URI bubble physicist counts bubbles in the ocean to answer questions about climate, sound, light
From a University of Rhode Island press release
NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – January 21, 2010 – The bubbles in your champagne that appear to jump out of your glass and tickle your nose are exhibiting a behavior quite similar to the tiny bubbles found throughout the world’s oceans, according to bubble physicist Helen Czerski.
But while the champagne bubbles are likely to raise your spirits, those in the ocean can cause clouds to form and affect the climate.
“Bubbles are little packets of gases that rise or fall and can be carried around as if they’re on little conveyor belts,” said Czerski, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. “They carry carbon dioxide and oxygen from the atmosphere down into the ocean, and then when they go back up again they pop and sulfur compounds from marine plants are sent upward, forming particles in the air that lead to the formation of clouds.”
Czerski is studying how to detect and count ocean bubbles of different sizes to help scientists in other disciplines create more accurate models. She said that scientists have found it difficult to judge the effect of bubbles on their data for years and usually have had to add a “fudge factor” to account for them.
“For instance, bubbles ring like bells when they are formed or when sound waves go past them, and if you’re studying sounds traveling through the ocean – like sounds from whales or sonar – bubbles can get in the way of what you’re trying to listen for,” said Czerski, who earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge University before spending a year studying bubbles at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and then moving to URI.
“Bubbles also scatter light strongly in the oceans and make things cloudy, so if you’re studying light in the ocean you need to understand bubbles,” she added.
The URI scientist uses an acoustical resonator to detect and count bubbles of different sizes in the water column. The device can detect bubbles from 3 to 170 microns in size, and she is assessing the accuracy and uncertainty in the measurements.
She recently used the resonator to collect bubble data near the Hawaiian Islands and in the Santa Barbara Channel off Southern California. She counts bubbles down to 10 meters deep – most bubbles don’t go down much further than that, she said. The big ones float back to the surface while the smallest ones gets squeezed out by the pressure as they sink.
“Just after a wave breaks, there are loads of bubbles and they’re changing really, really quickly,” Czerski explained. “They’re stretching and squishing and bumping into each other and breaking into smaller bubbles and they’re doing it all too fast for us to see directly. Whenever they break up, each new bubble makes a ‘ping’ sound, and if you hear it you can say something about those new bubbles.”
Czerski said that understanding the physics of bubbles is increasingly important as climate models become more and more refined.
“We need to study bubble distribution and where they go in the water column to understand the exchange of gases that they carry,” she said.
According to Czerski, while carbon dioxide and oxygen get carried into the ocean via bubbles, a chemical compound produced by phytoplankton gets carried out of the ocean via bubbles.
“No one really knows why phytoplankton create dimethyl sulfide, but they do, and it passes into bubbles and is carried up and out,” she said. “These bubbles supply sulfur to the atmosphere, which acts as a seed for cloud droplets to form.
“Climate is made up of a whole bunch of little things, including bubbles, and these little things matter because there are lots of them,” Czerski said.
Czerski began studying bubbles after earning a Ph.D. in a field she described as “blowing things up,” which included becoming expert at high-speed photography. She then looked for disciplines in which she could apply this knowledge.
“I’ve always been fascinated by small things that do stuff that’s too fast for us to see,” she said. “And I like building experiments that help us see those things.”
She learned to scuba dive in order to deploy instruments for measuring bubbles, and she now believes that getting in the water is a vital step for any aspiring bubble scientist.
“You can’t really understand what’s going on under the sea unless you go there yourself,” Czerski concluded. “There is a huge benefit to directly experiencing the world you’re studying. The rules are different down there.”
From the original source for “Cloud-seeding microorganisms go under the microscope”
The National Science Foundation.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114802
DirkH (13:55:09) :
Ray (14:03:26) :
The only air bubble that goes down in water is the air bubble between the legs of a water spider, all others only go up.
Ray, just took a “normal beer”, not a single bubble going down.
I simply don’t accept the claim of bubbles going down in a water column.
That’s it.
But when she gets done, scientists will know everything, and the science will be really, really settled.
