Vacationing on Venus Basic Geology Series Part 1
Guest post by Steven Goddard
Magellan radar imaged Venus – NASA Image
In some ways, Venus is similar to earth. It is about the same size as the earth, has a nickel-iron core, and has volcanic activity due to radioactive heating in the interior. But that is where the similarities end. Venus has some serious problems as a vacation spot – mainly that it is extremely hot and the atmosphere is a thick cloud of sulfuric acid, CO2 and other unpleasant chemicals.
So how did Venus get to be like that, and why is the earth different?
- Venus is closer to the sun, which makes it hotter and prevents formation of oceans due to excessive evaporation.
- Venus suffered a traumatic collision in it’s early days, which causes it to rotate very slowly and parallel to the ecliptic. This makes for long afternoons (thousands of hours long) which get extremely hot.
- Because of 1 and 2, Venus was never able to sequester CO2 in limestones like the earth.
For the last few billion years, volcanoes on earth have been spewing out the greenhouse gases H2O, CO2 and CH4, as well as, H2SO4, SO2, H2S, HCl and Cl2. If not for the oceans and limestone sequestration, we would have a very thick, hot acidic atmosphere like Venus which could not support life. Fortunately, temperatures and other conditions on earth were just right to allow huge volumes of CO2 to move into the oceans and precipitate carbonate rock layers, where the CO2 became sequestered. This makes earth the pleasant place which we all enjoy.
Wikipedia image – carbonate rocks in Italy, uplifted miles above sea level.
One of the oft stated concerns by the IPCC and others is excess CO2 from cement production, which involves heating carbonate rocks and has the side effect of returning CO2 to the atmosphere. Dr. Hansen and others have also suggested that periods of rapid warming in the past have been due to limestone formations being subducted into hot volcanic regions and losing their CO2 to the atmosphere.
But make no mistake, without the CO2 sequestered in limestone and other carbonate rocks, earth would be hot, toxic and probably unlivable – like Venus.
Some more detailed discussion here and here .
Part 2 will be a discussion of how fossil fuels fit into the picture.
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That the AGW promters even bring up Venus as something that could possibly happen to Earth due to AGW is evidence of their cynicism and how little regard they have for the public.
Oh right, Thanks Tom_R, sorry my bad!
Pat (03:57:10) :
“In Australia, C02 is being blamed for the wildfires. This is sad.”
They are right, you know. Without CO2 their wouldn’t be any trees to burn down. /sarc
Of course, their wouldn’t be any humans to make sick jokes either. 😉
Matt
A tidal effects from Earth determines the rotation rate of Venus. Here’s a (hopefully understandable) description of the Venus-Earth relationship.
Venus has an orbital period of 224.7 days, and a rotational period of 243.0 days. Because Venus rotates “backwards” the same point faces the sun every 116.7 days, slightly more than half an orbit. This is its synodic period, what an observer on Venus would call the length of its day.
Every 584 days (roughly) Venus reaches inferior conjunction with the Earth (their closest approach). 116.7 is one fifth of 584, so at each Earth-Venus conjunction there have been an even five Venus days, and the same part of Venus (midnight on Venus) is closest to Earth. I believe if one does the exact values rather than the round-offs, the synodic Venusian day is exactly one fifth of the time between Earth-Venus conjunctions.
There’s a similar relation between Mercury and Earth.
A compression effect commonly seen here on earth is the chinook winds coming off of the Rockie mountains. A simplistic view is that air above the mountains is cooled by the snow and ice and seeks to drop to a lower elevation. This results in high winds and a build-up of pressure along the lee side of the mountain.
A couple of Christmasses ago the city of Lethbridge Alberta Canada had temperatures of +25C because of the chinooks while the rest of the province was “basking” in -30C.
In all these discussion I miss the fact that the temperature and pressure of a gas are related. If you increase the pressure you will increase the temperature and vice versa, if you keep the volume and the gas composition constant.
The formula goes somthing like this:
pressure * volume = temperature * energy coeffiecient of the gas
The reason thus Venus is so hot is the enormos pressure (density) of the atmosphere. If one would exchange Venus atmosphere with that of the Earth (i.e mostly Nitrogen and Oxygon, some water vapour and some other trace greanhouse gasses) the temperature would actually be 200 degrees Celsuis hotter, since the air of Earth has a somewhat higher energy coefficient then the CO2 dominated atmosphere of Venus.
