How does sun heat the air?

On Oct 8, 8:52*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:
Jim Logajan wrote:
" wrote:
The sun shines down through the atmosphere, hits things on the ground,
the things on the ground get hot, and then the hot things on the
ground heat the air?

Sun light passing through the air does not heat the air at all? *Heats
the air some but not much?

If the air is transparent to solar energy, how is *the air able to
pick up so much energy from hot objects on the ground?

Try reading the content of this web page for some basic answers to all your
questions:

http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_1_1.htm

It's a good article by a good source, but robably more than he wants to
know, as it's not directly concerned with thermal production.

The thermals we like so much use air heated primarily by conduction from
the aforementioned hot objects, but I believe some "micro" (my term)
convection near the ground is important for making the warm layer near
the ground thicker than conduction alone would provide.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Bill,

Back to the basics, heat is transfered in general by three methods
conduction, convection and radiation (http://www.mansfieldct.org/
schools/MMS/staff/hand/convcondrad.htm).

Radiation is not radioactive but transfer from a warm body (the sun in
our case) to a cooler body (the earth) by waves. As you stated the
air is mostly transparent to the waves so most of the energy passes
through and hits the surface below. As you stated some of the energy
is absorbed by the atmosphere (air, water vapor, dust, smog, etc),
some is scattered (bent so it goes off at an angle and and some is
reflected back to space.

The radiative energy that reaches the earth is transfered into heat or
water vapor generally. The warmed earth then transfers the heat to
the air above it by a combination of conduction (the act of
transferring energy from one molecule to the next by vibrational
energy and direct contact) or conduction (the transfer of energy from
the flow of molecules over a warm surface).

In general thermals are generated by a combination of conduction and
convection and you have probably noticed that the best soaring days
generally have at least a slight wind to help induce more heat
transfer by causing more convection rather than by just conduction
alone. The heat transfer from the earth to the air is driven by the
driving force of the difference in temperature between the air and the
ground. If there is not airflow the layer of air above the ground
quickly heats up and nearly matches the ground temperature so the heat
transfer slows down. Having a little convection as Eric said helps
mix the air up and keeps cooler air near the hotter ground to allow
greater amount of heat to be transfered to the air and therefore more
energy that can by turned into thermals.