Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Such a gamma-ray burst may have been the cause of the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events. This scenario is unlikely in the foreseeable future. [ 137 ] Astroengineering projects proposed to mitigate the risk of gamma-ray bursts include shielding the Earth with ionised smartdust and star lifting of nearby high mass stars likely to explode in ...
[15]: 2251 Informally, longwave radiation is sometimes called thermal radiation. Outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) is the radiation from Earth and its atmosphere that passes through the atmosphere and into space. The greenhouse effect can be directly seen in graphs of Earth's outgoing longwave radiation as a function of frequency (or wavelength).
Quite short-lived halogenated compounds can still have fairly high global warming potentials: for instance chloroform, with a lifetime of 0.5 years, still has a global warming potential of 22; halothane, with a lifetime of only one year, has a GWP of 47 over 100 years, [22] and Halon 1202, with a lifetime of 2.9 years, has a 100 year global ...
Human activity since industrialization has led to a huge increase in the production of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to rising global temperatures. Scientists warn that if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at their current rates, Earth’s temperatures could increase dramatically in future ...
Earth constantly absorbs energy from sunlight and emits thermal radiation as infrared light. In the long run, Earth radiates the same amount of energy per second as it absorbs, because the amount of thermal radiation emitted depends upon temperature: If Earth absorbs more energy per second than it radiates, Earth heats up and the thermal radiation will increase, until balance is restored; if ...
Gamma rays from radioactive decay are in the energy range from a few kiloelectronvolts (keV) to approximately 8 megaelectronvolts (MeV), corresponding to the typical energy levels in nuclei with reasonably long lifetimes. The energy spectrum of gamma rays can be used to identify the decaying radionuclides using gamma spectroscopy.
Since then, numerous satellite gamma-ray observatories have mapped the gamma-ray sky. The most recent is the Fermi Observatory, which has produced a map showing a narrow band of gamma ray intensity produced in discrete and diffuse sources in our galaxy, and numerous point-like extra-galactic sources distributed over the celestial sphere.
Outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) is the longwave radiation emitted to space from the top of Earth's atmosphere. [1]: 2241 It may also be referred to as emitted terrestrial radiation. Outgoing longwave radiation plays an important role in planetary cooling. Longwave radiation generally spans wavelengths ranging from 3–100 micrometres (μm).