If this is true,with the biomass photosynthesis of CO2 and converting it to oxygen, it would seem to point to a self regulating effect of the biosphere on climate.The new study goes with this item reported on WUWT in June 2008.
Surprise: Earths’ Biosphere is Booming, Satellite Data Suggests CO2 the Cause
The SeaWiFS instrument aboard the Seastar satellite has been collecting ocean data since 1997. By monitoring the color of reflected light via satellite, scientists can determine how successfully plant life is photosynthesizing. A measurement of photosynthesis is essentially a measurement of successful growth, and growth means successful use of ambient carbon. This animation shows an average of 10 years worth of SeaWiFS data. Dark blue represents warmer areas where there tends to be a lack of nutrients, and greens and reds represent cooler nutrient-rich areas which support life. The nutrient-rich areas include coastal regions where cold water rises from the sea floor bringing nutrients along and areas at the mouths of rivers where the rivers have brought nutrients into the ocean from the land.
See an animation of the Earth;s Biosphere: 512×288 (30 fps) MPEG-1 10 MB. More here at NASA SVS
More oxygen – colder climate
From the University of Copenhagen news release. 9 September 2009
Using a completely new method, researchers have shown that high atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content makes the climate colder. In prehistoric times, the earth experienced two periods of large increases and fluctuations in the oxygen level of the atmosphere and oceans. These fluctuations also lead to an explosion of multicellular organisms in the oceans, which are the predecessors for life as we know it today. The results are now being published in Nature.
Everybody talks about CO2 and other greenhouse gases as causes of global warming and the large climate changes we are currently experiencing. But what about the atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content? Which role does oxygen content play in global warming?
This question has become extremely relevant now that Professor Robert Frei from the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with colleagues from Departamento de Geologı´a, Facultad de Ciencias in Uruguay, Newcastle University and the University of Southern Denmark, has established that there is a historical correlation between oxygen and temperature fluctuations towards global cooling.
The team of researchers reached their conclusions via analyses of iron-rich stones, so called banded iron formations, from different locations around the globe and covering a time span of more than 3,000 million years. Their discovery was made possible by a new analytical method which the research team developed. This method is based on analysis of chrome isotopes – different chemical variants of the element chrome. It turned out that the chrome isotopes in the iron rich stones reflect the oxygen content of the atmosphere. The method is a unique tool, which makes it possible to examine historical changes in the atmospheric oxygen content and thereby possible climate changes.
“But we can simply conclude that high oxygen content in seawater enables a lot of life in the oceans “consuming” the greenhouse gas CO2, and which subsequently leads to a cooling of the earth’s surface. Throughout history our climate has been dependent on balance between CO2 and atmospheric oxygen. The more CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the warmer the climate has been. But we still don’t know much about the process which drives the earth from a period with a warmer climate towards an “ice age” with colder temperatures – other than that oxygen content plays an important role. It would therefore be interesting to consider atmospheric and oceanic oxygen contents much more in research aiming at understanding and tackling the causes of the current climate change,” says Professor Robert Frei.
The results Professor Frei and his international research team have obtained indicate that there have been two periods in the earth’s 4.5 billion year history where a significant change in the atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content has occurred. The first large increase took place in between 2.45 billion years and 2.2 billion years ago. The second “boost” occurred for only 800 to 542 million years ago and lead to an oxidisation of the deep oceans and thereby the possibility for life to exist at those depths.
”To understand the future, we have to understand the past. The two large increases in the oxygen content show, at the very least, that the temperature decreased. We hope that these results can contribute to our understanding of the complexity of climate change. I don’t believe that humans have a lot of influence on the major process of oxygen formation on a large scale or on the inevitable ice ages or variations in temperature that the Earth’s history is full of. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot do anything to slow down the current global warming trend. For example by increased forestry and other initiatives that help to increase atmospheric and oceanic oxygen levels,” explains Professor Robert Frei, who, along with his research team, has worked on the project for three years so far.
