As a calibrated and mapped geostationary satellite dataset, GridSat is easily accessible for both meteorological and climatological applications that allows a wide range of user-specified levels of sophistication.

The National Weather Service (NWS), in collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), now issues an Ultraviolet (UV) index forecast. The UV index (UVI) is a mechanism by which the American public is forewarned of the next day's noontime intensity of UV radiation at locations within the United States. The EPA's role in this effort is to alert the public of the dangerous health effects of overexposure to, and the accumulative effects of, UV radiation. The EPA also provides ground-level monitoring data for use in ongoing verification of the UVI. The NWS estimates the UVI using existing atmospheric measurements, forecasts, and an advanced radiative transfer model. This paper discusses the justification for a forecasted index, the nature of UV radiation, the methodology of producing the UVI, and results from verifying the UVI. Since the UVI is an evolving product, a short discussion of necessary improvements and/or refinements is included at the end of this article.

The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) product, which NOAA has been operationally generating since 1979, is a very long data record that has been used in many applications, yet past studies have shown its limitations and several algorithm-related deficiencies. Ellingson et al. have developed the multispectral algorithm that largely improved the accuracy of the narrowband-estimated OLR as well as eliminated the problems in AVHRR. NOAA has been generating High Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS) OLR operationally since September 1998. In recognition of the need for a continuous and long OLR data record that would be consistent with the earth radiation budget broadband measurements in the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) era, and to provide a climate data record for global change studies, a vigorous reprocessing of the HIRS radiance for OLR derivation is necessary.This paper describes the development of the new HIRS OLR climate dataset. The HIRS level 1b data from the entire Television and Infrared Observation Satellite N-series (TIROS-N) satellites have been assembled. A new radiance calibration procedure was applied to obtain more accurate and consistent HIRS radiance measurements. The regression coefficients of the HIRS OLR algorithm for all satellites were rederived from calculations using an improved radiative transfer model. Intersatellite calibrations were performed to remove possible discontinuity in the HIRS OLR product from different satellites. A set of global monthly diurnal models was constructed consistent with the HIRS OLR retrievals to reduce the temporal sampling errors and to alleviate an orbital-drift-induced artificial trend. These steps significantly improved the accuracy, continuity, and uniformity of the HIRS monthly mean OLR time series. As a result, the HIRS OLR shows a comparable stability as in the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) nonscanner OLR measurements.HIRS OLR has superb agreement with the broadband observations from Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) and Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) in the ENSO-monitoring regions. It shows compatible ENSO-monitoring capability with the AVHRR OLR. Globally, HIRS OLR agrees with CERES with an accuracy to within 2 W m Ϫ2 and a precision of about 4 W m Ϫ2. The correlation coefficient between HIRS and CERES global monthly mean is 0.997. Regionally, HIRS OLR agrees with CERES to within 3 W m Ϫ2 with precisions better than 3 W m Ϫ2 in most places. HIRS OLR could be used for constructing climatology for applications that plan to use NPOESS ERBS and previously used AVHRR OLR observations. The HIRS monthly mean OLR data have high accuracy and precision with respect to the broadband observations of ERBE and CERES. It can be used as an independent validation data source. The uniformity and continuity of HIRS OLR time series suggest that it could be used as a reliable transfer reference for the discontinuous broadband...