English: This figure shows the absorption bands in the Earth's atmosphere (middle panel) and the effect that this has on both solar radiation and upgoing thermal radiation (top panel). Individual absorption spectrum for major greenhouse gases plus Rayleigh scattering are shown in the lower panel.
Date
Source
This figure was prepared by
Robert A. Rohde for the Global Warming Art project.
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Both the
Earth and the
Sun emit
electromagnetic radiation (e.g.
light) that closely follows a
blackbody spectrum, and which can be predicted based solely on their respective temperatures. For the Sun, these emissions peak in the
visible region and correspond to a temperature of ~5500
K. Emissions from the Earth vary following variations in temperature across different locations and altitudes, but always peak in the
infrared.
The position and number of absorption bands are determined by the
chemical properties of the gases present. In the present atmosphere,
water vapor is the most significant of these greenhouse gases, followed by
carbon dioxide and various other minor greenhouse gases. In addition,
Rayleigh scattering, the
physical process that makes the sky blue, also disperses some incoming
sunlight. Collectively these processes capture and redistribute 25-30% of the energy in direct sunlight passing through the atmosphere. By contrast, the greenhouse gases capture 70-85% of the energy in upgoing thermal radiation emitted from the Earth surface.
Data sources and notes
The data used for these figures is based primarily on
Spectral Calculator of
GATS, Inc.archive copy at the Wayback Machine which implements the LINEPAK system of calculating absorption spectra (Gordley et al. 1994) from the HITRAN2004 (Rothman et al. 2004) spectroscopic database. To aid presentation, the absorption spectra were smoothed. Features with a bandwidth narrower than 0.5% of their wavelength may be obscured.
Calculations were done on the assumption of direct vertical transmission through an atmosphere with gas concentrations representative of modern day averages. In particular, absorption would be greater for radiation traveling obliquely through the atmosphere as it would encounter more gas.
The total scattering and absorption curve includes only the components indicated in the lower panel. These represent the vast majority of absorption contributing to the greenhouse effect and follow the treatment of Peixoto and Oort (1992), but other minor species such as
carbon monoxide,
nitric oxide and
chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) have been omitted. Also omitted was scattering due to
aerosols and other sources besides Rayleigh scattering.
The peaks in the blackbody spectra were adjusted to have the same height for ease in presentation.
Licensing
I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:
The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the
public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.enCC0Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedicationfalsefalse
References
Gordley, Larry L., Benjamin T. Marshall, Allen D. Chu (1994). "LINEPAK: Algorithms for modeling spectral transmittance and radiance". Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer52 (5): 563-580.
L.S. Rothman, D. Jacquemart, A. Barbe, D. Chris Benner, M. Birk, L.R. Brown, M.R. Carleer, C. Chackerian Jr., K. Chance, L.H. Coudert, V. Dana, V.M. Devi, J.-M. Flaud, R.R. Gamache, A. Goldman, J.-M. Hartmann, K.W. Jucks, A.G. Maki, J.-Y. Mandin, S.T. Massie, J. Orphal, A. Perrin, C.P. Rinsland, M.A.H. Smith, J. Tennyson, R.N. Tolchenov, R.A. Toth, J. Vander Auwera, P. Varanasi, G. Wagner (2004). "
The HITRAN 2004 molecular spectroscopic database". Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer96: 139-204.
Peixoto, Jose P. and Abraham H. Oort (1992) Physics of Climate, Springer ISBN:
0883187124.
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=={{int:filedesc}}== {{Information |description= {{en|1=This figure shows the absorption bands in the Earth's atmosphere (middle panel) and the effect that this has on both solar radiation and upgoing thermal radiation (top panel). Individual absorption spectrum for major greenhouse gases plus Rayleigh scattering are shown in the lower panel.}} |date=2021-03-18 |source=This figure was prepared by
Robert A. Rohde for the Global Warming Art project. |author=[[User:Д.Ил...
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