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File:Earth's Overall Heat Flow.svg

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Summary

Description
English: The figure shows the overall heat flows between the realms of the Sun, Earth's surface, Earth's atmosphere, and space, making it clear that heat always flows from warmer realms of matter to cooler realms of matter.

For radiation heat transfer, "heat" transfer is defined as the net energy transfer after radiation energy flows in both directions are considered. Earth's atmosphere absorbs about 358 W/m2 of thermal radiation emitted by the surface, and emits about 340 W/m2 back to the surface—yielding a radiative heat transfer flux of about 58 W/m2 from the surface to the atmosphere.

Heat transfer from the surface to the atmosphere also includes 86.4 W/m2 from evaporation and plant transpiration, and 18.4 W/m2 from conduction and convection. Hence, the surface transfers heat to the atmosphere at an overall rate of about 123 W/m2.

Data is from work published in 2009.

References:

"Climate and Earth’s Energy Budget", NASA Earth Observatory. 2009. — show Earth's energy flows being depicted as both energy flows and heat flows.

"Earth's Energy Budget", my NASA data, data from 2009 — shows energy flux values used in the current figure.
Date
Source Own work
Author Rhwentworth

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Captions

Heat flows between the realms of the Sun, Earth's surface, Earth's atmosphere, and space

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27 May 2023

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Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current04:04, 28 May 2023Thumbnail for version as of 04:04, 28 May 2023592 × 288 (11 KB)RhwentworthReduce number of skewed lines and added labels
21:35, 27 May 2023Thumbnail for version as of 21:35, 27 May 2023603 × 288 (10 KB)RhwentworthUploaded own work with UploadWizard

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