April 7th, 2020 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
The COVID-19 disease spread is causing a worldwide shutdown in economic activity as business close, airlines cancel flights, and people shelter in their homes. For example, there was a 28% decline in global commercial air traffic in March 2020 compared to March of last year.
Last month I described a simple method for removing the large seasonal cycle from the Mauna Loa CO2 data, and well as the average effects from El Nino and La Nina (the removal is noisy and imperfect), in an effort to capture the underlying trend in CO2 and so provide a baseline to compare future months’ measurements too.
What we are looking for is any evidence of a decline in the atmospheric CO2 content that would be strong enough to attribute to the economic downturn. As can be seen, the latest CO2 data show a slight downturn, but it’s not yet out of the ordinary compare to previous month-to-month downturns.
I personally doubt we will see a clear COVID-19 effect in the CO2 data in the coming months, but I would be glad to be proved wrong. As I mentioned last month, those who view the economic downturn as an opportunity to reduce atmospheric CO2 would have to wait many years — even decades — before we would see the impact of a large economic downturn on global temperatures, which would occur at great cost to humanity, especially the poor.
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DonK said
…..there can be significant energy interchange between CO2 molecules and molecules of the non-radiative gases. i.e. can a collision between a CO2 molecule and, for example, a Nitrogen molecule cause the CO2 molecule to enter an excited state from which it can subsequently fire off a photon and return to its initial state. And vice versa. Can a CO2 molecule absorb a photon, enter an excited state, then transfer the energy to a Nitrogen molecule during a collision?
Henry says
Don, unfortunately there are many people like Phil. who honestly believe that CO2 can pass on this energy to other molecules. Now I worked with all kinds of spectroscopy. I even measured CO2 in nitrogen.
Note that I am notoriously absentminded, meaning that I usually left machines running for days on end. If what Phil. is saying is true, wouldn’t you think the cuvette and everything in it would have exploded or heated up tremendously if I continually bombarded it with radiation of the absorption area and if this energy were to be passed on as energy from certain molecules to other molecules?
It does not happen like that. The molecule absorbs until it is filled, the photons discover that they cannot go through and so they have to go back.
You can see this happening in the Turnbull report, especially look at Fig 6 (bottom) e.g. look at the green line of the CO2 that was projected. See how it comes back to us via the moon in Fig. 7. So that radiation went from the sun, to earth and hit on the CO2. The back radiation of the CO2 hit on the moon and bounced back to earth where we happened to have an IR measuring instrument sensitive enough in the near IR area so that we could measure it.
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/disksite/library/turnbull06a.pdf
You get it?
Just when I thought we had the AGW genie back in the bottle…so the increased UV is due to humans destroying O3 rather than the sun simply emitting more UV as some part of a solar cycle? I thought the government fixed the Ozone layer?
Meanwhile, I think I follow your general line of reasoning wrt to CO2. Steele Fig 44 and recent weather in Denver, CO and parts west seem to indicate that CO2 is not in control of the weather. Your point about earthshine is if the CO2 was so potent the IR is supposedly absorbed would not/could not travel back to the moon. It would have stayed right here in our atmosphere…but it didn’t.
Henry Pool April 15, 2020 at 7:32 am
DonK said
…..Can a CO2 molecule absorb a photon, enter an excited state, then transfer the energy to a Nitrogen molecule during a collision?
Henry says
Don, unfortunately there are many people like Phil. who honestly believe that CO2 can pass on this energy to other molecules.
Yes they’re called Physical Chemists, it’s not a question of belief it’s knowledge, they measure it! As mentioned earlier the Stern-Volmer equation describes such a process, I don’t suppose you looked it up Henry?
Now I worked with all kinds of spectroscopy. I even measured CO2 in nitrogen.
Note that I am notoriously absentminded, meaning that I usually left machines running for days on end. If what Phil. is saying is true, wouldn’t you think the cuvette and everything in it would have exploded or heated up tremendously if I continually bombarded it with radiation of the absorption area and if this energy were to be passed on as energy from certain molecules to other molecules?
