Radiometric performance of the CERES broadband radiometers on the Terra and Aqua spacecraft

The Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) is the only program currently measuring the global Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) from space. Two CERES units are located on the EOS Terra platform and two more are placed on the EOS Aqua satellite. Each of the four operational CERES instruments uses three broadband radiometric scanning telescopes: the shortwave (SW 0.3 - 5μ), total (0.3 - >100μ), and window (8 - 12μ) channels. Rigorous pre-launch ground calibration and in-flight calibration is performed on each CERES unit to achieve an accuracy goal of 1% for SW flux and 0.5% for outgoing LW flux.