The pressure difference between the top of the atmosphere of Earth and that at the surface can thus also explain the temperature difference (it gets rapidly colder the higher we go up in the troposphere), we do not neccessary need greenhouse gasses to do that.
Also Venus and Mars have more or less the same percentage of CO2 (+/- 95%). Venus however has a very dense atmosphere (90 times of Earth if I am correct), while Mars atmospheric pressure is even very much lower than that of the Earth. Mars is cold place and Venus a very hot one. The fact that Venus is closer to the Sun does play a role, but greenhouse gasses are supposed to trap the heat from the sun and there would have been enough time over millions of years to accumulate enough of that to make Mars vastly hotter than it is.
Another food for thought:
Day and night temperature differences on Earth can be about 30 degrees Celsius in some dry places (5-10 degrees in humid areas), while Mars temperature difference can be about 80 degrees, eventhough the precentage of its greenhouse gasses is vastly higher than on Earth. If greenhouse gasses really trap the heat, Mars would not have lost so much of it over about 12 hours (Mars’s and Earth days are more or less the same 24 hours).
“There is no evidence for plate tectonics, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous, and some suggest that instead Venus loses its internal heat in periodic massive resurfacing events.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
I’d hate to be on vacation there during a resurfacing event. 🙂
The problem with the Earth/Venus comparison is that you have to take all of the differences at once. It could be that we are lucky enough to have a livable planet because our distance from the sun gave us just enough time with liquid water for CO2 to be sequestered and life to form. It’s really all about the water, not the CO2. As stated previously, Mars has a mostly CO2 atmosphere, too.
Alex (02:28:43) :
Can’t handle a little humour there mike?? Obviously with any chemical be it O2 , CO2, Ne etc it would be dangerous to take a deep breath of that.
So then every single compound/element in existence is effectively “unpleasant”. rather silly if you ask me. How about putting a plant in that CO2 cloud?? Unpleasant? I think not.
I will not have my humour questioned, Alex. You tread a dangerous path there.
Meanwhile, try the soda pop experiment. That shall be your punishment.
As far as O2, I have spent many hours on 100% O2 flying in the Air Force. The only side effect is long after the flight, when the 100% O2 in the inner ear gets absorbed into the tissue and creates a low pressure area and an earache exactly like you sometimes get when an airliner descends to land.
A full breath of Neon would be like the balloon Helium that kids breathe to make their voices squeaky. For that matter, it would be like a full breath of Nitrogen. Your body has no sensors for those gasses, but it does have CO2 sensors, and they’ll let you know about it.
Questioning my humour, indeed.
Meanwhile, and seriously,
Bill Illis (16:59:03) :
I’m working on an adiabatic lapse rate for Venus’ CO2 atmosphere. So far, starting with a 90 bar 480C surface, when we climb to 1 bar, earth’s surface pressure, I get a temperature of 54C, which is 6 degrees less than the earth’s record high. That’s a rough number, since the CO2 heat capacity ratio changes a bit with temperature, and I’m doing this on a hand calculator. For being so close to the sun, I’d have thought the temp would have been much higher. Maybe my math is wrong.
Steven Goddard (17:39:59) :
“The reason why the small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has a big impact on temperature is because there is a spectral SW band which CO2 absorbs that is not absorbed by H2O. The first few tens of PPM CO2 in the atmosphere have a large impact on temperature.”
Another one of these “minute quantities causing massive effects.” It doesn’t add up. And don’t tell me “it’s complex but.”
“Because of the requirements equilibrium, it is impossible to trap radiation near the surface”
If you can psychically contact the late Dr. Reid Bryson (the Father of Climatology), perhaps you could argue it out with him, because he said the same thing as Chazz.
This whole article smells to me like back-door AGW! Especially when the name “Hansen” is attached.
Regarding the “greenhouse effect,” there was, not a hypothesis by Arrhenius, but an experiment in 1909 by the physicist R.W. Wood (The Philosophical Magazine, 1909, vol 17, pp319-320) which demonstrates that the radiative explanation of a greenhouse is wrong. The greenhouse glazed with rock salt (passing IR in and out) heated quicker than the glass house, because of the sun’s IR output, and the prevention of heat escape by convection. Why does noone want to tell us the sun emits a large proportion in the IR?
