From the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY comes this counter-intuitive finding:
During heat waves, urban trees can increase ground-level ozone
Previous research has shown that planting trees in cities can have multiple benefits, including storing carbon, controlling storm water and cooling areas off by providing shade. This has spurred efforts in cities across the U.S. and Europe to encourage the practice. However, it’s also known that trees and other plants release volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that can interact with other substances and contribute to air pollution. And when it’s hot, plants release higher levels of VOCs. Galina Churkina and colleagues wanted to investigate what effects heat waves and urban vegetation might have on air pollution.
The researchers compared computer models of air pollutant concentrations in the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan area in Germany in the summer of 2006, when there was a heat wave, and the summer of 2014, which had more typical seasonal temperatures. The simulation showed that during the summer of 2006, VOCs from urban greenery contributed to about 6 to 20 percent of the ozone formation, and that during the heat wave period, the contribution spiked to up to 60 percent. The researchers suggest that in addition to tree-planting campaigns, efforts to improve cities’ environments should include other measures such as reducing vehicular traffic, a major source of nitrogen oxides that can react with VOCs and form ozone.
###
The authors acknowledge funding from E.U. COST’s GreenInUrbs project.
The paper’s abstract is here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b06514.
We sing and dance around the fire.
Since UHI is greater than the unlikely 2° C from CO2, shouldn’t cities be banned?
“The researchers compared computer models”
Stop right there. This not science. It is mathematical onanism. If they actually went out and measured something somewhere and somewhen, it might be science. But, running models does not produce science anymore than sketching pictures produces science.
I suspect this is an example of science for millennials. Just my impression, but it seems that even measured data must be passed through someone’s SimEarth, otherwise the youngsters won’t take it seriously. A computer model and a connection to climate change are the new basics of science. You need them just to sneak in the empirical data.
I suspect this is an example of science for millennials. Just my impression, but it seems that even measured data must be passed through someone’s SimEarth, otherwise the youngsters won’t take it seriously. A computer model and a connection to climate change are the new basics of science. You need them just to sneak in the empirical data.
You shouldn´t. have stopped.
It is OK to compare a computer model to reality. It is part of the scientific method, which is:
1. make a guess. Build a hypothesis.
2. Calculate the consequences of your hypothesis. In the old days it was done with paper and pencil, now computers are used. They are quicker and less error prone.
3. Set up an experiment to obtain empirical data.
4. Compare the empirical data to the results of your calculations.
5. If the result of your calculations, or the output of your model is different from the empirical data, then trash your hypothesis.
6. If the experimental data agrees with your computer model, you can keep your computer model (until there is another set of experiments that refute your model).
The problem with CAGW is that the output of their computer models is different from the empirical data, but they refuse to get rid of the models.
Walter,
“mathematical onanism”
My compliments, Sir! A clever turn of phrase. Although my spell checker is not happy with it, but what does it know! With your kind permission, I think that I may appropriate it on occasion.
On the other hand –
https://www.google.at/search?q=traffic+jams+shanghai&oq=traffic+jams+shanghai&aqs=chrome.
I produce considerable VOCs when I eat too much onion or cabbage. Sounds like my days are numbered.
What the heck, they are numbered anyway.
Please pass the fried onions this way.
First step is – strictly electro lawn mowers mobility –
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=AEceWYifCYmya-eVnNgN&q=electric+lawn+mowers++riding+&oq=electric+lawn+mowers++riding+&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.3.
– everything else following suit.
So according to this article all plants should be removed from any areas that might be subjected to warm temperatures because plants may contribute to polution. So that includes most of the Earth. But without plants, most animals will end up starving to death. This article seems to support the idea than all life should be eliminated to “save the planet”,
The researchers suggest ………… reducing vehicular traffic
Its all God’s fault – he should have made a few qualifications – those poor babes in the wood thought they had it made.
?w=640
Good thing Adam and Eve were not taught about “cis” gender in school, hey.
Otherwise there would be no human population. 🙂
Imagine if Eve had been a feminist lesbian, and Adam an effeminate gayboy.
Ive mentioned on an earlier ridiculous thread on planting trees not being effective strategy in reducing CO2. The recent papers on rapid greening with 14% increase in forest area on the planet have spooked climate doomsters into worrying that the planet has much higher negative feedbacks and sinks and ‘carbon’ appears to have mainly beneficial effects. This ridiculous paper is part of the same campaign and I predict the team uses centralized response planning and their will be a flood of “anti-greening” papers. They want to prepare their unquestioning clones to fear what is happening with greening. I’m sure we will be seeing legions of trolls doing battle for their masters.
From the abstract linked above:
“We use the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with atmospheric chemistry (WRF-Chem) with emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from vegetation simulated with MEGAN to quantify some of these feedbacks in Berlin, Germany, during the heat wave in 2006.”
It looks like a case of models upon models. I don’t contest the theory, but I need at least some real-world observations before accepting their quantification of urban trees influence, and even moreso before accepting policies based on this theory.
IMO they use ozone as a distraction from really noxious disease-causing pollutants so those don’t have to be dealt with. Ozone is actually a necessary component of air as it cleans (oxidizes) a lot of crap out of the air. It’s no more of a pollutant than CO2 is. That sweet smell during a thunderstorm is ozone. Trees emit terpenes which UV acts upon to produce ozone. All of it perfectly natural.
So I guess the reason for the ozone hole over the south pole is because of the lack of trees in Antarctica. A logical deduction – no?
I never did trust trees.
Right on RoHa
Just what the song said.
