Several general uses for radiative flux datasets for climate studies were discussed at the workshop. Most general is for analysis of the climate system and its variability in terms of the energy and water cycle, including the variations in radiative heating that drive the atmospheric and oceanic circulations.

Long-term variations of these quantities help characterize the changing climate. The complexity of the climate system requires modeling studies as well as observational studies, so another general use is for the development and evaluation of climate models.

However, the extension of forecasting range from weekly into seasonal ranges also requires use of the same datasets for the development and evaluation of weather forecasting models as well.

A major form of model evaluation is comparison. All of these uses called for radiation flux datasets that separate shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) fluxes, upward and downward (the difference of which provides the net flux, the vertical derivative of which provides the radiative heating), for all-sky and clear-sky conditions over the whole global for decades at sufficient space-time resolution to observe the weather-scale variations.

A complete error assessment over the whole range of scales from weather to global-decadal is needed. Required accuracy depends on the space-time scales of variability and ranges from 15 to < 1 Wm-2 for weather-scales to climate scales.

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