Globally gridded satellite observations for climate studies

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. W ith the recent passing of the fiftieth anniver- sary of the first U.S. weather satellite, questions on how to best use historical satellite data come to the forefront of the discussion on climate observation. There are now over 30 years of globally sampled geostationary and polar satellite data, and while the visible and infrared (IR) imaging instru-ments on the satellites were not specifically designed for climate purposes, the record has great potential to be used for observational climate studies. With this in mind, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently embarked on an effort to derive climate data records (CDRs) from en-vironmental satellite data (National Research Counci