UPDATE2: The question has been resolved, please see this new WUWT story on the issue. – Anthony
UPDATE: There is a debate raging in comments about the validity of the statement “That is four degrees below the freezing point of CO2 and would cause dry (CO2) ice to freeze directly out of the air.”
On one hand we have an argument from several commenters that says that the temperatures, pressures, and phase diagrams only apply to a pure state of CO2, such as in the manufacture of dry ice.
“Certainly, at least some of the CO2 in the atmosphere at the poles does freeze out (of the air) during the winter.”
So there appears to be a debate. If it turns out the statement is wrong, and some empirical proof can be presented, I’ll retract and/or amend the article. There appears to be a wide interest in this question, so I’m not opposed to find the true answer, even if it means the statement is entirely wrong.
Feel free to post in comments, but leave the snark and ad hom out of it. I’m more interested in settling the question.
I’ve also changed the title to be more reflective of the question before us now. – Anthony
By Steven Goddard
The south pole of Mars (seen below) similarly has an eight metre thick layer of dry (CO2) ice on top of the H2O ice.
Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures. In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide “ice caps” near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun. “The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,” he said.
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A bit OT –
Here we go with the newest study, hot off the AP:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090610/ap_on_sc/us_sci_diminishing_winds
Winds are dying! It’s global warming again. Wind power is doomed!
And, from highly respected (*choke – cough*) scientists –
M. Mann – sounds about right
G. Schmidt – no they’re not
So much for a monolithic AGW movement. There are caveats in the study, but as usual, those will be forgotten in the quest for headlines.
Steven Goddard, please apologise and remove this nonsense from this website about CO2 freezing out of the atmosphere at the Earth’s South Pole. Then please go and read, as a matter of some urgency, about the subject of vapour pressure. This is even more misguided than your previous nonsense about CMEs destroying electronics.
It is rather ironic this polar cap is frozen CO2 isn’t it. Has any one of you clever people out there observed a time frame for this Anthropological Marsian Warming. There must be photographic evidence of the Marsian Polar Cap from previous space expeditions for comparison, surely? The time frame I would assume have some sort of periodicity coupled with the greater eliptical orbit that Mars has.
As to the apparent change of heart by the BBC displayed in the two recent posts they’ve made & commented on above, the cracks may be getting bigger, Dr Pope claiming alarmists are damaging the cause & claiming that Arctic sea-ice melt could be perfectly natural after all, etc. as I have pointed out elsewhere, they are doing the backside covering exercise many do when it starts to look like the game is up, people are beginning to know it, they become all embarrassed, feeling awkward, so they hedge their bets to save faces by reducing the level of commitment to the cause. This way, they can turn around to their accusers (& there will be many rightly or wrongly) & imply they were innocent all along! I must say this really is quite an extraordinary turn of events fromt he BBC, probably the most staunch supporter of AGW. They recently made cut backs in certain departments & arch AGW eco-champion Roger Harrabin had to walk! Roger Black appears to have been rather quiet too of late.
Could it be that they are becoming eh……..what are the words I am looking for, for a publically funded organisation, eh……oh I know, IMPARTIAL, FAIR, & BALANCED in their reporting of Global Warming!
Skeptic Tank (03:49:47) :
I wonder when legislation will be passed requiring reduced carbon or no carbon beer?
Beer is a basic human, if not civil, statutory and constitutional right. If it’s not protected, explicitly, it should be.
Hear! Hear!
I like my beer.
Leon Brozyna (06:29:36) :
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090610/ap_on_sc/us_sci_diminishing_winds
Winds are dying! It’s global warming again. Wind power is doomed!
If this is true, does that mean that the average pressures of both high pressure systems and low pressure systems are decreasing and increasing respectively?
This sounds as easy to measure as average temperature and as hard to accomplish as nailing jelly to a wall. (I don’t know who came up with that analogy but it’s a cracker!)
And frost forms at temperatures above or near 32deg F.
Is that also impossible?
Thanks Steven Goddard, a beautiful photograph: She’s LA NINA laughing of all Gwrs, while breathing a little of refreshing cold CO2.
