What is happening to the solar energy that is striking the desert sand at the moment?
Some of the suns energy hitting the sand is converted into heat, directly heating the atmosphere and consequently melts ice caps etc. Some of the energy is radiated back into space as infrared energy (much the same as if you put your hand near a radiator you would feel the infrared heat.) The remaining energy is bounced back into space. As per one of my slides, infrared energy is increasingly bounced back to the earth by blanket effect created by the extra CO2 in the atmosphere. See the slide CO2 attached. Q. Have you any idea what is the ratio of the amount of solar reflection of the reflector when compared to desert sand e.g. “These bounce 10 X the energy back into space than compared to raw desert!” Yes, the standard measurement tool for this is called Albedo, which is the measure of reflectivity. Here is a chart that that I downloaded from the web: Black 0 Forest 0.05–0.2 Grassland and cropland 0.1–0.25 Dark-coloured soil surfaces 0.1–0.2 Dry sandy soil 0.25–0.45 Dry clay soil 0.15
