Tue., Oct. 13 notes

Tuesday Oct. 13, 2015

Ballyhoo! "Phantoms", "Overnight Sensation", "Walk Away", "Battle Cry", "Cali Girl"

Both the 1S1P Scattering of Sunlight reports and the 1S1P Surface Weather Map Analyses have been graded and were returned in class today. There are a handful of people that have reached 45 pts, the maximum number of 1S1P pts allowed. Those students do not need to write any additional 1S1P reports. I will soon be putting a link on the class web page with the names of students that have earned 45 1S1P pts.

Several other students are close to 45 pts. The Causes of the Seasons reports haven't been graded yet. I will try to let students that are close to 45 pts and have turned in a Causes of the Seasons know as soon as I can if that report will be enough to get them to 45 pts.

Quiz #2 is Thursday this week (Oct. 15). Reviews are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, see the Quiz #2 Study Guide for times and locations.

The Experiment #2 reports were collected today. Those take a little while to get graded. I hope to have them all graded in time to return on Thursday Oct. 22. If you haven't returned the experiment materials, please bring them to class on Thursday. We need the thermometers for Expt. #3.

The revised Expt. #1 reports are due by Thursday this week (Oct. 15).

The Experiment #3 materials will be handed out before the quiz on Thursday.

Light emitted by the earth and the sun
Here's a short topic, the light emitted by the earth & sun, that I stuck onto the end of the last Thursday's class notes.

We looked at a couple of curves like these in class last week. Note the wavelength scale on the bottom of the figure. The interval from 0.4 to 0.7 micrometers is visible light. The sun is 20 times hotter than the earth; every square foot of the sun will emit 160,000 times as much radiant energy as a square foot on the earth. The type (wavelength) of light is very different.

The curve on the right is for the earth. Note the peak on the vertical axis is only 0.05 compared to 15,000 on the curve at left. Obviously the light emitted by the earth is much weaker than the sun. 100% of the light emitted by the earth (temperature = 300 K) is invisible far IR light. The wavelength of peak emission for the earth is 10 micrometers.

The curve on the left is for the sun. The surface of the sun has a temperature of 6000 K so we can use Wien's law to calculate λ_max . It turns out to be 0.5 micrometers, green light. The sun emits more green light than any other kind of light but appear green because it is also emitting lesser amounts of violet, blue, yellow, orange, and red - together this mix of colors appears white (it's a cooler white than you would get from a tungsten bulb). 44% of the radiation emitted by the sun is visible light, Almost as much, 37%, is near IR light. More about that below. Almost half of the light emitted by the sun (37% + 12% = 49%) is invisible IR light. Only 7% of sunlight is UV light and most of that gets absorbed by the ozone layer in the stratosphere.

Compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) and LED bulbs
Ordinary tungsten bulbs (incandescent bulbs) produce a lot of wasted energy. This is because they emit a lot of invisible infrared light that doesn't light up a room (it will warm up a room but there are better ways of doing that). The light that they do produce is a warm white color (tungsten bulbs emit lots of orange, red, and yellow light and not much blue, green or violet).

Energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) are being touted as an ecological alternative to tungsten bulbs because they use substantially less electricity, don't emit a lot of wasted infrared light, and also last longer. CFLs come with different color temperature ratings, different mixtures of the colors that make up visible light

The bulb with the hottest temperature rating (5500 K ) in the figure above is meant to mimic or simulate sunlight (daylight). The temperature of the sun is 6000 K and lambda max is 0.5 micrometers. The spectrum of the 5500 K bulb is similar. Even though the color temperature is high this is referred to as cool white because it contains more blue, green, and violet light.

The tungsten bulb (3000 K) and the CFLs with temperature ratings of 3500 K and 2700 K produce a warmer white.

Three CFLs with the temperature ratings above were set up in class so that you actually could see the difference between warm and cool white light. Personally I find the 2700 K bulb "too warm," it makes a room seem gloomy and depressing (a student in class once said the light resembles Tucson at night). The 5500 K bulb is "too cool" and creates a stark sterile atmosphere like you might see in a hospital corridor. I prefer the 3500 K bulb in the middle.

The figure below is from an article on compact fluorescent lamps in Wikipedia for those of you that weren't in class and didn't see the bulb display. You can see a clear difference between the cool white bulb on the left in the figure below and the warm white light produced by a tungsten bulb (2nd from the left) and 2 CFCs with low temperature ratings (the 2 bulbs at right).

