Earth Radiation Budget orbital measurements are key to validating climate model
 
prediction accuracy
 
The US National Research Council concluded in 2007 that existing Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) satellite measurements lacked sufficient accuracy, leading to various proposals for new climate satellite projects, that might provide the needed decadal ERB data by the 2040s.  It is therefore vital that such measurements continue and are improved in accuracy. However the Moon and Earth Radiation Budget Experiment, or MERBE, solves much of this problem now, using the moon's constant `climate' as a satellite calibration target. The project has recalibrated decades of existing ERB satellite measurements to remove instrument trends, in order to provide a clean dataset that can be freely downloaded right now to be used by scientists today.  A quick overview of MERBE is in this 15 min recorded AMS 2017 talk here.