Posts Tagged ‘albedo’

On Monday while discussing dark roofing materials we mentioned albedo, a word we are sure the majority of non-scientists have never heard of. That may not be the case for long. Here's the deal. Albedo is defined as high solar reflectance, i.e. the earth's capability of bouncing the sun's rays back into the stratosphere. If a surface absorbs all light it looks black and has an albedo of 0; if it is perfectly reflective it looks white and has an albedo of 1. All surfaces, in fact all objects, have an albedo within those two numbers. A new sheet of copy paper has an albedo of 1 while a brick wall or a freshly plowed field has an albedo closer to 0 than to 1. When the rays are absorbed or bounced, so is the accompanying heat from those rays. Thus the many chocolate colored roofs and...(read more)