There is one downside to these energy efficient CFLs. The bulbs shouldn't just be discarded in your ordinary household trash because they contain mercury. They should be disposed of properly (at a hazardous materials collection site or perhaps at the store where they were purchased). I suspect a lot of people don't do that.

It probably won't be long before LED bulbs begin to replace tungsten and CFL bulbs. The price has been dropping in the last year or two.

LED stands for light emitting diode. We won't be looking at them in detail except to say that a single LED can produce only a single color, it can't produce white light. What is done instead is to put three small LEDS producing red green and blue light in close proximity. When they are illuminated the three colors mix together to produce white light.

CFLs sometimes take 30 seconds or a minute to come to full brightness. LED bulbs turn on instantaneously.

The world viewed in near IR light.
The world would not look the same if we were able to see near IR light instead of visible light.


visible light reflected by the tree and photographed with normal film	near IR light reflected by the tree and photographed using near IR film

The picture at left was taken using normal film, film that is sensitive to visible light. The picture at right used near infrared film. In both pictures we are looking at sunlight that strikes the tree or the ground and is reflected toward the camera where it can be photographed (i.e. these aren't photographs of visible light being emitted by the tree or the ground).

The tree at left is green and relatively dark (it reflects green light but absorbs the other colors of visible light). The tree at right and the ground are white, almost like they were covered with snow. The tree and grass on the ground are very good reflectors of near infrared light. Here are many more images taken with infrared film.

Photographs of the ground taken from an air plane using ordinary film at left (responds to visible light) and near infrared film at right. Notice how much clearer the river is in the picture at right. The IR photograph is able to "see through" the haze. The haze is light being scattered predominantly by air molecules. You may remember from the 1S1P topic on scattering that air molecules scatter shorter wavelengths in much greater amounts that longer wavelengths. Near IR light is not scattered nearly as much as visible light.

You wouldn't have seen the tree or the river if the photos above had been taken at night. That is because they are photographs of reflected sunlight.

This is a picture of the far IR light that is emitted by a house (source of this image). You'd see this during the day or night, sunlight doesn't need to be present.

Remember that the amount of energy emitted by an object depends strongly on temperature (temperature to the 4th power in the Stefan-Boltzmann law). Thus it is possible to see hot spots that emit a lot of energy and appear "bright" and colds spots. Photographs like these are often used to perform an "energy audit" on a home, i.e. to find spots where energy is being lost. Once you locate one of these hot spots you can add insulation and reduce the energy loss. This photograph has been color coded. Reds and orange mean more intense emission of IR radiation (warmer temperature) than the blues and greens. The reds show you were energy is being lost (often through poorly insulating windows). Many of the roof tops are blue, they are cool. There is probably a lot of insulation in the attic and little energy is being lost out the roof.

Later in the semester we will looking at satellite photographs of clouds. Satellites take pictures of both the visible light reflected by clouds and also the IR radiation emitted by clouds.

We now have most of the tools we will need to begin to study radiant energy balance on the earth. It will be a balance between incoming sunlight energy and outgoing IR radiation emitted by the earth. This will ultimately lead us to an explanation of the atmospheric greenhouse effect.

Radiative equilibrium on the earth without an atmosphere
We will first look at the simplest kind of situation, the earth without an atmosphere (or at least an atmosphere without greenhouse gases). The next figure is on p. 68 in the ClassNotes. Radiative equilibrium is really just balance between incoming and outgoing radiant energy.

You might first wonder how it is possible for the relatively small and cool earth (with a temperature of around 300 K) to be in energy balance with the much larger and hotter sun (6000 K). Every square foot of the sun emits 160,000 times as much energy as a square foot on the earth. At the top right of the figure, however, you can see that because the earth is located about 90 million miles from the sun and only absorbs a very tiny fraction of the total energy emitted by the sun. The earth only needs to balance the energy is absorbs from the sun.

To understand how energy balance occurs we start, in Step #1, by imagining that the earth starts out very cold (0 K) and is not emitting any EM radiation at all. It is absorbing sunlight however (4 of the 5 arrows of incoming sunlight in the first picture are absorbed, 1 of the arrows is being reflected) so it will begin to warm This is like opening a bank account, the balance will start at zero. But then you start making deposits and the balance starts to grow.

