Solar Irradiance

  • Credit

    NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Solar Irradiance (WMS)

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 meridian for June 20, 2003 through June 19, 2004 as calculated from measurements made by the TIM instrument on SORCE.

Metadata

  • Sensor

    SORCE/TIM

  • Animation ID

    3109

  • Start Timecode

    00:00:00:00

  • End Timecode

    00:00:00:00

  • Animator

    Horace Mitchell

  • Studio

    SVS

  • Visualization Date

    2005/02/28

  • Scientist

    Gary Rottman (University of Colorado), Tom Woods (University of Colorado)

  • Datasets

    Solar Irradiance

  • 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

  • Georeference Data

    [-180,-90,180,90]

  • Data Date

    2003/06/20-2004/06/19

  • Story URL

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

  • Animation Type

    Regular