Allan M
with previous comment, see:
http://globalwarmingnot.blogtownhall.com/2009/02/03/greenhouse_theory_disproved_a_century_ago.thtml
AM
OK, the Venus discussion got me thinking about ‘planets did it’ again. So this is somewhat OT, but related. Planets. Magnetic fields. Solar interaction…
So I’m sitting here trying to piece together a bunch of stuff. Ozone changes, sudden stratospheric warming event coincident with it more or less, sunspots stilll gone, burst of cold here… And I take the time to read some stuff I’d been going to get to Real Soon Now for the last 6 months. And where does this wandering put me?
Maybe Vukcevic is on to something…
A large Flux Transfer Event happens (FTE) as in:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30oct_ftes.htm
This could then lead to a Sudden Stratospheric Warming event? the imagination speculates? And what about Ozone? From:
http://exp-studies.tor.ec.gc.ca/cgi-bin/selectMap?lang=e&type1=de&day1=07&month1=02&year1=2009&howmany1=3&interval1=1&intervalunit1=d&hem1=g&type2=no&day2=08&month2=02&year2=2009&howmany2=1&interval2=1&intervalunit2=d&hem2=n&mapsize=100
We have an ‘odd’ spike in Ozone at the N. Pole (along with the Finger of God hot spot look). FTE? Why was the rest of the planet looking all green / blue with dropping ozone levels (and the N. Pole had been up to 40% low a few weeks ago) all nicely in synce with what would be expected from lower UV, then suddenly BANG the N.Pole lights up with a +50% O3 hotspot and generally higher O3 all over? The right side of my brain says the pattern is nice, things ‘fit’; go look here it murmers… Maybe this is clue:
Again from: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30oct_ftes.htm
“Now that Cluster and THEMIS have directly sampled FTEs, theorists can use those measurements to simulate FTEs in their computers and predict how they might behave. Space physicist Jimmy Raeder of the University of New Hampshire presented one such simulation at the Workshop. He told his colleagues that the cylindrical portals tend to form above Earth’s equator and then roll over Earth’s winter pole. In December, FTEs roll over the north pole; in July they roll over the south pole.”
Yeah, a simulation; but simulations can inform our ignorance and this one points out that these events can have large polar asymetries to them. Suddenly one pole ‘lighting up’ when the rest of the planet doesn’t has a plausable cause… a magnetic one. (I hate it when someone says magnets are causal. I use it as a ‘quack flag’ for implausable ideas and looney toons physics; yet it makes motors run and TVs work and… so I have to set aside my fire alarm sometimes; but it keeps on clanging even as I ignore it…)
Maybe it is all numurology, astrology, and magnets…
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm
Shows that geomagnetic peaks (Inter-hour Variability Index or IHV) happen 6+ years ahead of solar cycle sunspot peaks.
“Why? Don’t ask why; down that path lies insanity and ruin -emsmith” so exploring why, we find:
“We don’t know why this works,” says Hathaway. The underlying physics is a mystery. “But it does work.”
Maybe a beer would help? Asks a small part of my mind…
Well, I like my causes to precede my effects, so this gnaws at me… Here we have a magnetic preceedent event predictive of sunspot cycles. How can the Earth magnetosphere event (effect) predict the Sun event (implied cause)? Vukcevic connects this with the idea that the magnetoshere interactions of the sun and planets may have a phase difference with the sunspot effects of the solar system via Alfven currents. From
ihttp://www.vukcevic.co.uk/solarcurrent.pdf
“Contains factor 2 π/3. This is a sequential angular shift within J/S synodic period. For this particular function 2 π period = 19.859 years; or 2 π /3 = 6.62 years. This may be a critical relationship between planetary magnetospheres for their interactions with the heliospheric current and is therefore reflected in the values of the relevant geomagnetic index. “
“It takes 6 years for the angle of Jupiter-Sun-Saturn configuration to change by 90 degrees. If the mentioned 3-6 months are added then the result is Dr. Hathaway’s “6 plus years”. It is just possible that the 90 degrees change in the Jupiter – Saturn angular displacement will significantly alter the total effectives of the magnetic portals, and in doing so via HS current feedback, affect sunspot cycle. This may be coincidence and pure speculation, but if it is not then “the underlying physics would not be a mystery; and we would know why IHV predictions work”.
Dang it! Now I’ve got planetary alignments in the mix that seem to be reasonably tied to physics. But he’s connecting it with real physics and with something called Alfven currents (that I wander of to explore, more on that later). So now my “astrology” siren joins my “magnets” clanger and my head starts to suggest a bit of wine might help… but I resist.
