Weather Words: Sunglint

Have you ever visited the beach and taken a picture of what you hoped would be a framer, only to see a bright glare on the ocean? Definitely not a framer! You may have been battling the phenomenon of sunglint. And it has made for bigger problems than a vacation photo fail. Astronauts also deal with it from space, which can have impacts on their research and observations.

If you’re a nerd like me and love looking at imagery from space, you may have noticed these bright patches over the oceans or other bodies of water. These are referred to as sunglint.

In the image below, you can see it off the coast of Crete. To me, it almost appears like smoke or clouds are coming off the southern side of the island, but in fact it’s sunglint.

The phenomenon can create problems for some scientists because the sunglint hides some features that are normally visible. However, they have created a few workarounds that have helped reduce this and improve their availability to see past it. On the other hand, scientists say sunglint actually helps when they are detecting oil on the surface of the water.

While experiencing sunglint can be a nuisance, it’s a little comforting to know that even NASA has trouble with this in photos, and it’s not just us!

Jennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world's biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.