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George,
A reaction’s endo- or exo-thermicity is defined by the change in the state function known as enthalpy (delta H) which, under constant pressure constraints is also what is called “heat of reaction” or q_p. If the products of a reaction have a higher enthalpy than the reactants, then the reaction is by definition endothermic. Since enthalpy is a state function, or, if you prefer, an exact differential, it is path or process independent: changes in enthalpy depend only on initial and final state (reactants and products if the process is a chemical reaction). Thus, it matters not whether the energy input to the reactants takes place via absorption of a photon; via thermal excitation; via ultrasonic techniques or by one step or twenty: the overall process is still “endothermic.”
Gary (18:42:12) :
The news release is puzzling because the paper abstract doesn’t say a thing about temperatures. Sounds like editorializing by the author and friends.
I was puzzled, too. You are correct, there is a huge disconnect between the press release and the abstract. The title of the press release “More Qxygen – Colder Climate”, is grossly misleading. As you note, the abstract does not say a thing about global warming, global cooling or CO2. The actual study probably does not either, but I’m not going to spend $32 to find out. The author is a geochemist who specializes in isotope dating. His curriculum vitae is most impressive, but it shows no experience in climatology. (See: http://geo.ku.dk/english/staff/cv/?personid=111368). I would take his editorial comments on global warming with a grain of salt…
If the purpose of the press release was to seek publicity, it achieved it’s goal. After all, it was posted on WUWT.
“”” Aelric (11:34:25) :
George,
A reaction’s endo- or exo-thermicity is defined by the change in the state function known as enthalpy (delta H) which, under constant pressure constraints is also what is called “heat of reaction” or q_p. If the products of a reaction have a higher enthalpy than the reactants, then the reaction is by definition endothermic. Since enthalpy is a state function, or, if you prefer, an exact differential, it is path or process independent: changes in enthalpy depend only on initial and final state (reactants and products if the process is a chemical reaction). Thus, it matters not whether the energy input to the reactants takes place via absorption of a photon; via thermal excitation; via ultrasonic techniques or by one step or twenty: the overall process is still “endothermic.” “””
Well Aelric, one thing I am not is a chemist. I’m not sure I completely grasp all of your explanation; perhaps I should say I am sure I did not grasp all of your explanations, since it seems you are saying if there is more energy input than output, it is endothemic, and if the energy output exceeds the energy input then it is exothermic.
For example in one sense one would think that photosynthesis is a 100% efficient process; a photon is absorbed and some reaction takes place and all of the photon energy is taken up by that process, with no waste energy left over. I’m sure that is only true if the photon is of the exact energy required to complete the reaction. Presumably if the photon energy is higher than required, then there must be some excess energy which will manifest itself in the form of heat; assuming it isn’t emitted as a lower energy photon.
Well I guess I will have to hit the books to get to where your explanation makes sense to me.
Thanks for the lesson; nothing goes to waste here.
George
Not quite. Energy outputs cannot exceed inputs, or vice versa. Enthalpy is not about total energy, only direction of heat flow.
Exothermic – Reaction in which a system RELEASES
heat to its surroundings.
Endothermic – Reaction in which a system ABSORBS
heat from its surroundings.
George E Smith.
This is best understood in the terms of Hess’s Law, plenty of good explanations on the web.
Kindest Regards
So OK I got the gist of Hess’s Law, and don’t have any problem with that concept; nor do I see it as relevent to the reaction being considered; i.e. photosynthesis.
My understanding was (silly me) that an Exothermic reaction would release “heat” energy (and therefore result in a temperature increase of the system) while an Endothermic reaction would absorb heat and thereby result in a reduction of the system temperature. Now I can see there are some problems.
For example, If I pass a current of 0.5 Amps through a 4 Ohm resistor, it takes 2 Volts across the resistor, and heat is generated at a rate of one Watt.
If I apply the same 0.5 Amp to a high efficiency LED at the same terminal voltage of 2 Volts, I am still consuming electricity at the same one Watt rate, but my LED may only be generating “heat” at one half a Watt rate, so it will get less hot than the resistor did; the remaining half Watt is emitted in the form of Light (em radiation).
Now of course ultimately that light is going to be absorbed into something, perhaps very remote, and will then likely be converted to heat at some remote location. So although my expectation is that the same total amount of “heat” will ultimately be produced my LED will still run cooler than the resistor.
