Gray+Notes+and+Research

toc I am slightly awesome i AM slightly awesome i am SLIGHTLY awesome i am slightly AWESOME I AM SLIGHTLY AWESOME

BUT I also did my assignment for thursday the 26th of August

and so...

The Greenhouse Effect
8/27/10 The greenhouse effect is well named. Greenhouses are designed so that the maximum amount of sunlight and energy and heat enters the house, but the minimum leaves. This is not quite true for the Earth, but the greenhouse effect will take us closer to that negative utopia. The greenhouse effect is a process that changes the world so that more of the sun's heat is trapped here on earth and less of it escapes. This is done by reducing initial reflection of the energy (reducing white stuff on the surface) and also by increasing the secondary reflection, from going outwards to back into the earth. This is accomplished by water vapor, CO2, and more.

The Goldilocks Principle
8/30/10

unfortunately I was unable to find the information on the bottom of the chart anywhere but here http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_1_2_1t.htm it feels like cheating but idk how else to do it.

Interesting that you would feel that way (and noble too). In science, researchers use each other's data all the time. If that didn't happen, science would come to a standstill. You would have to repeat everything that everyone else had done before proceeding to something new. The key here is when you use data that someone else has compiled you give them credit for the information. If you are creating data sets that someone else might want to use, you are responsible for making it as clear as possible how you collected that data and arrived at your conclusions. Did the UCAR website do that?

Gray:

I didn't really understand this section in your report:

"//Earth has levels of all these categories in the middle of a vast spectrum, of which Mars and Venus encompass both ends quite well. The particular categories that make a huge difference are atmospheric content (CO2 alone is not suitable for such a wide variety) and temperature (so that liquid water exists."//

//Can you explain this a bit more? It seems a bit of a muddle of 3 or 4 separate ideas. Can you break them out by numbering them?//

Chapter 2 Questions
8/31/10

1. 60*60*24=86400 sec/day*100W=8640000 J/day 30000000*.3=9000000 j/kg coal 8640000/9000000=.96 kg coal

2. approx 100 days in a growing season. 250J/(s*m^2)*86400s/day*100days/season /4186 J/kCal/30 ears/m^2=17200 kcal/ear. 120 kcal/ear/17200 kcal/ear=.007 efficiency

3.1000000J*7*10^9kg/(2*10^9W)=3500000 seconds or 40.5 days 1609^2*247 m^2/lake*250W/m^2*.12=1.92*10^10 W

4. (2*10^9J/m^2)/(250W/m^2*.12 efficiency)/(31536000sec/yr)=771.6 days (2.11 yrs)

5. 10^-2/10^-5=1000 3*10^8/.0000005=6*10^14 Hz 3*10^8/1*10^8=3m

Chapter 3 Questions
1. Balance must exist between energy in and energy out, otherwise the overall energy would increase or decrease over time. We also know that as the Etotal of any blackbody increases, so does Fout. So any blackbody would eventually stabilize, giving Fin=Fout. In this case it is that the amount of sunlight coming in is equal in energy to the IR light leaving us. 2. We measure the size of the shadow because it's difficult to measure the different intensities of sun all along the surface of the sphere of the Earth. The shadow cast provides a circle (really a very very shallow spherical cap) of "negative" light; measure the amount missing in that shadow and you know how much hit the earth. 3. Obviously not, seeing as we have yet to take atmospheres into account. Atmospheres, as we discover later in the chapter, retain lots of heat.

10/4/10 end of chapter 3 1. well the equation is I(upatm)=I(inslr). This basically says that for any balanced earth not shifting in average temperature, the Ein=Eout. I(upatm) is both initial reflection and later reflection that passes thru 2x. It's the sum of the other two for a very simple reason, namely the delta energy through the atmosphere is going to be the negative of the delta energy due to the ground and it's absorbsion, which sums to zero, or the different between I(upatm) and I(inslr). 2. At the most exterior point of the earth, solving the T equation always leads to the same answer. So no matter how permeable the rest of the substance was, even if it was atmospheres all the way through the earth, it would be the same temperature on the surface of the earth. This is important because it gives us an easy way to measure how hot our earth would be without the atmosphere, namely the temperature at the edge of the atmosphere. This contributes to the layer model because it allows one to work inward rather than outward, i.e. you know what the outer 5 layers will do in a 7 layer system if you know what a 5 layer system does. This makes it much easier to extrapolate. 3. the moon's albedo is .12 Tmoon=4throot((1-.12)(1350)/(4E(5.67*10^-8))) however i have been unable to find a good estimate for E. I'll use 1. Tmoon=4throot((1-.12)(1350)/(4*5.67*10^-8))=269.02 K

