  The light scattered by an extrasolar Earth-like planet's surface and
atmosphere will vary in intensity and color as the planet rotates; the
resulting light curve will contain information about the planet's properties.
Since most of the light comes from a small fraction of the planet's surface,
the temporal flux variability can be quite significant, $\sim$ 10-100%. In
addition, for cloudless Earth-like extrasolar planet models, qualitative
changes to the surface (such as ocean fraction, ice cover) significantly affect
the light curve. Clouds dominate the temporal variability of the Earth but can
be coherent over several days. In contrast to Earth's temporal variability, a
uniformly, heavily clouded planet (e.g. Venus), would show almost no flux
variability. We present light curves for an unresolved Earth and for Earth-like
model planets calculated by changing the surface features. This work suggests
that meteorological variability and the rotation period of an Earth-like planet
could be derived from photometric observations. The inverse problem of deriving
surface properties from a given light curve is complex and will require much
more investigation.
