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Images & Animations
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Credit
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Average Total-sky Outgoing Longwave Flux (WMS)
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 longwave radiation from July, 2002 through June, 2004 as measured by the CERES instrument. This is the thermal radiation given off by the warm Earth. The Earth's rotation and the movement of warm air from the equator to the poles make the Earth roughly uniform in temperature. The most visible features are the cold poles in winter and the cold clouds along the equator which trap the outgoing thermal radiation.
This is the legend for the total-sky outgoing longwave flux animation, indicating the magnitude of the energy flux.
Metadata
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Sensor
Terra/CERES -
Animation ID
3092 -
Start Timecode
00:00:00:00 -
End Timecode
00:00:00:00 -
Animator
Horace Mitchell, Eric Sokolowsky -
Studio
SVS -
Visualization Date
2005/02/01 -
Scientist
Bruce Wielicki (NASA/LaRC) -
Datasets
Outgoing Longwave Radiation -
Keywords
GCMD--EARTH SCIENCE--Atmosphere--Atmospheric Radiation--Outgoing Longwave Radiation, GCMD--EARTH SCIENCE--Oceans--Ocean Heat Budget--Longwave Radiation -
Georeference Data
[-180,-90,180,90] -
Data Date
2002/07/01-2004/06/30 -
Story URL
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/ceres/ASDceres.html -
Animation Type
Regular