GEOG 3020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: United Nations Environment Programme, World Meteorological Organization, Yellow Arrow

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Geography
• Course: GEOG 3020
• Professor: Lucy Sportza

Document Summary

Courtesy of nys department of environmental conservation. Figure 3. 1 above provides us with a simple visual to think about energy transfers and balances in the atmosphere. As displayed in the figure, radiant energy is either absorbed, transmitted, or reflected. As you can see in the yellow arrows, solar radiation enters the atmosphere as very high energy short wave radiation. As indicated by the yellow arrow to the furthest left, some of it is absorbed by earth"s surface. As indicated by the middle yellow arrow, some of it is reflected from the earth"s surface especially white surfaces such as snow and ice (more on that later). The yellow arrow to the furthest right is showing the radiation that is reflected back to space by clouds and other atmospheric aerosols. The orange arrows tell most of the global warming story. Earth emits body heat in the form of long-wave radiant energy.