From a University of Copenhagen News Release
First, read a primer on the Faint Sun Paradox here Normally, I wouldn’t use Wiki, but the article does include a reference to Nir Shaviv.
Lot’s of “mays and ifs” in this one. Our understanding is by proxy. In this article, unfortunately, life is made to be the culprit of the ice ages. Note the standard caveat at the end. Here is another primer, on Carbonyl Sulphide. Interestingly that primer says that:
This compound is found to catalyze the formation of peptides from amino acids. This finding is an extension of the Miller-Urey experiment and it is suggested that carbonyl sulfide played a significant role in the origin of life.
On the plus side, CO2 isn’t vilified here. – Anthony
The greenhouse gas that saved the world
Chemistry researchers uncover why the archean world was not frozen solid
When Planet Earth was just cooling down from its fiery creation, the sun was faint and young. So faint that it should not have been able to keep the oceans of earth from freezing. But fortunately for the creation of life, water was kept liquid on our young planet. For years scientists have debated what could have kept earth warm enough to prevent the oceans from freezing solid. Now a team of researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology and University of Copenhagen’s Department of Chemistry have coaxed an explanation out of ancient rocks, as reported in this week’s issue of PNAS
A perfect greenhouse gas
– “The young sun was approximately 30 percent weaker than it is now, and the only way to prevent earth from turning into a massive snowball was a healthy helping of greenhouse gas,” Associate Professor Matthew S. Johnson of the Department of Chemistry explains. And he has found the most likely candidate for an archean atmospheric blanket. Carbonyl Sulphide: A product of the sulphur disgorged during millennia of volcanic activity.
– “Carbonyl Sulphide is and was the perfect greenhouse gas. Much better than Carbon Dioxide. We estimate that a blanket of Carbonyl Sulphide would have provided about 30 percent extra energy to the surface of the planet. And that would have compensated for what was lacking from the sun”, says Professor Johnson.
Strange distribution
To discover what could have helped the faint young sun warm early earth, Professor Johnson and his colleagues in Tokyo examined the ratio of sulphur isotopes in ancient rocks. And what they saw was a strange signal; A mix of isotopes that couldn’t very well have come from geological processes.
– “There is really no process in the rocky mantle of earth that would explain this distribution of isotopes. You would need something happening in the atmosphere,” says Johnson. The question was what. Painstaking experimentation helped them find a likely atmospheric process. By irradiating sulphur dioxide with different wavelengths of sunlight, they observed that sunlight passing through Carbonyl Sulphide gave them the wavelengths that produced the weird isotope mix.
– “Shielding by Carbonyl Sulphide is really a pretty obvious candidate once you think about it, but until we looked, everyone had missed it,” says Professor Johnson, and he continues.
– “What we found is really an archaic analogue to the current ozone layer. A layer that protects us from ultraviolet radiation. But unlike ozone, Carbonyl Sulphide would also have kept the planet warm. The only problem is: It didn’t stay warm”.
Life caused ice-age
As life emerged on earth it produced increasing amounts of oxygen. With an increasingly oxidizing atmosphere, the sulphur emitted by volcanoes was no longer converted to Carbonyl Sulphide. Instead it got converted to sulphate aerosols: A powerful climate coolant. Johnson and his co-workers created a Computer model of the ancient atmosphere. And the models in conjunction with laboratory experiments suggest that the fall in levels of Carbonyl Sulphide and rise of sulphate aerosols taken together would have been responsible for creating snowball earth, the planetwide ice-age hypothesised to have taken place near the end of the Archean eon 2500 million years ago. And the implications to Johnson are alarming:
– “Our research indicates that the distribution and composition of atmospheric gasses swung the planet from a state of life supporting warmth to a planet-wide ice-age spanning millions of years. I can think of no better reason to be extremely cautious about the amounts of greenhouse gasses we are currently emitting to the atmosphere”.
From a University of Copenhagen News Release
h/t to Leif Svalgaard
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“And the models in conjunction with laboratory experiments suggest that the fall in levels of Carbonyl Sulphide and rise of sulphate aerosols taken together would have been responsible for creating snowball earth”
models eh? Laboratory experiments (which simulate prehistoric earth?)… It just keeps getting better.
