The Relationship between the Planetary and Surface Net Radiation: An Update

In an earlier study, Pinker et al. have shown that the daily average net radiation at the top of the atmosphere is highly correlated with the daily average net radiation at the surface. A regression formalism was derived and tested on independent datasets; it proved to yield estimates of net radiation to accuracies required for climate studies. The objective of the present paper has been to simplify the regression approach for deriving surface net radiation from satellite observations. It was found that the scene brightness alone, as sensed by the GOES satellite, can serve as a predictor of the net radiation at the surface.