Earth  ID: 3097

Average Total-sky Outgoing Shortwave Flux (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 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 average amount of reflection and absorption is critical to the climate, because the absorbed energy heats up the Earth until it is radiated away as thermal radiation. This animation shows the monthly average outgoing shortwave radiation from July, 2002 through June, 2004 as measured by the CERES instrument. This is the sunlight that is directly reflected back into space by clouds, ice, desert, and other physical areas on the Earth. Although clouds are very reflective, they come and going during the month, so more reflection is seen on average from ice sheets, which change very little during a monthly period. Note that the cloud-free parts of the ocean are relatively dark, indicating that oceans absorb more sunlight than they reflect.
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This animation shows the monthly average total-sky outgoing shortwave flux from CERES for July 2002 through June 2004.

This product is available through our Web Map Service.
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This is the legend for the total-sky outgoing shortwave flux animation, indicating the magnitude of the energy flux.

For More Information

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

Visualization Credits

Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC): Lead Animator
Eric Sokolowsky (GST): Animator
Bruce A. Wielicki (NASA/LaRC): Scientist
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

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https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3097

Data Used:
Aqua/CERES/Outgoing Shortwave Radiation Flux
2002/07/01-2004/06/30
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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:
2002/07/01-2004/06/30

This item is part of this series:
WMS

Keywords:
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Atmosphere >> Atmospheric Radiation >> Shortwave Radiation
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Oceans >> Ocean Heat Budget >> Shortwave Radiation
SVS >> CERES
NASA Science >> Earth

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