Earth Sun ID: 3109

Solar Irradiance (WMS)

Visualizations by Horace Mitchell Released on February 1, 2005

The Earth's climate is determined by energy transfer from the sun to the Earth's land, oceans, and atmosphere. As the Earth moves around the sun, the fact that the Earth's axis is tilted means that the sun's overhead position moves from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere and back from one summer to the next. This effect causes winters to be cold and summers warm in the Northern Hemisphere and the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere. This animation shows the incoming solar irradiance on the Earth at noon on the Greenwich meridian during an entire year, illustrating this movement. The magnitude of this irradiance comes from measurements by the TIM instrument on SORCE. Since the Earth's orbit is elliptical, the magnitude of the solar irradiance at the Earth is least when the Earth is farthest from the sun and greatest when the earth is closest. This 6 or 7 percent change can be seen in the animation by watching the dark bands move. When the bands expand from the bright spot, the Earth is getting closer to the sun, from July through December, and when they contract the Earth is moving away, from January through June. The sun's irradiance is also variable from day to day, but that effect is about ten times smaller than the effect of the earth's orbit.

This animation shows the solar radiance on the Earth at noon on the Greenwich meriidian for June 20, 2003 through June 19, 2004 as calculated from measurements made by the TIM instrument on SORCE.

This product is available through our Web Map Service.

For More Information

http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/

Visualization Credits

Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC): Lead Animator
Gary Rottman (University of Colorado/LASP): Scientist
Tom Woods (University of Colorado): Scientist

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3109

Mission:
Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE)

Data Used:

SORCE/TIM/Solar Irradiance

2003/06/20-2004/06/19

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Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.

Dates of Data Used:
2003/06/20-2004/06/19

This item is part of this series:
WMS

Keywords:
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Atmosphere >> Atmospheric Radiation >> Incoming Solar Radiation
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Atmosphere >> Atmospheric Radiation >> Solar Irradiance
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Sun-earth Interactions >> Solar Activity >> Solar Irradiance
NASA Science >> Earth
NASA Science >> Sun

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0