Vukcevik has a nice formula that seems to be fairly predictive of solar state based on the assumption that the planets magentospheres can influence the return “Alfven” current to the sun (which then could impact the solar dynamo which another paper showed could behave like it does if it had a bit of ‘randomness’ tossed in).
“A current scientific view of Grand Minima:
Solar Phys. DOI 10.1007/s11207-008-9293-6
Grand Minima of Solar Activity and the Mean-Field Dynamo
I.G. Usoskin · D. Sokoloff · D. Moss
A current scientific view of Grand Minima:
Abstract We demonstrate that a simple solar dynamo model, in the form of a Parker migratory dynamo with random fluctuations of the dynamo governing parameters and algebraic saturation of dynamo action, can at least qualitatively reproduce all the basic features of solar Grand Minima […] We demonstrate that such ability to reproduce the Grand Minima phenomenology is not a general feature of the dynamo models but requires some specific assumption, such as random fluctuations in dynamo governing parameters.”
So here we have some randomness … but a couple of the numbers in it don’t make sense to me (like the shift from cos to sin in 1810 or so and the 1941 ‘plug number’) but the formula works… So I’ve now got numerology in the mix. BANG BANG BANG goes my numerology drum. But sometimes numbers are just the right numbers, whispers my right brain… Maybe whiskey would be a better choice mutters the left side of my brain…
But it all seems to fit.
To preserve my sanity I let go of exploring “why” and wander off to learn about Alfven currents. There I find a Nobel Laureate in physics; this bit at least, is making my left brain happy…
Sidebar: Yet Another Peer Review Refugee; Alfven:
In trying to learn what these “Alfven currents” were I stumbled on this in the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannes_Alfvén
Begin Wiki quote:
Alfvén considered himself an electrical engineer foremost. During his scientific career, prior to winning the Nobel Prize, Alfvén was not generally recognized as a leading innovator in the scientific community (though they were using his work). He enjoyed the assertion that he was guilty of a fault or offence by the entry into areas not previously explored in astrophysics leveled by other cosmologists and theoreticians.[citation needed]
Research, awards, and contributions
Alfvén’s work was disputed for many years by the senior scientist in space physics, the British-American geophysicist Sydney Chapman. Alfvén’s disagreements with Chapman stemmed in large part from trouble with the peer review system. Alfvén rarely benefited from the acceptance generally afforded senior scientists in scientific journals. He once submitted a paper on the theory of magnetic storms and auroras to the American journal Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity and his paper was rejected on the ground that it did not agree with the theoretical calculations of conventional physics of the time. He was regarded as a person with unorthodox opinions in the field by many physicists,[3] R. H. Stuewer noting that “… he remained an embittered outsider, winning little respect from other scientists even after he received the Nobel Prize…”[4] and was often forced to publish his papers in obscure journals. Alfvén recalled:
When I describe the [plasma phenomena] according to this formulism most referees do not understand what I say and turn down my papers. With the referee system which rules US science today, this means that my papers are rarely accepted by the leading US journals.[5]
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1970 for his work with magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). In 1988, Alfvén was awarded the Bowie medal by the American Geophysical Union for his work on comets and plasmas in the solar system.
Awards
Alfvén was also awarded:
• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1967)
• Gold Medal of the Franklin Institute (1971)
• Lomonosov Gold Medal of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1971)
End Wiki quote.
Yup, you just gotta love that “Settled Science Peer Review” process for how well it identifies world class ideas … they just need to get the sign right, that’s all… And you just gotta love it when an Engineer gets involved in cosmology…
Now my brain is happy and asking for a bit of coffee please, so I’m off to my expresso maker and a visit to FORTRAN land…
Psi (18:01:24) :“Twin footprints of electric currents from space are apparent at Venus’ south pole—counterparts to the footprints earlier discovered at Venus’ north pole….”
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060717doubleeye.htm
Could this be related to the recent formation of a ‘split polar vortex;’ here on earth? The ozone maps seems to have two ‘eyes’ in them at the north pole area as well…
http://exp-studies.tor.ec.gc.ca/e/ozone/Curr_allmap_g.htm
From the ‘thunderbolts’ link above:
“Leading Electric Universe proponent Wal Thornhill identified the dipolar configuration of the polar vortex as a cross-sectional view of a cosmic electric current. Within the solar system, as in every observed region of space, electric currents flow over vast distances by means of filaments of plasma that tend to organize themselves into “twisted pairs.” A common name for this “doubleness” in current-conducting plasmas is a “Birkeland current”. ”
Said Birkeland currents being part of the work realated to Alfven…
So, OK, does anyone have any idea why we are getting a split vortex just now? (Per a prior thread about one sort of developing…)
[Steven Goddard (05:27:18) :
“Chazz,
The earth’s radiative balance is always maintained, so”…………….]
