Gorshkov V.G., Makarieva A.M. (2002) Greenhouse effect dependence
on atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse substances and the nature of
climate stability on Earth. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Discussions, 2, 289-337.
Abstract
Due to the exponential positive feedback between
sea surface temperature and saturated water vapour concentration,
dependence of the planetary greenhouse effect on atmospheric water
content is critical for stability of a climate with extensive liquid
hydrosphere. In this paper on the basis of the law of energy
conservation we develop a simple physically transparent approach to
description of radiative transfer in an atmosphere containing greenhouse
substances. It is shown that the analytical solution of the equation
thus derived coincides with the exact solution of the well-known
radiative transfer equation to the accuracy of 20% for all values of
atmospheric optical depth. The derived equation makes it possible to
easily take into account the non-radiative thermal fluxes (convection
and latent heat) and obtain an analytical dependence of the greenhouse
effect on atmospheric concentrations of a set of greenhouse substances
with arbitrary absorption intervals. The established dependence is used
to analyse stability of the modern climate of Earth. It is shown that
the modern value of global mean surface temperature, which corresponds
to the liquid state of the terrestrial hydrosphere, is physically
unstable. The observed stability of modern climate over geological
timescales is therefore likely to be due to dynamic singularities in the
physical temperature-dependent behaviour of the greenhouse effect. We
hypothesise that such singularities may appear due to controlling
functioning of the natural global biota and discuss major arguments in
support of this conclusion.
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