Geostationary satellite parameters for surface energy balance Original Research Article

Since January 1996, surface climate parameters for the continental US have been produced in real time at NOAA/NESDIS from GOES-8 observations, and have been made available to the NOAA/NWS National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), to the GEWEX Continental-Scale International Project (GCIP) community, as well as to the public. The products include radiative fluxes, such as surface and top of the atmosphere short-wave radiation, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), cloud fraction, as well as surface temperature. The data can be used for evaluating corresponding parameters as produced from the NCEP (ETA) model or other meso-scale models, as inputs to hydrological models for computing evapotranspiration and snow-melt, for estimating net primary productivity, and other applications. As of July 2000, this product has become operational at NOAA/NESDIS, and it is distributed to the public within one day after being produced. In this paper provided will be background information about this product and identified will be issues that require further attention.