Incident Light and Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) Monthly Means in the Australian Region

• Other Authors: CSIRO O&A, Information & Data Centre (pointOfContact), CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere - Hobart (hasAssociationWith), Hayes, Donna (pointOfContact)
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Australian Ocean Data Network
• Subjects: climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere; Earth Science | Cryosphere | Sea Ice | Ice Edges; Earth Science | Cryosphere | Sea Ice | Ice Extent; Earth Science | Cryosphere | Snow/Ice | Snow Cover; Earth Science | Oceans | Ocean Optics | Absorption; Earth Science | Oceans | Ocean Optics | Irradiance; Earth Science | Oceans | Ocean Optics | Reflectance; Earth Science | Oceans | Sea Ice | Ice Edges; Earth Science | Oceans | Sea Ice | Ice Extent; Earth Science | Terrestrial Hydrosphere | Snow/Ice | Ice Extent; Earth Science | Terrestrial Hydrosphere | Snow/Ice | Snow Cover; Marine Features (Australia) | Australian EEZ; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://researchdata.edu.au/incident-light-photosynthetically-australian-region/678423

Progress Code: completed Maintenance and Update Frequency: notPlanned Statement: The complete production at daily and monthly resolution (July 1983 to June 1991) were obtained by contacting Dennis Joesph, Chi-Fan Shih or another member of the NCAR DSS team and downloading:DS741.0: Bishop's Surface Solar Irradiance derived from ISCCP". The mean photosynthetically active radiation data for each month were extracted for the geographical area bounded by the equator to 60S and 90E to 180E by Richard Matear, and converted to netCDF format. The initial data processing and quality control checks were done by NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Mean Monthly PAR was calculated for one degree squares for each of the 12 months in a year. The mean PAR was calculated from the eight years of data available. This data is the surface solar irradiance data obtained for NASA/GISS to allow the production of photosynthetically active solar irradiance fields to allow the calculation of primary production using satellite ocean colour products. The information comes from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) using C1 data from multiple geostationary and polar orbiting meteorological satellites to provide a global view of the occurrence and properties of clouds. Atmospheric, cloud and surface data from ICSSP are used as input along with a scheme for computing clear-sky irradiance from the solar zenith angle, air properties, and surface reflectance. The scheme then uses simple cloud properties (cloud fraction, cloud optical thickness, and diffuse albedo) to produce total and photosynthetically active solar irradiance fields (Bishop and Rossow 1991; ISCCP Documentation of Cloud Data; Frouin et al. 1989). Input and output data fields are given in a 2.5° latitude and longitude grid. Monthly output data averages have been used for this project.