on the dark side of the moon the estimated value would be 0K because I(solar) is 0. However reexamining our assumptions, we know that this is not true because the moon does have heat transfer.

The Greenhouse Effect REMIX
The Greenhouse effect is a process by which the atmosphere keeps heat in the earth's surface. The atmosphere acts as the "skin", this insulating the ground beneath it. Instead of bare rock that only has temperature 4throot((1-a(earth))(1350)/(4eb)), the temperature is actually 4throot((1-a(atmsphr))(1350)/(4eb))+4throot(((a(atmsphr)-a(atmsphr)^2))*(1350)/(4eb)). Since a(atmsphr) is much smaller than a(earth) this will be bigger no matter what the second part of the equation is. While more cloud cover could increase a(atmsphr) beyond a(earth), this won't happen because as it approaches that value the earth would have to get infinitely hot. a-a^2 is a(1-a) multiplied out. This is the extra reflected energy from the bottom of the atmosphere. if we observe this light, we notice it passed through the first time (probablility 1-a) and then reflected the second time (probablility a) Better but now a bit too technical.

Daisy Questions
1. The daisies are better able to control the temperature with a lower deathrate. They do little to the species mix except spread the graph out horizontally 2. They are better able to control temperature with increased insulation. Interestingly enough with insulation 1 and a 5-species model, there existed a gap where neither purple nor orange was a good enough fit and the planet became barren. 3. It seems to be the number of generations before changing up the sun pattern. It doesn't make any large changes unless you make it something seriously imprecise like 1 or 2. 4. I prefer the second option and just enjoy it. Although it seems as if with so many colors to choose from the world has many different ways to get the ideal temperature and picks the simplest one. 5.This isn't really a question, but I still don't understand why there is a sudden cutoff at one or both ends all the time. NOT SURE I UNDERSTAND YOUR QUESTION. PLEASE ASK DURING ELLUMINATE SESSION. 6. The cross occurs when the average albedo of all the daisies is the same as that of the barren planet, or .5 also try B&W black .15 white 1.0 it's crazy 7. It's difficult to tell but near luminosity like our sun's there appears to be a mix of the low-albedo stuff. 8. That's simple. If it weren't for the fact that snow is white, one might expect polar regions to have lower albedos to better warm their temperatures. Since this is not the case we get the difference in temperature we see. 9 and 10. As a species becomes the one species with the correct albedo to maintain the correct temperature, it takes over. Obviously this is false because there is just as much reason to believe that two or more species could find the balance themselves. For instance there is a combination of white and black that creates the ideal temperature for every temp in the range. 11. Like I said before, there is no reason to assume the one best suited to stabilize should dominate. Why they peak and then drop briefly away i have no idea. 12.You examine the backup evidence, if it's legit you acquit 13. No thanks

Chapter 4 questions
1. a. Adding methane is more significant since it has 30 times the reflectivity of CO2 b. Methane absorbs ~1300, so .1-.2 W/M^2 is necessary. c. No, While methane is more reflective per ppm, CO2 is more effective overall and thus a doubling of co2 would have more effect. d. double methane = +2.3 ppm *30x effectiveness= about 70 ppm CO2 3. a. final output - initial output=291.5-287.8=3.7 W/m^2 b. change in output is 2.198, and it is higher. The earth is thus more sensitive to CO2 increases. c. with constant vapor pressure, temp increase necessary is .11 degrees celsius. With constant rel. humidity, the change needed is .18 degrees celsius, which is higher. So Water Vapor changes do indeed feed back into the system, cooling the planet.

PS that is my 2nd try