Studies of the radiation budget anomalies over Antarctica during 1974–1983, and their possible relationship to climatic variations

We present the results of a study of anomalies, which are defined as differences of seasonal means from the data set seasonal means, in the Earth's radiation budget from the analysis of nine years of ten day mean observations derived from the NOAA polar orbiter satellites for the period, 1974–1983. We estimate that the standard deviation in the outgoing longwave flux for this period is less than 12 Wm−2 and typically 7 Wm−2. The results show that there are several geographical areas for which the standard deviation is in excess of 20 Wm−2; in such regions the radiation budget anomalies exceeded these due to natural atmospheric variability. In this paper we discuss the relationship of these anomalies with climatic change.