Can you keep an open mind on the cause of winds? Climate science needs your help!
by Anastassia Makarieva
Many of us who have become researchers have been attracted by the dynamic and constructive debate that lies at the heart of scientific progress. Every theory is provisional waiting to be improved or replaced by a more thorough understanding. In this perspective new ideas are the life-blood of progress and are welcomed and examined eagerly by all concerned. That’s what we believed and were inspired by. Is climate science a dynamic field of research that welcomes new ideas? We hope so – though our faith is currently being tested.
Five months have not been enough to find two representatives of the climate science community who would be willing to act as referees and publicly evaluate a new theory of winds. Of the ten experts requested to act as referees only one accepted. This slow and uncertain progress has caused the Editors to become concerned: recently they “indefinitely extended” the public discussion of the submitted manuscript. The review process is perhaps becoming the story.
Here the authors share their views and request help.
Background
On August 06 2010 our paper “Where do winds come from? A new theory on how water vapor condensation influences atmospheric pressure and dynamics” was submitted to the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions (ACPD) journal of the European Geosciences Union. There we proposed a new mechanism for wind generation based on pressure gradients produced by the condensation of water vapor. ACPD ensures transparency during the review procedure: the submitted manuscripts and subsequent reviews are published online and available for public discussion. Authors can follow their submission through the process: they see when the Editor invites referees and whether they accept or decline.
Here are the standings as of 20 January 2011:
The Editor handling our paper has invited ten referees so far. Only one, Dr. Judith Curry, accepted. After 10 November 2010, in the record there have been no further attempts to find referees.
Normally ACPD’s discussion should take eight weeks. But in early January 2011, after twelve weeks in process, the status of the discussion of our manuscript was changed to “indefinitely extended”. In a recent letter to the authors, the Editor-in-Chief admitted that handling ‘a controversial paper’ is not easy, but assured us that the Journal is doing their best.
Discussion of our propositions secured over a thousand comments in the blogosphere within four weeks of publication indicating wide interest. Among the ACPD discussion participants two are active bloggers. Does blog culture outcompete formal peer review in evaluating novel concepts? It’s an open question. But let’s take a moment to focus on science.
Why condensation-induced dynamics is important
It would be generally useful to understand why the winds blow. It is sufficient to note that understanding the physical bases of atmospheric circulation is key for determining the climate sensitivity to changes in the amounts of atmospheric greenhouse substances, which is currently a highly controversial topic. The lack of current understanding may not be widely recognized outside the climate and meteorological community. But within the community moist processes in the atmosphere are admitted to be among the least understood and associated with greatest challenges. Not only theorists, but also modelers recognize their existence. For example, in a paper titled “The real holes in climate science” Schiermeier (2010) identified the inability to adequately explain precipitation patterns as one of such holes. In particular,
“a main weakness of the[ir] models is their limited ability to simulate vertical air movement, such as convection in the tropics that lifts humid air into the atmosphere.”
Any meteorological textbook will provide a discussion of buoyancy-based convection: how a warm air parcel ascends being lighter than the surrounding air. The convective instability of moist saturated air, so far neglected by the meteorological theory, is different. Any upward displacement of a saturated air volume, even a random fluctuation, leads to cooling. This causes the water vapour to condense. Condensation diminishes the total amount of gas and thus disrupts the hydrostatic distribution of moist air (if a hydrostatic equilibrium exists it is unstable to any such minor movements). The conclusion: moist saturated atmosphere in the gravitational field cannot be static.
Our analyses show that the current understanding of air movements being dominated by temperature and buoyancy is incomplete and flawed. Rather we find that the phase changes of water (condensation and evaporation) can play a much larger role than has previously been recognized. You can find out more if you see our paper. We would hope that a dynamic and advancing science would welcome new ideas.
Can the blogosphere help?
Perhaps we can help the Journal review our paper with your help. Are you an open minded climate scientist who would be ready and competent to discuss our ideas?
