Re: atmospheric blanket / greenhouse effect

[Bernard Cleyet <anngeorg@PACBELL.NET>]

water vapour doesn't do the heat trapping - CO2 does.  However, water
haze, aerosol, and rain may -- I can't spend the time to find this.   I
haven't seen any data on methane, yet.

bc

p.s. more on this follows.

John S. Denker wrote:

> On 07/28/2003 05:37 PM, Larry Woolf wrote:
> > There are a wide variety of regions where the atmosphere is either
> > completely absorbing, partially absorbing, or completely transparent
> > to IR radiation due to the presence of CO2 in the 5-20 micron band
> > where most of the terrestrial radiation lies.
>
> I assume that word "regions" refers to regions
> of the spectrum.
>
> The friendly local IR astronomer told me that the
> absorption varies according to _geographic_ region
> mainly due to H2O.  H2O is also the dominant
> source of seasonal and daily variability, and
> also the largest single contribution to the total
> heat-trapping, or so I'm told.
>
> This leads to a positive feedback scenario:  higher
> temperatures means more H2O in the atmosphere,
> which means more heat-trapping, ......  I suppose
> you have to imagine lots of gaseous H2O as opposed
> to thick clouds that are opaque in the visible
> (not just the IR).