This directory contains Earth radiation budget data observed from
satellites during ERBE, the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment.
It also contains associated surface temperature files that are
useful in helping to interpret the radiation data.

The files ending in ".txt" are plain-text tabular files of zonal-average
data which can be read into any spreadsheet or graphics program.  The
first column is the latitude, and the other columns give the data for each
month. The column headed "Ann" is the annual mean.  

The file name gives the type of data and the year.  The file names
have the form <datatype><year>.txt  The following table describes the data

All radiation datasets refer to top of atmosphere (not surface) values.

The cloud longwave forcing is the amount by which cloud effects reduce the
OLR. A positive value has a warming influence. The cloud longwave forcing
is OLRclear-OLR, the OLR being the all-sky value.

The cloud shortwave forcing is the quantity one adds to the clear sky
absorbed solar radiation to get the actual absorbed solar radiation. These
values are all negative, corresponding to a cooling influence on climate.

**Missing data is currently filled in with zeros, but that will be changed in the
next revision

Caution: The fields SW and SWclear are not the absorbed solar radiation. They
are the outgoing (reflected) solar radiation.  The absorbed solar radiation
can be computed either by using NET and OLR (or NETclear and OLRclear), or
by using the albedo data. 


<datatype>	Description 		Units

OLR	Outgoing Longwave Radiation	W/m**2
OLRclear	Clear-sky Outgoing Longwave Radiation	W/m**2
SW	Reflected Shortwave (solar) Radiation	W/m**2
SWclear	Clear-sky reflected Shortwave Radiation	W/m**2
NET	Net top of atmosphere radiation
                                              (SW - OLR)	W/m**2
NETclear	Clear-sky Net radiation	W/m**2
ALB	Albedo		Dimensionless (percent)
ALBclear	Clear-sky albedo		Dimensionless (percent)
CLOUDlwf	Cloud longwave forcing	W/m**2
CLOUDswf	Cloud shortwave forcing	W/m**2