ENVIRSC 1A03 Lecture Notes - Rayleigh Scattering, Mie Scattering, Scattering
6 Jun 2013
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Document Summary
The atmosphere absorbs some radiation directly and thereby gains heat. Another portion of radiation disperses as weaker rays going out in many different directions through a process we call scattering. Some of the scattered radiation is directed back to space; the remainder is scattered forward as the light we see from the portion of the sky away from the solar disk. In either case, the energy that is scattered is not absorbed by the atmosphere and therefore does not contribute to its heating. The remaining insolation is neither absorbed nor scattered and passes through the atmosphere without modification, reaching the surface as direct radiation. But not all the energy reaching the surface is absorbed. Instead, a fraction is scattered by the atmosphere, it doesn"t contribute to the heating of the planet. Absorption: a process in which radiation is captured by a molecule. Unlike reflection, absorption represents an energy transfer to the absorbing molecule: represents an energy transfer to the absorber.
