Excerpt from The Energy Budget at the Earth's Surface, Vol. 1: Preliminary Studies at Ithaca, N. Y., 1959 Theoretical estimates of the role played by photosynthesis in the energy balance reveal the possibility of much greater energy utilization in the photochemical fixation of carbon dioxide than was heretofore realized. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Representative energy balance data over corn and alfalfa fields point up the importance that leaf cover (and thus ''surface wetness'') has in effecting the partition of net radiation. In a cornfield sensible heat exchange in the soil and the air was proportionately greater than in an alfalfa field where more energy was exchanged as latent heat. Energy balance studies in a wintertime snowfield under solar radiation intensities comparable to those in a summertime cornfield reveal how important albedo (solar radiation reflection) is to the energy balance. In an investigation of the surface aerodynamic properties of a cornfield, it was found that the elastic properties of the surface cause the ''roughness length'' to increase with windspeed, and the ''crop displacement'' to decrease with windspeed. This suggests that with increasing windspeed the corn crop surface appears to increase in roughness length, and thus act as a greater momentum sink. (Author).