Flown onboard Terra (formerly called EOS AM-1).

Applications: earth's radiation budget; atmospheric radiation.

Data collected in the shortwave and longwave portions of the electromagnetic spectrum; pixel size is 20 km.

In addition to the Terra satellite, a CERES instrument has also flown onboard the Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission (TRMM). This particular instrument is an updated and improved version of the ERBE (Earth Radiation Budget Experiment). The main focus of this particular instrument is the Earth's radiation budget -- incoming and outgoing radiation. Four areas in which CERES will play a role are long term climate variability, seasonal to interannual climate prediction, natural hazards (i.e., effects of volcanic eruptions), land cover (i.e., photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) for predicting crop yields).

More information: asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/ceres/ASDceres.html

This plot shows the longwave flux or heat energy leaving the Earth during the first orbit of measurements after CERES began scanning the Earth. The flux is expressed in units of watts per square meter, or energy per unit area. Blue areas are the cold tops of clouds while red areas are generally warm, clear desert regions" -- CERES Instrument Team (source above).