The ACP Chief-Executive Editor Dr. Ulrich Pöschl is aware that we are inviting your helps and asked that the following issues be noted (we quote):
1) ACPD is not a blog but a scientific discussion forum for the exchange of substantial scientific comments by scientific experts.
2) The open call for scientific experts who would be ready to act as potential referees would be a private initiative of the manuscript authors.
3) The list of potential referees compiled by the authors will be treated like the suggestions for potential referees regularly requested. The responsibility and authority for selecting and appointing referees rests exclusively with the editor.
If you have no conflict of interests and are willing to review our paper please contact the corresponding author (A. Makarieva) and we will forward your details to the Editor as a potential referee. For those who would like to remain anonymous please approach the ACP Chief-Executive Editor directly. We would be very grateful for your help – we have faith in you.
Anastassia Makarieva
on behalf of the authors:
A.M. Makarieva, V.G. Gorshkov, D. Sheil, A.D. Nobre, B.-L. Li
P.S. Thanks to Jeff for hosting our appeal on this blog. For a list of publications relevant to condensation-induced dynamics, please, see here.
Myrrh wrote:
I thought water vapour wasn’t bothered by how cold air was, if it could get to it it could saturate it.
If you take a well-mixed column of air (with a uniform fraction of water), if it’s saturated at sea level, it will be supersaturated at all points higher.
anna v wrote:
The ten reviewers who refused to review the publication in a sense say “I do not believe it, but I am not confident in my physics knowledge enough to refute it with a QED at the end”.
Here’s your sign.
I suspect you’re right.
I suspect the lack of confidence is well-founded.
Just because “I believe it” doesn’t mean it is. ‘Truthiness’ may work in soft sciences, but it’s not Physics.
I believe the difficulties in getting this paper reviewed say far more about the peer-review process than the paper.
BigWaveDave @ur momisugly January 21, 2011 at 5:20 pm
All one needs to do is put some warm tap water in the bottom of a plastic jug or soda bottle, cap it tightly and watch.
Sometimes the simplest observations are the most profound.
Colonial @ur momisugly January 21, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Suggested reviewer Nir Shaviv of Hebrew University
Here is a post from Nir on his blog ScienceBits on the subject of Open convection cells over the Negev?
Hopefully this will clear up a couple of points above where there was a bit of confusion
There are three v. d. Waals forces, 1. hydrogen bonding (water, ammonia) which is a particularly strong version of the second, 2. dipole-dipole interactions and 3. dispersion aka London forces. Dispersion occurs because of fluctuation in the charge distribution of molecules/atoms that do not have a permanent dipole moment.
Thompson measured the ratio of charge to mass of the electron by passing a beam of electrons (e/m) through a combination of magnetic and electric fields. Millikan measured the charge by measuring how fast an oil drop fell when it had a charge on it from an electron attaching. You can “do” the Thompson experiment using this applet(scroll down and select the e/m one), and the Millikan experiment using this applet.
Myrrh says:
That is 100% relative humidity, which is basically just tautology. I.e., relative humidity is defined as the ratio of the amount of water vapor divided by the amount of water vapor for saturation at that temperature. The Clausius-Clapeyron relation tells us that the saturation vapor pressure rises rapidly with increasing temperature. See, for example, this graph: http://kkd.ou.edu/METR%202603/satvp.jpg
Without going through all the comments, I still believe that winds are associated with uneven heating of the surface. Does water vapor play into that uneven heating? Maybe. At issue then is what causes uneven water vapor? Maybe it is the constant Sun hitting a somewhat chaotic oscillating cold versus warm, and choppy versus calm ocean surface. But that leads us always back to wind. So it seems to me that the cause may not be determinable, as the primary issue is a self-perpetuated system that is recharged via the Sun due to the leaky nature of the Earth’s atmospheric system.
http://www.areco.org/pdf/Global%20Winds_Jan07%20update.pdf
The refusal by the nine contains the eensiest weensiest little soupcon of racism. (Look at the nationalities of the authors.) AGW is at its core an anglosaxon club, with mascots like Pachauri for window dressing.