But now what if that light beam is collected, and focussed on to an appropriate photo-diode, and reconverted to an electric current. Well you see this can go on for ever, and I can see that Hess’s law will apply no matter how complex the set of reactions.
But what happens to the sunlight that is absorbed by tree leaves and eventually converted along with CO2 into wood. It seems to me that that should not result in local heating.
A Stanford/Livermore Labs team claimed that it would result in local heating, whereas the snow that would be there, absent the trees, would reflect the sun, so in their view the trees would cause global warming, if they are grown in otherwise snowy regions.
In fact Dr Steve Running at Montana State (I think) called those authors on it, and basically scotched the idea; well I am sure they all got grant money out of the deal.
George
But for me, I would still like to see an endothermic reaction cool things down; like a refrigerator for example.
“But for me, I would still like to see an endothermic reaction cool things down; like a refrigerator for example.”
The reaction of barium hydroxide octahydrate (aq) with ammonium nitrate (aq) is a classic general chemistry experiment of this type. With the reactant solutions close enough to the freezing point the product solution will solidify. But don’t eat the barium containing ice cube!
Beverage chillers essentially do what you suggest. So, use this as an excuse to go enjoy “a cold one.” 🙂
Missing in virtually all astronomical and climatological studies is Planet Earth’s geophysical, plate-tectonic context. The analogy with Alfred Wegener is quite precise: Before deep-ocean (“bathymetric”) probes discovered otherwise, geologists assumed that continental landmasses differed little from “abyssal plains,” invalidating Wegener’s “continental drift” hypothesis because no geophysical mechanism could drive, for example, Africa and South America apart. Yet any child can see the two fit together beyond coincidence. Only in 1964 did science realize that features such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge bore no resemblance whatsoever to the continents– that “sea-floor spreading” via upwelling magma and subduction zones made nonsense of any “static Earth” scenario.
A comparable revelation of near-equal import occurred about 2002, when geologists discovered that since the mid-19th Century vast, worldwide subsurface volcanism –“magmatic episodes”– has consistently affected global ocean basins. Even one fifty-thousandth of Earth’s 4,000-mile radius equals some 400 feet… “as if the Earth in fast, thick pants were breathing” [“fast” meaning centuries, if not millennia]. Earth alternately expands – contracts, pulsing in rhythms determining long-term climatic effects.
As warmer water rises to shallow continental shelves, accelerating evaporation –an “air conditioning” (cooling) process– drives hot air higher, drawing cold-air currents underneath. The result is flooding rains in summer, blizzard snows in winter… but even this widespread effect is marginal unless continental dispositions interfere with global atmospheric circulation.
For tens of millions of years now, North and South American continents have effectively walled off Eastern from Western Hemispheres; at one pole sits the Arctic Ocean, the other holds Antarctica. Over Earth’s current 1.8-million year Pleistocene Era, ice ages averaging 102,000 years interspersed with median 12,250-year interglacial epochs have occurred regular-as-clockwork.
Paleontological evidence puts a definitive end to continental ice-sheets about BC 8800 –10,800 years-before-present (YBP)– but a 1,500-year “cold shock” called the Younger Dryas reset the interglacial clock to 12,300 YBP. (Astronomers have known since 2006 that this extreme rebound stemmed from a swarm of cometary and meteorite debris spraying to the inner solar system when an extra-solar body disrupted Sol’s encompassing shell called the Oort Cloud.) On this basis, Earth’s current Holocene Interglacial Epoch was loosely due to end as of AD 2000 + (12,250 – 12,300) = AD 1950. Given a looming Dalton if not Maunder Minimum, Ice Time may be nigh upon us.
Since Earth’s “Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) Boundary” 65-million YBP, geological eras have averaged about 12-million years. This means the Pleistocene’s well-defined cyclical ice ages could persist at least another 10-million years, that is, until plate tectonics redistributes continental landmasses sufficiently to restore
benign global atmospheric circulation-patterns.
