ERBE data inversion

The Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) involves the use of a system of three spacecraft with instrument packages for measuring the earth's radiation balance to an accuracy which has been unattainable in previous experiments. The experiment is to determine the monthly averaged radiant exitances at te 'top of the atmosphere' (TOA) over the earth with a resolution of 250 km. The realization of this goal requires the conduction of high accuracy measurements, and the computation of the instantaneous radiant exitances from these measurements. The operation involved in this computation is called an 'inversion'. A third requirement is related to the computation of the daily and monthly averaged regional values from the instantaneous values. A brief description is provided of the algorithms for the inversion of the measurements to TOA radiant exitances, taking into account also the techniques which are used to validate the methods and results.