Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: atmospheric blanket / greenhouse effect



On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, Bob LaMontagne wrote:

Unfortunately, CO2 is only a
player in a few narrow bands of the IR radiated upward from the Earth.
Within those narrow bands it is basically opaque and between the bands
it
is almost totally transparent. Doubling the CO2 content of the
atmosphere
produces no significant change in the IR radiation budget. It is water
that has the most dramatic influence because

to which I asked for a reference. Larry Woolf
provided a nice reference but it isn't clear that it supports
the statement that doubling CO2 content produces no
significant change in the IR budget.

Here are some more specific questions:

1. At what IR wavelengths is CO2 an absorber AND
for which the atmosphere is not already opaque?

2. What is the spectral irradiance at these wavelengths
(i.e., what is the power per area per wavelength)?

3. At these wavelengths, how much more irradiance will be
absorbed by doubling CO2?

4. How does the answer to #3 compare to the total irradiance
currently absorbed by the atmosphere?

5. Repeat questions 1-4 for H2O.

6. How likely is a global-wide doubling of H2O vs. a global-wide
doubling of CO2?

____________________________________________________
Robert Cohen; 570-422-3428; www.esu.edu/~bbq
East Stroudsburg University; E. Stroudsburg, PA 18301