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Earth's Albedo

Table of Contents

1. Puzzle

We are given the albedo of the Earth is approximately 0.30; how can we derive this from first principles? (Albedo is the percentage of [solar] radiation reflected by an object.)

The underlying issue here is calculations related to radiative forcing due to greenhouse gases.

2. References

2.1. Physical Optics

  • W. A. van Wijngaarden, W. Happer, "Dependence of Earth's Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases". arXiv:2006.03098, 38 pages
  • W. A. van Wijngaarden, W. Happer, "Relative Potency of Greenhouse Molecules". arXiv:2103.16465, 29 pages
  • K. K. Yoshikawa, "An Iterative Solution of an Integral Equation for Radiative Transferusing Variational Technique", NASA Technical Report TN-D-7292, A-4774 (1973) PDF

2.2. Radiative Forcing

  • Myhre, Highwood, Shine, Stordal, "New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases". Geophysical Research Letters 25, 14 (1998) pp2715–2718 PDF

Last Updated 2021-06-01 Tue 10:00.