Question

From the Earth s Energy Balance, when the trapped energy present in the atmosphere rises, but the energy emitted by the earth stays the same, what has to happen to the albedo to compensate for these changes? Explain

Answer 1

Albedo is the proportion of incident light or radiation that is reflected by the surface of the planet. It is given that the emitted energy remains same, but the trapped energy in the atmosphere increases, that implies that the absorption of incident energy / radiation must increases ie. the Earth should absorb more energy which is incident on it. Therefore we can say that the albedo should decrease. The energy trapped can be written as the difference between the absorbed and emitted energy,

The reflected energy can be written in terms of albedo as,

Hence we can say that when Ei is constant, as E increases a should decrease ie. the albedo should decrease.