Towards Determining the Earth Energy Imbalance from Space - Outcome of a recent ISSI International Team

A positive Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) is the energy, which is continuously stored by the Earth and will ultimately released to the atmosphere, causing global warming. The "imperative to monitor Earth’s energy imbalance” (von Schuckmann et al., 2016) has been continuously reported by the Earth’s climate community. The EEI has been identified to be around 0.5 to 1.0 Wm−2. To determine its exact value both the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) and the Top of the Atmosphere (ToA) Outgoing Radiation (TOR) need to be measured with unprecedented accuracy and precision.However, so far, the EEI could not be determined as the measurements were not sufficiently accurate. This calls for improved instrument technologies as well as a traceable calibration chain of the space instrumentation. To pave the way in that direction, the ISSI International Team "Towards Determining the Earth Energy Imbalance from Space" has been established. We collect the current knowledge of ERB measurements and identify missing elements for measuring EEI from space. Specifically, we collect past and ongoing measurements of the ERB components obtained with instruments such as CLARA, RAVAN, SIMBA, GERB, and CERES. The goal is to evaluate the performance and uncertainty of each of the instruments to identify observational challenges that need to be overcome to be able to measure both TSI and the Earth’s outgoing radiation with the required accuracy to ultimately be able to determine the absolute level of EEI from space.