What the Heck is Effective Emissivity?

I am still working on the details, but it is the restriction to light flow through a medium and it is starting to look like any medium. Very interesting.

While this is still theoretical, it appears that the vacuum of space is not resistance free to at least low energy photons. Not much, but a little, which is enough to figure out what it is approximately.

Since even photons have mass, it is not unrealistic to believe that the mass of a photon may increase as its energy decreases. If that is the case, then the radiant part of the Relativistic Heat Conduction (RHC)equation is much easier to determine. That is a very cool thing!

The mass though doesn't have to be determined directly. The frequency and wavelength of photons are subject to change when there is interaction with mass. Short wave absorbed becomes long wave radiated. Long wave at one wavelength can become long wave at another wave length.

For CO2, the absorption and emission at 14.7 microns is the big picture, but conductive interaction can change the picture to the smaller side spectra. The mass encountered can add its on spectra to the picture.
We end up with a picture out of focus in mixed gas environments which is probably all environments to a degree.

Space is nearly perfect for radiant enery transport with the exception of the inverse square law, the cone of energy expands with the square of its distance from the source to the sink. Nearly perfect is far from true perfection. While it would be hard to measure, especially if you were not looking for it, interaction with dust and possibly even other low energy photons could create an Effective resistance to flow, "Effective" emissivity.

In the Kimoto equation I have used the terms conductivity, convectivity and emissivity as the related impedances to conductive, convective and radiant heat flows. Latent heat is lumped in with convective, as it should be, but there is a sensible component to latent heat which should not be ignored in convective calculations.

With a well described initial condition, conductivity, convectivity and emissivity, in the sense of effective emissivity, which varies with density, can be approximated. Small state changes allow the approximations to be extended, allowing a more detailed description of the change in each value with density, temperature and changes in gas composition. Pretty difficult to solve from the basics, but not that difficult to estimate.

At the surface, my first estimate of emissivity was 0.850. Which should have been close. But the best estimate is 0.825, why?

Possibly that is the effective emissivity of space to low energy photons. Most measurements of energy of stars, etc. have small notches where the measured spectrum deviates from the classical calculations. Rayleigh-Jeans equations work well for low energy but suffer from the Ultraviolet catastrophy. Stefan-Boltzmann works well for higher temperature objects, but just doesn't cut it for lower temperature objects. The Planck equation falls in between. Things change with energy and mass. Pretty simple concept.

Does that change mean that the RHC equation is doable? Not really, but it appears to have at least one NEW niche, low energy photons in a mixed gase environment. From that start, who know what can follow?

I added the bold new above because it was one of the more important things missing. RHC has applications, mainly in plasmas. That would make most think that it would not apply to the low temperatures and energies of the atmosphere. The only reason it seems to apply to the atmopshere is the magnitude of the total energy transfered and the large number of thermal gradients. That's my theory and I am sticking to it :)

I would not have noticed a relationship looking at any parts of the data, but as a whole, it is noticable and then as major segments of the atmopshere, northern extent, southern extent and tropics it is also noticable, once you are sensitive to what you are looking for themodynacially.

The differences in the northern and southern responses are most obvious and appear to be explained by the emissive and conductive relationship. The tropopause regulation potential most noticable in the tropics and near tropics and appear to be explainable with the conductive/latent to radiative transistions.

Explaining the tropopause regulation may be nearly impossible. The analogy to a radio antennea ground plane is pretty good. Using a ball over sphere model showing the inverse square propogation of the upper point source or ball on a much large spherical surface is helpful as well, but neither really come close to a proper visual aide. It seems that many may picture a lower point source with a concave outer sphere focusing the back radiation, which is opposite the actual effect. I am not possitive why it is so difficult to explain with simple geometry why down welling longwave has to obey the inverse square relationship. Some think I am a lunatic just for believing that energy transfer cannot be 100% efficient. That is truly odd!

I would prefer being called a lunatic for more sophisticated reasons, like believing conductive heat flux never should have been considered negliable. I mean, that did surprise me. Had it not at least offered some explanation for the Antarctic's refusal to warm as predicted I would not have pursued this theory.

My limited acceptance of the absolute value of the S-B or Rayleigh-Janes or Kirschoff's is a reasonable grounds for calling me a lunatic. Still we are only looking at a possible 1% change in radiative forcing which is easily offset by the tails in nearly any spectrum of any element in the atmosphere. What appears to be the case in the atmosphere is only fraction of a percent uncertainty in the classical equations for what is admittedly a special case. I really don't see the issue there, especially with the relativistic motion of the photons with changing density.

Perhaps I am just a lunatic for thinking what is accepted, but obviously not working, should be questioned. That's no fun. If it is wrong and getting worse, it should be questioned.

Anyway, the poor drawing seems to be a pretty good representation of what is happening in the tropopause. Those interested can check the temperature profiles of the tropopause in the lattitude 20 to 40 ranges to see temperature can decrease by nearly 50C in short time periods. That is a much more rapid response time than the stratospheric temperature change. It is all in the rates of the rate of change.

What appears to be happening is much more interesting than what was predicted to happen. Man can alter climate, only not as was once thought.