CERES EBAF Ed4.2.1¶

Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) Edition 4.2.1

Available

At a glance¶

Note on period: As checked on 2026-10-12, the CERES data page lists EBAF-TOA through July 2026 and the combined TOA and surface EBAF through May 2026. March 2000–June 2002 is Terra only, July 2002–March 2022 Terra and Aqua, and April 2022 onward NOAA-20 only.

Overview¶

A climate data record of monthly mean top-of-atmosphere (TOA) shortwave, longwave and net radiative fluxes on a 1° grid from NASA's CERES instruments. The TOA net flux is constrained to the ocean heat storage ("energy balanced"), and clear-sky gaps are filled to give regionally complete fields. The same product family includes computed surface fluxes (upward, downward and net), cloud radiative effects and cloud properties, making it a standard reference for Earth's energy imbalance, cloud feedback and model evaluation.

What changes with the successor¶

EBAF Ed4.2 → EBAF Ed4.2.1¶

Transition: 2025-03

For April 2022 onward, Ed4.2.1 switches the atmospheric input for imager cloud retrievals from GEOS-5.4.1 to MERRA-2. Data through March 2022 are identical to Ed4.2, which stopped at July 2024.

Sources: CERES EBAF Ed4.2/Ed4.2.1 Data Quality Summary (V8, 2026-09-10) · ECMWF Forum — Reprocessed CERES EBAF (Ed 4.2.1) now available (2025-06-05)

Available variables¶

TOA and cloud variable names are those in the EBAF-TOA Ed4.1 NetCDF file metadata; check that they are the same in your Ed4.2.1 files. The official documentation does not give in-file names for the surface variables, so only descriptions are listed. All fluxes are in W m-2.

instantaneous mean accumulated maximum minimum static — instantaneous: value at the time stamp · mean/accumulated/maximum/minimum: over the indicated interval · static: does not change with time

Top-of-atmosphere fluxes — EBAF-TOA¶

Cloud properties (CERES-MODIS/VIIRS)¶

Surface fluxes and cloud radiative effects (combined EBAF file, computed)¶

The full variable list is in the official documentation.

How to get the data¶

• CERES ordering, subsetting and visualization tool (EBAF Ed4.2.1) — Web order (choose variables, period and region → NetCDF3, up to 2 GB)
  • The route recommended by the CERES team. Choose regional (1°), zonal or global means, and monthly means or climatology.
• CERES data page (product table and data availability) — Web
• NASA Earthdata / ASDC (CERES_EBAF, CERES_EBAF-TOA Edition4.2.1) — Earthdata Search / earthaccess (NetCDF4)
  • File downloads require a (free) NASA Earthdata Login.
• Copernicus CDS — Earth's radiation budget (includes CERES EBAF) — Web download / CDS API
  • A copy redistributed by C3S; edition and period may differ from the NASA original (catalogue period ended at 2026-03 when checked in October 2026). Requires an ECMWF account.

Example code¶

Run earthaccess.login() once with your NASA Earthdata account first. Confirm variable names in the downloaded file.

# pip install earthaccess xarray netCDF4
import earthaccess
import numpy as np
import xarray as xr

earthaccess.login()
results = earthaccess.search_data(short_name="CERES_EBAF-TOA", version="Edition4.2.1")
files = earthaccess.download(results[:1], "./ceres")

ds = xr.open_dataset(files[0])
net = ds["toa_net_all_mon"]          # TOA net flux (W m-2), 1° monthly mean
w = np.cos(np.deg2rad(ds["lat"]))
print(net.weighted(w).mean(("lat", "lon")).sel(time="2024"))  # area-weighted global mean

Practical tips¶

• EBAF is energy-balanced, so the absolute global-mean net flux is tied to ocean heat storage estimates. Changes in net flux (trends, anomalies) come from the observations, but do not treat the absolute level as an independent measurement.
• Cloud properties may have discontinuities around July 2002 (Aqua joins) and April 2022 (switch to NOAA-20 only). Check these dates before interpreting long-term cloud trends.
• Surface fluxes are computed from cloud and atmospheric inputs, not observed. Anomalies can be noisy where surface adjustments are large (the Andes, Tibet, central eastern Africa), and near-surface temperatures before March 2006 run high in some regions because of the coarse MERRA-2 SST input.
• The DQS warns that Arctic polar night cloud fraction is over-adjusted in Ed4.2.1 (differences of up to 20–30%) and advises against correlating Arctic or Antarctic polar night cloud properties.
• The 3–5 February 2024 data gap remains in both editions. Check the DQS notes on missing data before using that month.
• For daily or hourly fluxes, use CERES SYN1deg rather than EBAF.