Philip Johns:Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun. That were his words about 1997-1998 el Nino warming, now he says:
We expect that the next relatively deep minimum of the solar activity, radius, and radiation flux in the 200-year quasi-cycle will be close to the Maunder minimum level and will occur in the year 2040 ±10.
http://www.giurfa.com/abdusamatov2.pdf
Please go through the list of NASA planetary weather stations and take pictures of them and their surrounding area. We need to know if any of those are closer than they should be to buildings or parking lots. I’m sure that NASA has had at least as much difficulty running wires to the MMTS locations as those on Earth have had.
“During the ice ages, more [CO2] probably froze out and accumulated, effectively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and contributing to the cooling of the atmosphere.”
–David R. Cook, Atmospheric Research Section, Environmental Research Division, Argonne National Laboratory
One more reason why fossil plant stomatal index (SI) studies indicate 320ppmv to 360ppmv CO2 during periods in which the ice core data indicate 285ppmv.
If the plant SI data are more analogous to the modern instrumental CO2 record than the ice core data are…385ppmv is not particularly anomalous.
Steven Goddard:
the condition for a spontaneous solid-gas phase transition at a given T and P is:
DG=RT ln(p/p0)<0
(which can be found in any thermodynamics textbook). In this equation, p is the partial pressure of the component in the atmosphere. If p is larger than p0 (which changes with T) then the solid-gas transition is not spontaneous, i.e. the gas-solid one will take place. There's no way of getting rid of this condition.
Your explanation about water freezing is really perturbing- you say freezing (liquid-water transition) would not be possible in our approach because of some water vapor pressure? But water vapor pressure doesn't even enter the condition for freezing!
You are right on the other hand when you mention the very low H2O partial pressure a the poles. This is why sublimation is often observed there.
“I must say this really is quite an extraordinary turn of events fromt he BBC, probably the most staunch supporter of AGW. They recently made cut backs in certain departments & arch AGW eco-champion Roger Harrabin had to walk! Roger Black appears to have been rather quiet too of late.”
No, Roger and Richard are still around and the BBC’s reporting line has not changed at all
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8092866.stm
Symon (07:21:26) :
Experiments conducted in the early 20th Century by scientists including R.W. Wood and Niels Bohr proved that “greenhouse” gases like CO2 cannot increase air temperature by “trapping” infrared radiation. The results of R.W. Wood’s research were published in Philosophical magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320 – back when science relied on experiments, not computer models. Four years later Niels Bohr reported his discovery that the absorption of specific wavelengths of light didn’t cause gas atoms/molecules to become hotter. Empirical science proves that CO2 will not warm our atmosphere by trapping IR. The Earth will continue to warm and cool according to the natural cycles of the sun, the oceans, volcanism, orbital variations, and numerous other natural factors. The 0.038 percent concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is a drop in the bucket and totally irrelevant and insignificant.
More disturbing than the thought of some fiery armaggedon caused by SUVs long after I’m dead are the rumors in this post that beer might at risk. I’d rather drive a Prius than give up my beer, but I hope it doesn’t come to that.
Aren’t Guinness and Kilkenny nitrogen charged? Is there still hope?
The ice core data is used to reconstruct atmospheric concentrations of CO2, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen etc. Great pains are taken to ensure the accuracy of the chemical analysis. From that air bubble analysis data we have a developed ideas on past climate. 0
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/289/5486/1897
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5752/1313
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/289/5486/1897
What effect is there on the chemical composition of air bubbles trapped in the the deepest ice cores from the extended pressure and temperature difference on those deepest cores?
Does anyone know of laboratory-controlled validation tests of the chemical composition of air bubbles in ice tested under the same pressure and temperature as that from the deepest ice cores themselves?
We’ve been through all this before, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/04/snow-job-in-antarctica-digging-out-the-data-source/
I’m at work and don’t have time to wade through all this again right now. Here’s one more familiar item.
Some mornings in February I go outside when it’s 20F and I don’t see frost on my windshield. Other days I do. If water freezes at 32F, shouldn’t I see frost every day? No – the key is the dewpoint and that’s coupled to water vapor’s partial pressure, not the total atmospheric pressure.
” Squidly (23:25:51) : ”
The way I read the link, one scientist said it was POSSIBLE for some CO2 frost but it wouldn’t accumulate. If there were CO2 frost in any measurable quantity there, we would already know that. It would have already been measured and published long ago before there was any “global warming” hype.
