Simulate daylight and weather

The latitude of where you live affects many of the characteristics that make your home distinctive. Places near the poles, like the Svalbard archipelago in Norway, can experience 24 hours of sun in the summer, but they also experience the Arctic Night, or 24 hours of darkness per day, in the winter. On the other hand, places close to the equator, like Bogota, Colombia, experience much less seasonal variation in daylight hours. The tilt of the Earth that causes these seasonal changes in daylight also influences the climate. Svalbard typically experiences a lot more snow than Bogota does. In this tutorial, you’ll use the weather and daylight tools to understand how latitude affects seasonal changes in weather and daylight.

In this tutorial you will learn to:

• View a map in 2D and 3D
• Navigate a map in 3D
• Use the Daylight tool to simulate light conditions at different times of year
• Use the Weather tool to simulate different weather conditions

This tutorial was last tested on September 25, 2024.

Requirements

Simulate daylight and weather

Simulate daylight across time zones

As Earth spins, different parts of the planet face toward or away from the sun, creating night and day. Historically, many places around the world kept local time based on observable markers, such as when the sun was highest in the sky. As the world globalized, a standardized way of telling time became more crucial to time train travel, workdays, freight deliveries, and more. To help people around the world better coordinate what time it was, time zones were created. Originally, time zones were drawn roughly every 15 degrees of longitude, but there are many variations based on political and geographic decisions. For example, during World War II, the Germans occupying France switched the country from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) to Central European Time (CET) to follow German time. After the war, France never changed back to GMT. Another example is China, which changed from using five time zones to using a single time zone after the Chinese Civil War in 1949. As a result of these changes, people can experience very different night and daytimes, even in the same time zone.

1. Open MapMaker.

   

2. On the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, click the 3D button.

   

   The map opens in 3D. Next, you'll add a layer showing world time zones.

3. On the toolbar, click Add layer.

   The Add layer pane opens.

4. In the Add layer pane, search for Time Zones. In the list of search results, for the Time Zones layer, click the Add button.

   

5. Close the Add layer pane.

   The Time Zones layer is now added to the map.

6. On the map, zoom to the country of China. Click the map to open an informational pop-up.

   

   According to the pop-up, China Standard Time is 8 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. This means if it's 12 noon in Greenwich, England, then it's 8 PM in Beijing, China. While it's convenient in some ways to have the entire country using a standard time, there may also be some challenges for people living in different parts of the country who want to optimize daylight. Next, you'll use the daylight tool to explore the difference in daylight hours between eastern and western China.

7. Close the pop-up.
8. On the toolbar on the left side of the screen, click the Open daylight tool button.

   

   The Daylight pane appears. Using this tool, you can model realistic scenes showing daylight and shadow by adjusting the time of day, day of the year, presence of shadows on the map, and the sun's position by date and time.

9. In the Daylight pane, drag the time slider to 06:00 PM.

   

   The map now shows the position of the sun at 06:00 PM local time. Notice that eastern China is experiencing darkness at 6:00 PM, while western China still has daylight.

10. On the daylight pane, use the time slider to consider the following question: approximately how many hours difference is there between sunrise in eastern China and in western China?

Explore seasonal changes

In addition to spinning on its axis, the Earth also rotates around the sun. As it does so, it tilts, which causes seasons. At the poles, seasonal changes are extreme, ranging from 24 hours of full sun and relatively mild weather to 24 hours of complete darkness, cold, and snow. Near the equator, these variations are more subtle, and you may not notice them at all. You'll explore these changes with MapMaker.

1. In the upper left corner, click the Open search button.
2. In the Find address or place bar, type Longyearbyen, Svalbard and press Enter.

   

   The map zooms to Longyearbyen, a city on the Svalbard archipelago of Norway. The community is one of the northernmost settlements on Earth. Because of the way the Earth tilts, Longyearbyen experiences little to no daylight from late October to early February.

3. Close the Search result window, then zoom out until you can see the entire Svalbard archipelago and the North Pole.

   

4. On the daylight pane, use the calendar to change the date to the winter solstice, December 21. Drag the time slider from 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM.

   

   What do you notice about the amount of daylight at the North Pole? The South Pole?

5. On the daylight pane, use the calendar to change the date to the summer solstice, June 21.

   The summer solstice is the shortest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

   What do you notice about the amount of daylight at the North Pole? The South Pole?

6. On the daylight pane, drag the time slider to 12:00 AM, then click the Animate sun and shadow over a year button.

   

   An animation plays, showing you where the sun is on the same day of the month over the 12 months of the year.

7. After the animation plays, click the Animate sun and shadow over a year button again to pause the animation.

Model weather in 3D

Finally, you'll model sunlight and weather for the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, over the course of a day. Using the Topographic 3D basemap, you can model how building shadows affect the surrounding area, what conditions on roads might look like, and more.

1. In the upper left corner of the map, click the Open search button. Search for Minneapolis, Minnesota and press Enter.

   

2. Close the Search result pop-up.
3. On the toolbar, click the Basemaps button. In the Basemaps pane, choose the 3D Buildings basemap.

   

4. Close the Basemaps pane.
5. Zoom in to downtown Minneapolis until 3D buildings appear on the map.
6. Hold the right mouse button and drag the map to tilt it. Tilt until you see the buildings as though you were flying around them in a helicopter.

   

7. If necessary, reopen the Daylight pane.
8. On the daylight pane, use the calendar to change the date to the spring solstice, March 19, and the time slider to set the time to 07:30 AM.

   What do you notice about the shadows of the buildings? What angle is the sun at to create these shadows?

9. On the toolbar on the left side of the screen, click the Open weather simulation button.
10. In the Weather pane, click Rainy.

    

    Note:

    If rain does not appear, zoom in closer to the city or rotate your map more.

11. In the Weather pane, drag the Cloud cover slider to the right to increase the number of clouds in the sky.
12. Drag the Precipitation slider to the right to increase the amount of rainfall.
13. Change the weather to Snowy.

Being able to explore the differences in daylight over time is useful for understanding the effects of seasonality on different places on Earth. Likewise, picturing the variations in the possibilities of the weather can help prepare for the future or understand the environmental conditions of past events.

You can find more tutorials in the tutorial gallery.

Acknowledgements

• National Geographic Style Map sources: Esri, TomTom, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community
• Topographic map sources: Esri, TomTom, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community