The Global Energy Balance Archive (GEBA) is a database
for the central storage of the worldwide measured energy fluxes at the
Earth's surface, maintained at ETH Zurich (Switzerland). This paper
documents the status of the GEBA version 2017 dataset, presents the new
web interface and user access, and reviews the scientific impact that GEBA
data had in various applications. GEBA has continuously been expanded and
updated and contains in its 2017 version around 500 000 monthly mean entries
of various surface energy balance components measured at 2500 locations. The
database contains observations from 15 surface energy flux components, with
the most widely measured quantity available in GEBA being the shortwave
radiation incident at the Earth's surface (global radiation). Many of
the historic records extend over several decades. GEBA contains monthly data
from a variety of sources, namely from the World Radiation Data Centre
(WRDC) in St. Petersburg, from national weather services, from different
research networks (BSRN, ARM, SURFRAD), from peer-reviewed publications,
project and data reports, and from personal communications. Quality
checks are applied to test for gross errors in the dataset. GEBA has played
a key role in various research applications, such as in the quantification
of the global energy balance, in the discussion of the anomalous atmospheric
shortwave absorption, and in the detection of multi-decadal variations in
global radiation, known as global dimming and brightening. GEBA is
further extensively used for the evaluation of climate models and
satellite-derived surface flux products. On a more applied level, GEBA
provides the basis for engineering applications in the context of solar
power generation, water management, agricultural production and tourism.
GEBA is publicly accessible through the internet via http://www.geba.ethz.ch.
Supplementary data are available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.873078
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