And CO2 is such a tiny fraction of the atmosphere that if you did find any, you might be hard pressed to prove it because it would likely sublime in the process of collecting it and the CO2 level would not be measurably different than the natural CO2 content of air.
It would go something like this … some CO2 freezes out, you have a sample with CO2 frost, snow, and CO2 depleted air. CO2 sublimates, CO2 content of the air in the sample returns to “normal”. Collecting a few particles of CO2 frost mixed with snow would be very difficult. If it wasn’t, it would have already been done.
Flanagan,
The nucleation of ice is dependent on many factors. Frost will form on a dirty windshield but will not form on a clean one. In the upper atmosphere, ice can nucleate around salt particles and dust at extremely low humidities.
The point of mentioning that Vostok is running below the dry ice freezing point was tongue in cheek and was merely intended to point out that Antarctica is incredibly cold. This article is about the current opportunity to test Dr. Abdussamatov’s theory of solar induced global warming.
I hope that you guys are right, that the CO2 won’t freeze and deposit itself onto Antarctica. I would hate to work on the Hazmat team that has to remove it at those temperatures! The area would become some sort of Superfund site, polluted by this toxic accumulation!
crosspatch (23:18:31) :
How cold is it in Antarctica? According to Weather Underground, Vostok, Antarctica is forecast to reach -113F on Friday. That is four degrees below the freezing point of CO2 and would cause dry (CO2) ice to freeze directly out of the air.
Uhm, no. Vapor pressure and all of that.
————-
Can’t see that vapour pressure has anything to do with it. At 20 deg C, the vapour pressure of atmospheric humidity is a little over 2,3 kPa, within a sea level atmospheric pressure of 101 kPa. Thus, in a sea level environment which happens to have a dewpoint of 20 deg C, an object at 15 deg C will sweat. Atmospheric moisture will sublimate onto an exposed pipe surface which is at minus 5 deg C, yielding frost. (eg. The compressor suction valve of a freezer refrigeration application). These situations are absolutely commonplace, and are plainly observable. The situation with atmospheric CO2 cannot be any different, save for the difference in operative temperature.
Hello Steven Goddard,
yes, what you mention are kinetic effects associated with nucleation and growth. Nevertheless, these processes cannot take place as long as the thermodynamic condition is not respected. The example in the video is supercooled water, this is water for which the conditions are such that is should be solid (from a thermodynamic point of view) but is still liquid (because it takes time).
You really should take away this “natural carbon sequestration” part in the title as well as the idea that CO2 will deposit, at least as long as you’re not sure that the CO2 partial pressure can be above the equilibrium one.
According to the ice core folks…There are know effects from burial or the core extraction process.
But there are at least three other estimates pre-industrial CO2 levels…
1) 19th Century direct measurements ranged from 280ppmv to 550ppmv.
2) Becks’ recent chemical analyses yielded 300ppmv to more than 400ppmv.
3) Plant stomatal studies yielded 320ppmv to 360ppmv.
The ice core data put the pre-industrial level at 285ppmv. It fits the narrative; so it’s the one that’s used.
I’m not aware of any.
On the other hand, plant SI data can be empirically calibrated and SI data over the last 60 years (Wagner, 2004) correlate very well with Mauna Loa and other modern instrumental records.
So…The warming of the late 20th century was not anomalous…And if the plant SI data are correct, 385ppmv CO2 is not anomalous.
Dave Middleton (09:31:20) :
“There are know effects from burial or the core extraction process,” should be “There are no effects from burial or the core extraction process.
D’Oh!!!
Re: Geoffrey Alder
Vapour pressure and partial pressure has everything to do with – suggest you look at this link to understand principles at work here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dew_point
Rhys Jaggar (04:10:52) :
If you want to hold the conference in Vostok next week, I’d advise all male attendees to visit a sperm bank before going……..you never know what might happen to you down there…….
It’s this kind of anthropogenic self-absorption that is dooming mankind.
if we just make the concerted effort to move beyond it as a community, we would find ourselves in a very quiet and peaceful place, in harmony with all.
16,500 condoms at McMurdo – but are there any women?
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=5027989&page=1
Best not to think about that too much.