Conservation of Heat

In Solar Increase we were concerned that our program of increasing solar power did not allow adequate time at each value of solar power for the simulation to arrive at thermal equilibrium. As we described in our previous post, we now have measurements of the state of the simulation at each value of solar power. The following graph plots penetrating power, total escaping power, and downwelling power versus solar power. The penetrating power is the power per square meter that gets to the surface through the clouds. The total escaping power is the power per square meter that the surface and atmosphere together radiate into space. The downwelling power is the power arriving back at the surface from the radiating clouds.



The downwelling power is increasing because the cloud layer is getting thicker. The clouds radiating heat towards the surface are lower down and therefore warmer. But it is the equality of the penetrating and escaping power that interests us the most today. At thermal equilibrium, the total escaping power should be equal to the penetrating power. And indeed we see that this appears to be the case for all values of solar power.