Approximating Annual Mean Incoming Solar Radiation

Abstract

We derive the Legendre series expansion for the insolation distribution on rapidly rotating planets as a function of sine of the latitude and the planet's obliquity. We give an explicit formula for the coefficients of this series as it depends on the obliquity and approximate the convergence rate. We determine the optimal truncation of the series for use in climate models and compare this approximation to other approximations in the literature.