Reflection on the first week.

Having completed the first week's material in two days, I thought I could do some reflecting here. The new things that I've learnt are:

• The albedo effect - this is effectively a measure of the percentage of incoming energy that is reflected back from the earth's surface- the earth's albedo is about 30%
• the five "spheres" are
  • atmosphere- the hundreds of km of air above the surface - The international space station is still inside the "atmosphere"! - it is at 330-410 km above the earth's surface. I'm guessing from reading the article, that the most "reflection" back to the earth happens near the top of the troposphere (roughly 12km up)
  • hydrosphere- all the water in liquid form (and water vapour)
  • biosphere - all the life - interesting fact - there was also a biosphere 2 experiment in Arizona and the trees buckled under their own weight due to lack of wind in the biosphere 2 - space exploration here we come!
  • cryosphere- all the ice
  • lithosphere- the rocky crust
• There are some feedback loops - mainly the water loop (positive feedback with 3 elements), the ice melting (positive feedback with 2 elements, and the radiation outward - a negative feedback loop with 2 elements