Towards Moon-based monitoring of energy budget of the earth climate system

Detection of changes in the balance between the incoming energy from the Sun and the outgoing energy from the Earth is crucial to our understanding of global climate change. Here we elaborate some advantages of observing planetary scale phenomena associated with the energy budget of the Earth climate system from a Moon-based observatory. Accidentally acquired lunar surface temperature time series from the Apollo-15 provide a proof for the concept of such a lunar terrestrial observation. Albedo and global mean surface temperature are two key variables in quantifying the Earth energy budget. As the first step in moon-based terrestrial observation, we propose to target at these two variables on global and regional scales. Data from a permanent lunar observatory will be complementary to the data obtained from satellite platforms and ground-based stations.