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A Moon-based radiometer can provide continuous measurements for the Earth's full-disk broadband irradiance, which is useful for studying the Earth's Radiation Budget (ERB) at the height of the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA). The ERB describes how the Earth obtains solar energy and emits energy to space through the outgoing broadband Short-Wave (SW) and emitted thermal Long-Wave (LW) radiation. In this work, a model for estimating the Earth's outgoing radiative flux from the measurements of a Moon-based radiometer is established. Using the model, the full-disk LW and SW outgoing radiative flux are gained by converting the unfiltered entrance pupil irradiances (EPIs) with the help of the anisotropic characteristics of the radiances. Based on the radiative transfer equation, the unfiltered EPI time series is used to validate the established model. By comparing the simulations for a Moon-based radiometer with the satellite-based data from the National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Radiometer (NISTAR) and the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) datasets, the simulations show that the daytime SW fluxes from the Moon-based measurements are expected to vary between 194 and 205 Wm−2; these simulations agree well with the CERES data. The simulations are about 5 to 20 Wm−2 smaller than the NISTAR data. For the simulated Moon-based LW fluxes, the range is 251~287 Wm−2. The Moon-based and NISTAR fluxes are consistently 5~15 Wm−2 greater than CERES LW fluxes, and both of them also show larger diurnal variations compared with the CERES fluxes. The correlation coefficients of SW fluxes for Moon-based data and NISTAR data are 0.97, 0.63, and 0.53 for the months of July, August, and September, respectively. Compared with the SW flux, the correlation of LW fluxes is more stable for the same period and the correlation coefficients are 0.87, 0.69, and 0.61 for July to September 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Moon-based radiometer can provide continuous measurements for the Earth’s full-disk broadband irradiance, which is useful for studying the Earth’s Radiation Budget (ERB) at the height of the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA). The ERB describes how the Earth obtains solar energy and emits energy to space through the outgoing broadband Short-Wave (SW) and emitted thermal Long-Wave (LW) radiation. In this work, a model for estimating the Earth’s outgoing radiative flux from the measurements of a Moon-based radiometer is established. Using the model, the full-disk LW and SW outgoing radiative flux are gained by converting the unfiltered entrance pupil irradiances (EPIs) with the help of the anisotropic characteristics of the radiances. Based on the radiative transfer equation, the unfiltered EPI time series is used to validate the established model. By comparing the simulations for a Moon-based radiometer with the satellite-based data from the National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Radiometer (NISTAR) and the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) datasets, the simulations show that the daytime SW fluxes from the Moon-based measurements are expected to vary between 194 and 205 Wm−2; these simulations agree well with the CERES data. The simulations are about 5 to 20 Wm−2 smaller than the NISTAR data. For the simulated Moon-based LW fluxes, the range is 251~287 Wm−2. The Moon-based and NISTAR fluxes are consistently 5~15 Wm−2 greater than CERES LW fluxes, and both of them also show larger diurnal variations compared with the CERES fluxes. The correlation coefficients of SW fluxes for Moon-based data and NISTAR data are 0.97, 0.63, and 0.53 for the months of July, August, and September, respectively. Compared with the SW flux, the correlation of LW fluxes is more stable for the same period and the correlation coefficients are 0.87, 0.69, and 0.61 for July to September 2017.

Solar UV radiation reaching the Earth's surface is known to have various effects on human health and on the ecosystem. Ground-based measurements of surface UV radiation are spatially sparse and in many cases do not provide long time series. Higher spatial coverage can be provided by measurements from satellite based instruments, but these measurements need to be compared to ground-based measurements of sufficient quality before they can be used in health and ecosystem applications. Here, we compare the measurements of surface solar UV radiation in UVA (315–400 nm) and UVB (280–315 nm) bands with the satellite retrievals (CERES) and validate the latter at an urban location, Delhi, India. We have also used MODIS-retrieved aerosol optical depth (AOD) and cloud optical depth (COD) data to see the effect of atmospheric opacity on UV radiation. Ground-based measurements of UVA and UVB were performed from 01 October, 2012 to 30 September, 2015. Correlations between daily surface measurements and CERES-derived surface UV fluxes showed very good agreement (r ∼ 0.92–0.93) over Delhi. We found a negative correlation between UV fluxes and AOD over Delhi during all seasons. A unit increase in AOD leads to a decrease of ∼4–5 Wm -2 in UVA and ∼0.09–0.14 Wm -2 in UVB over Delhi. The trend analysis from monthly mean CERES-derived UV fluxes for 17 years data reveals that UVA and UVB are decreasing ∼0.07 Wm -2 yr −1 and 0.003 Wm -2 yr −1 , respectively with AOD increase (∼0.005 yr −1 ) over Delhi. The simultaneous increase in aerosol loading with decrease in UV fluxes at the surface may be explained as a masking effect of ever increasing pollution on surface UV radiation over Delhi. Our results show ∼10% and ∼20% decrease (with respect to mean) in UVA and UVB surface fluxes, respectively during last 17 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]