78
votes
How do 'greenhouse gases' let heat in, but not let it out?
In a nutshell:
The radiation that enters is shortwave radiation from the sun. Solar radiation is dominated by visible (as well as UV and near infrared) radiation with a wavelength mostly between 0.2 ...
- 11.9k
46
votes
Why doesn't the 71% water of the earth dry or evaporate?
There are two ways this problem needs to be looked at. The first is more astronomy than Earth science. The Earth as an entire system is largely contained. Its gravity and magnetic field retains ...
- 5,897
39
votes
Accepted
Why were both the sun and the moon red today?
Smoke. There was significant smoke across the USA, which attenuated the light from the sun/moon due to increased scattering. The smoke particles effectively cause the light to reflect in different ...
- 14k
36
votes
Accepted
Why aren't weather balloons left in the atmosphere permanently?
In addition to radiosondes that do a single ascent over a few hours, there are also driftsondes that stay in atmosphere for days or weeks, typically with their buoyancy set up to track a particular ...
- 3,980
30
votes
Accepted
Why are mornings cooler than nights?
The Earth is always radiating heat to the space. But in the day the Sun delivers some heat. The net heat flux is then defined as the sum of those two factors. If the energy delivered by the Sun is ...
- 638
28
votes
Accepted
Where is the calmest place on Earth?
The main resistance that winds have to their movements comes from the topography and surface obstacles. Therefore, as a general rule the closer to the surface the less wind you will find. But I guess ...
- 17.7k
25
votes
Why doesn't the 71% water of the earth dry or evaporate?
Why doesn't 71% water of the earth dry or evaporate?
The simple answer: Because it rains.
The not so simple answer: By some estimates, the Earth has already lost about a quarter of its water, and it ...
- 24.7k
25
votes
How do 'greenhouse gases' let heat in, but not let it out?
Gerrit's got the technical answer; I'm going to answer for a layperson.
There are two ways objects lose heat.
The first, and the way people are most familiar with, is conduction. Something touches ...
- 351
24
votes
Accepted
What is the fastest the Earth has ever spun?
The speed of rotation of Earth is controlled by its angular momentum. And the conservation of angular momentum is a very serious law of physics (perhaps even stricter than conservation of mass). So in ...
- 17.7k
24
votes
Why aren't weather balloons left in the atmosphere permanently?
It depends on what each weather balloon is measuring; what data they are capturing.
Most weather balloons are released as specific times during a 24 hour cycle. Such balloons measure altitude, ...
- 25.1k
23
votes
How do 'greenhouse gases' let heat in, but not let it out?
To add to Gerrit's excellent answer, I'd like to add a couple more Images. Images always help clarify things for me.
Firstly, this one shows the spectrum light coming from the sun in red. The peak is ...
- 327
22
votes
Accepted
Why is CO₂ abundance in the atmosphere still small?
The mass of the atmosphere is 5.1 × 1018 kg, which is 5.1 × 1015 t.
As stated in the edited question,
industries emits 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year,
That's 1.5 × 109 t.
The ...
- 25.1k
20
votes
Why is CO₂ abundance in the atmosphere still small?
As well as the atmosphere having a lot of mass, there are many processes which remove CO2 from the atmosphere, see the wikipedia article for the carbon cycle. Plants sequester it as biomass, some of ...
- 309
19
votes
Is the Unified Theory of Climate (Nikolov & Zeller) compatible with the AGW/GHG theory in any respect?
The paper you linked lists as its first reference Volokin and ReLlez, 2014; a paper that addresses the magnitude of the Earth's greenhouse effect. The validity of the paper you found largely hinges on ...
- 3,376
17
votes
Accepted
Where do bad smells eventually go?
If you are smelling something, you are inhaling gases, particles, or a combination of the two. They don't normally build up in the atmosphere because of three reasons: transport/dilution (which you ...
- 14k
16
votes
Why does warm air "hold" more moisture?
