NASA Scientific Visualization Studio Collection

Instantaneous Incoming Solar Flux (WMS)

SORCE/TIM

This is the legend for the Incoming Solar Flux animation, indicating the magnitudes of incident energy flux.

The Earth's climate is determined by energy transfer from the sun to the Earth's land, oceans, and atmosphere. As the Earth rotates, the sun lights up only part of the Earth at a time, and some of that incoming solar energy is reflected and some is absorbed, depending on type of area it lights. The amount of reflection and absorption is critical to the climate. An instrument named CERES orbits the Earth every 99 minutes and measures the reflected solar energy. This animation shows the incoming solar radiation within view of CERES during 29 orbits on June 20 and 21 of 2003. Because this is incoming solar flux, its magnitude only depends on the position of the sun, and, because the orbit is synchronized with the sun, the orbit crosses the equator in the daylight at about 1:30 PM local time on every orbit. This data is not actually measured from CERES, but is calculated to compare with the outgoing radiation that CERES does measure.

2005-02-01

*Please give credit for this visualization to*
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio

SVS

Horace Mitchell (Lead)

Eric Sokolowsky

Bruce Wielicki (NASA/LaRC)

WMS

2003/06/20-2003/06/2 2

*DEPC Metadata* is available here.

GCMD

EARTH SCIENCE

Atmosphere

Sun-earth Interactions

Solar Activity

Atmospheric Radiation

Incoming Solar Radiation

Solar Irradiance

More Information on this topic available at
http://asd-www.larc…

*This product is available through our Web Map Service. Click here to learn more. [ http://svs.gsfc.nas…]*

Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

Langley Research Center (LaRC)

2003

Earth

Sun

WMS

SORCE

2003

3105

SPD-SCIVS-http://svs .gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a 000000/a003100/a0031 05/incswbar.0000-IMA GE

http://svs.gsfc.nas…