Global Radiation and Aerosols - NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory An official website of the United States government Here's how you know Official websites use .gov .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( ) or means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Global Monitoring Laboratory Global Radiation, Aerosols and Clouds GRAD is involved in observational and theoretical research of the Earth's surface and atmospheric radiation budgets, and of climate-forcing properties of different types of aerosols. Long-term radiation, meteorological and aerosol measurements are made at diverse globally-remote sites and continental US sites ( SURFRAD and SOLRAD ). In addition, we make observations of spectral solar radiation for the purpose of remote sensing of certain atmospheric constituents and determination of variations in the UV irradiance. GRAD also operates the NOAA Federated Aerosol Network (NFAN) , whose goal is to characterize means, variability, and trends of climate-forcing properties of different types of aerosols, and to understand the factors that control these properties. These measurements are used for evaluating earth system models and provide ground-truth for satellite measurements. Sites Datasets Data Viewer News Solar Calculator Observing Networks Aerosol Network Baseline Network SURFRAD Network SOLRAD Network NEUBrew Network Antarctic UV Network Data SURFRAD Data Plots SOLRAD Data Plots Baseline Radiation Plots Recent In Situ Aerosol Data Plots Recent Observatory Data Plots Aerosol Column Properties Data Archive Climate Products Mauna Loa apparent transmission Pacific Arctic Climate Barrow's Annual Snow Cycle Field Campaigns NOAA SPLASH Study Wind Forecasting Improvement Project (WFIP-2) Wind Forecasting Improvement Project 3 (WFIP-3) Cloud Properties Experiment (CPEX) Instrumentation Aerosol Instrumentation Radiation Instrumentation Broadband Solar Calibration Facility Central UV Calibration Facility Additional Information