System implementation for earth radiation budget satellite system

Abstract

The earth-orbiting satellite provides a platform, outside the earth's atmosphere, which is capable of simultaneously monitoring the outgoing reflection of the sun's energy from the earth's surface and atmosphere, and the longwave radiation emitted by the earth and its atmosphere. These capabilities provide the opportunity to conduct detailed studies of the variations in the earth's radiation budget, the effects of natural and manmade changes in the environment on this budget, and the effects which changes in the energy budget produce on earth's weather and climate. A description is presented of the instrument system requirements and a conceptual design of an instrument approach to meet these requirements for providing the earth radiation budget data.