Answers to questions from Chapters 1-3
1. What is T1 in the greenhouse equation? The temperature of the earth's surface in the absence of a greenhouse effect. T2 is the temperature with the greenhouse effect. The 1 and the 2 signify the relative amounts of longwave radiation emanating from the surface without and with the greenhouse effect, respectively.
2. How does electromagnetic radiation pass through water? It is best to visualize the wave aspect of EM radiation here. Between the molecules, it travels just as it does in space. When it interacts with a molecule, however, it can be absorbed and reradiated, which slows it down and can change its direction.
3.How do gravity and centrifugal force affect the Coriolis effect? Gravity has no direct role. We will cover centrifugal force in the next chapter.
4. Can you explain the greenhouse equation? The section on Planetary Energy Balance does it just as well as I can.
5. What does f, the feedback factor, represent physically? You can see the answer from the diagrams in which it appears. It represents the relative change in some variable, usually temperature here, with and without a feedback loop.
6. Can two things in a feedback loop that do not directly affect each other be represented directly on a system diagram? If by "represented directly" you mean connected directly to each other, the answer is no.
7. What is the radiative-convective model? You don't have to worry about this for the first exam.
8. Why must a factor of two be included in the Stefan-Boltzmann function for calculating the magnitude of the greenhouse effect? The factor of two comes from the earlier step where we had to scale up the earth's radiation by that factor in order to get 100 units out in the presence of greenhouse gases.