IRC Status Report:

The Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN)And its Central Archive

The World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC)

Julian Gröbner, Gert König-Langlo

Main WRMC Objectives:

Archiving uniform and consistent measurements throughout the BSRN to:

1. monitor the surface short-wave and long-wave radiative components and their changes with the best methods currently available,

2. provide data for the validation of satellite-based estimates of the surface radiative fluxes and

3. produce high quality observational data for comparison to climate models.

Julian Gröbner, Gert König-Langlo

Brief WRMC-BSRN History:

1. 1988: The WMO proposed the establishment of the BSRN.

2. 1992: The BSRN started with 5 sites and the WRMC at ETH Zurich under the direction of Prof. Atsumu Ohmura.

3. 2004: BSRN officially became a contributor to the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS).

4. 2008 July: After 15 years of nearly continuous operation at ETH Zurich, the archive moved to Alfred-Wegener-Institut (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany under the direction of Dr. Gert König-Langlo.

Julian Gröbner, Gert König-Langlo

Present State of the BSRN: 52 stations providing data

Julian Gröbner, Gert König-Langlo

The web-address is:

http://www.bsrn.awi.de.

File access is:

ftp://ftp.bsrn.awi.de/

WRMC uses PANGAEA.

Julian Gröbner, Gert König-Langlo

Present State of the WRMC: 6000 station-months available

……….

2011-May-03

500 years of radiation data are now available!

Congratulation especially to Fred M. Denn from Chesapeake

Light who submitted the first file for April 2011 which happened

to be accidentally No. 6000! Also many thanks to all other

station scientists who contribute with their data.

Julian Gröbner, Gert König-Langlo

Future Developments I

A “Cooperating Network Agreement” is being developed to maximize scientific collaboration between the BSRN and the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC) (it should become active soon).

Julian Gröbner, Gert König-Langlo

Future Developments II

• A PhD student will join the WRMC team in order to develop a central quality management system within the WRMC.

• Aerosol Optical Depth measurements will get included within the WRMC as soon

as an agreement exists on how it should be done.

Julian Gröbner, Gert König-Langlo

FRC-III, Davos, 2010

Future Developments IIIAt the moment 7 candidate BSRN stations exist (green dots) which are expected to

submit their data soon: http://www.bsrn.awi.de/en/stations/google_earth_overlay/.

Julian Gröbner, Gert König-Langlo

Candidate Stations

• Alert, Canada

• Budapest, Hungary

• Summit, Greenland

• Hanimaadhoo, Maldives

• Jungfraujoch, Switzerl.

• Zvenigrod, Russia

• Almeria, Spain