Proceedings of the Workshop on New Generation of Radiation Budget Measurements from Space and their use in Climate Modelling and Diagnostic Studies

This publication contains a collection of abstracts of papers which were presented at the workshop on "New Generation of Radiation Budget Measurements from Space and their use in Climate Modelling and Diagnostic Studies" jointly organized by the GKSS Forschungszentrum in Geesthacht and the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorolo- gy in Hamburg. The workshop was held at the Max-Planck-Institute on 11 June 1992. Its aim was to bring together the research teams that are involved in the provision of satellite data from the ScaRaB project and potential users of these data in the climate modelling community. A continuation of space borne measurements of the planetary radiation budget is required in order to investigate the role of clouds and radiation within the climate system. Highly accurate measurements provided by the American ERBE (Earth Radiation Budget Experiment, 1984—87) have proven to be excellent tools for the vali- dation of climate model simulations. Some of the experience that was gained with this data set will be reported in this volume. It is proposed to employ a new radiation budget instrument ScaRaB, to continue the monitoring of the required quantities from 1993 onwards. The instrument is being built jointly by French, Russian and German groups. In the initial stage, two satellite launches have been confirmed for the autumn 1993 and 1994 on a Russian satellite. Negotiations are underway concerning the payload on the European satellite POEM. The ScaRaB project is envisaged to fill the data gap in the medium term before further instruments become available around the year 2000 and will help to improve our knowledge of radiative and cloud processes.