I mean, peak emissivity of Earth surely isn’t in the near-infrared, is it? My point is that you could probably dodge the most of it by carefully selecting the spectrum.
But thanks for your correction anyway, I appreciate discussion of sciency stuff in hexbear.
Peak for the surface is ~7μm, so not NEAR near, but not super far infrared either. This is the whole pickle with the greenhouse effect: the atmosphere is basically transparent with respect to peak wavelength for incoming solar radiation, but close to opaque for outgoing infrared. The idea with albedo modification geoengineering is to sidestep that problem by just cutting down on the amount of energy coming into the system before it even has a chance to pass through the atmosphere. It would definitely work at its primary task of cooling the atmosphere, but both theoretical and real-world models (like the eruption of high-sulfur content volcanoes) shows it’s also very likely to significantly disrupt other parts of the climate system.
I mean, peak emissivity of Earth surely isn’t in the near-infrared, is it? My point is that you could probably dodge the most of it by carefully selecting the spectrum.
But thanks for your correction anyway, I appreciate discussion of sciency stuff in hexbear.
Peak for the surface is ~7μm, so not NEAR near, but not super far infrared either. This is the whole pickle with the greenhouse effect: the atmosphere is basically transparent with respect to peak wavelength for incoming solar radiation, but close to opaque for outgoing infrared. The idea with albedo modification geoengineering is to sidestep that problem by just cutting down on the amount of energy coming into the system before it even has a chance to pass through the atmosphere. It would definitely work at its primary task of cooling the atmosphere, but both theoretical and real-world models (like the eruption of high-sulfur content volcanoes) shows it’s also very likely to significantly disrupt other parts of the climate system.