Components of Heat Budget
The components of heat budget are as follows:
- Reflection: Reflection happens when incoming solar radiation hits a surface in the sky, on land, or on water and bounces back without producing heat.
- Absorption: Radiation absorption is the process of transforming electromagnetic radiation into heat energy.
- Scattering: When solar radiation collides with tiny things in the Earth’s atmosphere, such as air molecules, water droplets, or aerosols, the radiation scatters, spreading the solar waves in all directions.
- Terrestrial Radiation: Longwave radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface or its atmosphere is called terrestrial radiation. The processes that Terrestrial Radiation uses to keep the temperature balanced include the following:
- Latent heat transfer: Latent heat is the heat or energy absorbed or released during a substance’s phase change. It could transition from a solid to a liquid, from a liquid to a gas, or vice versa. The amount of heat transferred when one substance is prepared to change its condition is known as latent heat transfer.
- Sensible heat transfer: The energy needed to increase a substance’s temperature without inducing a phase shift is known as sensible heat. Sensible heat transfer occurs when energy is supplied to an object as heat without causing the object’s state to change. The earth or the air itself may absorb sunlight, causing a shift in temperature.
- Emission by vapour and clouds: The clouds and water vapour also emit significant amounts of terrestrial radiation.
Heat Budget of Earth
Heat Budget of Earth: Heat is a form of energy, received by the earth from the sun. Heat Budget deals with the amount of heat energy received from the sun and its utilization in the atmosphere and the surface of the earth. This explains why the earth neither warms up nor cools down despite the huge transfer of heat that takes place.
Let us learn this in detail!
Table of Content
- Heat Budget of Earth Diagram
- What is Heat Budget of Earth?
- Heat Budget of Earth – explained with an example
- Components of Heat Budget
- Importance of Heat Budget of Earth
- Effects of Heat Budget of Earth
- Variation in the Heat Budget of Earth
- How is the Heat Budget of Earth Analyzed and Calculated?