Once the earth starts to warm it will also begin to emit EM radiation, though not as much as it is getting from the sun (the slightly warmer earth in the middle picture is now colored blue). Only the four arrows of incoming sunlight that are absorbed are shown in the middle figure. The arrow of reflected sunlight has been left off because they don't really play a role in energy balance (reflected sunlight is like a check that bounces - it really doesn't affect your bank account balance). The earth is emitting 3 arrows of IR light (in red). Because the earth is still gaining more energy (4 arrows) than it is losing (3 arrows) the earth will warm some more. Once you find money in your bank account you start to spend it. But as long as deposits are greater than the withdrawals the balance will grow.

Eventually the earth will warm enough that it (now shaded brown & blue) will emit the same amount of energy as it absorbs from the sun. This is radiative equilibrium, energy balance (4 arrows of absorbed energy are balanced by 4 arrows of emitted energy). That is called the temperature of radiative equilibrium (it's about 0 F for the earth).

Note that it is the amounts of energy, not the kinds of energy that are important. Emitted radiation may have a different wavelength than the absorbed energy. That doesn't matter. As long as the amounts are the same the earth will be in energy balance. Someone might deposit money into your bank account in Euros while you spend dollars.

Filtering effect of the atmosphere on ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light
Before we start to look at radiant energy balance on the earth with an atmosphere we need to learn about how the atmosphere will affect the incoming sunlight (a mixture of UV, visible, and near IR light) and outgoing far IR light emitted by the earth. We'll draw a filter absorption graph for the earth's atmosphere.

We will first look at the effects simple blue, green, and red glass filters have on visible light. This is just to be sure we understand what an absorption curve represents.

If you try to shine white light (a mixture of all the colors) through a blue filter, only the blue light passes through. The filter absorption curve shows 100% absorption at all but a narrow range of wavelengths that correspond to blue light. The location of the slot or gap in the absorption curve shifts a little bit to the right with the green and further right with the red filter.

The following figure is a simplified, easier to remember, representation of the filtering effect of the atmosphere on UV, VIS, and IR light (found on p. 69 in the photocopied notes). The figure was redrawn after class.

You can use your own eyes to tell you what effect the atmosphere has on visible light. Air is clear, it is transparent. The atmosphere transmits visible light.

In our simplified representation oxygen and ozone make the atmosphere pretty nearly completely opaque to UV light (opaque is the opposite of transparent and means that light is blocked or absorbed; light can't pass through an opaque material). We assume that the atmosphere absorbs all incoming UV light, none of it makes it to the ground. This is of course not entirely realistic.

Greenhouse gases make the atmosphere a selective absorber of IR light - the air absorbs certain IR wavelengths and transmits others . Wavelengths between 0.7 and 8 or 9 μm are absorbed (by greenhouse gases), radiation centered at 10μm is transmitted by the atmosphere. Wavelengths greater than 10 μm are absorbed (again by greenhouse gases). It is the atmosphere's ability to absorb certain wavelengths of infrared light that produces the greenhouse effect and warms the surface of the earth. The atmosphere also emits IR radiation. This is also an important part of the greenhouse effect.

Note "the atmospheric window" centered at 10 micrometers. Light emitted by the earth at this wavelength (and remember 10 um is the wavelength of peak emission for the earth) will pass through the atmosphere. Another transparent region, another window, is found in the visible part of the spectrum.

Now back to the outer space view of radiative equilibrium on the earth without an atmosphere. The important thing to note is that the earth is absorbing and emitting the same amount of energy (4 arrows absorbed balanced by 4 arrows emitted). The arrow of reflected sunlight doesn't any role at all.

We will be moving from outer space to the earth's surface (the next two figures below).

Don't let the fact that there are

4 arrows are being absorbed and emitted in the figure above and
2 arrows absorbed and emitted in the bottom figure below

bother you. The important thing is that there are equal amounts being absorbed and emitted in both cases.

The reason for only using two arrows in this picture is to keep the picture as simple as possible. It will get complicated enough when we add the atmosphere to the picture.

Here's the picture that is in your ClassNotes (p. 70a). It's the same picture with a little explanation added.

Radiative equilibrium on the earth with an atmosphere - the greenhouse effect
The next step is to add the atmosphere.

