Examines the problem of determining the separate shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) components of the Earth radiation budget from space. Because true broad-band longwave filters do not exist, daytime LW radiance determinations can depend entirely or in part on subtraction of the measured SW radiance from the "Total" (TW) radiance involving integration over the entire electromagnetic pectrum. Examining radiances measured in the three channels (SW, imperfectly filtered broad-band LW, TW) of the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) scanners on board the NOAA-9, ERBS and NOAA-10 satellites, the authors find small discrepancies in the daytime estimates of broad-band ("unfiltered") LW radiances using the ERBE "spectral correction" procedure. The authors show that these result from errors (of order 2.5%) in the calibration of the SW channel and possibly in the spectral characterization of the SW and/or TW channel of the ERBE scanners on NOAA-9 and NOAA-10. Nighttime estimates show no such bias, and there appears to be no such error in the data from ERBS. Considering the LW radiant exitances determined from ERBE scanner data from the three satellites, the authors find systematic differences in individual satellite estimates of simultaneous instantaneous regional means and of regional monthly means, consistent with the radiance discrepancies, instantaneous daytime LW estimates can be in error by 20% in the extreme case of very bright cold cloud, and LW cloud radiative forcing may be significantly biased. They consider the implications of these small SW-dependent errors on the determination of diurnal variation and of cloud radiative forcing in the longwave domain. They show how the ERBE estimates can be corrected, and consider how procedures can be used to validate results of future experiments (ScaRaB and CERES). >
['Denis Thomas', 'Jean Philippe Duvel', 'Robert Kandel']
Diurnal bias in calibration of broad-band radiance measurements from space