Overview of class and introduction.

Pick up class notes from Bob's Copy Shop on Jan 26.

Basic Concepts in Radiative Transfer

• Planck's Law
• Stefan-Boltzman Law
• Conservation of Energy
• Irradiance
• Wien's Law

22 Jan

Computer system demonstration

• Learn basic Unix commands (logging on to tornado, see web page or handout for useful Unix commands)
• Learn ways to get data in and out of the Sun workstations (nedit and lpr)
• Using the Internet (Netscape and FTP)
• Matlab demonstration (Basic commands; see web page or handout, basic matrix manipulations, loading and plotting data)

• Brief discussion of figures plotted in Lab 1
• Matlab:  scripts versus functions
• Downloading data from a web page
• Intro to Lab 2:  The Planck function

 
• Lecture notes for 27 January 1998

• EM spectrum
• Basic ideas of Earth's energy balance
• Solar vs. terrestrial radiation
• Importance of gases in the atmosphere
• More on Matlab:  scripts versus functions

 

• Radiance versus Irradiance (flux)
• The shapes of spectral lines of radiatively active gases

 

• Derivation of the concept of solid angle
• Converting from radiance to flux.

 

• The shapes of spectral lines of radiatively active gases

• Discussion of Matlab basics and Lab 3.

 
• Columns versus Row vectors (the real scoop!)

• Units and Wien's Law

 
• Printing web pages from Netscape

 

• Emissivity and grey bodies
• Infrared atmospheric spectra
• Shapes of spectal lines of radiatively-active gases

 

• Brightness temperature (brittemp.m,    Tb.m)
• Emissivity and gray bodies
• Brightness temperature spectra looking up from South Pole and looking down at mid-latitudes
• Important properties that determine structure of brightness temperature spectra
• Temperature
• Pressure
• Concentration of gas
• Frequency
• Atomic and molecular energy levels
1. Electron transitions cause absorption at solar wavelengths (example, ozone)
2. Molecular vibration and rotation cause absorption at infrared wavelengths (examples, water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone)

 

• Energy balance between Earth and Sun
• Shapes of spectal lines of radiatively-active gases

•  Discussion of Lab2 (Grades, Answers)
1. Pay attention to radiance units.
2. Distribution of Planck functions vary depending on units, but the total energy does not.
3. Difference between Planck distributions and normalized Planck distributions.
4. PUT UNITS ON ALL VALUES IN LABS!
5. KEEP LABS NEAT AND ORGANIZED!
• Energy balance between the Earth and Sun.
1. Total power radiated by the sun
2. Power per unit area radiated by the sun
3. Sun's power intercepted by the earth
4. Balance between the earth and sun   (CALCULATE THE EQUILIBRIUM TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH!)
 

• Finish the energy balance of earth and sun
• Shapes of spectral lines of radiatively-active gases (These gases keep our earth warm!)
• Beer's Law (simple version of the radiative transfer equation)

 
 

Beer's Law and visibility

Beer's Law and visibility

Beer's Law and visibility

 
• Lab 3 results (Grades, Answers)
• Discussion of Lab 4
• Sun-earth geometry (sunearth.m)
1. Earth's orbit around the sun is elliptical.  Earth travels around the sun in the ecliptic plane.
2. The earth's rotational axis is currently tilted at 23.5 degrees relative to the normal of the ecliptic plane.
3. The tilt of Earth's axis causes seasons.  [winter solstice (21/22 Dec), vernal equinox (20/21 Mar), summer solstice (21/22 June), autumnal equinox (22/23 Sept)]
4. Solar Declination Angle - Know its definition [0 degrees at equinoxes, +23.5 degrees at summer solstice (in N. hemisphere), and -23.5 at winter solstice (in N. hemisphere)]
5. Solar Zenith Angle - Know its definition

• Lecture notes for 2 April