The Earth's Temperature: Certainly, the average temperature of the Earth has varied greatly during the last million years, from about 2°C (36°F) during the ice ages to about 15°C (59°F) during the warmer interglacial periods. We're now in an interglacial periodic and the Earth's average temperature the past century averages 13.9°C (57°F). A lot of the research on the Earth's temperature has been an endeavor to understand the coming and going of the ice ages. We now understand that the Earth's temperature is correlated with the Milankovitch cycles, which affect just how much sunlight the Earth receives, but that is not the entire story. That greenhouse gases may play a role in warming the Earth was shown by Joseph Fourier in the 1820s. Utilizing the differential equations he developed for heat transfer, Fourier calculated that the Earth, considering its size and its distance from the Sun, should be considerably colder than it actually is. He proposed the Earth must be kept warmer by its atmosphere, which acts much as the glass in a greenhouse. The particular number of warming that could be related to the greenhouse effect was later found from the Stephen Boltzmann law, developed in the early 1900s. If the Earth had no atmosphere, its average temperature would be 33°C lower, at -19.0°C (-2.2°F). Without greenhouse gases, the Earth would be a frozen block of ice. vaporizer
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Greenhouse Gases: Heat energy leaves the Earth as infrared radiation, helping to make up a part of the spectrum that is absorbed by many molecules as they vibrate. As infrared radiation leaves the Earth, it's absorbed then reemitted in every directions, some of it returning toward the Earth where it further warms the Earth. In the 1850's, John Tyndall's infrared research found that nitrogen and oxygen, the major components of the atmosphere, don't absorb infrared radiation. He discovered that the molecules responsible for the greenhouse effect were water vapor and carbon dioxide. Water varies from a trace around about 4% with regards to the humidity; carbon dioxide's concentration was about 0.0028% in Tyndall's time. In spite of their low concentration, CO2 and H2O both absorb strongly in the infrared region of the spectrum. Also, radiation leaving the Earth must traverse several kilometers of atmosphere, greatly increasing the possibility of the radiation being absorbed and readmitted. Co2 plays a big role because of its concentration, since it absorbs strongly in regions of the infrared spectrum where water does not.
Recent research by Kiehl and Tenebreth on the Earth's energy budget identified five naturally occurring gases that donate to the greenhouse effect. The gases, along with their contribution in both clear sky and cloudy conditions, are listed in the table. UK online
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Each of the greenhouse gases has several absorption bands, and there are a few regions of the spectrum where the bands overlap, as noted in the table. Once clouds form, the liquid droplets absorbed broadly across a lot of the infrared region, so cloud formation reduces the contributions of the other gases. Overall, clouds and H2O take into account about 75% of the greenhouse effect and carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases for approximately 25%. A number of the coldest nights on Earth are once the humidity is low and the night is still and clear, as the contribution of H20 is reduced far below the 60% given in the table.
The typical residence time of a water molecule in the atmosphere is only about nine days. Because precipitation removes water from the air in such a short while, the concentration of water in the air varies from a trace in cold arid region around about 4% in warm humid regions. The typical residence amount of time in the atmosphere of CH4 is 12 years, while the residence times of NO2 and CO2 are higher than a century. Gases with long half-lives reside in the atmosphere good enough to become evenly distributed through the entire atmosphere. Ozone (O3), that includes a residence time of a couple of months, is continually being formed in the atmosphere from photochemical processes, many that are initiated by methane and hydrocarbons.
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