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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread
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To: TigerPaw who wrote (19393)1/6/2008 11:32:13 PM
From: neolib  Read Replies (1) of 36921
 
Convection would allow the energy to get above the greenhouse gasses if the atmospheric layers did not form bands and barriers. That is not the case on our planet.

I understand what you are saying but I'm not sure how significant it is. Fundamentally, you can't have that extreme of convection. You would have to pipe the air up to keep it warm that long. The upper atmosphere is cooled radiatively, and that cooling is significant. If you put hot air up there, it will cool in one night to very cold temps. Convective air is not rising fast enough to stay warm while also cooling due to radiation as it rises. As you rise in the night atmosphere, there is not much heat reflected back from the atmosphere above you, the night sky is very cold. I would be interesting to see a good model of a full column of the atmosphere, but sans any horizontal flows, and just look at vertical radiation and convection for a 24 hour period (including the surface of course). You cannot get warm temps at the top of that column, I'm dead certain of that.
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