Defining the Magnitude: Patterns, Regularities and Direct TOA-Surface
Flux Relationships in the 15-Year Long CERES Satellite Data —
Observations, Model and Theory
Abstract
Over the past fifteen years, the NASA Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant
Energy System (CERES) satellite mission has provided the scientific
community with the most reliable Earth radiation budget data. This
presentation offers quantitative assessment of the published CERES
Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) Edition 2.8 and Edition 4.0 data
products, and reveals several internal patterns, ratios and regularities
within the annual global mean flux components of the all-sky and
clear-sky surface and atmospheric energy budgets. The found patterns,
among others, include: (i) direct relationships between the
top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiative and surface radiative and
non-radiative fluxes (contradicting the expectation that TOA and surface
fluxes are physically decoupled); (ii) integer ratios and relationships
between the absorbed and emitted surface and atmospheric energy flow
elements; and (iii) definite connections among the clear-sky and the
all-sky shortwave, longwave and non-radiative (turbulent) flux elements
and the corresponding greenhouse effect. Comparison between the EBAF
Ed2.8 and Ed4.0 SFC and TOA data products and trend analyses of the
normalized clear-sky and all-sky greenhouse factors are presented.
Longwave cloud radiative effect (LW CRE) proved to be playing a
principal role in organizing the found numerical patterns in the surface
and atmospheric energy flow components. All of the revealed structures
are quantitatively valid within the one-sigma range of uncertainty of
the involved individual flux elements. This presentation offers a
conceptual framework to interpret the found relationships and shows how
the observed CERES fluxes can be deduced from this proposed physical
model. An important conclusion drawn from our analysis is that the
internal atmospheric and surface energy flow system forms a definite
structure and seems to be more constrained to the incoming solar energy
than previously thought.