Thank you Dishman and Joel, I’ve done some more reading on it and I think I’m just getting a grasp of it.
Another novice question, re the paper. If winds are caused by this water induced play with pressures, has this been tracked to, say, give an explanation of winds across the Sahara?
Myrrh says:
January 24, 2011 at 5:51 am
Another novice question, re the paper. If winds are caused by this water induced play with pressures, has this been tracked to, say, give an explanation of winds across the Sahara?
The paper gives a cause for generation of winds in the particular situation of a storm forming, not all winds in general and exclusively.
Tall chimneys generate winds even without a fire.
I used to live in the first floor of a tall apartment house whose windows faced east on one side and west on the other. On windless days, an enormous wind would go through the apartment if both sides were open and the sun hit the east side.
Fires cause winds.
The hot / cold mechanism of wind generation has been observed and studied for ages.
So dr Makarieva tells us that also condensation causes winds, and should be taken into account as dominant in certain situations, of course not all.
sky
January 22, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Once again, thank you for your comments. I suggest that we should separate emotions (‘enthusiasm’) from scientific arguments. My colleagues and I are convinced that condensation-induced dynamics is dominant on Earth (we have not studied Mars or Venus yet) not out of enthusiasm, but because of quantitative evidence, which can be briefly summarized as follows (see the paper for details):
1) Consideration of mechanical power release associated with condensation on a global scale coincides in the order of magnitude with the observed power of global atmospheric circulation.
2) Theoretically estimated pressure gradients produced by condensation coincide with observations in both mesoscale circulation patterns as hurricanes and global scale circulation patterns as Hadley cell.
This makes us certain that future research will confirm the dominance of the mechanism we propose in generating winds on Earth. Neither wind bursts in Sahara nor breezes are global scale winds. Monsoons are, and they are accompanied by intense condensation.
Now then, when somebody puts forward a quantitative claim that condensation is unimportant, we go into details to show why such a conclusion is incorrect. Here is but one example. This demands time and involvement and we have done and are doing considerable work on this. So, when I say that I am convinced that condensation-induced dynamics is dominant, I mean all this work and all these arguments. If someone proves them wrong, I will accept that it is not dominant.
As for the human dimension — ‘enthusiasm’ — if you admit that there are two cents worth of good sense in what we are doing, you should realize that none of our findings would have never seen the light of the day had it not been for our radical ‘enthusiasm’. So, it is in the interest of all who think there is at least something worthy in what we are doing that our ‘enthusiasm’ persists rather than be tempered.
I’ll review your paper.
In Equation 1 you present an energy balance for air that remains saturated with water vapor. In Equation 3 you quote the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. This equation tells us the slope of the line that separates vapor and liquid in a p-T graph for water. You combine 1 and 3 and end up with Equation 11. Equation 11 tells us that when we drop the pressure of our air without removing any heat, the saturation pressure of water vapor in the gas decreases.
In Section 2.2 you say, “Our previous result refutes the proposition that adiabatic condensation can lead to a pressure rise due to the release of latent heat.” Your Equation 11 shows that we must drop the pressure to cause water to condense. It does not prove that the drop in pressure is caused by condensation, nor does it prove that the drop in pressure is increased by condensation. Indeed, simple calculations show that quite the opposite will be the case.
http://homeclimateanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/11/condensation-and-convection.html
You spend several lines deriving Equation 16, which shows “condensation cannot occur adiabatically at constant volume.” This conclusion is equivalent to the definition of saturation: water will not condense because it is stable in solution. So there is no need for the proof.
In Section 2.3, you show that condensation occurs only when pressure drops. Indeed, that is the case. But this does not imply that water vapor increases the pressure drop.
In 3.3 you argue that condensation causes a drop in surface pressure. You say that condensation of water vapor removes mass from the column, which causes its weight to drop, and therefore the surface pressure to drop. I think you are saying that when it rains, the column of air above gets lighter, so surface pressure decreases. That’s interesting.
