Urban Signatures: Thermal Radiation (WMS)

  • Released Friday, May 27, 2005
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Big cities influence the environment around them. For example, urban areas are typically warmer than their surroundings. Cities are strikingly visible in computer models that simulate the Earth's land surface. This visualization shows outgoing thermal radiation predicted by the Land Information System (LIS) for a day in June 2001. Cities are warmer, so they emit more longwave (infrared) radiation. Only part of the global computation is shown, focusing on the highly urbanized northeast corridor in the United States, including the cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington.

This image shows outgoing thermal radiation (watts per square meter) predicted by LIS for 2001/06/11. The urban areas stand out very distinctly against their less radiative surroundings.This product is available through our Web Map Service.

This image shows outgoing thermal radiation
(watts per square meter) predicted by LIS for 2001/06/11. The
urban areas stand out very distinctly against their less
radiative surroundings.

This product is available through our Web Map Service.

Thermal radiation color bar ranging from 0 to 160 W/m2.

Thermal radiation color bar ranging from 0 to 160 W/m2.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio. Additional credit should go to NASA GSFC Land Information System (http://lis.gsfc.nasa.gov/)

This page was originally published on Friday, May 27, 2005.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:56 PM EDT.

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