Chapter 3: Atmospheric Energy and Global Temperatures .What is Albedo? Be able t

Question

Chapter 3: Atmospheric Energy and Global Temperatures .What is Albedo? Be able to recognize the albedo values of different surfaces? . What is Scattering (Diffuse Radiation)? How does this affect sky color? o What is Refraction? o How does this affect how and when we are able to see the sun at sunrise/sunset? . What is Earth's total average albedo? . What effect do clouds have on daily temperatures? How do temperatures correspond the peak insolation during the day and throughout the year... what is the approximate lag time? What is absolute zero? Celsius and Fahrenheit temperatures .The 4 Controls on Temperature: o 1. Latitude o 2. Altitude/Elevation o 3. Cloud Cover o 4. Land-Water Heating Differences Marine and Continental Climates Urban Heat islands Wind Chill and Heat Index

Explanation / Answer

1) Everyday sunlight strikes the earth's surface , a part of this reflection reverts back to the atmosphere.

this part of energy is called as albedo.

albedo is measured on a scale from 0 to 1. when the entire energy/ rays revert back into the atmosphere it is regarded as of high albedo and numerically 1, whereas if no radiation of the sun returns back to the atmosphere ,it is called as a surface of low albedo and numerically it is 0 and it is considered a dark surface.

2) Scattering is diffusion or distribution of rays of light or particularily the sun's ray striking the earth's atmosphere and gets reflected and refracted in different directions, by the air molecules present in the atmosphere, this phenomenon is known as scattering.

the sunlight consists of seven colours which is abbreviated as VIBGYOR. this effects the colour of the sky. in clear cloudless day we see blue sky because molecules in the air scatter blue colour more than the red colour, while during sunset or sunrise we see red colour because it is least scattered from our line of vision.

3)  Deviation in path of light passing through a medium is called refraction of light. when a light travels from a denser medium to rarer medium, it is bends away from the imiginary normal line of the incident surface while in vice versa case i.e if light travels from rarer to denser medium it deviates towards the normal of the incident surface.

  due to varying densities of our earth's atmosphere, the sun's rays are refracted in a succesive period at the time of sunrise. sun's rays continuously bend towards the earth's surface and due to this refraction phenomenon an apparent position of the sun is observed , which is formed even before the actual sunrise takes place.

4) on a scale of 0 to 1, earth's total average albedo is around 0.37

5) absolute zero is the temperature at which motion of the molecules ceases, and this is the state at which any thermodynamic system will have lowest energy available and further no more heat could be removed from this system.

temperature value at absolute zero is considered to be -273 deg. C or 0 kelvin.

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