Monthly Mean Global Satellite Data Sets Available in CCM History Tape Format

This report describes work completed on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project, "Intercomparison of Satellite-Based Global Data Sets with Global Atmosphere/Ocean Model Experiments on the Greenhouse Effect" (NASA Grant W-17214, UPN 578-41-29-03). A goal of the project has been to acquire and analyze global satellite data sets that can potentially provide a standard for validating coupled atmosphere-ocean models. Such models are used to simulate the present climate and investigate possible climate change caused by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. Global satellite data sets are also useful for many diagnostic studies of the climate system. Emphasis has been placed on acquiring satellite data with records of, at least, several years. The intercomparison of satellite data with model data is facilitated by putting the observed data into "history tape" format for use with the NCAR Community Climate Model (CCM) processor. This format is widely used to analyze CCM output as well as global data sets from the European Centre for Medium- Range Weather Forecasts and the National Meteorological Center. The satellite data sets that have been archived in CCM history tape format include data from: Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) Nimbus-7 Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) Nimbus-7 Cloud-Matrix (CMATRIX) Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) Data from NOAA. It is likely that additional satellite data will be archived in the future. Access to the archived data above is described in this report, and brief summaries of each data set are given. Current and future work will include more detailed evaluations of the quality of the satellite data. Intercomparisons with model output will be reported elsewhere.