Billy_Bob
Diamond Member
- Thread starter
- #41
it's pretty simple really... IF you have a layer (a thermocline) which is slightly warmer than the layer below the energy required to enter that next layer is much greater. This will result in warming of the lower layer until the gradient exists to get past the barrier. IF it is lower, the emissions will enter the layer at a shorter wavelength. The question is, is the matter above capable of absorption in that wavelength? Once LWIR gets above 16um, pretty much nothing exists in that layer with the capability to absorb it. IF that upper layer continues to cool, less and less will be absorbed in that wavelength. When the sun does little to warm it, more and more will escape faster.
Paradoxical presentations... got to love them... They react differently than a stove heating water. Think about wintertime and what happens to exhaust outputs. They keep rising until they cool to near the atmospheric temperature. These are called heat blooms. They rise until they meet a thermocline barrier, there they cool until the mass is sufficient to break that barrier. As the upper air mass gets colder, the heat bloom must cool and get very large before it can break into that region. You seldom see them in summer, as there is most generally sufficient heating of the atmosphere to keep them from forming. Occasionally there is a cooler layer above the very hot layer (inversion) that doesn't allow the air to circulate. These happens in cold extremes and hot extremes. The wintertime ones are more common as cold settles to the ground and a warmer air aloft creates the barrier. These can last for weeks until a strong storm breaks up the thermocline.
It's an interesting paradox and I will admit it can be baffling as we still do not fully understand the dynamics.
