The Physics of the Climate Response to Doubling CO2
In a recent post , I provided a standard calculation for the effective temperature of Earth (the earth without GHGs) to be 255K. This calculation used the temperature and radius of the sun, the earth's distance from the sun, an emissivity of 1 and albedo of 0.3. So, if the earth had no atmosphere, the average surface temperature of the earth would be about -18 C. However, we know that currently, the earth is about 33 C warmer than this; it's ~288 K or 15 C. The 33 C difference is caused by the greenhouse effect, and the above diagram of the Earth's emission spectrum illustrates how this is accomplished. Greenhouse gases slow down upwelling LW radiation escaping into space, trapping heat in the troposphere, such that the surface warms in response. Climate at Equilibrium to 288 K Current Conditions I decided it would be fun to explain how this works given the physics accounting for various fluxes that influence the Earth's surface temperatu