Wikinotes

Maintainer: admin

Jan 18

-weather over time
-tropical: hot, humid
-poles: dry and cold

atmosphere - warm fronts, cold fronts, jetstreams, changes in precipitation
hydrosphere -- water from oceans: rain, snow, ice
biosphere -- living system, plants absorb co2, release water, oxygen. animals consume oxygen, release co2.

blackbody objects - hotter objects emit more radiation: $$ F, energy flux = a T^4 $$
i.e. if earth was twice as hot, it releases 16 times more energy

green house gases - atmosphere absorbs most of the energy emitted by earth and that energy is radiated back down

make up a very small amount of atmosphere. most atmosphere is nitrogen and oxygen
water vapor, co2, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone in that order

angle that the sunlight hits the earth - over poles, the same amount of energy is spread out over a larger distance

temperatures want to equilibrate - we have a series of cells
i.e. inner tropical divergence zone, is where two cells meet
understand how the precipitation works.

the spinning earth creates drag that causes circulation of water and air
there are a lot of coupling between sea surface and coupling - strongest in tropics

they heat differently.
sun heats just the surface area of land - very little mass being heated
sun penetrates the water, a larger area. + there is mixing. slow heating, slow cooling (high 'inertia')

warm waters evaporate, caries of moisture and cools it, the salinity increases, the water becomes denser, and then sinks, and travels around the world, and then it comes up, due to some complicated factors (this circulation takes 500-1000 years).
it sinks around iceland
important because as greenland's ice sheet melts, the salty changes, which will fuck up some stuff

something about mountains

system has sources, stocks, and sinks
amount in the reservoir is equal to the difference of the rate of change between the source and the sink

99.25% of energy of sun goes into heat and evaporation
0.75% goes into 'gross primary production'
- about a 3rd of that is used in plant respiring
some energy goes to roots, some amount goes to leaves
soil organisms receave a piece
insects mostly eat green stuff

carbon: second most common
most important: since human actives don't change amount of water vapor
mega, giga, tera, peda: peda = 10^15. measure things in peda grams of carbon/year
atmosphere: 590 (i think) pedagrams/year
atmosphere, oceans, lands all absorb carbon - check numbers
oceans are the largest store of carbon
marine biota: 3 pedagrams/year: but release and absorb 39 (storing: absorbing, dying, and settling to the bottom of the ocean)

land use
net change: 3.3 pedagrams carbon/year added

chlorophyll
create sugars
at night, absorbing water, realizing co2

balanced system

cold winter, hot summer

dynamic behavior over some other function. sine wave over a linear function