Name _________________
Solar Irradiance and Temperature Take home questionsSubmit through Canvas
From power point.
Use a google search to find the solar irradiance at the top of Earth’s atmosphere,S, sometimes called the
solar constant the solar constant (units should be in W/m2)
Tearth=_________________________ K
Tearth=_________________________
o
Tearth=_________________________
o
C
F
Take Home Questions (from student handout)
4.
Describe, in your own words, how energy from the Sun is transmitted to the Earth.
5.
In class, you were shown how Earth is in energy balance with the Sun, meaning that Earth’s outgoing
energy is equal to the incoming energy from the Sun. Based on this, you saw that the temperature of
4
the earth could be estimated as: Tearth = 41.9 * √𝑆. Using this calculation, and your estimate of solar
irradiance from Question 2, what is your estimate of Earth’s temperature in K? What about in °C (to
convert between the two, subtract 273.15° from your K value to get °C)? What about in °F (to convert,
multiply your °C value by 1.8 and then add 32°)?
6.
In the above question, you calculated earth’s effective temperature based on energy received from the
Sun. Does anything about your answer seem surprising to you?
7.
Think about the how the temperature graph your group produced compared to the graph of the whole
time period (Figure 2, next page). Was the trend in your graph the same as that for the entire time
period? Is 10 years of data enough to determine a trend in global temperature?
8.
Describe a way in which the temperature trend of the last 50 years may have affected the natural world
(living or non-living)
9.
Describe a way in which the temperature trend of the last 50 years may have affected humanity.
10.
What was something you found surprising about this activity?
11.
What part of this activity was most unclear or confusing to you?
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Solar Irradiance, Wm
2
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Solar Irradiance
Data source: Myhre, G., D. Shindell, F.-M. Bréon, W. Collins, J. Fuglestvedt, J. Huang, D. Koch, J.-F. Lamarque, D. Lee, B. Mendoza, T . Nakajima, A. Robock, G. Stephens, T . T akemura and H. Zhang, 2013:
Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing Supplementary Material. In: Climate Change 2013: T he Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
[Stocker, T .F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. T ignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Available from www.climatechange2013.org and www.ipcc.ch.
Figure 1: Solar irradiance, 1880-present
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1.2
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Temperature anomaly, ° Celsius
Global Temperature Anomaly
Data source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index
Available from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.txt
Figure 2: Global temperature anomaly, 1880-present