Estimating Land Surface Energy Budgets From Space: Review and Current Efforts at the University of Wisconsin—Madison and USDA–ARS

Abstract

Since the advent of the meteorological satellite, a large research effort within the community of earth scientists has been directed at assessing the components of the land surface energy balance from space. The development of these techniques from first efforts to the present time are reviewed, and the integrated system used to estimate the radiative and turbulent land surface fluxes is described. This system is now running in real time over the continental United States at a resolution of 10 km, producing daily and time-integrated flux components.