Dip of the Horizon

Introduction
When we observe sunset and mirage phenomena, we're usually standing on the surface of
the Earth. But standing on the
surface doesn't mean our eyes
are at the surface. Even at sea, if
your eyes were at the surface of
the water, your nose would be
under it; this isn't a tenable
position for very long.

Diagrams in textbooks are often

drawn as if the observer is at the
surface of the Earth — partly
because the height of the eye is
very small compared to the size
of the Earth: a person's eyes are
about 1.6 meters above the
ground, but the radius of the
Earth is over 6 million meters.
But, in this case, “very small”
isn't the same as “negligible.”
Let's work it out:

Dip, without refraction

Here's a diagram of the situation without atmospheric refraction. The diagram shows a
vertical plane through the center of the Earth (at C) and the observer (at O). The radius of
the Earth is R, and the observer's eye is a height h above the point S on the surface. (Of
course, the height of the eye, and consequently the distance to the horizon, is greatly
exaggerated in this diagram.) The observer's astronomical horizon is the dashed line
through O, perpendicular to the Earth's radius OC. Because we are temporarily assuming
that there is no refraction, the observer's apparent horizon coincides with the geometric
horizon, indicated by the dashed line OG, tangent to the surface of the Earth.

Because of the observer's height h, the apparent horizon lies below the astronomical one
by the angle dg, which is the geometric dip of the (unrefracted) horizon.

Because the tangent OG is perpendicular to the radius CG of the circle that represents the
Earth, the angle OCG is also equal to the dip dg, because both angles labelled dg are
complementary to the angle COG. So we can apply elementary trigonometry to calculate
the dip:
 cos (dg) = CG/OC = R/(R + h)

But h is, as remarked above, very small compared to R. That means the dip angle itself is
small; so we can apply the small-angle approximation cos x = 1 − x2/2 to the left side of
the equation, and use the binomial theorem to expand the right side [after dividing both
numerator and denominator by R, to get 1/(1 + h/R)], which becomes 1 − h/R. Then the
1's cancel, leaving us with the approximate result

(dg)2/2 = h/R ,
or
(dg) = sqrt(2h/R) .

To get some feeling for how this works, look at some numbers. Suppose you're standing
at the edge of the sea, with your toes at the waterline. Your eyes are about 1.5 meters
above the sea, and R = 6.4 × 106 m. Then sqrt(3/6.4 × 106) is about 0.00068 radians, or
0.039°, or about two and a third minutes of arc.

As the resolution of the normal eye in broad daylight is about one minute of arc, this dip
is an easily visible angle. So, although the angle is small, it is hardly negligible, even for
a naked-eye observer standing at the water's edge. Clearly, dip is an appreciable effect for
all real-world observations.

Before considering a more realistic situation that includes refraction, notice that the dip is
the same as the angle OCG at the center of the Earth. A rule of thumb is that a minute of
arc on the surface of the Earth is a (nautical) mile. So this calculation also supplies the
distance to the apparent horizon: about 2 1/3 nautical miles, in this example.
Equivalently, we can say that as the angular distance to the horizon is sqrt(2h/R), the
linear distance to the horizon is R times this, or sqrt(2hR).

Dip, including refraction

So far, we have ignored refraction, and drawn the line of sight to the apparent horizon as
the straight line OG. But, in the real world, there is some terrestrial refraction between the
observer and the horizon; the line of sight to the apparent horizon is not straight, but
curved. So let's try to allow for that curvature:
 Usually, the ray is concave
toward the Earth, as shown in
this drawing. The solid arc OH
now represents the curved line of
sight; H is the (refracted)
apparent horizon. Notice that
refraction lets us see a little
farther; but the refracted dip d
between the horizontal (dashed)
and the tangent to the curved line
of sight is now less. So we no
longer have the nice equality
between the dip and the distance
to the apparent horizon —
although the refraction correction is usually small, so the geometric relationship is often
roughly correct.

The derivation including refraction is a little tedious for a Web page, so I'll just quote the
result here. If we can regard the ray OH as an arc of a circle, with a curvature k times the
Earth's curvature (that is, the radius of curvature of the ray is R/k), then the above result
is still true if we just replace R in the original expressions (without refraction) with R/
(1 − k). This is equivalent to saying that the effective curvature of the Earth is simply
diminished by the curvature of the ray: the Earth's curvature is 1/R, the ray's curvature is
k/R, and the difference of the curvatures is (1 − k)/R.

In other words, everything is the same with refraction as it would be on a fictitious planet
with a radius of R/(1 − k) and no refraction. So, as long as k isn't very big, the numbers
aren't greatly changed by refraction.

So how big is k? That depends on the temperature gradient; see the ray-bending page for
details. It turns out that in “normal” conditions — when the Standard Atmosphere is a fair
approximation — k is about 1/6 or 1/7. Values of k around 0.13 have been used in
correcting surveyors' data for a century or more.

Clearly, both the dip and the distance to the horizon are still proportional to sqrt(h), but
the proportionality constant depends on the value of k adopted — which is equivalent to
assuming a particular lapse rate between the eye and the surface, as the ray bending
depends mainly on this temperature gradient. Typical values used in practice are dip =
1.75' × sqrt(h, meters) [taken from the Explanatory Supplement], and horizon range =
3.83 km × sqrt(h, meters).

On the other hand, when there is a strong temperature inversion, k can reach, or exceed,
unity. The case k = 1 corresponds to horizontal rays that orbit the Earth indefinitely (a
situation considered in exquisite detail by Kummer.) Values larger than 1 correspond to
ducting conditions; if the observer is inside the duct, a pseudo-horizon appears above the
astronomical one, so the dip of this apparent horizon is negative — a remarkable
phenomenon that really is observed, occasionally.

You can see some examples of dip variations in the green-flash pictures taken by Oscar
Medina from his home at Pacific Beach. (The best examples are near the bottom of his
Web page.) Several of his pictures show the roof of a large building nearly level with the
sea horizon. In the ones having an inferior-mirage flash, the sea horizon is very nearly
even with the top of the building. These flashes require water warmer than the air. But
those with mock-mirage flashes, which are produced by thermal inversions below eye
level, and hence require water considerably colder than the air at eye level, show a visibly
higher sea horizon.

These effects are readily visible to the naked eye, and are quite striking to anyone who
regularly observes sunsets from a place that has a suitable architectural feature nearly at
the sea horizon. They were observed about 1889 by Annibale Riccò with the naked eye;
but instrumental observations were first made by Alexander von Humboldt, who first
connected them with the changes in sea-surface temperature.