Steven,
Without using the expression “scientific consensus”, can you substantiate this?
Are you absolutely sure that there can be no other significant factor involved in the equilibrium? Or should I ask “what radiative influences are you counting as valid?”
(ps. Look, I know I’m dim, guys (and gals), but I can’t seem to find the way to format comments into the conventional pattern. Does anyone have the patience to just tip me how the rules to format my text? Sorry to be so noncomplit!)
E.M.Smith (11:44:41) :
You gave this link:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm
which predicts a large cycle 24 peaking within a year. Cycle 24 is not playing ball currently. Anyway the proof will be in the pudding in about a year.
I am very dubious of these magnetic theories as they stand, particularly when planets enter the game. It is intuitive, possibly I cannot envisage magnetic interactions between planets having enough power to affect anything except cosmic rays.
If I were to speculate, I would put my money on dark matter and the pertinent interactions that are not yet even proven in the laboratory.
Let me make a science fiction scenario: Dark matter is supposed to be 90% of the universe. String theory, at the moment fashionable, gives plenty of models that could accommodate dark matter. At the same time there will be corresponding forces that will be the carriers of the interactions in these other dimensions. If dark matter is 90% of our space area, this will introduce whole new physics and therefore any correlations seen in the forces we measure and know could very well be the end result of these unknown yet forces, acting in extra dimensions. Such a scenario would satisfy my reasoning much better than all these angles of Jupiter with Saturn etc. correlated to our known forces.(Still science fiction at the moment, these new forces could turn gravity to electomagnetism and vice versa).
Phil. (20:13:10) : If you read the paper you will have noticed that the recovery process takes the order of a century to complete, part of it after demolition of the structure.
And your point is??…
Cement usage dates from the Roman era, was rediscovered in the 1800’s. At least here on the Left Cost in California, I see lots of “tilt up fall down” concrete slab walled buildings and parking lots from about 1950 – 1980 being ground up and recycled into new ‘aggregate’ for new buildings. (And we won’t talk about the speed with which residential driveways get recycled… one neighbor is on the 10 year plan… likes it ‘clean and neat’…)
Looks to me like lots of the CO2 ‘problem’ from cement getting regularly recycled (with maybe a 50 year average lag time, but dating from more than 50 years ago…). So again I say: So?
Steve (of G.Brown.Land) (12:54:31) :
Formating
I will use the brackets [ ] but you should use the > and < . If I use them I will not be able to explain,
[i]italics[/] . I substitute italics
[b]bold[/b] bold
the rest available show up over the comments panel.
Now on the radiative balance. I think it is the classic argument that since the earth can only lose energy to space by radiation the amount that comes in should go out, otherwise we would be cooked to a crisp.
E.M.Smith (11:44:41) :
Thanks a lot. Now my head hurts! 😉 Got an extra beer?
Mike McMillan (11:11:15) : As far as O2, I have spent many hours on 100% O2 flying in the Air Force. The only side effect is long after the flight, when the 100% O2 in the inner ear gets absorbed into the tissue and creates a low pressure area and an earache exactly like you sometimes get when an airliner descends to land.
Unless you are a premature baby… then it can cause blindness and several other terrible things… Adults are much more resistant to oxygen, but 100% oxygen is still ‘not good’ …
Also our “CO2 sensors” are just an indirect way to measure O2. You will happily breath pure nitrogen until you die. You don’t know you need the O2 and don’t feel ‘out of breath’. Nature just took a short cut to an O2 indirect measurement so you would know when to breath. I would consider it a hardware bug, since it periodically kills people, but it works 99.9%+ of the time so “Good enough for evolution work”…
Ice and snow on mountains don’t cause chinook type winds.
Chinooks are caused by dry air having a greater adiabatic lapse rate than moist air. As moist air goes up the west side of the Rockies it loses moisture as precipitation. At the same time it cools as it decompresses. When the now dry air goes down the east side of the Rockies it heats at a faster rate (a bit less than twice as much per 1,000 feet) as it recompresses.