Whispering Grass
Don’t you tell it to the breeze
She will tell the birds and bees
And everyone will know
Because you told the blabbering trees
Yes, you told them once before
It’s no secret anymore
Ground-level ozone does not affect weather nor climate. It affects health, but only in rare instances. Ozone is second only to H2-F, also known as Hydro-Fluoric Acid, as an oxidizer, which can really mess up the chemistry in the lungs of any air-breather, killing at a very low Parts Per Billion level. Has NOTHING to do with climate, yes I am SHOUTING. Why is this post on WattsUpWithThat?
Ozone at the Top Of Atmosphere is Created by Ultra-Violet Radiation from the Sun, and is largely responsible for Life on Earth, as without it all animals and plants would be subjected to Ionizing, equals Fatal, radiation at all times. Thank God for Ozone…
Michael – “Ozone is second only to H2-F, also known as Hydro-Fluoric Acid, as an oxidizer, which can really mess up the chemistry in the lungs of any air-breather, killing at a very low Parts Per Billion level.”
That conclusion is probably not valid (or not as valid as implied). There are numerous studies that show a very minor (albiet statistically significant) increase in premature deaths when there is an increase in ground level ozone (many using a 10ppb increases). Each of the studies have numerous errors such as data collection lack of control group, etc, One well known study was based on 100 north american cities. This particular study is one of the most often cited, but it also suffered from numerous short comings, lack of control, accuracy of data collection. A several of the cities with low levels of ground level ozone had much higher rates of premature deaths, than cities with high levels of ozone. All the cities had high correlation of premature deaths with increases in heat and while the correlation of increases in premature deaths to increases in ground level ozone varied widely between cities.
In summary, ground level ozone may be a health hazard, but the studies making those claims are not supported by the underlying data used in those studies.
Difficult to know what to make of an assertion which displays an impossible chemical formula for hydrofluoric acid, HF.
“Ground-level ozone does not affect weather nor climate”
Actually ozone is a quite powerful greenhouse gas (in contrast to CO2 and CH4) since it has a strong absorption line right in the middle of the ‘”atmospheric window”.
The good folks at Branscomb AFB, the progenitors of MODTRAN, figured this out a long time back. Mid-latitude heat waves are temporary episodes of the tropics pole ward of their normal bounds. In MODTRAN there is an explicit factor: Tropical Ozone (ppb).
In the tropics, CO2 radiation to space tracks with the tropopause; and ozone tracks with the surface.
Ozone will form from O2 wherever sufficient energy exists. We call it smog at the surface, and we laud its protective effects in the lower stratosphere.
Whatever may be the arguments on VOC, Asthma, etc, etc,— the basic reason why environmental groups encouraged urban tree plantations are to minimise the pollution in that zone.
For the last several decades, Zoo park with thick green trees in Hyderabad/India continuously presented lower pollution levels over other parts of the city with fewer trees and concrete jungle showing higher pollution levels and thus at higher levels [vertical] also in the night showing higher temperatures and thus increasing power consumption. The Zoo area creates a temperature gradient and thus pollutants disperse with the wind associated with the temperature gradient path. Quite coincidently todays news reports states: that Pollution Control Board suddenly changed and saying high pollution index at Zoo Park.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
There was a big fuss about trees and ground level ozone with James Watt, many years ago.
http://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/05/12/EPA-admits-trees-cause-air-pollution/4866610948800/
If you take someplace like Phoenix and plant trees not natural to the area you might be able to bump up the humidity of an already hot place with the extra water needed to keep them alive. However I do not believe the presence of the trees makes Phoenix hot:)
So the trees make VOCs, these make photo-chemical smog containing ozone and O3 is known to damage trees.
(There is a feedback loop in there, can these bozos see it?)
Yet the trees are thriving, they love it in the cities. Victorians planted parks (with trees) in London (notably Victoria Park in E London) to alleviate smog and bad air. This made the people healthier and hence= more productive workers. The economy boomed with trains, canals, bridges, sewers, cotton/wool industry etc
Don’t tell me, the Victorians burned vast amounts of coal, started the industrial revolution and that made/makes them evil. sigh
This is just more noise. They have discovered some miniscule & trivial drawback to ‘swimming’ while blind to the huge benefits swimming confers on, say, fish.
Proud, self confident and clear headed people making up our society & its leadership would have the strength to ignore these folks and they would simply then, Go Away. Maybe even Get A Life for themselves.
Do we have any ‘strong’ people (left) like that?
“The researchers compared computer models of …”
Does this research hold up in a tropical rain forest ?
Here’s another one
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39943197
Seems vegetation can act as a barrier?
OT
http://sorendreier.com/west-coast-seismic-alert-volcanoes-erupt-earthquake-swarms-at-mount-st-helens/
Why did they have to use computer models rather than empirical research, and how were they able to establish that it was the trees that created the additional ozone? It seems to me that they are trying to justify, rather crudely, their research grant.
Chop down all the trees.
Live in caves.
The Greenie agenda !!
My God, you can always find something. Maybe you will find soon GreenInUrbs is a Green-pups. Ozone is only half the problem, or not at all, if you behave sensibly during a heat wave and do not perform any major physical exertion. If, someone should mean to have to do at 14.00 clock at the Timesquare at noon his 14th July Marathon then of course this looks different with the ozone. This is not, however, by ozone, but by this idiot. The bigger problem is the merciless heat in the cities through heated building and road surfaces. Trees can bring a lot of relief. Even in a forest, trees are releasing more ozone from a certain temperature. Nevertheless, during a heat wave under a tree, one feels more comfortable than in the open field. Because trees produce more ozone during heat waves, one should now stop the greening of cities, is a great bullshit. The study belongs to the category: Mega bullshit.
Reagan was right!