Attenuated backscatter profiles from the CALIOP satellite lidar are used to estimate cloud base heights of lower-troposphere liquid clouds (cloud base height below approximately 3 km). Even when clouds are thick enough to attenuate the lidar beam (optical thickness > 5), the technique provides cloud base heights by treating the cloud base height of nearby thinner clouds as representative of the surrounding cloud field. Using ground-based ceilometer data, uncertainty estimates for the cloud base height product at retrieval resolution are derived as a function of various properties of the CALIOP lidar profiles. Evaluation of the predicted cloud base heights and their predicted uncertainty using a second, statistically independent, ceilometer dataset shows that cloud base heights and uncertainties are biased by less than 10%. CBASE provides two files for each CALIOP VFM input file: one using a 40 km window to detect the cloud field base height, and one using a 100 km window. (The input CALIOP VFM dataset is organized by the daytime/nighttime half of each orbit.) The file name pattern is CBASE<resolution>_<date>T<time><day/night>.nc (identical to the input CALIOP VFM file name with the exception of the product name). Files are organized into subdirectories by half-orbit start date.
‘Heat stored in the Earth system: Where does the energy go?’ contains a consistent long-term Earth system heat inventory over the period 1960-2018. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere which is driving global warming. This Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) is the most critical number defining the prospects for continued global warming and climate change. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system from this accumulated heat – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system - is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This dataset is based on a study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory, and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960-2018. Changes in version 2: a) uncertainties have been added and updated in the netcdf file b) Ocean heat content > 2000m depth: update of one time series, and thus revised ensemble mean c) Atmospheric heat content: update of the time series as received by experts on the 29/05/2020 d) Available heat cyropshere: update of the time series as received by experts on the 27/05/2020. e) some attributes have been added for more details.
The dataset ‘Heat stored in the Earth system: Where does the energy go?’ contains a consistent long-term Earth system heat gain over the past 58 years. Human-induced atmospheric composition changes cause a radiative imbalance at the top-of-atmosphere which is driving global warming. This Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) is a fundamental metric of climate change. Understanding the heat gain of the Earth system from this accumulated heat – and particularly how much and where the heat is distributed in the Earth system - is fundamental to understanding how this affects warming oceans, atmosphere and land, rising temperatures and sea level, and loss of grounded and floating ice, which are fundamental concerns for society. This dataset is based on a study under the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory, and presents an updated international assessment of ocean warming estimates, and new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960-2018.