“‘I can think of no better reason to be extremely cautious about the amounts of greenhouse gasses we are currently emitting to the atmosphere’.”
Now this would make good NY times or BBC headline news: ‘Greenhouse gases to cause ice age, industries urged to emit more GHGs to avert this by causing runaway global warming thermageddon.’
“We estimate that a blanket of Carbonyl Sulphide would have provided about 30 percent extra energy to the surface of the planet.”
“Provided” extra energy?! Like Tiny micro-suns in the sky…
“The greenhouse gas that saved the world”
Perfect movie title..
I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist!
I agree the wording is bad here, particularly:
We estimate that a blanket of Carbonyl Sulphide would have provided about 30 percent extra energy to the surface of the planet.
They should have said “retained” since the chemical itself does not add energy, but reflects more LWIR with increasing concentrations.
What is missing is how much of that OCS is converted to H2SO4 and thus all of the aftereffects that causes. How much was precipitated out as rain? Modeling an ancient atmosphere when you aren’t sure of its total makeup is even more dicey than modeling our existing one.
Or ‘re-radiated’ perhaps… I think they did mean that the LW energy is ‘trapped’ as the consensus GHG theory says, at first glance it does appear rather dodgy though.
“weird isotope mix” doesn’t sound too good either.
wattsupwiththat (08:41:57) :
“Modeling an ancient atmosphere when you aren’t sure of its total makeup is even more dicey than modeling our existing one.”
Not only that, but no reference is made to the chemistry of the oceans which could have impacted the processes.
OT
This is an amazing extrapolation to go from random chemical reactions based on the four forces of nature to encoded recursive self reproducing life using photosynthesis!
Well, at least it goes up and down at the right times: I’m convinced that orbit perturbations influence ice ages, but the ice ages themselves seem to come “too fast” to, and with too great a change over too short a time to be completely explained by the very, very slow changes in orbit axis, inclination, perturbations -> and thus total solar radiation received to account for the swings in temperature required.
Tipping points then? But what “tips” to cause 4000 feet of ice to cover Indiana, Illinois, and all of North and South Dakota, Michigan, Minnesota, and most of Canada? By the way, how come we never seen ice age charts of Africa and Australian glaciers?
Maybe, or maybe it was something else. Like Cosmic Rays:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0306/0306477v2.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0311/0311087.pdf
Or Cirrus Clouds:
Rondanelli, R. & R.S. Lindzen (2009) Can thin cirrus clouds in the tropics provide a solution to the faint young sun paradox? (to be submitted to Journal of Geophysical Research).
This science ain’t settled.
There’s a much simpler explanation for the “Faint young sun paradox”
It’s called the “close young moon tidal warming theory”.
Walter Munk phrased it thus:
“Will you attempt to visualize circumstances surrounding the Gerstenkorn event? A heavy hot atmosphere over a darkened Earth. Giant tides on a 5h day, with steaming tidal bores following the moon on a 7h polar orbit.”
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1968QJRAS…9..352M&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf
The Gerstenkorn event was earth’s collision with another planet that led to the creation of the moon.
“A perfect greenhouse gas….”
It’s a miracle, I believe… Gore, ooops, God must have had a hand in that.
some things to think about
A. was the sun actually 30% cooler say a billion years ago?
B. could we tell if it was?
C. the earth must have been entirely resurfaced by subduction in a billion years (pangaea was about a quarter of a billion years ago). I think subduction would hide all sign of glaciation
D. the earth itself has been in a slow cool-down from original heat of formation and could have been inherently much warmer if and when the sun was cooler
E. were all the planets formed with the sun, or were some captured
Lee (09:40:16) : A. It’s the Standard Model of the Sun. This has been known since at least 1972:
Sagan, C. and G. Mullen. (1972) Earth and Mars: evolution of atmospheres and surface temperatures. Science, 177, 52-56.
