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7

There is no doubt that the sooner the mitigation effort happens, the greater will be its impact. In other words, the impact on year 2100 climate of the sequestration of 20 billion tons $\ce{CO2}$-eq right now, is much bigger than the impact that the same action will have in 30 years from now. Therefore, a mitigation action today is much cheaper than one ...

4

It is because longwave (LW) correspond to a negligible part of the solar radiation and shortwave corresponds to a negligible part of solar radiation. You can make an experiment yourself using NASA's Radiance calculator. By adjusting the parameters for Earth's and the Sun you will get the following plot of energy flux at different wavelengths (The red line ...

2

It is important to keep in mind the black-body approximated radiation for the Earth and the Sun. Notice how small the long-wave energy radiation is from the sun and how Earth's radiation peaks there. I would speculate that this question has something to do with the fact that Earth's surface is heated by solar shortwave radiation, and that Earth's lower ...

1

I think you’re not far off with your understanding, but maybe I can put in a few comments to make things clearer. I often get confused because most diagrams for the Earth energy budget and net radiation balance show more infrared leaving the surface than is ever supplied by solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere in the first place… As you can see, ...

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