Active Users:1228 Time:23/11/2024 07:00:13 AM
Re: Not THAT ludicrous, just more extreme. - Edit 2

Before modification by Isaac at 19/11/2010 07:32:08 PM

So it's daytime is shorter; does that mean the seas of lead freeze on the night side?


No, it's day times are longer by about a hundredfold, and its temp is pretty much the same on both sides, heat transfer through convection happens really quick at those levels of pressure and heat. Venus's atmsosphere is around 100 atm IIRC

I'm only a layman, but it seems like the amount of heat retained and reflected should be about the same whether the half of the surface getting sunlight is the same or varies.


Reflected, pretty much, radiated? Not even vaguely. The effect isn't linear. Stefan-Boltzmann Law requires an object to radiate energy at a rate of the fourth power to temperature. So like, double an objects tmep and it radiates 2^4 or 16 times as much, triple and 3^4, or 81 times as much. This is in Kelvin, so a 20 degree Fahrenheit difference between day and night isn't as much as it sounds like. Take the radiation between the Earth and sun... Divide the sun's surface temp by the Earth's (in kelvin) and raise that to the fourth power. Multiply that by the ratio of the sun's surface area to the Earth, you will see you have the same number as the ratio of the earth's radiation and the sun's (or close to it :P )

A planet that radiates half the time at a higher temp and half at a lower will radiate away more heat then one which keeps to the same average temp the whole time.

Naturally differences between various places on the planet should vary a lot more, but if there's a big difference between the total heat retained by a spinning versus motionless planet I'm curious to know why.


It reflects a lot of radiation away. Inb thermodynamics radiation, be it normal light like we see or gamma rays or the kinetic energy of a non-light particle acts in 3 ways. Reflect, Absorb, Transmit. Except for neutrinos, anything that hits the earthi is pretty much absurbed or reflected, anything not reflected is absorbed and becomes heat. Try whacking a pile of clay with a hammer a bunch of times and watch it temperature rise, or bending a close hanger back and forth and watch the bent part get nice and hot. All energy which doesn't exit in some other form is heat. All those cosmic rays and particles we talk about our magnetosphere protecting us from, all of those if not reflected or curved away would become heat.

That doesn't even include the effect rotation and an EM field has on weather, which is primarily convective, but heat transfer is a big factor there and convection goes faster when you stir stuff up, try taking two identical hot coffee cups, stir one constantly and let the other sit... which cools faster? This won't change the rate at which the planet radiates heat directly, we don't convect with the vacuum above, but it spreads temp faster, and as mentioned, average temperature does not dictate rate of radiation If I take four steel globes, two at 60 degrees, one at 80, and 1 at 40, those two identical ones will emit less heat via radiation then the the two at 80 and 40, because the one at 80 will emit significantly more heat, as the effect goes with the fourth power - again, in absolute temp. Run this for yourself, 40 f is 277 K, 60 f is 288, and 80 f is 300 K

Treat 277 as radiating 1 unit of heat

the 288 case will emit (288/277)^4 = 1.17 units of heat

the 300 k case will emit (300/277)^4 = 1.38

1+1.38 = 2.38

2x1.17 = 2.34

So 2% more heat radiated for the same average temp, and that's a fairly minimal fluctuation in temperature, only about 4% either way. Using those two examples, let's say the avg temp of a planet went from 40 f to 60 f, it now radiates 17% more energy, yet when this is from a greenhouse effect the same amount of light is hitting it, actually less as more clouds from more water vapor cause more reflection, another of those negative feedbacks, water clouds are a greenhouse gas, but they are also white, so they reflect a lot of light too, Venus, as you may note, isn't white, different albedo than ours.



Additional questions:

Is a magnetic field thought to play a role in the greenhouse effect, or did you just mention it to give an example of a difference between Earth and her sister planet?

Twice as much light, really? I didn't think they were THAT much closer to the sun.

I'm not saying we're identical though, just that Venus provides us an excellent example of how a runaway greenhouse effect really can have dire consequences, despite the claims of those who insist it doesn't matter even if it IS happening here. Too much of that, hell, too much of US policy in general these days, strike me as a rationalized excuse to do nothing, with the incidental effect that those who materially benefit from doing nothing continue doing so. And accuse reputable scientists of bias and greed.

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