Do Global Energy budgets make sense. ???

[Richard111]

Interesting to catch up with this thread. Quite a few posts here while I was incommunicado.

Clouds and energy budgets... love to read up more detail on this. My take: the top of the cloud absorbs all radiation, short as well as long wave, the bottom of the cloud can only radiate long wave, at less than 0C, plus pass along some light (and UV) by scatter effect through the cloud.

That implies a large energy change from top to bottom of the cloud. I understand a goodly portion of the shortwave radiation is reflected directly back out to space (albedo), but what happens to the rest? It is not reaching the surface.

The more I think about this the more complex it becomes, thin clouds, thick clouds, high clouds, low clouds, deep clouds, shallow layer clouds and not least ice clouds... aghh... what was that about energy budgets?