Neither botany nor climatology are empirical disciplines, formulating testable hypotheses, designing falsifiable experiments amenable to peer-group replication. In 1960, Edward Lorentz definitively showed that “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” aka Chaos Theory renders complex systems necessarily “non-random but indeterminate”– however detailed and sophisticated, computerized “climate models” are by mathematical definition incapable of making meaningful projections. Chaos Theory of course shades into Benoit Mandelbrot’s “fractal geometry,” self-similar on every scale, not to mention “Information Theory” as developed by Kurt Godel and Claude Shannon among others. Regardless of data inputs, the very notion of extrapolating putative climate-trends is nonsense on its face.
Gore, Hanson, Mann et al. aren’t right– they aren’t even wrong. Climate Cultists are no more scientists than are creationists, mystics, psychics of every stripe. Best consider such hubristic arrogance the work of Luddite sociopaths akin to Ehrlich, Holdren, Singer– terminal misanthropes celebrating human megadeaths in terms of “population bombs,” mass epidemics, resource depletion, you name it. Norman Borlaug of Green Revolution fame is Holdren’s particular bete noir– humanity is (and we quote) “a seething mass of maggots” better off exorcised, exterminated. Holdren’s subtext is an atavistic, virtually nihilist appeal to Lebensraum.
How long, O Lord, how long?
were slowly pulsating, lava wells up from oceanic rims.
George E Smith
Gosh I am a little taken aback, less by you, than Stanford- Livermore.
Golly gosh. Bear with me.
Yes your electronic example is perfectly correct.
And yes If I burn a hydrocarbon so it decomposes into H2O and CO2 the reaction is exothermic so heat is released to the universe.
To reverse this and turn C02 and H2O into some complex hydrocarbon by whatever exact route means I must supply energy, for instance sunlight, and you can describe the reaction as endothermic because it needs outside energy to cause it to happen.
Although strictly chemists use the term endothermic to describe reactions which adsorb the energy needed as heat rather than some other source of energy.
No matter.
Now all such processes, in this universe at least, are subject to the second law of thermodynamics, the Arrow of Time, which means they are irreversible.
For instance chemical reactions are reversible, X plus Y goes to XY and vice versa depending only on the change in energy between the separate states of X and Y and the compound XY.
Whih is why chemists write their equations with a reversible equals sign which my keyboard doesn’t seem able to do, to show that given the initial conditions the reaction will go one way or the other.
But even if you did the reaction X plus Y to produce XY and then reversed it to decompose XY back into X and Y there are losses in the process so overall some energy is lost as heat and cannot be recovered: and the entropy of the universe increases.
I hope I am making sense here, and not being condescending either, but if you are either puzzled or annoyed please say so: and I will try again.
Now as to trees as sunlight falls upon them overall they convert CO2 into complex chemicals that amongst other things make wood. In terms of energy the process is far from perfect so some energy must be released as heat.
So what? The tree and its leaves are not a perfect adsorber of sunlight, so some may be scattered and adsorbed by other trees or the earth and some reflected upwards.
Obviously if the sunlight falls upon virgin snow which, for the sake of argument, reflects it all perfectly, then the trees by comparison have indeed adsorbed solar energy.
Again so what? If the sunlight fell upon black earth it would have adsorbed all its energy. And in warming radiated some of it backto space but being colder than the trees less than they do.
So quite what the Stanford Livermore people are saying beyond the obvious I do not understand.
That an Earth covered with snow and ice would adsorb less energy from sunlight than one where the land has vegetation?
Amazing give the lad a PHD and a grant at once.
By the way I would be wary of referring to refrigeration processes as being endothermic, there are a few, such as sachets with a clip you can buy, but for all practical purposes natural and mechanical ones are not.
Hope this helps.
Kindest Regards.
Flanagan; re consuming oxygen and producing oxygen from CO2. You are partly correct there is a balance in burning fossil fuels; Coal – about 6 Btpy but there is also 45 Mtpy limestone used in flue gas desulphurization, 2.5 Btpy of limestone burned in making cement and lime, 100 Btpy as a flux in making steel (150kg/ton of steel), plus other metallurgical use for base metals….. I judge you to be a smart guy but perhaps more like a smart teenager who is skilled in apriori reasoning because he doesn’t have experience. It would be nice if you took off your collegiate debating cap and provided us with more quantitative data.
