New Radiative Flux Analysis Data Released

Published: 8 August 2025

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility has released the Radiative Flux Analysis value-added product (RADFLUXANAL VAP) for the 2021–2023 Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL) campaign near Crested Butte, Colorado, and the 2023–2024 Eastern Pacific Cloud Aerosol Precipitation Experiment (EPCAPE) in La Jolla, California.

In addition, new RADFLUXANAL data are now available for the following ARM sites and date ranges:

• the ARM Mobile Facility at Oliktok Point, Alaska, from March 21 through June 8, 2021, completing the RADFLUXANAL processing for this deployment
• the North Slope of Alaska central facility at Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow) from July 4, 2021, through July 10, 2024
• Southern Great Plains extended facility E13 near Lamont, Oklahoma, from July 12, 2021, through May 28, 2024
• the broadband radiometer station at the Southern Great Plains Central Facility near Lamont from July 12, 2021, through May 28, 2024
• the Eastern North Atlantic atmospheric observatory in the Azores from August 21, 2021, through February 8, 2024.

RADFLUXANAL calculates clear-sky irradiance in the shortwave and longwave surface fluxes from the measured broadband irradiance. This VAP also calculates fractional sky cover and cloud parameters, including effective visible cloud optical depth, cloud radiating temperature, and shortwave cloud transmissivity, from the measurements.

The new RADFLUXANAL data are all c2-level data. When c2 files are available, they should be used instead of c1 files because they include improved data for infrared loss correction.

More information about RADFLUXANAL, including the technical report, can be found on the VAP web page.

Scientists can use the new RADFLUXANAL data now. Access the data in the ARM Data Center. (To download the data, first create an ARM account.)

For questions about the VAP, please contact ARM translator Damao Zhang or developer Krista Gaustad.

To cite the RADFLUXANAL data from the Southern Great Plains broadband radiometer station (radfluxbrs1long.c2), please use doi:10.5439/1395069. For the other RADFLUXANAL data (radflux1long.c2), please use doi:10.5439/1395157.