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Sunlight penetrating through a forest canopy in Germany. The existence of nearly all life on Earth is fueled by light from the Sun. Most autotrophs, such as plants, use the energy of sunlight, combined with carbon dioxide and water, to produce simple sugars—a process known as photosynthesis. These sugars are then used as building-blocks and ...
Total solar irradiance (TSI) is a measure of the solar power over all wavelengths per unit area incident on the Earth's upper atmosphere. It is measured perpendicular to the incoming sunlight. [3] The solar constant is a conventional measure of mean TSI at a distance of one astronomical unit (AU).
In physics, the term "light" may refer more broadly to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible or not. [4][5] In this sense, gamma rays, X-rays, microwaves and radio waves are also light. The primary properties of light are intensity, propagation direction, frequency or wavelength spectrum, and polarization.
The Sun emits its peak power in the visible region, although integrating the entire emission power spectrum through all wavelengths shows that the Sun emits slightly more infrared than visible light. [15] By definition, visible light is the part of the EM spectrum the human eye is the most sensitive to. Visible light (and near-infrared light ...
Outgoing longwave radiation. Spectral intensity of sunlight (average at top of atmosphere) and thermal radiation emitted by Earth's surface. In climate science, longwave radiation (LWR) is electromagnetic thermal radiation emitted by Earth's surface, atmosphere, and clouds. It may also be referred to as terrestrial radiation.
Albedo (/ ælˈbiːdoʊ / al-BEE-doh; from Latin albedo 'whiteness') is the fraction of sunlight that is diffusely reflected by a body. It is measured on a scale from 0 (corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation) to 1 (corresponding to a body that reflects all incident radiation).
An atmospheric window is a region of the electromagnetic spectrum that can pass through the atmosphere of Earth. The optical, infrared and radio windows comprise the three main atmospheric windows. [2] The windows provide direct channels for Earth's surface to receive electromagnetic energy from the Sun, and for thermal radiation from the ...
Photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) designates the spectral range (wave band) of solar radiation from 400 to 700 nanometers that photosynthetic organisms are able to use in the process of photosynthesis. This spectral region corresponds more or less with the range of light visible to the human eye. Photons at shorter wavelengths tend to ...