Post by steve on Mar 24, 2012 13:22:48 GMT
Only got a couple of minutes at the moment.
I started a thread a while back that shows the effect of water vapour being strong up to 500mbar or so. In a sense this means that addition or removal of CO2 doesn't have much impact on the radiative transfer here. I'll try and dig it out later if you can't find it.
Near the surface the short mean free paths of radiation emitted by water vapour would mean that there is some degree of radiative equilibrium - as you say there are many "surfaces".
The wiki explanation is talking about the "surface" where radiation emitted by the atmosphere starts to be able to get to space. In reality such a "surface" is very thick - photons of certain frequencies will be able to escape to space from 6-700 mBar whereas photons of other frequencies will still be absorbed effectively from this layer.
I think when they are talking about the "surface" in the troposphere being linked to the surface with the lapse rate they are merely saying that the temperature profile of the atmosphere is controlled by a number of factors, but in general remains roughly the same on average.
I think I need to review what I just wrote later...need to get on now...
I started a thread a while back that shows the effect of water vapour being strong up to 500mbar or so. In a sense this means that addition or removal of CO2 doesn't have much impact on the radiative transfer here. I'll try and dig it out later if you can't find it.
Near the surface the short mean free paths of radiation emitted by water vapour would mean that there is some degree of radiative equilibrium - as you say there are many "surfaces".
The wiki explanation is talking about the "surface" where radiation emitted by the atmosphere starts to be able to get to space. In reality such a "surface" is very thick - photons of certain frequencies will be able to escape to space from 6-700 mBar whereas photons of other frequencies will still be absorbed effectively from this layer.
I think when they are talking about the "surface" in the troposphere being linked to the surface with the lapse rate they are merely saying that the temperature profile of the atmosphere is controlled by a number of factors, but in general remains roughly the same on average.
I think I need to review what I just wrote later...need to get on now...
