The Earth’s climate is established via a complex set of interactions between and within its major subsystems. Predicting the evolution of the Earth’s climate is difficult as the processes that govern these interactions are connected over vast ranges of time and space. Credible climate prediction requires a deep level of understanding which in turn requires observations that are able to link processes that take place on the smaller-faster scales, such as those affecting the evolution of clouds, precipitation and other aspects of the hydrological cycle, to the global scale. Climate also requires that these observations be made over sufficiently extended time periods. The almost regular-in-time and global-in-space nature of satellite observations makes them particularly attractive for this purpose and the use of satellite data in the study of Earth’s climate has grown significantly over the last two decades.
Selected examples of climate studies that use satellite data are introduced below...
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Notes
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More can be found on the radiation budget and total solar irradiance satellite programs, http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/ceres/ASDceres.html, http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/ CAMPAIGN_DOCS/FTP_SITE/INT_DIS/readmes/sol_irrad.html)
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More information about NASA’s EOS, ESA’s Earth observations and Japan’s ADEOS programs can be found under the respective home pages of each program, http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/, http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ADEOS/, http://www.esa.int/ esaSA/earth.html
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Although the IR sensors of the GEO satellites are operationally calibrated in orbit, vicarious calibration is required to correct for unwanted effects.
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Stephens, G.L. (2005). Satellite Observations Of The Earth’S Climate System. In: Oliver, J.E. (eds) Encyclopedia of World Climatology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht . https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3266-8_175
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