The Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) is an integrated program of research, observations, and science activities with the goal of providing data sets to support accurate predictions of global and regional climate change. Research in the areas of Earth radiation budget, hydrometeorology, and modeling/prediction contribute to meeting the goal of GEWEX.

The NASA/GEWEX SRB project is a major component of the GEWEX radiation research. The objective of the NASA/GEWEX SRB project is to determine surface, top-of-atmosphere (TOA), and atmospheric shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) radiative fluxes with the precision needed to predict transient climate variations and decadal-to-centennial climate trends.