Scientists have revived and modernized a nearly forgotten technique for monitoring Earth's climate by carefully observing "earthshine," the ghostly glow of the dark side of the moon. Earthshine measurements are a useful complement to satellite observations for determining Earth's reflectance of sunlight, an important climate parameter. Long-term observations of earthshine thus monitor variations in cloud cover and atmospheric particles known as aerosols that play a role in climate change.

Earthshine is readily visible to the naked eye, most easily during a crescent moon. Leonardo da Vinci first explained the phenomenon, in which the moon acts as a giant mirror, showing the sunlight reflected from Earth. The brightness of the earthshine thus measures the reflectance of Earth.

In May 1 issue of the journal, Geophysical Research Letters, published by the American Geophysical Union, a team of scientists from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the California Institute of......

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Title: Earthshine
Approximate Word Count: 424
Approximate Pages: 2 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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