Earth anisotropic reflection and the orbit of LAGEOS

Radiation pressure due to sunlight anisotropically reflected from the oceans apparently cannot explain the fluctuations in the anomalous along‐track deceleration of the LAGEOS satellite. It fails by about a factor of 2 to account for the major peaks in the acceleration. This result is based on an extreme model: a cloudless earth whose northern hemisphere consists of continent and whose southern hemisphere consists of ocean. The continent is assumed to reflect sunlight according to Lambert's law, while the ocean reflects anisotropically according to a simple analytical law which mimics Nimbus 7 observations. The inclusion of clouds into the model would reduce the acceleration to perhaps an order of magnitude below those observed. Some other explanation for the fluctuations, which have magnitude ∼2 × 10−12 m s−2, must be sought.