Instantaneous Scene Identification (WMS)

  • Released Tuesday, February 1, 2005
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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 th e climate. An instrument named CERES orbits the Earth every 99 minutes and measures the reflected solar energy. This animation shows the scene identification as measured by CERES during 29 orbits on June 20 and 21 of 2003. By comparing the incoming solar radiation with the outgoing reflected and thermal radiation, it is possible to identify the type of area being viewed, whether it be land, clouds, ocean, or ice. This scene identification is used together with the radiation flux measurements to build up a complete picture of the Earth's energy budget over time.

This animation shows 29 orbits (2 days) of CERES measurements of regions of solar reflectivity, from June 20-21, 2003.

This product is available through our Web Map Service.

This is the legend for the Scene Identification animation, indicating the discreet regions of solar reflectivity.

This is the legend for the Scene Identification animation, indicating the discreet regions of solar reflectivity.

For More Information

See http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/ceres/ASDceres.html

Credits

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

This page was originally published on Tuesday, February 1, 2005.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:56 PM EDT.

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Datasets used in this visualization

  • [Aqua: CERES]

    ID: 149
    Sensor: CERES Dates used: 2003/06/20-2003/06/21

    The CERES instrument aboard many Earth-orbiting satellites records the flow of reflected Solar radiation and reprocessed longwave radiation in the Earth's radiation budget.

    See all pages that use this dataset

  • [ERBE Scene Identification]

    ID: 400
    Type: Model Sensor: ERBE Scene Identification
    See all pages that use this dataset

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