Notices and change history¶

References for your paper¶

Dataset citation¶

EBAF TOA and Surface (Ed4.2.1) — DOI 10.5067/TERRA-AQUA-NOAA20/CERES/EBAF_L3B004.2.1

@misc{ceres_ebaf_ed421,
  author    = {Doelling, David},
  title     = {{CERES} Energy Balanced and Filled ({EBAF}) {TOA} and Surface Monthly means data in netCDF Edition 4.2.1},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {NASA Langley Atmospheric Science Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center},
  doi       = {10.5067/TERRA-AQUA-NOAA20/CERES/EBAF_L3B004.2.1},
  note      = {Accessed DD MMM YYYY}
}

EBAF-TOA (Ed4.2.1) — DOI 10.5067/TERRA-AQUA-NOAA20/CERES/EBAF-TOA_L3B004.2.1

@misc{ceres_ebaf_toa_ed421,
  author    = {Doelling, David},
  title     = {{CERES} Energy Balanced and Filled ({EBAF}) {TOA} Monthly means data in netCDF Edition4.2.1},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {NASA Langley Atmospheric Science Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center},
  doi       = {10.5067/TERRA-AQUA-NOAA20/CERES/EBAF-TOA_L3B004.2.1},
  note      = {Accessed DD MMM YYYY}
}

Reference papers¶

EBAF-TOA Edition 4.0 paper (TOA methodology) — DOI 10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0208.1

@article{loeb2018ebaf,
  author  = {Loeb, Norman G. and Doelling, David R. and Wang, Hailan and Su, Wenying and Nguyen, Cathy and Corbett, Joseph G. and Liang, Lusheng and Mitrescu, Cristian and Rose, Fred G. and Kato, Seiji},
  title   = {Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System ({CERES}) Energy Balanced and Filled ({EBAF}) Top-of-Atmosphere ({TOA}) Edition-4.0 Data Product},
  journal = {Journal of Climate},
  volume  = {31},
  number  = {2},
  pages   = {895--918},
  year    = {2018},
  doi     = {10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0208.1}
}

EBAF surface irradiance Edition 4.0 paper — DOI 10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0523.1

@article{kato2018ebafsfc,
  author  = {Kato, Seiji and Rose, Fred G. and Rutan, David A. and Thorsen, Tyler J. and Loeb, Norman G. and Doelling, David R. and Huang, Xianglei and Smith, William L. and Su, Wenying and Ham, Seung-Hee},
  title   = {Surface Irradiances of Edition 4.0 Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System ({CERES}) Energy Balanced and Filled ({EBAF}) Data Product},
  journal = {Journal of Climate},
  volume  = {31},
  number  = {11},
  pages   = {4501--4527},
  year    = {2018},
  doi     = {10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0523.1}
}

TOA continuity across satellite transitions (NOAA-20 splice) — DOI 10.1175/JCLI-D-24-0180.1

@article{loeb2024continuity,
  author  = {Loeb, Norman G. and others},
  title   = {Continuity in top-of-atmosphere Earth radiation budget observations},
  journal = {Journal of Climate},
  year    = {2024},
  doi     = {10.1175/JCLI-D-24-0180.1}
}

Acknowledgements¶

The CERES team asks that publications give the product and edition name (e.g. 'CERES_EBAF_Ed4.2.1') and, when the data come from the CERES website, the acknowledgement "These data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center CERES ordering tool at https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/data/." ASDC recommends "These data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center." Cite Loeb et al. (2018) for TOA fluxes and Kato et al. (2018) for surface fluxes.

Information on the datasets used in this study was compiled with the help of the Korean Climate Data Navigator (KCDN) (Sim, 2026; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23300923).

Links¶

• CERES data page (EBAF product table and availability)
• CERES EBAF Data Quality Summary (DQS, latest)
• ASDC — CERES EBAF Edition4.2.1
• NOAA NESDIS — Libera
• NCAR Climate Data Guide — CERES EBAF