modelBiosphere

Information

The iconic representation represents Biosphere 2, modeled as a single biome, i.e., we assume that the entire air inside Biosphere 2 is at the same temperature. This is certainly not realistic, but doesn't truly matter, as long as the air conditioning is left out of the model.

We are now ready to assemble the Biosphere 2 model from its components. At this point, the modeling task has become quite simple.

Each of the five modeling elements:

1. the inside air,
2. the dome,
3. the pond,
4. the vegetation, and
5. the top layer of the soil

is represented by a 0-junction with a heat capacity attached to it that calculates the temperature of that modeling element. The dome 0-junction was split into two 0-junctions connected by a bond due to the large number of connections to it.

A sixth 0-junction is used to represent the moisture of the air. It has its own special moisture capacitor element attached to it.

The six modeling elements are connected among each other by convection, radiation, condensation, and evaporation as appropriate.

Each modeling element has furthermore a modulated power source attached to it, which represents the solar input to that modeling element. Rather than modeling the distribution of solar energy in any detail, the model uses a fairly global approach to railroad the available solar input to the five modeling elements.

At the top of the model, we have the usual computation of ambient temperature (for external convection), night sky temperature (for radiation), solar radiation, and that's it.

Of course, the devil is in the detail. Each of these models contains a substantial number of parameters that need to be set, and getting the correct parameter values together for such a complex model is no easy task.

Enjoy!

Parameters

Components