Announcing the Release of the Radiative Flux Analysis PI Product

 
Published: 15 May 2008

Developed by Dr. Chuck Long, Radiative Flux Analysis PI Product data are now available from the ARM Climate Research Facility Archive. The current release includes data for all of the ARM fixed sites (except Darwin, which requires manual processing because of the monsoon season) plus data for the AMF deployments at Pt. Reyes and the COPS Black Forest site. Future releases will include data for Darwin, the COPS Hornisgrinde and Rhine Valley sites, and the AMF Niamey deployment.

The Radiative Flux Analysis is a technique for using surface shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) broadband radiation measurements for detecting periods of clear (i.e., cloudless) skies. The detected clear-sky data are used to fit functions that are then used to produce continuous clear-sky flux estimates. The clear-sky estimates and measurements are used in various ways to infer cloud macrophysical properties, including fractional SW and LW sky cover, cloud optical depth for sky cover > 0.95, effective cloud transmissivity, and cloud radiating temperature for sky cover > 0.5. A brief description of the methodology, a listing of the derived parameters, and references to papers with detailed methodology descriptions are given in the README file included with the data.