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	Coverage of this dataset spans November 1984 to September 2005.
	The animation features of the Earth Observatory are currently unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience. To view the full temporal span of this dataset, please view the Outgoing Longwave Radiation monthly holdings.

Product description: A portion of the sunlight that enters the Earth system is reflected back into space, while the remaining portion of the sunlight is absorbed by the Earth system and stored as heat; some is absorbed in the atmosphere and some is absorbed in the lands and oceans. A percentage of this stored heat is emitted by the Earth system back into space in the form of longwave energy. The term "outgoing longwave radiation" refers to the sum total of all the longwave electromagnetic energy, or infrared radiation at wavelengths ranging from 5 to 100 micrometers, that escapes from the top of the Earth's atmosphere back into space. The image above is a false-color map showing the amount of longwave energy (in Watts per square meter) that was emitted by the Earth system for the given month(s). In the image, the brighter yellow and orange regions show where more heat is emitted, while purple and blue regions show intermediate values, and white regions are lower values. Notice that most heat is escaping from the world's equatorial and desert regions. Notice also the tropical heat transported northeastward by the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean. All of the images in this dataset up to and including February 1990 were acquired by the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) sensor and all of the images from March 2000 onward were acquired by the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) sensor aboard NASA's Terra satellite. (Data courtesy ERBE and CERES Projects, NASA LaRC)

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