The rest of your paper proceeds from the rain-induced pressure argument. Your earlier argument that condensation is always accompanied by pressure drop is irrelevant, as it would have to be, because the conclusion says nothing about what condensation does to the surrounding gas.
So, I would cut the many unnecessary initial argument from your paper and start with your calculation that rain reaching the earth causes the pressure to drop. From there you can make your horizontal pressure gradient argument, which is fascinating.
Yours, Kevan
Kevan Hashemi says:
January 24, 2011 at 8:26 am
“In Section 2.3, you show that condensation occurs only when pressure drops. Indeed, that is the case. But this does not imply that water vapor increases the pressure drop.”
If a vapor condenses, doesn’t the resulting condensation exert less pressure on the surrounding system than the original vapor? I would think that the act of condensation would exert a negative pressure, actually, so for total pressure to remain approximately the same the remaining dry air would have to expand in order to make up for the pressure loss of water vapor condensation.
Steve
January 24, 2011 at 9:24 am
Exactly. This is why the cloud sucks in the surrounding air, as Jantar said above. Since condensation occurs as the air moves upwards and cools, the resulting pressure gradient force is also upward directed.
There are two effects: contraction due to water vapor turning into liquid and heating due to water vapor giving up its latent heat of evaporation. The heat causes the air to expand. According to my calculation, the expansion due to heating is eight times greater than the contraction due to vapor becoming liquid.
Dear Kevan,
Thank you for your comments. We are compiling a list of potential reviewers to submit to the Editors. In the meantime, every one registered can post a comment to the ACPD discussion. The comments are most welcome. Perhaps if there is sufficient feedback from the scientific community, the Editors may decide that one referee (Dr. Judith Curry) plus the Editor’s own evaluation would suffice to make a decision.
In your post at http://homeclimateanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/11/condensation-and-convection.html you calculate the effect of condensation on buoyancy taking into account latent heat release. You conclude that condensation causes a net increase in pressure because of latent heat release.
The question is: increase compared to what? If there is air ascending without condensation nearby starting from the same surface temperature and if all latent heat remains in the volume where condensation takes place (nothing is radiated to the atmosphere), then the pressure in the column where condensation takes place can be higher — if if the surface pressure is the same. The comparison taking into account all these ‘ifs’ can be seen in Fig. 1c of our paper.
Let me explain why the effects of gas mass removal and latent heat release on pressure are physically different. Suppose that you gradually move upward a dry air volume in hydrostatic equilibrium. You can do it infinitely slowly without disturbing the equilibrium. If you look at the column of a given area where the dry air ascends infinitely slowly, you will always be able to identify and follow the original air volume — it will retain its ‘identity’ — it will expand, but it will be the same air volume (as if it were a balloon) (we neglect diffusional mixing).
To cancel out the effect of latent heat, suppose that we raise the dry air diabatically (warming it a little bit as it ascends) precisely such that the vertical temperature gradient is moist adiabatic (as if latent heat were being released).
Something different happens when you attempt to raise a saturated air volume in hydrostatic equilibrium. Before vapor condenses, it does not know that it will and behaves as non-condensable gases. Suppose you gradually move the moist air parcel upward to occupy the imaginary volume it should have occupied if it were dry. Now let the vapor ‘recall’ that it is condensable and condense. Air pressure drops immediately (remember: latent heat has been accounted for). Droplets do not make a contribution to the ideal gas pressure, so the air pressure where condensation occurs drops immediately — not after the rain falls out.
So, immediately upon condensation, there is disturbance of hydrostatic equilibrium: the air below our parcel has an uncompensated pressure to push the air parcel upward. This uncompensated pressure gradient force (N/m^3) is equal to pv(1/hv – 1/h), as I said above, where pv is partial pressure of vapor and hv is its scale height. Since the atmosphere is much wider than high, this force is redistributed, via hydrostatic adjustment, in the horizontal plane. If you look at typical horizontal pressure gradients observed in the atmosphere, you will find that pv(1/hv – 1/h) describes them very, very well. Yet you will not find a mention of this interesting fact anywhere in the meteorological literature. Moreover, when the facts are laid out, it appears very difficult to find two climate scientists willing to discuss it.
