Zeitschrift für Ökosystem und Ökologie

Abstrakt

Analytical Approach to Calculate the Heat Fluxes in the Atmosphere and to Quantify the Sensitivity of Earth Temperature due to CO2 and H2O

Tino Redemann and Eckehard Specht

A mathematical model has been developed to understand the effect of carbon dioxide and water vapor on the mechanism of global warming. First, the increase of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere could be based on the anthropogenic CO2 emissions according to the combustion of fossil fuels. Second, the heat fluxes in the atmosphere were described by known relations in thermal engineering. Here, the heat transfer due to radiation between the gas which contains water vapor and carbon dioxide, and the Earth's surface as well as the clouds is considered. The emissivity of the gases depends on temperature, and the gas concentration and the beam length of the atmospheric layer. The sensitivity of this model was quantified less, when e.g. the cloud height and the relative humidity of the atmosphere were varied. The known average temperature of the Earth was used to validate this model. The temperature of the Earth increases significantly with the CO2 concentration. When the concentration of CO2 is doubled, the temperature of the Earth increases by 0.43 K.