Abstract/Summary

The near-infrared solar spectral irradiance (SSI) is of vital importance for understanding the Earth’s radiation budget, and in Earth observation applications. Differences between previously published solar spectra (including the commonly-used ATLAS3 spectrum) reach up to 10% at the low-wavenumber end of the 4000-10000 cm-1 (2.5 – 1 μm) spectral region. The implications for the atmospheric sciences are significant, since this spectral region contains 25% of the incoming total solar irradiance. This work details an updated analysis of the CAVIAR SSI, featuring additional analysis techniques and an updated uncertainty budget using a Monte Carlo method. We report good consistency with ATLAS3 in the 7000-10000 cm-1 region where there is confidence in these results due to agreement with other spectra, but ~7% lower in the 4000-7000 cm-1 region, in general agreement with several other analyses.