The buoyancy related force arises when the air nearby has not warmed — as you mentioned in your post. If the air is uniformly warm, if there is intense turbulent mixing, nothing happens. In contrast, the pressure gradient force due to removal of vapor from the gas phase arises whenever moist saturated air ascends — irrespective of the presence or absence of horizontal gradients of temperature and buoyancy.
You say, “Now let the vapor ‘recall’ that it is condensable and condense. Air pressure drops immediately (remember: latent heat has been accounted for).”
If you mean that we have accounted for the latent heat by adding it before the vapor condenses, then your statement describes the contraction in volume that occurs when a vapor condenses. But if I imagine the balloon of air going up as you describe, and the vapor suddenly condensing, as in a bubble chamber hit by a cosmic ray, then the latent heat will pass into the air and warm it up, causing the gas to expand. So I’m not sure how your thought experiment refutes the effect of latent heat that I calculate in my example.
You say, “So, immediately upon condensation, there is disturbance of hydrostatic equilibrium: the air below our parcel has an uncompensated pressure to push the air parcel upward.”
If, indeed, the air contracted when condensation occurs, then it would become more dense, and it would tend to sink. You appear to be saying that that contraction in volume requires an in-rush of air, and so causes wind. But the contraction is of order 0.1% (in my calculation), and can be accommodated by a 0.1% expansion of nearby air. Once that’s done, the contracted air in your thought experiment would be more dense, and would fall.
But that’s not what happens. Instead, the air in which water condenses appears to rise. According to my calculations, it rises because it is less dense, and it is less dense because it has expanded after receiving the latent heat of the water vapor. It begins to rise, and it keeps rising, and that causes wind.
“”””” Eli Rabett says:
January 23, 2011 at 5:37 am
Hopefully this will clear up a couple of points above where there was a bit of confusion
>…………………………………..<
Thompson measured the ratio of charge to mass of the electron by passing a beam of electrons (e/m) through a combination of magnetic and electric fields. Millikan measured the charge by measuring how fast an oil drop fell when it had a charge on it from an electron attaching. You can “do” the Thompson experiment using this applet(scroll down and select the e/m one), and the Millikan experiment using this applet. """""
Well this is the first time I've heard of using my cell phone to do Physics experiments with. Actually I don't own a cell phone; with or without a bite out of it.
When I went to a University; one that actually taught Physics, it was fashionable to have the sudents do Milliken's oil drop experiment using an actual oil drop, and a parallel plate capacitor to provide a controllable electric field. We actually observed the droplet under a microscope, so we could adjust the field to stop the drop from falling, and turn off the field to let the drop fall so we could determine its mass and size from the terminal velocity, and the properties of the oil. I believe we did that experiment during our freshman year at the University; which for me, would be my sixth year of Physics; having done it for five years in high school. (I still have all my grades; well actual exam marks for the High school physics).
But I can see why they would now do Physics on a cell phone; some of these fancy video games claim that their graphics follows real Physics laws.
That would prepare the modern Physicist to study climate on a super computer.
I notice that the "mathematician" who solved Fermat's Last Theorem, did that on a super computer. It's a fairly safe, free beer bet, that that mathematician, did NOT discover Fermat's proof of Fermat's last theorem.
I didn’t mean to ignore Eli Rabett’s introduction of Van der Waals forces to the intermolecular force kit. I had deliberately removed the charged droplet case to simplify the situation so that cloud Electric fields, didn’t get into the water droplet support. We used to fly Hydrogen inflated weather radiosonde balloons up into boomer storm clouds with custom apparatus on it, to actually monitor the electric fields under storm clouds. This was back when graduate students were cheap and naive; and indestructible.
