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 Adding some more detail, consider a slightly more sophisticated ZDEBM, the like of which actually represents the planet in enough detail to be of actual (though limited) predictive use. To begin, we might note that only some of the wide spectrum of E/M radiation reaching the Earth actually makes it to the planet’s surface. This reflects the fact that our first approximation of the Earth as a totally featureless ideal black-body is, as we’ve seen, very inaccurate: in addition to radiating and absorbing, the Earth also reflects some energy. The value representing the reflectance profile of a particular segment of the planet (or the entire planet, in this simple model) is called the albedo. At the very least, then, our ZDEBM is going to have to take albedo into account: if we allow our model to correct for the fact that not all of the energy that reaches the Earth is actually absorbed by the Earth, then we can approach values that accurately represent the way things are.

Earth’s albedo is highly non-uniform, varying significantly over both altitude and surface position. In the atmosphere, composition differences are the primarily relevant factors, while on the ground color is the most relevant characteristic. Cloud cover is certainly the most significant factor for calculating atmospheric albedo (clouds reflect some energy back to space). On the ground, the type of terrain makes the most significant difference: the ocean reflects very little energy back to space, and snow reflects a great deal (dry land falls somewhere between these two extremes, depending on what’s on it). However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves: ZDEBMs don’t take any of this variation into account, and operate on the simplifying assumption that albedo can be averaged for the planet (in much the same way that emission and absorption can be). In all cases, though, albedo is expressed as a dimensionless fraction, with a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive). 0 albedo represents total absorption (a perfectly black surface), and 1 albedo 114