Radiation Budget

The radiation budget is the balance between incoming and outgoing radiative energy at a surface or at the top of the atmosphere. At the sea surface it has two radiative terms: net shortwave, the absorbed fraction of solar irradiance after reflection set by albedo (about 0.06 for the open ocean), and net longwave, the difference between downward atmospheric emission and the surface black-body emission, almost always a net loss of 30 to 70 W/m2. At the top of the atmosphere, absorbed solar minus outgoing longwave defines the planetary energy imbalance, currently a small positive value near 1 W/m2 that the ocean stores as heat. CERES satellites measure the top-of-atmosphere budget.