B-U-U-U-U-U-U-R-R-R-R-P-P!!!!!!
Bob D.
I remember reading somewhere recently that plankton releases gas into the air when they get too hot. The gas then seeds cloud formation for local cooling of the seas surface.
I seems to me that Czerski has found the connection.
Ah, but it takes the genius of Monty Python to put things back into perspective!
http://dingo.care-mail.com/cards/flash/5409/galaxy.swf
Click, and have a a Eureka moment!
21 Jan: National Post: Scientists using selective temperature data, skeptics say
By Richard Foot, Canwest News Service
The NOAA database forms the basis of the influential climate modelling work, and the dire, periodic warnings on climate change, issued by James Hanson, the director of the GISS in New York.
Neither agency responded to a request for comment Wednesday from Canwest News Service…
http://www.canada.com/technology/Scientists+using+selective+temperature+data+skeptics/2468634/story.html
kadaka,
403b defined contribution plans. Like a 401k, but for non-profits.
Bunnies=Monsters??? No way. Just feed ’em old socks and lost letters.
Damn she’s good and bright and beautiful. Love the line “the fashionable one at the moment”. Ha ha ha.
You go girl!
20 Jan: National Post: Lorne Gunter: First Climategate, now Glaciergate
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/01/20/lorne-gunter-first-climategate-now-glaciergate.aspx
20 Jan: National Post: Peter Foster: IPCC meltdown
Exhibiting stunning chutzpah, Dr. Hasnain — the man who made the original prediction — stated righteously that, “It is not proper for IPCC to include references from popular magazines or newspapers.” Strangely, however, Dr. Hasnain hadn’t been trying to distance himself from his own wild speculation as recently as last September, when he was quoted in a story in The Globe and Mail as a person “who believes the Himalayas may be denuded of all snow and ice in as little as 20 years.”
Perhaps that might have had something to do with the fact that, after his alarmist speculations proved so useful for the IPCC’s case, he was hired by The Energy Research Institute, TERI, whose director just happens to be IPCC head Dr. Pachauri!
As the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Jr. noted this week, “[T]his stinks … what we have here is a classic and unambiguous case of financial conflict of interest.”
True Believers were quick to attempt to pin this, er, misunderstanding on those Big Oil ideologues. Bob Ward of the U.K.’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change told The Guardian, “It is only a matter of time before the lobbyists who peddle climate change denial for their own political ends start to overstate the significance of this episode, and try to link it to the controversy surrounding the email messages hacked from the University of East Anglia.”
Thanks for saving us the trouble Bob!..
Although Professor Cogley did not notice it, when the 2007 IPCC report was published, the 2035 date was dutifully reported by newspapers all over the world, and became the subject of much Jeffrey Simpson-style brow-knitting.
The vast climate change industry of politicians, bureaucrats and radical NGOs was already reeling from the revelations of Climategate and the failure of Copenhagen. However, the finagling at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia is complex enough for the industry to have mounted a rearguard action of confusion in the hopes of burying the issue. This latest revelation is much easier to understand. It provides incontrovertible evidence that the IPCC’s scientific standards are not only shoddy, but strongly biased towards extreme alarmism.
Mr. Pachauri has already come under intense criticism not only for his own arrogance but for multiple conflicts of interest (which admittedly hardly makes him unusual in a policy strata that also contains Al Gore and Maurice Strong). Now the issue is whether he will be thrown under the climate juggernaut in order to keep the policy charade going…
This is not just a minor matter that needs a little clearing up. It is further evidence that the entire IPCC process has been corrupt from the start.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/01/19/peter-foster-ipcc-meltdown.aspx
A bit OT but – Anthony have you seen this. the euros are waking up slowly!
http://www.breitbart.tv/scam-scam-scam-european-parliament-member-rips-global-warming-hysteria/
REPLY: Try scrolling down on the main page of WUWT
Ron de Haan (15:00:41) :
The bubbles in a Gunness pint is the exception… all the other bubbles that I personally know, go up…. well except those in my intestines…. but those might not be bubbles after-all, else I need a change… sorry!