We will study a simplified version of radiative equilibrium just so you can identify and understand the various parts of the picture. Keep an eye out for the greenhouse effect. Here's a cleaned up version of what we ended up with in class. Energy balance is a little more complex in this case, there are more arrows to sort out.

It would be hard to sort through and try to understand all of this if you weren't in class (difficult enough even if you were in class). So below we will go through it again step by step (which you are free to skip over if you wish). Caution: some of the colors below may be different from those used in class.

1. In this picture we see the two rays of incoming sunlight that pass through the atmosphere, reach the ground, and are absorbed. 100% of the incoming sunlight is transmitted by the atmosphere. This wouldn't be too bad of an assumption if sunlight were just visible light. But it is not, sunlight is about half IR light and some of that is going to be absorbed. But we won't worry about that at this point.

The ground is emitting a total of 3 arrows of IR radiation. That might seem like a problem. How can the earth emit 3 arrows when it is absorbing only 2 from the sun. We'll see how this can happen in a second.

2. One of these (the pink or purple arrow above) is emitted by the ground at a wavelength that is not absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (probably around 10 micrometers, in the center of the "atmospheric window"). This radiation passes through the atmosphere and goes out into space.

3. The other 2 units of IR radiation emitted by the ground are absorbed by greenhouse gases is the atmosphere.

4. The atmosphere is absorbing 2 units of radiation. In order to be in radiative equilibrium, the atmosphere must also emit 2 units of radiation. That's shown above. 1 unit of IR radiation is sent upward into space, 1 unit is sent downward to the ground where it is absorbed. This is probably the part of the picture that most students have trouble visualizing (it isn't so much that they have trouble understanding that the atmosphere emits radiation but that 1 arrow is emitted upward and another is emitted downward toward the ground). Both arrows leave the atmosphere, one goes out into space and the other goes into the ground.

Now that all the arrows are accounted for, we will check to be sure that every part of this picture is in energy balance.

Checking for energy balance at the ground.

It might help to cover up all but the bottom part of the picture with a blank sheet of paper (that's what I tried to do in the right figure below).

The ground is absorbing 3 units of energy (2 green arrows of sunlight and one blue arrow coming from the atmosphere) and emitting 3 units of energy (one pink and two red arrows). The ground is in energy balance. The earth emits more energy than it gets from the sun. It can do this because it gets energy from the atmosphere.

Checking for energy balance in the atmosphere

The atmosphere is absorbing 2 units of energy (the 2 red arrows coming from the ground) and emitting 2 units of energy (the 2 blue arrows). One goes upward into space. The downward arrow goes all the way to the ground where it gets absorbed (it leaves the atmosphere and gets absorbed by the ground). We don't care where the arrows are coming from or where they are going. We are just interested in the amounts of energy gained and lost by the atmosphere. The atmosphere is in energy balance.

And we should check to be sure equal amounts of energy are arriving at and leaving the earth.

2 units of energy arrive at the top of the atmosphere (green) from the sun after traveling through space, 2 units of energy (pink and orange) leave the earth and head back out into space. Energy balance here too.

Did you spot the greenhouse effect?

It's Points 3 & 4 in the figure. The greenhouse effect depends on both absorbing IR radiation and emitting IR radiation. Here's how you might put it into words.

The greenhouse effect warms the earth's surface. The global annual average surface temperature is about 60 F on the earth with a greenhouse effect. It would be about 0 F without the greenhouse effect.

Here are a couple other ways of understanding why/how the greenhouse effect warms the earth.

The picture at left is the earth without an atmosphere (without a greenhouse effect). At right the earth has an atmosphere, one that contains greenhouse gases. At left the ground is getting 2 units of energy (from the sun). At right it is getting three, two from the sun and one from the atmosphere (thanks to the greenhouse effect). Doesn't it seem reasonable that ground that absorbs 3 units of energy will end up warmer than ground that is only absorbing 2?

The next picture shows an even better (but more subtle) way of analyzing the situation.

To be in energy balance, the ground in the picture above at left must emit 2 arrows of radiant energy. At right the ground must emit 3 arrows. The amount of energy emitted by an object depends on temperature (to the 4th power). The Stefan Boltzmann law tells us that. The ground above at right has to be warmer in order to emit more radiant energy.