It’s a result of moist air gaining/loosing more (heat) energy when it compresses/decompresses than dry air.
Not to be confused with Katabatic winds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katabatic_wind
Steve, I manually add the HTML tags.
Phillip_B, so the ‘chinook’ winds on the northeast Colorado plains are actually Katabatic since they are from pressure differential, high west of Rockies, low east of Rockies. Misnamed often in the weather reports.
“” Allan M (11:15:19) :
Steven Goddard (17:39:59) :
“The reason why the small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has a big impact on temperature is because there is a spectral SW band which CO2 absorbs that is not absorbed by H2O. The first few tens of PPM CO2 in the atmosphere have a large impact on temperature.”
Why does noone want to tell us the sun emits a large proportion in the IR? “”
Maybe because the sun doesn’t emit a large proportion in the IR.
The roughly 6000 K solar “near blackbody” spectrum peaks at around 0.5 microns. The first significant CO2 absorption band is around 2.5 microns which is five times the peak wavelength. 96.5% of the total spolar spectrum radiation is below 2.5 microns. The next CO2 dip is at 4 microns which is 8 times the solar peak wavelength, and over 99% of all solar radiation occurs below 4.0 microns. The major CO2 absorption line at 14.77 microns, is close to 30 times the solar peak wavelength and the intensity of solar radiation at that wavelength is down to around 3E-5 times the pak.
So the sun does not radiate much energy in the CO2 bands. Water absorption bands on the other hand start at around 750 nm or 1.5 times the solar peak wavelength, and 50% of all solar radiation is emitted above that wavelenght so water does have a significant absorption of incoming solar energy, but CO2 does not. And water vapor goes from near zero absorption at 9.0 microns to 100% at about 17 microns, being about 50% absorption at 13 microns which is still below the 14.77 micron CO2 band; so water vapor does in fact absorb more than 50% at the same wavelength as the major climate CO2 band. Then Ozone in the upper atmopshere absorbs strongly in the 9-10 micron band. The sum total of all the water absorption bands in the IR spectrum from 0.7 to 20 microns, is that over half that spectrum width is either totally absorbed or totally transmitted by water vapor. So since 50% of the solar energy is above 750 nm, and water absorbs about half, the net atmospheric water vapor absorption is around 25% of incoming solar spectrum, and it is totally opaque beyond about 17 microns in the earth thermal radiation spectrum.
But I disagree with Steven that there is a significant CO2 absorption band that is not also absorbed by water vapor (where water vapor is present). It is true that the 4 micron CO2 absorption band is a water vapor window. BUT, there is virtually no solar spectrum energy in that band, and since it is 40% of the 10.1 micron peak of the earth thermal radiation spectrum (at +15C), the earth irradiance is about 6% of the peakat 4 microns, and less than 1% of the total earth thermal radiation is emitted below 4 microns. Only 5% of the earth thermal radiation is emitted below about 6.7 microns.
So I disagree that CO2 energy interception is not overwhelmed by water vapor where water vapor is present.
George
@anna v.: Thanks, I needed that! 😉
Sidebar on Venus and CO2 / H2O :
I’ve sometimes pondered wether it was just initial state that determined things. Earth was cool enough due to solar distance for CO2 to get bound into rocks while Venus was hot enough to keep it ‘cooked out’ like when we make CaO quicklime. Some excess O2 on earth (from CO2 binding in what otherwise would be oxide minerals) reacts with some H+ and we have water. Now whole thing feeds on itself with subduction, oceans, et. al. Poor Venus left hot and dry awaiting a ‘cool enough’ moment to start the process of CO2 / O2 substitution, but in a race with a sun putting out more each epoch…
(Yes, I know my chem equations don’t balance… attempting to avoid “Chem Wars, Return of the Sith” as broke out under Coral thread 😉
Hmm… been reading Slavic authors… now not using articles much… 😉
Richard M (13:37:09) :
E.M.Smith (11:44:41) :
Thanks a lot. Now my head hurts! 😉 Got an extra beer?
Sorry… Fresh Out!
E.M.Smith (12:54:19) :
“So, OK, does anyone have any idea why we are getting a split vortex just now? (Per a prior thread about one sort of developing…)”
The recent Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/10mb9065.gif
During Minor SSWS the polar vortex typically gets pushed to the side and/or weakened. However during Major SSWs (this one was a record since 1979, the start of Satelite data) the polar vortex can be entirelly split in 2. That appears to be the case currently.