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Glint, the specular reflection of sunlight off Earth's oceans, may reveal thepresence of oceans on an extrasolar planet. As an Earth-like planet nearscrescent phases, the size of the ocean glint spot increases relative to thefraction of illuminated disk, while the reflectivity of this spot increases.Both effects change the planet's visible reflectivity as a function of phase.However, strong forward scattering of radiation by clouds can also produceincreases in a planet's reflectivity as it approaches crescent phases, andsurface glint can be obscured by Rayleigh scattering and atmosphericabsorption. Here we explore the detectability of glint in the presence of anatmosphere and realistic phase-dependent scattering from oceans and clouds. Weuse the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Virtual Planetary Laboratory 3-Dline-by-line, multiple-scattering spectral Earth model to simulate Earth'sbroadband visible brightness and reflectivity over an orbit. Our validatedsimulations successfully reproduce phase-dependent Earthshine observations. Wefind that the glinting Earth can be as much as 100% brighter at crescent phasesthan simulations that do not include glint, and that the effect is dependent onboth orbital inclination and wavelength, where the latter dependence is causedby Rayleigh scattering limiting sensitivity to the surface. We show that thisphenomenon may be observable using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) pairedwith an external occulter.

Detecting Oceans on Extrasolar Planets Using the Glint Effect