GG231 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Latent Heat, Thermodynamics, Atmospheric Circulation
Document Summary
Atmospheric processes: forces that drive the atmospheric processes, energy. Atmospheric processes involve huge amounts of energy: amounts so large that they may be expressed in terawatts. One tw equals 1 trillion w, which equals 1 million megawatts (mw) The total solar energy absorbed at the earth"s surface is approximately 120,000 terawatts per year, and it is mainly this power that heats our planet, evaporates water, and produces the differential heating that causes air masses to move. Earth receives energy from the sun, and this energy affects the atmosphere, oceans, land, and living things before being radiated back into space. Earth"s energy balance is the equilibrium between incoming and outgoing energy. Energy changes form repeatedly and in a complex manner from the time it reaches earth to the time it leaves, but as stated in the first. Law of thermodynamics, it is neither created nor destroyed: energy at earth"s surface.
