Earth's Albedo : CDEM="Climate_Deus_Ex_Machina"
Joannes Sevenhans
Alcatel Academy Distinguished Member_2001 ...IEEE_Fellow_2000 for contributions to the design of solid state telecommunication transceivers ...PhD 1984 KULeuven ...Semi-retired ...Always looking for a next project ...
If albedo represents atmospheric reflectivity then where in atmosphere does the albedo_reflection take place :
Earth’s albedo as monitored by the CERES satellite system shows a darkening of Earth that has caused 1.7?W/m2 warming since 2010.[23] That amount, only some of which is climate forcing, is equivalent to a 138?ppm increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide.[23]
The 427ppm CO2 today, 127ppm above the highest historical level, is not the dominant global warming driver as albedo-loss is equivalent to 138ppm CO2 :
Anyway :
In climate science there are too many unanswered questions and too many unquestioned answers ...
But : Health & Climate & Energy are really very complicated and delicate politico-scientific stuff and also socio-economic stuff but we do the best we can and try to explain it as simple as possible but not simpler than that in the group :
Freelance consultant, M.Sc.+, Agronomist, agroforestry, tropical crops, soil and water
2 周More green house gases cause more heat causing more water (also a GHG) can be absorbed without forming reflecting clouds. The effects of high and low clouds on temperature changes partly outweigh each other.
Senior Project Manager at Officine LUIGI RESTA SpA
2 周I still have to see one credible and reproducible experiment proving CO2 can warm anything by radiative effect by any measurable amount. Instead, I see plenty of working machines that use CO2 as a powerful refrigerant (obviously not by radiative effects which remain invisible). It's the difference between theory and reality.
Senior/Principal Geoscientist, Prospect Generator and dedicated oil and gas, finder and developer: International & Browse Basin Specialist
2 周In Stefan Boltzmann's law we treat the earth and the atmosphere with respect to solar incident flux and infra-red radiation loss as a thermal equilibrium problem. We change the emissivity to something less than 0.75 to account for the cloud free albedo (greenhouse effect) and as you say the thermal layering of the atmosphere. As we are looking at the reflection issue from the perspective of Planck's Law then we can't escape the fact that there is very little difference in how photons interact with respect to either reflection or absorption except with respect to Energy (E=hv) ie infra-red or ultra violet. As these interactions happen at the speed of light and billions per nanosecond it doesn't really matter where the photon interactions take place as far as SB law is concerned. However, as we are talking about scattering then we know a lot of scattering will happen from incoming solar energy at the first large reflection co-efficient for blue light, at the boundary of the upper atmosphere, explaining why the sky is blue!! However, for longer wavelength light, the visible and infra-red, then scattering will take place within the troposphere where most of thick clouds are, and of course at the Earth's surface.