During the Water and Energy Budget Synthesis Workshop that we held at the University of Maryland on May 19, 1999, recommendations were made for preparing data sets for the Mississippi River Basin, that will allow to close the water and energy budgets at various temporal and spatial scales. It was recommended to synthesize information currently available from the various GCIP projects such as model outputs, observational data, and remotely inferred information. Selected summaries have been prepared. The following can be viewed here:

Seasonal average of shortwave downward flux for 1996-1999 (Fig. 1)

Seasonal average of net SW flux 1996-1999 (Fig. 2)

Seasonal average of cloud amount for 1996-1999 (Fig. 3)

Annual average of shortwave downward flux for 1996-1999 (Fig. 4)

Annual average of net SW flux 1996-1999 (Fig. 5)

Annual average of cloud amount for 1996-1999 (Fig. 6)

Stewart diagram of shortwave downward for 1996-1999 (Fig. 7)

Summaries of model output comparisons can be viewed at:

http://ecpc.ucsd.edu/gcip/gcipwebs.html

Downwelling surface shortwave and photosynthetically active radiation, top of atmosphere downward shortwave radiation and top atmosphere upward shortwave radiation, cloud amount and surface skin temperature are provided in the "historic" data archive for the entire GCIP area.  In order to save space, data are not duplicated for the Mississippi River Basin and the sub-basins alone. Instead, "mask files" are supplied that can be used to extract the basin-scale data from the full-scale data.

The mask files have the same format and grid structure as those of the GCIP/SRB data files. In these files, each cell has one of two possible values: +1 or -1. A value of +1 means the cell is inside the boundaries of the basin, while -1 means the cell is outside the basin.

To extract data for a particular basin three steps should be taken:

The annual evolution of the monthly mean SW radiative fluxes for the Mississippi River Basin are presented in Gallery I.

The annual evolution of the monthly mean PAR fluxes for the Mississippi River Basin are presented in Gallery II.

The annual evolution of the monthly mean SW albedos for the Mississippi River Basin are presented in Gallery III.

The annual evolution of the monthly mean cloud amounts for the Mississippi River Basin are presented in Gallery IV.

Selected results on the Radiation Budget of the Mississippi River Basin and its sub-basins are provided in the following figures:

• Monthly mean surface shortwave downward radiation (W/m²) for 1998 (gziped postscript file)
• Standard deviation of daily shortwave downward radiation (W/m²) for 1998 (gziped postscript file)
• Normalized standard deviation of daily shortwave downward radiation for 1998 (gziped postscript file)

• Monthly mean cloud cover fraction for 1998 (gziped postscript file)
• Standard deviation of daily cloud cover fraction for 1998 (gziped postscript file)
• Normalized standard deviation of cloud cover fraction for 1998 (gziped postscript file)

• Monthly mean surface albedo for 1998 (gziped postscript file)
• Standard deviation of monthly mean surface albedo for 1998 (gziped postscript file)
• Normalized standard deviation of monthly mean surface albedo (gziped postscript file)

• Monthly mean statistics of surface short wave radiative fluxes for the Mississippi River Basin and the sub-basins for 1998. Given are the means, standard deviations, minimum and maximum values, and the number of grid cells in each basin.