Albedo

Climate change is defined as a long-term change in the global climate, specifically increasing average atmospheric temperature (Dictionary). In reality, it is not just an increase in temperature, climate change is rising sea levels, habitat loss, water contamination, loss of biological diversity, and so much more. In the past, climate change was a controversial debate topic, now, it is a widely accepted, inevitable fact (Think Again). Evidence for climate change became prevalent in the 1890’s,…

For my research involving Module 2b I chose to conduct my research on question four. I found this question interesting because the preservation of wildlife interests me, which led me to my research question. Has the deforestation in the United States caused a warming effect or cooling effect for the average temperature? I plan to explore this topic by researching temperatures over time in the United States and the amount of deforestation that has occurred in the United States. Also I plan to…

vents - that are thought to be the source for magma-carved valleys on Mercury - and irregular depressions named "hollows", probably generated from the collapse of magmatic chambers. Another interesting feature from Mercury is that it displays a high albedo, which is an absolute number (in a scale from 0 to 1, also written from 0% to 100%) used to indicate the reflective nature of a planetary…

Stewart Negron At this point in time, the world has reached a point of no return climatically and the impacts of “Global Warming” are inevitable. Given current atmospheric research, climate change is proven to be a true, unnatural feedback caused by human activity. Due to the medias selective exposure of climate change information, specifically of the skeptic views of the topic, society has not grasped global warming as a current and vital issue. Additionally, the refusal to join climate…

Consider the following questions on the carbon cycle: [2 pts] Assume that the atmospheric reservoir of CO2 contains 830 Gt of carbon, and the rate at which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere is 180 Gt of carbon per year. What is the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere? (Give units) The residence time of CO2 in this atmospheric reservoir is 4.61 years. [6 pts] Using the concepts we’ve discussed in class, explain two temporal patterns that you observe in the figure below and the processes…

support a healthy water cycle and watershed through increased percolation, infiltration, and groundwater recharge, as well as decreased levels of erosion and runoff. Terrestrial carbon sequestration and evapotranspiration that produces clouds with high albedo both minimize the repercussions of global warming. Urban forests perform all of the critical functions of their wild, larger counterparts, but exhibit these essential functions directly to people in a more up-close and personal fashion. It…

Temperature’s vary across the globe for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons is that there is a heat imbalance on Earth due to fact that the earth spins on an axis, however this axis is not vertical. If the earth’s axis was vertical we would not experience any of the changing seasons that we do today. Instead we would all have equal lengths of day and night no matter which hemisphere you’re in because heat from the sun would be equally distributed all over the world even at the Poles and…

reasonable computational cost. Each image brings along its own unique reflectance map, therefore each image will define a unique set of possible orientations for each point. Photometric stereo can recover not only surface orientation but also surface albedo. 4.2.1 Algorithm for photometric…

The Earth climate results from a very complex exchange of energy between the sun and the earth and also the exchanges of energy and humidity which are produced in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere/solid earth, cryosphere and biosphere. The atmosphere is the central component of the global environmental system from which life is based on. The climate can be defined in general terms as the long term behavior of the environmental system. To fully understand climate and climate change we…

by the Earth back out into space. How much energy stays in the planet is determined through two main factors. Albedo and emissivity. Albedo is how reflective something is, with a higher albedo indicating a more reflective surface. Emissivity is a value that is used to quantify emitting infrared radiation, or how much heat escapes the planet. As little as a 0.01 decrease in albedo or emissivity, both values that max out at one, there would be a one degree Celsius increase…