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En-en adult card 15 radiative forcing: Difference between revisions
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En-en adult card 15 radiative forcing (view source)
Revision as of 19:22, 5 February 2021
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Earth receives energy from the Sun and radiates it back to space in the form of infrared. Normally it is in thermal equilibrium and its temperature is constant. | Earth receives energy from the Sun and radiates it back to space in the form of infrared. Normally it is in thermal equilibrium and its temperature is constant. | ||
Anything that causes the Earth to move away | Anything that causes the Earth to move away from this thermal equilibrium, whether natural (sun, volcanoes) or anthropogenic (aerosols, GHGs), is called radiative forcing. | ||
Caution: the definition has been simplified for educational purposes. A rigorous definition would be as follows: "Radiative forcing is the measure of the imbalance between the energy that arrives every second on Earth and the energy that would leave if the temperature had remained fixed since 1750". As the earth's temperature has risen in the meantime, the delta between instantaneous heat exchanges has decreased. Similarly, in 2050, in the [[En-en adult card 15 radiative forcing#RCP|RCP]]2.6 scenario, the forcing will be 2.6 W/m<sup>2</sup>, but the temperature will have stabilised, meaning that the delta between incoming and outgoing energy will be zero. | Caution: the definition has been simplified for educational purposes. A rigorous definition would be as follows: "Radiative forcing is the measure of the imbalance between the energy that arrives every second on Earth and the energy that would leave if the temperature had remained fixed since 1750". As the earth's temperature has risen in the meantime, the delta between instantaneous heat exchanges has decreased. Similarly, in 2050, in the [[En-en adult card 15 radiative forcing#RCP|RCP]]2.6 scenario, the forcing will be 2.6 W/m<sup>2</sup>, but the temperature will have stabilised, meaning that the delta between incoming and outgoing energy will be zero. | ||