Saying that warm air "holds" more moisture is technically incorrect, but is a common colloquialism. Let's break it down to the technicalities.
Let's consider a glass of water with a vacuum (no air) ...
- 8,827
15
votes
Accepted
Why (actually) is the night sky so bright in the city? How far up is that happening?
What's actually happening is scattering of light, both off of aerosol particles and nitrogen and oxygen molecules.
For a review of quantitative models of light pollution as a function of distance ...
- 5,962
15
votes
Accepted
Is Earth getting heavier or lighter?
tl;dr: The Earth receives 40,000 tons of dust from space every year, but looses 95,000 tons of Hydrogen and 1,600 tons of Helium every year as well. After all additional effects are balanced, the ...
- 6,904
14
votes
Why is it colder in the mountains than at sea level?
The traditional answer basically comes down to the physics concept of adiabatic cooling, a description of which is:
There is less pressure as you go up in the atmosphere (basically due to less air ...
- 8,827
14
votes
Accepted
What is the explanation of using pressure units (hPa) to express height when dealing with wind speeds?
There are several reasons. From the theoretical point of view it is beneficial to use isobaric coordinates, due to the vanishing density in the equations of motion. While in cartesian coordinates the ...
- 1,165
13
votes
Accepted
How much water is the atmosphere losing to space?
It is not actual water what is lost to space, because in the high atmosphere water usually dissociate into other molecules or ions. The oxygen ion outflow is frequently assumed to be a proxy for the ...
- 17.7k
13
votes
Is the Mauna Loa CO$_\mathsf{2}$ record affected by the nearby mantle plume?
How is ist possible that Mauna Loa Observatory is the International Reference Observatory for CO2 Global Meassurments
I don’t know that it is ‘the International Reference Observatory’. The Mauna Loa ...
- 5,429
13
votes
Accepted
Is volume of air increasing as CO2 levels increase?
[Major edits below]
In short the answer is NO.
Before we get into volume changes, I have to say that volume is a tricky measure to apply to the atmosphere as a whole, because there is no clear limit ...
- 17.7k
13
votes
Accepted
Why is Earth's density gradient a step-function, rather than smooth?
Roughly put, it's the same thing that makes a density step function when you try to combine oil and water:
Source
The components do not mix with or dissolve into each other, so gravity makes the ...
- 4,041
13
votes
Why aren't weather balloons left in the atmosphere permanently?
There are several reasons for this. One of them is air traffic concerns. The parts of the atmosphere that are interesting for weather (namely, the troposhere and lower stratosphere) also happen to be ...
- 303
12
votes
Accepted
Where on Earth has the least changing temperature?
To answer the first question, yes, there are maps showing the seasonal temperature variation, for example here
Unsurprisingly, the equatorial areas have the least variation because the angle of the ...
- 851
11
votes
Accepted
Why do cities at high altitude regions have high atmospheric pressures?
The reason for this is that the reported value is the relative pressure and not the absolute pressure. If meteorological stations reported the absolute pressure, dependent on elevation, it would been ...
- 1,884
11
votes
Why have "ozone-depleting substances" led to a third of all global warming and half of arctic sea ice loss?
The Global warming potential (GWP) describes how much global warming a particular gas may induce in a particular time period. It is often expressed in terms of CO₂-equivalent. The best known ...
- 11.9k
11
votes
Why are atmospheric BrO and ClO important to measure by satellite?
BrO and ClO significantly deplete ozone from the atmosphere.
Researchers at Harvard University state:
It is a remarkable fact that perhaps the most important observation coupling climate forcing ...
- 25.1k
11
votes
Why is the creation of water from the combustion of hydrocarbons not listed as a cause for rising sea levels?
1.2 x 1013 kg equals 12,000,000,000,000 l water. One liter equals 0.001 m³, while one km³ equals one billion (1 x 109) m³. So we're supposedly adding 12 km³ water to the atmosphere per year.
According ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible