CERES: the next generation

Industrial activities, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation are examples of things that people do that may change the Earth's atmosphere. In order to determine how clouds are responding to the changes people are making on Earth, scientists need to continue to measure clouds from space and see how their net effect changes. This is the main job of the CERES experiment. As did ERBE, CERES monitors the difference in the energy reaching its sensors when it observes clear and cloudy areas of the globe. Scientists will then compare this energy difference - the net effect of clouds - with that measured by ERBE in the 1980s, and also look for any trends in the measurements over the lifetime of the CERES instruments. The CERES instruments have better spatial resolution and better accuracy then ERBE, so that these measurements can be made more accurately than ever before. In addition, the CERES instruments orbit the Earth on satellites that also carry imaging instruments: VIRS on the TRMM spacecraft and MODIS on Terra. These imagers enable great advances in cloud detection and identification, also leading to a better estimate of the effect of clouds on climate.

Further reading on CERES can be found at http://science.larc.nasa.gov/ceres/ .