CLIMATE CHANGE AND GREENHOUSE EFFECT:

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Fulvio BOANO
Politecnico di Torino
Dept. of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering
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The Climate System

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 What is climate
American Meteorological Society

The slowly varying aspect of the atmosphere-hydrosphere-land surface system. It

is typically characterized in terms of suitable averages of the climate system over
periods of a month or more, taking into consideration the variability in time of
these averaged quantities.

Mark Twain (attributed)

Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.

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 What is climate
Temperature is the parameter most often associated with
climate.

We mainly focus on temperature for two reasons:

1) the most direct impact of addition of greenhouse
gases is on temperature. Changes in other variables
(e.g., sea level, precipitation…) arise as a response to
temperature changes.

2) we have more data about temperature.

The statistics that most frequently get discussed is average

temperature, but extreme temperatures also matter.

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 Radiation
Stefan-Boltzmann equation (radiation emitted by black bodies  stars):
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𝑆 𝑒= 𝜎 𝑇

Se is the emitted radiation flux (or irradiance) [W m-2], is Stefan-Boltzmann constant (=5.67
10-8 W m-2 K-4) and T is temperature [K]

Solar radiation to Earth

Ts = 5796 K𝑆
𝑆𝑢𝑛 =6.4 ∙ 10W7
m-2 Emitted radiation flux at Sun surface
RSun~0.71x106 km
RSun~0.71x106 km REarth~6.37x103 km
REarth~6.37x103 km
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𝑅 𝑆𝑢𝑛 ≈ 0 , 7 ∙ 10 km
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𝑑 𝑆𝑢𝑛 − 𝐸𝑎𝑟𝑡h ≈ 150 ∙ 10 km
Sun-Earth ~ 150x106 km
Sun-Earth ~ 150x106 km

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4 𝜋 𝑅𝑠 Radiation flux reaching the outer atmosphere
𝑆 0= 𝑆 𝑠𝑢𝑛 ∙ 2
=1365W m-2
4𝜋𝑑 𝑆−𝐸 (solar constant)
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 Albedo
Albedo is the fraction of reflected radiation.
Main contributions: clouds, snow-covered soil. Very low for water.

Average albedo of the Earth is

around 0.3 (mainly for clouds)

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 A simple energy balance
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𝑆 0 ≈1365 𝑊 𝑚 𝐸 𝑒= 𝜀 ∙ 𝜎 𝑇
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Emissivity ≤1
(deviation from black body)

𝑆 0 (1 − 𝛼 ) ∙ ( 𝜋 𝑅 2) = 𝜎 𝑇 4 ∙ ( 4 𝜋 𝑅2 )

Reduction for albedo α Different areas (1:4)

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 A simple energy balance
−2
𝑆 0 ≈1365 𝑊 𝑚 𝐸 𝑒= 𝜀 ∙ 𝜎 𝑇
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Emissivity ≤1
(deviation from black body)

𝑆 0 (1 − 𝛼 ) ∙ ( 𝜋 𝑅 2) = 𝜎 𝑇 4 ∙ ( 4 𝜋 𝑅2 )

(-18°C) !
With albedo coefficient   0.3 one obtains

The real Earth temperature is T = 288 K (15°C)  NEED TO ACCOUNT FOR THE ATMOSPHERE !!!

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Greenhouse effect

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Absorption by the main GHGs

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Spectrum of Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR)
Wavelength (µm)
20 10 5

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Small amounts of GHGs matter!
Greenhouse gases

Concentration:
CO2 400 ppm
CH4 1.8 ppm
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Equivalence between GHGs

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