Which doesn’t stop some bizarre attempts to rewrite stellar physics:
Sackmann, J. and A.I. Boothroyd (2003) Our sun. V. A bright young sun consistent with helioseismology and warm temperatures on ancient earth and mars. The Astrophysical Journal, 583:1024-1039
B. You mean other than through solid theory of stellar evolution? No.
C. We are talking about a forcing which is equivalent to doubling CO2 15 times, and the evidence that the Earth was an ice ball includes the fact that you exist.
D. The math doesn’t add up. the rate at which the Earth cools can be computed theoretically. It just wouldn’t be enough.
E. Irrelevant but interesting question. Ask somebody who knows a bit more about astronomy.
You know, there have been several attempts at a “greenhouse” explanation of the paradox. They have all failed for various reasons. Sagan and Mullen thought the atmosphere might have been ammonia rich. That’s a no go-the geological evidence doesn’t support it. Several bars of CO2? Nope (we have a one bar atmosphere, and CO2 is only a small fraction of that. The evidence simply doesn’t support that much extra CO2 in the atmosphere back then…) How about large amounts of Methane? Does seem like that fits either. Some still try to overcome the inadequacies:
Haqq-Misra, J.D., S.D. Domagal-Goldman, P. J. Kasting, and J.F. Kasting (2008) A Revised, hazy methane greenhouse for the Archean Earth. Astrobiology in press
But this business is getting absurd when people try to revise the models of stellar evolution!!!
I’d watch for Lindzen’s paper on the paradox. It probably will go over the attempts and offer an intriguing alternative…
No, some extraterrestrials Species heated up the atmosphere. I made computer simulations and those proved it.
I have doubts about this whole GHE/33K alchemy. This paper shows, that Earth and other planets in Sun system enjoy surface temperatures equal to density of their atmosphere and amount of Sun energy reaching it, and it does not matter which gases are their atmospheres composed of.
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Rethinking_the_greenhouse_effect.pdf
The pure existence of atmosphere (= nitrogen + oxygen) increases our temperature compared to blackbody (or Moon) and buffers day-night fluctuations. Water in form of latent heat carrier and clouds is cooling the earth considerably.
Can anybody prove that Moon without atmosphere, with hypothetical 380ppm of CO2 and 4000ppm of water vapor will suddenly became habitably warm?
When we go that far back in time there would have been a LOT more radioactive isotopes that have all decayed by now. Would radioactive decay account for a significant part of the heating back then?
There are too many variables and unknowns for this to be more than guessing. The sulphate effect would change the Earth’s albedo, by scattering and changing cloudiness. The Earth reflects about 36% of the incoming energy, so if it turned totally black it would only just compensate on its own. (What’s the albedo of lifeless volcanic rock? Just askin’.) The maximum possible greenhouse effect is dependent on where the tropopause is. (Bearing in mind that the greenhouse effect doesn’t work by “trapping” radiation.) If we assume it’s where it is now, then you could get up to 30 C more greenhouse warming by having all outgoing IR emitted from the tropopause altitude. If the atmosphere was thicker back then, you could get more.
This has to balance the 30% reduced input, which if we just plug into Stefan-Boltzmann (more assumptions) we get a drop in temperature to 0.7^0.25 * 255 C = 233 C. In other words, we need an additional 20 C from greenhouse warming and reduced albedo (and the list of unknowns).
So it doesn’t appear to be impossible on the face of it, but it would require the carbonyl sulphide in a few kilometres thickness of air to be nearly totally opaque across the IR spectrum.
Some of the newer research on stellar evolution of metal-rich GV stars like our Sun indicate there is a period at the beginning when they lose more mass and are more luminous than originally thought. This period can last for up to 2 billion years.
Secondly, a 30% less luminous Sun does not translate into 30% less solar energy at Earth distance. If you follow the formula through to the end, solar energy at the Earth surface is only about 16% less or enough to drop temperatures by 8.5C (still enough to leave Earth a frozen snowball for most of its history).
So either there were more greenhouse gas effects around at the time or the other alternative for stellar evolution is correct.
Also note that the continents were not fully formed in the early Earth and a more ocean-covered world would have had lower albedo and fewer times when the continents were at the poles so that large-scale galciers could build up.
Still, there have been at least 5 different snowball periods, 2.8 billion, 2.4 billion, 2.2 billion, 710 million and 635 million years ago when the Earth froze over nearly completely.