But Eli of course is correct that VdW forces of the several species can also supply support to a raindrop. That doesn’t really change anything though. As a result of providing the levitation; be it through collision and rebound or VdW forces, the result is a downward reaction on the atmospheric molecules; which must manifest itself at the boundary (ground) as an increase in pressure; that being the necessary pressure to sustain the total mass (and weight) of the water droplets. So it is still not clear to me that mere condensation of water vapor into a droplet will drop the atmospheric pressure (or increase it). And of course as Anastassia points out the latent heat is a different issue. The condensation takes place as a consequence of the loss of that latent heat energy, so it seems to me that in the act of “condensing”, there isn’t a sudden heat surge. But any net change in the energy can be accommodated by the ordinary gas law equations of state.
The mass of the water molecules must be supported by the atmosphere whether as individual free molecules or some condensed state; they still have to be supported, and must produce a pressure increase (due to their presence).
The whole process may be fully explained by Dr Makarieva’s team or not. I just don’t have the gist of it yet; but am not arguing against their thesis.
Mr. Smith,
Your description of electrostatic force being able to support water droplets is fascinating. I will have to think about it more, because I don’t yet understand it, but it certainly adds a new dimension, because that means that the charge will keep building up where the water is condensing, as the air rises through the cloud-forming layer.
I may be missing something about the latent heat, and hope to be enlightened if I am, but it seems clear to me that the latent heat is not lost, but merely transformed into the kinetic energy of air molecules, causing them to expand. That makes the air lighter, which causes it to rise. If it fell instead, we would not see air rushing up into clouds. The fact that the cloud appears to stay still does not mean that the air within the cloud is still, so far as I can tell. There is that phenomenon of a stationary cloud on the top of a mountain when the air blows over the top.
Kevan Hashemi says:
January 24, 2011 at 11:21 am
“If, indeed, the air contracted when condensation occurs, then it would become more dense, and it would tend to sink. You appear to be saying that that contraction in volume requires an in-rush of air, and so causes wind. But the contraction is of order 0.1% (in my calculation), and can be accommodated by a 0.1% expansion of nearby air. Once that’s done, the contracted air in your thought experiment would be more dense, and would fall.”
It should be easy enough to test in a home refrigerator. Blow up a few balloons (warm, moist air) and stick them in. If water condensation does indeed result in a net pressure increase then you should see the balloons gradually deflate as they cool off, expand when the air inside the balloons hits the dew point, then deflate again as cooling proceeds. With breath near 100% humidity you won’t have to wait long for the expansion event (if any) – the air in the balloons only has to drop a couple of degrees before it hits the dew point (at sea level).
Nice idea with the balloons. But I don’t think anyone is claiming that condensation reverses a pressure drop. The balloons in the refrigerator will not start to expand again. Nevertheless, we might learn something from how much a dry nitrogen balloon contracts compared to a wet air balloon. I’ll have to think about it.
My calculation, which agrees with many others, shows that you must expand moist air by a greater extent in order to achieve the same pressure drop. If we double the volume of a cylinder containing air, and do so without allowing heat in or out, we calculate the pressure at the end with pV^1.4 = constant. But if it’s moist air, we get a smaller pressure drop. The heat liberated by condensation causes the pressure to rise above the pV^1.4 value, despite the contraction caused by the condensation. But we always have pressure decreasing as volume decreases.
If we compare a dry cell of air rising beside a wet cell, all other things being equal, once condensation starts, the wet cell will have to expand more in order to remain at the same pressure as the dry air beside it. Because it expands more, it will be lighter, and will tend to rise above the dry air.
Certainly, I don’t see anything in the paper that proves the opposite case, as I tried to show in my review above.
Correction: We always have pressure decreasing as volume INcreases.
Anastassia Makarieva says:
January 24, 2011 at 7:55 am
“My colleagues and I are convinced that condensation-induced dynamics is dominant on Earth (we have not studied Mars or Venus yet) not out of enthusiasm, but because of quantitative evidence, which can be briefly summarized as follows (see the paper for details):
1) Consideration of mechanical power release associated with condensation on a global scale coincides in the order of magnitude with the observed power of global atmospheric circulation.
