Biology 2485B Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Evapotranspiration, Wavelength, Ellipse
5 Mar 2019
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Climate: weather: atmospheric conditions (temp, humidity, precip, wind) at localized sites over hours or days. Climate: mean and variance of those atmospheric conditions (temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind) over the long-term (decades to centuries) over a large geographic regions: considering the earth as a whole, we can talk about global climate. Three factors exert more influence on global climate than all others: sun (supplies planet"s energy, atmosphere (absorbs 70% of incoming solar radiation, oceans (shape climate by storing and transporting heat and moisture. Describes the greenhouse effect which is at the core of climate change. Short wavelength radiation from sun higher energy yellow. Long wavelength radiation from earth and its atmosphere lower energy red. Some of sunlight is absorbed by the atmosphere, some reflects off the atmosphere, some goes through atmosphere hits earth surface and is reflected off the surface. Any object that has a temperature, emits radiation. The wavelength of that radiation depends on the temperature of that object.