So, there doesn’t need to be really unusual greenhouse gas effects to match the temperature history of Earth – just something a little extra in the very early times.
Ahem…
There’s a fly in the ointment. COS (the more common formula for carbonyl sulfide) breaks down spontaneously, and with a fairly high reaction half-rate into hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide in the presence of water vapor, catalyzed by both visible and ultraviolet light.
Even in the snowball-earth scenario, there would be appreciable water vapor in the thin, chilled troposphere, and much UV in the lowered stratosphere. I don’t think this is the smoking gun Spring Day in Snowsville gas, me hearties. Now, methane, yes. And plenty of sulfur dioxide, yes. But COS, no.
Boris Gimbarzevsky (10:38:39): Lord Kelvin famously forgot that effect which caused him to vastly underestimate the age of the Earth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Early_calculations:_physicists.2C_geologists_and_biologists
I will refrain from commenting on how an atheist deigned to criticize Kelvin’s thermodynamics not on the grounds that it excluded important processes (unknown to both Huxley and Kelvin) but because he couldn’t abide anything which challenged his (whether correct or not) worldview with regard to evolution (something I happen to agree with, to be sure)….
Juraj V. (10:37:53) : Habitable? Sticky term there…warm or not the moon would need a great deal of other things to be habitable (for animals, oxygen for one).
Bill Illis (12:22:29) : You’ll forgive me if I have my doubts as I suspect that you are referring to:
Sackmann, J. and A.I. Boothroyd (2003) Our sun. V. A bright young sun consistent with helioseismology and warm temperatures on ancient earth and mars. The Astrophysical Journal, 583:1024-1039
Which does not seem widely accepted.
“Secondly, a 30% less luminous Sun does not translate into 30% less solar energy at Earth distance. If you follow the formula through to the end, solar energy at the Earth surface is only about 16% less or enough to drop temperatures by 8.5C (still enough to leave Earth a frozen snowball for most of its history).”
I revise my statement to it being equivalent to 8 or less CO2 doublings. However I haven’t checked your math on the temperature difference there so I’m gonna have to figure the implications and see if it accords with other evidence.
Very interesting speculation. But this statement:
” and the only way to prevent earth from turning into a massive snowball was a healthy helping of greenhouse gas,”
is equally stupid to this statement:
“The current warming could only be explained by the increases in greenhouse gases.”
Meanwhile, I’m still wondering why, at a given latitude and altitude, temperatures are higher where the amount of greenhouse gases are lower.
timetochooseagain (13:13:05)
“Habitable” I meant in term of temperatures. Once again, who can prove that Moon with a little bit of water vapor and CO2 will be 33K warmer than it is now, without the atmosphere?
Btw, 33K is wrong number, since it calculates blackbody Earth but still with albedo 0,3 – however, this albedo is mainly created by clouds and you can not have Earth without GHG and with clouds at the same time. So more correctly it should be some 15K.
Then GO TO BED WITH A BOTTLED FILLED TO THE TOP OF PREHEATED CARBONYL SULPHIDE
Warning: be careful with other suphides present around, as dihydrogen sulphide 🙂
“Hollywood Science” again: WATER WINS=6.10 times heat capacity compared with this gore (filthy) gas.
OT , but has anyone noticed the latest SOHO images are upside down?
timetochooseagain, 13:13:05
That article was one that I was thinking about but there is more research being done with the “Sun in Time” program where they are undertaking intense surveys of near-by solar analog G0V to G5V stars. Some very unexpected results.
This is a presentation of some of the results and there are various papers discussing some of this.
http://www.inaoep.mx/~isya28/lecciones/ed_12.pdf
Note that luminosity is related to solar radius and temperature while solar irradiance at earth is related to solar radius, temperature and mass (and the distance of the earth to the sun). Putting in all the best estimates for these numbers 4.5 billion years ago still results in 30% less luminosity but not 30% less solar radiation at the earth surface. If you have better numbers, I could use them.
Bill Illis (15:18:28) : I’m skeptical…I’ll look into it but consider me a part of the old “solar consensus” in the mean time. 😉
Old ideas die hard.