2) Theoretically estimated pressure gradients produced by condensation coincide with observations in both mesoscale circulation patterns as hurricanes and global scale circulation patterns as Hadley cell.
This makes us certain that future research will confirm the dominance of the mechanism we propose in generating winds on Earth. Neither wind bursts in Sahara nor breezes are global scale winds. Monsoons are, and they are accompanied by intense condensation.”
Having spent many decades in scientifically testing theoretical expectations in geophysics against data gathered in carefully conducted field experiments, I cannot share your certainty about the results of future research on the generation of global winds.
My mention of haboobs and sea breezes was not to suggests that they are global winds. They are simply common examples of winds generated by differential heating rather than condensation . Mars clearly has global winds without any condensation. On Earth, it is the westerlies, in which the Coriolis effect plays an important dynamical role, that are global, along with the major convective cells. But there countless un-named cells that develop in a self-organizing manner on a much smaller scale that militate against coherent pressure changes over areas larger than where condensation is actively taking place at a given time . You might find order–of-magnitude agreement between your theoretical expectations and coarse estimates of the global wind power, but that is scarcely a basis for discounting all other factors. There’s simply too much data that informs us otherwise.
To repeat, I applaud your contribution to theoretical understanding of the mechanical effects of moist convection. Many times here at WUWT I found myself stressing its dominance from a thermal-energy-transfer standpoint to radiation-centered audience. But that is not the same as claiming it to be the dominant MECHANICAL player on the globe. Since I ‘m prohibited by contractual terms from revealing data and analysis results, and my attempts to be otherwise helpful violate your sense of “scientific argument,” I can only leave you to your academic pursuits.
Anastassia Makarieva.
I’d have liked to have responded earlier to you post, but social disciplines have prevented this.
I’ve spent ~4 hrs reading your paper and responses here (I don’t ‘speed read’ too well when it comes to reading tech stuff), and one thing becomes ‘blatantly’ apparent! I don’t see any inclusion of ‘Earth spin’ energy in your paper (or in ‘climate models’ either).
OK, so I’m just an engineer with an interest in climate change, but it becomes apparent to me that you are ignoring the effect of Earth’s rotational slow down following the ‘alleged collision’ with Thea that both accelerated Earth’s rotation and formed ‘the Moon’ way back.
The ‘centrifuge effect’ imparted by Earth’s rotation supplies most of the energy at the equatorial ICG to supply the Hadley Cell with all the energy that it needs for it’s circulation (I calculated this to be more than ‘3 inches per second squared’ in counterpoise to the gravitational constant). However, IMHO, I think that your paper may well describe the ‘extra’ energy that supports the Brewer-Dobson circulation to some degree.
But, hey. I’m just an engineer!
Best regards, Ray Dart.
Dear Anastassia et al.,
Consider your Equation 1. Substitute for dT using RdT = pdV + Vdp. Assume dQ = 0. I’ll use w for the mass of water dissolved in 1 kg of air, so R is 287 J/Kkg, C is around 1 kJ/kgK, and L is 2 MJ/kg.
dp = -(1+R/C)pdV/V – RLdw/VC
In dry air we have dw = 0, and we are left with the derivative form of the adiabatic expansion equation. When water condenses we have dw < 0. Thus dp will be less negative than it would be for dry air.
When 1 g of water condenses at 100 kPa and 300 K, its volume contracts from 1 liter to 1 milliliter. Your Equation 1 does not account for the contraction of the water vapor. Your Equation 11, derived from Equation 1 and Equation 3, does not account for the contraction of water vapor either. The apparent relationship between dp and dw in Equation 11 is the slope of the coexistence line on the p-T graph for water.
The contraction due to water turns out to be insignificant compared to the latent heat, as I have already shown.
Yours, Kevan