COMPARISON OF GENERAL-CIRCULATION MODELS TO EARTH RADIATION BUDGET EXPERIMENT DATA - COMPUTATION OF CLEAR-SKY FLUXES

The recent availability of top-of-the-atmosphere radiometric measurements from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment provides important opportunities for testing and improving numerical climate models. What is unique about these satellite data is that they provide monthly mean clear-sky measurements. There is, however, considerable confusion as to evaluating clear-sky radiative fluxes in climate models in a manner that is consistent with the satellite data processing system. This study provides a clear-sky flux computation method that serves as an analog to the data processing procedure and so provides a model diagnostic that is consistent with the processed satellite data.