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Old 1st-September-2007, 04:41 PM
cbacba cbacba is offline
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you'll be amused to realize that ghgs cause an increase in emissivity (as in stefan's law) when they increase in absorption. What that means is while they absorb more, they emit more, even at the same temperature and that the temperature for the atmosphere doesn't have to increase to accomodate more energy being absorbed since that permits it to emit more of the energy that is absorbed.

Changes in albedo, cloud cover, incoming solar radiation can change how much is absorbed in the earth&atmosphere and these don't affect the atmospheric emissivity so variations in these must be balanced by changes in temperatures (actually T^4 )which means relatively little temperature change is needed to accomodate the changes. As for ghgs it looks like it's almost a total wash as increasing the absorption essentially means increasing the emissions by the same percent for a given temperature - which basically negates the need for a temperature change to reach a balance.
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