Dataset of CERES and MODIS retrievals over 2002–2020

The dataset comprises satellite retrievals from CERES and MODIS, providing global distributions at a 1° horizontal resolution for the period 2002–2020, which we aggregated into monthly averages.References for variables: Loeb et al. (2018); Platnick et al. (2015); Levy et al. (2017); Schaaf & Wang (2015); Kilpatrick et al. (2015); Wan et al. (2015). Precise descriptions of the variables are provided in Clément et al. (2026), and in its Supplementary material (under review in Environmental Research Letters). Variable Description / Range year [2002; 2020] month [1; 12] lon longitude (°) [-179.5°; 179.5°] cos_time cos(2π · month / 12) sin_time sin(2π · month / 12) lat latitude (°) [-89.5°; 89.5°] cos_lon cos(longitude) sin_lon sin(longitude) mask mask from Quaas et al. (2022), 0 or 1 land_sea_mask % of sea in a 1° × 1° grid box surface_temperature surface temperature (°C) surface_albedo [0; 1] od_aer aerosol optical depth lwp liquid water path (g/m²) clt cloud fraction ([0; 1]) scdnc column-integrated cloud droplet number (/m²), following Quaas et al. (2006) TOA_sw_clear_sky_monthly reflected SW flux at TOA (clear-sky) (W/m²) TOA_sw_monthly reflected SW flux at TOA (all-sky) (W/m²) albedo_TOA_clear_sky TOA albedo clear-sky ([0; 1]) albedo_TOA TOA albedo all-sky ([0; 1])