Planetary Heat Balance

Planetary Heat Balance

So what is the planetary heat balance???

Basically it is a system that needs to be in balance otherwise the Earth would either freeze or burn.

(If one day the system is not in balance, I prefer being freezed to being burned, I hate hot weather ^^)

The note is very long and complicated to read every single point in it so that I will summarize the most important points :

Shortwave radiation from the Sun enters the surface-atmosphere system and is ultimately returned to space as longwave radiation.

There are 3 main losses of solar radiation back to space .The sunlight is returned back because of

1. Surface reflection

2. Cloud reflection

3. Back scattering

There are also 3 main processes through which the energy leaves the Earth’s surface

1. The heat may leaves as sensible heat ( sensible heat is just a kind of heat that can be felt) => atmosphere by convection and conduction

2 & 3.The melting and evaporation of water transfer energy into atmosphere as latent heat

Personal comments on the lessons and the note :

I’m sure that we will find all the data provided in the note very hard to memorize and you will wonder why we have to learn all those data.

Oh, the reason is simply for you to understand roughly how much energy is transferred in and out of the Earth.

However, I personally think that all those numbers are just making just more and more confused. Those values of energy cannot be constant because if they were constant then there would be no climate change today (so good right ?!). Those values depend on a lot of other factors such as CO₂ concentration, the thickness of the Ozone layer…etc… Therefore, I think you don’t need to remember all those value, you just learn the processes and understand them as a system. Forget all the Values.

One last comment about the method of the teaching is that drawing the whole system on your own is a really useful technique to study since you can explore your ability to really learn by yourself. At the same time you also learn how to analyze the information in the passage and how to synthesize them into a diagram.

Yeah, that's all for today lessons. One more time, LEARN IT AS A SYSTEM!!!!!!!!