Sentences with phrase «radiative balance»
"Radiative balance" refers to the stability of incoming and outgoing energy in a system. It means that the amount of energy entering a system (such as Earth) should be equal to the amount of energy leaving it. This balance is important for maintaining a stable temperature and climate on our planet. Full definition
This characteristic of the climate system emerges from many feedbacks on a wide range of time scales following an initial immediate change in radiative balance of the atmosphere.
climateanalytics.org
The gas constant therefore sets the volume of atmosphere needed to leave the surface temperature at the level required to both support the atmosphere AND achieve radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere.
So temperatures will continue to rise until the planet warms enough to restore radiative balance.
It matters because of there are other features that affect radiative balance, we need to understand and model them accurately.
(Note: this relies on the earth coming back into radiative balance via changes in surface temperature).
Climate response (and thus climate sensitivity) isn't just about radiative balance, heat capacity etc..
If you really think about 1st law, you'll see that it only reduces to radiative balance if internal energy remains constant, and work is zero.
It is the quantity itself that expresses the overall radiative balance of the system.
T represents the amount of energy available from all sources to maintain the constant flow that keeps the atmosphere off the surface AND achieves radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere.
It is often suggested that GHGs alter the radiative flow of energy up through an atmosphere so as to allow warming at the surface and cooling higher up whilst not upsetting the top of atmosphere radiative balance permanently so that the lower atmosphere and surface settle down to a higher equilibrium temperature.
The textbook formulae for a simple radiative balance model is:
For instance, Forster and Gregory, 2006, used linear regression of -LCB- forcing minus the Earth's net radiative balance -RCB- on surface temperature, which as they stated implicitly used a uniform in lambda prior for lambda.
It's something of an abstract concept, but with real world implications, and the universality of such physical models, based on things like radiative balance, atmospheric composition and density, distance from the local Sun, etc., is a very strong argument in favor of general acceptance of the results of climate models and observations on Earth.
However, the sun provides an abundant source of energy and by changing the earth's radiative balance so that we absorb a little more of that energy, we are having an important effect on the earth's climate.
I'm not using radiative balance as a mechanism, but as the method of identifying where the mechanism will lead