Measuring Earth's Radiation Imbalance using Cubesat Constellations

At present, the global annual-mean Earth Radiation Imbalance (ERI) is estimated to be of order 1 W/m2, although the uncertainty in ERI is much larger than this estimate. The best current satellite-only observational determinations of ERI range from-2 to+ 7 W/m2 unless major adjustments are made using ocean observations. Since measurements of ERI accurate to better than 0.5 W/m2 are essential for understanding and predicting changes in our climate, new missions to determine ERI in conjunction with ongoing ocean observations are urgently needed. These missions should reliably determine Earth's radiation balance at the temporal and spatial scales sufficient for relating ERI to the physical processes responsible for variability. The compelling objective of measuring ERI can be met using a constellation of satellites making global, high-frequency radiation measurements of the solar energy reflected and …