Unexpectedly large sunlight reflecting impact of big particles in a clean sky
Wednesday, November 7, 2012 - 07:30
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org)—A few large particles in a crowd of tiny ones have often been ignored when calculating the amount of sunlight bounced back into space in clean-sky conditions. Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that these "giant" particles have a larger-than-expected impact on the amount of sunlight reflected away from Earth, by as much as 45 percent. They also showed that particles larger than one micron (0.000039 inch) occur much more frequently than expected, up to 85 percent of the time.