Climate and the Earth’s Radiation Budget

MAY 01, 1989

A NASA multisatellite experiment has determined that clouds cool the planet more than they heot it and identified them as a major source of uncertainty in three‐dimensional models used for studying the greenhouse effect and global warming.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881167

V. Ramanathan

Bruce R. Barkstrom

Edwin F. Harrison

Among the first payloads aboard satellites in the early 1960s were instruments for measuring the Earth’s radiation budget. The radiation budget consists of the incident and reflected sunlight and the long‐wave (infrared and far infrared) radiation emitted to space. The source for the recent spurt in scientific and public interest in the greenhouse effect and global warming is the alteration of the radiation budget by the anthropogenic emission of trace gases into the atmosphere.

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More about the authors

V. Ramanathan, University of Chicago.

Bruce R. Barkstrom, NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia.

Edwin F. Harrison, NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia.