Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Cooling Earth using solar air heaters.

Ice reflects solar energy fairly well, keeping Earth cool. When ice melts, dark solar energy-absorbing surfaces sometime take the place of the ice surfaces. 

https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/processes/albedo.html says: Sea ice has a much higher albedo compared to other earth surfaces, such as the surrounding ocean. A typical ocean albedo is approximately 0.06, while bare sea ice varies from approximately 0.5 to 0.7. This means that the ocean reflects only 6 percent of the incoming solar radiation and absorbs the rest, while sea ice reflects 50 to 70 percent of the incoming energy. The sea ice absorbs less solar energy and keeps the surface cooler.
The whole process of rain formation takes heat from the lower levels where evaporation cools things and takes it higher up where clouds form from condensation. This condensation releases heat again, so that the heat has been transferred from lower to higher regions. The clouds then generally reflect solar energy, cooling Earth, but high level cold clouds might actually warm Earth.. Low level clouds are especially associated with cooling of Earth (for one reason, they are warmer and emit more energy by radiation than high level clouds). We could create something similar in the following manner. When ice melts, shade the area with huge solar air heaters. The solar air heaters prevent ground from heating up, because of the shading and absorbing of the solar energy, and they are cooled to some extent by the air passing through them. This hot air rises, allowing for the possible formation of low level clouds, which could cool Earth by reflection and radiating to space. So this process again takes energy from lower regions to higher regions as with rain formation. But generally, one could put solar air heaters on the roofs of buildings in hot climate regions. This would cool buildings and enhance cloud and rain formation. Low level clouds in warm climate zones are especially associated with cooling of Earth.

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