John Blake (19:55:11) : ” Missing in virtually all astronomical and climatological studies …
Thank you, John.
Gary Pearse (21:10:45) : “… there is a balance in burning fossil fuels; Coal – about 6 Btpy …
Can you assist me here, Gary? I have read of a very basic “X ounces of coal can drive a steam locomotive Y miles” ratio and would like that information in some form (and not only for my children and grandchildren…).
Gary: yes, limestone gets oxidized in these processes (I guess, because you seemingly don’t care about giving details). How exactly is thus supposed to INCREASE the atmospheric content of O2?
Btw, I’m not a “teenager”. Are you?
Flanagan is right: this is _not_ an example of a “self-regulating effect on climate” because the excess CO2 that leads to increased plant growth (and O2 emissions) mostly comes from C+O2 from combustion processes. So as long as CO2 concentrations are going up, O2 concentrations are likely to be going down. And, because people here like observations, a decrease in atmospheric O2 has indeed been observed: see the biogeochemistry chapter of the IPCC 4th assessment report, or use google.
this message re coal for locomotives was for
Roger Carr (23:14:08) :
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/LunChen.shtml
An average value for the thermal energy of coal is approximately 6150 kilowatt-hour (kWh)/ton.” (8,240 horsepower-hours). You would have to have values for the traction load being hauled, the speed of the train and an efficiency factor for the steam engine (the larger the more efficient). My father was a firemen on the Canadian National as a young man and with 100 cars loaded – approx 10,000sht ton gross wt, he shoveled 20t per rail division of about 125 miles – roughly 6 miles per ton of coal. We used to laugh at the miner’s song “Sixteen Tons” – hey loading 16t was considered wussy’s work by locomotive firemen.
Flanagan,
Apologies for teenager remark. (I had 6 of them in that age group at one time and I remember the exasperating nature of bright children’s argument style – with fondness I might add). I don’t dare argue with them now – especially one of them who is a post doc physicist starting at JPL in October, having completed a post doc at Scripps. She now can be exasperating because she’s kind to me in arguments.
The limestone is not oxidized but rather CO2 is driven off. My point was that there is lots of extra Anthropo CO2 that could feed plants to generate extra oxygen. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could resolve the whole issue by greening up the planet a bit more.
Gary Pearse (10:49:08) : “An average value for the thermal energy of coal …
Many thanks, Gary.
@John Blake (19:55:11) :
Hear! Hear! You called it pretty much the way I see it. We’ll get real climate change when the continents make a major shift in position. Meanwhile, on geologic time scales, the glacials and interglacials are just “weather.”
I wonder; how would climate change if the Isthmus of Panama disappeared?
“”” a jones (20:29:30) :
George E Smith
Gosh I am a little taken aback, less by you, than Stanford- Livermore. “””
No problemo a, I understand all of that; but can’t say I always have it at my fingertips.
For me, Chemistry stopped my last year in high school; just when things were starting to get treally interesting; so consider my self to be very weak on Chem, specially Organic; but I have no problerm with the general idea expressed in Hess’s Law. I have always held that adding oxygen to a gasoline fuel as we are mandated to do in California; by adding either an alcohol (ethanol) or previously an ether (MTBE), is tantamount to adding water to the gasoline, from the point of view oif the avaiable energy of combustion. My car has an engine, whose function is to add oxygen to the gasoline to release energy, so why would I want them to release that energy in the additive factory.
I’m happy with the notion that an exothermic reaction adds heat to its surroundings, while an endothermic reaction extracts heat from its surroundings. I guess it depends on the question of isolated versus closed, versus open systems. Also agree that refrigerators was not a great analogy.
In any case my basic point was that the boreal forests absorb solar energy (and CO2) and grow wood; and that is far more enviromentally useful that simply having some snow reflect what very little sunlight reaches those places anyway. There’s a reason that it is cold there; and also conifer forests are like optical anechoic chambers, and very efficient at trapping sunlight, in order to survive in those latitudes.
I actually contacted Prof Running about his public comments re the Stanford/Livermore snafu.
George