GEOB 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Rayleigh Scattering, Shortwave Radio, Smog
25 Sep 2017
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Attenuation of solar energy by the atmosphere --> could be executed by reflection and scattering/absorption and transmission. Attenuation of radiation: the reduction of radiation that is absorbed by the earth. Absorption --> get the graph that shows the absorption of radiation. Earth absorbs a lot of short wave radiation. Most of the absorption is occurring through long wave radiation --> i. e. co2. The atmosphere is a selective absorber of radiation, it only absorbs in certain wave lengths. 0. 5 microns is the wavelength for green light. You can see on the graph that methane wave radiation is on the. 8-11 micron level as well, which means that this greenhouse gas is severely impacting the way the planet is cooling down (so global warming) Hence, it is an important process in cooling down the earth. Scattering --> a process like reflection, that diffuses incident light in all.
