Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) S-7 Monthly Medium-Wide Data Tape

ERBE_S7_NAT_1 is the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) S-7 Monthly Medium-Wide Data Tape (MWDT) data set, which is in Native (NAT) format. The MWDT (S-7) product contains a condensed version of the non-scanner data that were found on a monthly set of Processed Archival Tapes (PAT), except that the shortwave estimates of the radiant exitance at the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) were based on the mostly cloudy over ocean bidirectional model. The MWDT product then provided a consistent data set of non-scanner TOA estimates which were not dependent on the operational status of the ERBE scanner instrument.

ERBE was a multi-satellite system designed to measure the Earth's radiation budget. ERBE instruments flew on a mid-inclination National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) and two sun-synchronous National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites (NOAA-9 and NOAA-10). Each satellite carried both a scanner and a non-scanner instrument package. The S-8 contained all satellite and viewing geometry, and all scanner and non-scanner radiometric measurements in engineering units with flags defining their validity. It also contained quantities such as scanner measurements corrected to flat spectral responses, the scene identified for each scanner pixel, the estimate of radiant flux at the top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) for each scanner pixel, and the estimates of the radiant fluxes from the non-scanner measurements. The data were for a 24-hour period and one satellite. If all three satellites were operational on the same day, three separate S-8s were required for a full set of ERBE data. The data period started at Greenwich midnight (zero Universal Time) and continued for 24 hours and the period was divided into 16-second intervals.