From the UOW, nice to see that man isn’t the culprit in this case.
UOW data confirm surprising atmospheric findings
By Melissa Coade – Satellites showing that nature is responsible for 90% of the earth’s atmospheric acidity shocked researchers from the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, whose findings have just been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Stunned, the scientists approached a team from the University of Wollongong’s Centre of Atmospheric Chemistry (CAC) to confirm what satellite readings were telling them.
By providing data from a ground-based solar Fourier transform spectrometer instrument at the University, CAC used 15-years worth of information to verify the satellite’s story: all existing global models had substantially misjudged the main source of formic acid levels on earth – its forests.
UOW Physical Chemistry lecturer Dr Clare Murphy (Paton-Walsh) made the first measurements of formic acid with the instrument as part of her PhD looking at the atmospheric emissions of bushfires.
“The instrument provides a spectral record, of which you can analyse for a whole number of different gases, and formic acid is one that is relatively new,” Dr Murphy said.
“The modelling shows, particularly, that natural forest emissions have been highly underestimated. Our forest areas are producing more formic acid than we ever thought,” she said.
Dr Murphy said the unexpected results might well mean forests are responsible for most of the acidity in rainwater in areas other than highly-polluted inner-cities.
“Our instrumentation has global significance because the number of facilities in the region are very limited. In order to capture some of the major forests of the Southern Hemisphere this machine was crucial,” she said.
In the atmosphere, formic acid impacts a number of important pH-sensitive chemical reactions such as the production and loss of radicals affecting the ozone. Quickly absorbed by microbes, formic acid is not associated with the harmful effects of acid rain.
According to CAC coordinator and co-contributor Professor David Griffith, the results provide a whole new angle to existing knowledge about our atmosphere.
“When it comes to understanding the fundamental chemistry that goes on and the whole oxidiative cycle, where formic acid has an important impact is that it is one component of the soup which controls the ability of the atmosphere to oxidise pollutants and get rid of them,” Professor Griffith said.
“Normally you take your measurements and might make a 10 or 20 percent adjustment to an estimate of a source but here we’ve proven by several factors that our understanding was wrong,” he said.
The study showed that terrestrial vegetation accounts for 90 percent of annual formic acid production. Other sources include fossil fuel combustion, agriculture and biomass burning.
Alongside UOW co-authors Dr Murphy and Professor Griffith worked CAS members Dr Nicholas Jones and Dr Nicholas Deutscher.
h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
wayne Job, gum trees are not bullet proof. We did a live fire shoot in the late 1980s on a range that was covered in gum trees. We were supposed to be shooting at pop-up targets, but I noticed the bloke lying next to me was putting all his rounds into the base of a gum tree. It took about 30 rounds from his SLR, but he managed to chop it down. I was on the M60 – I gave another tree the better part of a belt and down it came.
Our RSM noticed what I was up to, and he walked over and booted me in the arse, yelling at me to engage the targets and not the trees. The difference was that I was firing 1 in 5 tracer, and the tracer gave me away.
When we finished the shoot, the thick scrub and undergrowth had been totally cleared (like a herd of hungry elk had been through), and several gum trees had gone horizontal.
My data from field observations trumps your model!
Another of the Greenie Undead Lies. Acid rain was localized in the downwind of farms using fertilizer and growing swine, etc. It turned out to have little or nothing to do with combustion products.
There are some reactions where the increase of NH3 in the atmosphere might result in Oxidation of So2 to SO3 (and thus reluting in acidification). Although NH3 (for fertilizer and manure) is per se decrasing the pH of rain (and thus the acidity).
What you did not see is: for the Oxidation of SO2, SO2 must be in the atmosphere; same is true for Nitrogen oxides.
Talking about manure: So not a greenie lie, rather BS on your side.
repost sinc I missed the “quote”:
>Brian H says:
>January 14, 2012 at 5:56 pm
>>BillD says:
>>January 13, 2012 at 9:41 am
>> Presumably, formic acid is an insignificant contributor to acid rain
>> (as suggested by MFKBoulder above), which is mostly sulfuric
>> and nitric acid. Sulfuric acid comes mainly from buring sulfur-
>>containing coal
> Another of the Greenie Undead Lies. Acid rain was localized
> in the downwind of farms using fertilizer and growing swine,
> etc. It turned out to have little or nothing to do with
>combustion products.
//////////////////////////////////////////
There are some reactions where the increase of NH3 in the atmosphere might result in Oxidation of So2 to SO3 (and thus reluting in acidification). Although NH3 (for fertilizer and manure) is per se decrasing the pH of rain (and thus the acidity).
What you did not see is: for the Oxidation of SO2, SO2 must be in the atmosphere; same is true from Nitrogen oxides.
Talking about manure: So not a greenie lie, rather BS on your side.
MFKBoulder says:
January 17, 2012 at 2:34 am
“Talking about manure: So not a greenie lie, rather BS on your side.”
Greenie Lie is a tautology. Thanks MFKB, I’d rather go with Ferdinand Engelbeen and Pat Moffitt on this one.