow and ice cover, soil moisture and vegetation indices. Data also used for volcanic eruption monitoring.	n/a
CERES Cloud and the Earth's Radiant Energy System	Operational	Long term measurement of the Earth's radiation budget and atmospheric radiation from the top of the atmosphere to the surface; provision of an accurate and self-consistent cloud and radiation database.	n/a
MISR Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer	Operational	Measurements of global surface albedo, aerosol and vegetation properties. Also provides multi-angle bidirectional data (1% angle-to-angle accuracy) for cloud cover and reflectances at the surface and aerosol opacities. Global and local modes.	n/a
SIMBA Instrument SIMBA Instrument	Operational	Achieve a high absolute accuracy by employing the same instrument for the very first time to measure irradiance from both the Sun and Earth. The CubeSat will turn from our planet to deep space – for calibration purposes – then to our parent star.	n/a
SSIM Solar Spectral Irradiance Monitor	Operational	Solar irradiance monitoring.	n/a
TGF Detectors TGF Detectors	Operational	Dedicated mission optimized for TGF observations focusing on short time scales and energy ranges not well studied by other missions.	n/a
GEOXO Imager GEO Extended Operations Imager	Being developed	Detects clouds, cloud properties, water vapour, land and sea surface temperatures, dust, aerosols, volcanic ash, fires, total ozone, snow and ice cover, vegetation index.	n/a
UVNS (Sentinel-5) Ultra-violet Visible Near-infrared Shortwave-infrared spectrometer	Being developed	Supporting atmospheric composition and air quality monitoring services. Measurements of atmospheric trace gases, primarily O3, NO2, SO2, HCHO, CH4 and CO.	High-resolution nadir-scanning SW spectrometer

* Description adapted from WMO.