re: #205 claire

ex

Yes and yes. I understand relative humidity, but don’t get why with all this increased warming/evaporation/humidity/cooling/precipitation , there would be MORE cloudfree spots over the oceans than there are now? As far as CO2, why does it matter how much distance there is between the reflective molecule and the surface of the earth, and why does farther away have a greater trapping effect? Would CO2 a million miles from the surface has a greater trapping effect than CO2 2 miles up? No. It’s counterintuitive. There’s another effect there clearly, which he didn’t bother to explain. Wanker. Ego Video. Triple Grrr…

Here’s how it works. The sun (solar, or shortwave radiation) heats the earth. The warm earth emits in the infrared and warms the atmosphere. There is little direct absorption of solar shortwave; atmospheric constituents, incl CO2 absorb instead in the infrared. They then reradiate that energy, sending some of it back to earth. (This is the Greenhouse effect). The rate at which the energy is reradiated is proportional to T^4, the fourth power of the temperature. So if the reradiating gases are farther from the surface, they will be colder and so will radiate less. If they are closer to the surface, they will absorb the terrestrial IR and reradiate it back to the surface at a higher temperature.