Here’s how to serve the perfect pint of Guinness
The Dr. is right, you need to get wet to get a real feel for the science. The ocean is in a saturated condition and any disturbance will cause the creation of bubbles. Study your beer or sparkling wine if your too lazy to get wet. The bubbles are the gas – liquid interface, the lungs of the planet. Reminds me of the inside of one of my dynamic fume scrubbers.
There is another theory for these bubbles.
http://tinyurl.com/l2qsmq
Don’t laugh, it is possible. I seem to remember that this came out when he was doing poorly, and his numbers picked up from here on. It is not scientific, but I wonder if fishermen do this often. Remember, no one believed these guys about rogue waves either.
Her nickname wouldn’t be… Bubbles, would it? 😉
Cloud seeding form sulfur compounds emitted from the ocean gets a mention in Svensmark and Calder’s “The Chilling Stars”. They propose that the cloud nucleation particles produced by this process over the oceans are far fewer than those produced by other processes over land. Further to this they reference empirical evidence from airborne instruments that not all cloud seeding over the oceans is due to these sulfur compounds.
I wonder if Helen Czerski’s work can shed some light on the 800 year lag between global temperature rise and CO2 levels. She may also be able to clear up the issue of the time CO2 remains in the atmosphere.
Good grief!
Ray 12:54:43-my bubbles stick!
Mine in the tub stink!
Ron de Haan 13:29:!2
Bubbles going down-I don’t believe it either. Maybe these guys have had too much beer.
You don’t have to get in the ocean to be get wet either. You can be “all wet” with a silly experiment.
Gary (15:28:28) :
Bunnies=Monsters??? No way. Just feed ‘em old socks and lost letters.
Grasshoppers can be cute, until their population explodes and they transform into a locust swarm. For the sake of the cats, I can’t take that risk. The dust bunnies must be controlled!
Jennifer Jambo (11:47:11) :
I make wine and beer and I am guilty as charged…
Have you ever made any persimmon beer? Good stuff!
But a cloud of gnats will follow you around for a week, no matter how many showers you take.
♫ Tiny bubbles ♫
There, that gives it a little more character.
I’m forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air.
They fly so high,
Nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams,
They fade and die.
Fortune’s always hiding,
I’ve looked everywhere,
I’m forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air.
Ron de Haan (13:29:12) :
After spending many hours looking at sweet and salt water aquariums and some diving I have made some observations of my own.
I am sorry to say this but in my humble opinion this is a kind of wacko story.
I don’t see bubbles filled with oxygen and CO2 (better call it “air”) making a downward voyage in a water column.
Let alone bubbles bringing oxygen and CO2 down, releasing the content and taking sulfur compounds up!
All I have ever seen is bubbles going up but bubbles going down?
Go to your kitchen Ron, put a full glass of water under a running faucet and you’ll see plenty of bubbles going down! Personal incredulity is no way to do science Ron. Bear in mind that the ones that you see are rather large and that the buoyancy to drag ratio is proportional to d and they’re looking at bubbles smaller than 170μm.
The major driver of tropical cloud formation is variation in cosmic ray fluxs.
http://www.solarstorms.org/CloudCover.html
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18059989
we are not in charge.
phil 17;33:05 Bubbles going down with faucet on. Sure, go underneath Niagara falls and plenty of bubbles are going down but how many bubbles make it to the bottom and remember the ocean is a lot deeper than the river at Niagara. Also what exactly is the push on bubbles in the ocean. I will believe this if i can experiment along side the hottie scientist and help her drink her bubbly. snipe away
Also what exactly is the push on bubbles in the ocean.
Heard of waves? The base of the circulation beneath waves is a depth of one half wavelength below the midpoint of the wave, 100m wavelengths are common so that gets down to 50m.
Water in the ocean is constantly agitated by waves, so some of the motion has got to be semi-circular (think undertow at the shore), and surely that will pull the bubbles down.
This has got to be one of the most entertaining threads ever on WUWT—from Billie Holiday to a lesson on pouring Guinness to Monty Python—how am I supposed to be getting any work done?
/Mr Lynn