干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

By making use of real information about the continental and oceanic surface distribution of the Earth, and cloudiness data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP), we have studied the large-scale cloudiness behavior according to latitude and surface types (ice, water, vegetation and desert). These empirical relationships are used here to reconstruct the possible cloud distribution of historical epochs of the Earth history such as Late Cretaceous (90 My ago) and Late Triasic (230 My ago) when the landmass distribution was different. This information can be used to simulate the photometric variability of these planets according to their different geographical distribution.