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 ...
- 11.6k
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 ...
- 5,847
40
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 ...
- 13.5k
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 ...
- 3,940
35
votes
Why is the temperature *still* rising?
"So much work"? Actually, compared to the global rate of greenhouse gas emissions, it's a case of "so little work"! From a scientific perspective the 'economists' solution' of carbon trading was ...
- 14.2k
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 ...
- 17.6k
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 ...
- 23.1k
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
25
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, ...
- 24.6k
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 ...
- 17.6k
23
votes
Why is the temperature *still* rising?
Your premises are flawed due to the lack of two critical details:
Population rise; the sheer number of people on the planet that are consuming resources has risen to 7 billion people.
Standard of ...
- 13.5k
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
23
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 ...
- 24.6k
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 ...
- 3,366
17
votes
Accepted
Why is WRF most often configured at 3:1 nesting ratio?
To understand why the nesting ratio of 3 is preferred to the nesting ratio of 2, it is important to understand the following two features of WRF:
1) Grids are Arakawa C-staggered: mass points are at ...
- 4,983
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 ...
- 13.5k
16
votes
Accepted
Does rain (temporarily) deplete the surrounding atmosphere of carbon dioxide?
Here is the mass-calculation. We will consider a column of the atmosphere with a footprint of 1m × 1m. This column weighs about 10,000 kg (per square metre). In these days of climate change we will ...
- 14.2k
16
votes
Accepted
Why snow is white?
Normal ice (as in refrigerated ice cubes) mostly has uniform crystalline structure - water molecules are in a perfect hexagonal grid, which enables it to be transparent.
Not all ice is like that - ...
- 276
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) ...
- 8,684
15
votes
What keeps the different gases mixed in the atmosphere?
It's because gases also diffuse. If you separate two gases of different densities by a horizontal membrane, and then slowly remove the membrane, then the interface will diffuse. You can try this with ...
- 2,028
15
votes
Why snow is white?
Snow has a very high albedo. Actually, it reflects all wavelengths of the visible spectrum, whilst absorbing no particular wavelength. Hence the eye averages out the multiple reflected wavelengths as '...
- 14.2k
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
14
votes
Accepted
What causes a rainbow, its colours and its shape?
Short answer: A rainbow is formed when light enters a drop of water or an ice crystal and gets refracted and reflected back into an observer's eye.
Longer Answer: Light travels at different ...
- 2,177
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 ...
- 8,713
14
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 ...
- 7,074
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 ...
- 1,145
14
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 ...
- 313
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible