Climatic variations in the outgoing longwave radiation of the past decade as observed from NOAA polar orbiting satellites

Components of the earth radiation budget have been calculated on a regular basis since June 1974 (except for a 10 month gap in data in 1978) based on measurements by the scanning radiometers and the advanced very high resolution radiometers on the operational NOAA polar orbiting satellites. A new base set of monthly and seasonal averages of outgoing longwave radiation has been prepared by NOAA's Climate Analysis Center (CAC) for the entire period of record through November 1983. Anomalies relative to these new normals have now been constructed for each month and season in the entire record.In this presentation, some of the more prominent anomalies of outgoing longwave radiation over the past decade are discussed. A major concentration is on the tropics and subtropics where there have been very substantial radiation variations associated with major shifts in convective cloudiness accompanying El Niño/Southern Oscillation events.