And those molecules in turn collided with the glass walls of the cuvette and transferred their heat to the outside world.
It does not happen like that. The molecule absorbs until it is filled, the photons discover that they cannot go through and so they have to go back.
It certainly doesn’t work like that!
You can see this happening in the Turnbull report, especially look at Fig 6 (bottom) e.g. look at the green line of the CO2 that was projected. See how it comes back to us via the moon in Fig. 7. So that radiation went from the sun, to earth and hit on the CO2. The back radiation of the CO2 hit on the moon and bounced back to earth where we happened to have an IR measuring instrument sensitive enough in the near IR area so that we could measure it.
That’s not what the paper says, Turnbull says that light reflected from medium altitude water clouds forms the Earthshine that reflects off the moon, some of the wavelengths are absorbed by the various components of the altitude above those clouds thereby providing a structure to the spectrum indicating the composition of the atmosphere. If you look at Fig. 7 you’ll see that the reflectivity is lower in the absorption bands, whereas your theory says it should be higher. What they’re looking at is the absorption spectrum from space not backscatter from atmospheric molecules.
You get it?
Yes I do, unfortunately you don’t.
When a photon enters a gas, three things can happen upon a collision…it can be absorbed, it can be reflected, and it can be deflected. This is very simple gas theory. You can look it up. Now, when a photon is absorbed, it is gone. The absorber enters a higher energy state. The excited molecule can then emit a new photon, or it can lose energy through a collision with a lower energy molecule. It is my understanding that it only takes nanoseconds for an excited molecule to radiate a photon. Having worked with lasers for over a decade, these principles were used to make them work properly. All a laser is, is a method of getting gases to emit photons. The lasers at Lawrence Livermore in the fast breeder project were 6 inches in diameter (the beam) and salt was used as the lenses. They were so powerful that they emitted X-rays. My instrument was used to measure the power of those lasers…
We had Co2 lasers, and nitrogen lasers…and of course He Ne red lasers. Co2 laser beams are invisible, but mighty. Nitrogen beams are green and can cut your finger off if you’re not careful. The light, from lightening, is photons emitted by all the gases in the ionization process…ALL of them.
John Shotsky April 16, 2020 at 6:21 am
When a photon enters a gas, three things can happen upon a collision…it can be absorbed, it can be reflected, and it can be deflected. This is very simple gas theory. You can look it up. Now, when a photon is absorbed, it is gone. The absorber enters a higher energy state. The excited molecule can then emit a new photon, or it can lose energy through a collision with a lower energy molecule. It is my understanding that it only takes nanoseconds for an excited molecule to radiate a photon.
The mean time for radiation will depend on the nature of the excited state, in the case of vibrationally excited CO2 it’s of the order of millisec so with ~10 collisions/nsec there are millions of collisions during the lifetime of the excited state.
Having worked with lasers for over a decade, these principles were used to make them work properly. All a laser is, is a method of getting gases to emit photons. The lasers at Lawrence Livermore in the fast breeder project were 6 inches in diameter (the beam) and salt was used as the lenses. They were so powerful that they emitted X-rays. My instrument was used to measure the power of those lasers…
We had Co2 lasers, and nitrogen lasers…and of course He Ne red lasers. Co2 laser beams are invisible, but mighty. Nitrogen beams are green and can cut your finger off if you’re not careful.
Lasers are a bit different from normal emissions since they involve stimulated emission which requires that the excited state be in an inverted population state (more excited states than ground state). In fact the CO2 laser involves exciting N2 to an excited state via an electronic discharge, this state has a forbidden transition back to the groundstate so it has a long lifetime. Coincidentally it has almost exactly the same energy as an excited state of CO2 which it can collisionally excite. The excited state of CO2 then becomes inverted leading to a laser pulse. A perfect example of collisional quenching.
So what excites atm CO2?
Sunshine?
If so, more CO2 = more excitement?
Or more sunshine = CO2 more excited?
Mass balance aside, what be the energy balance?
Same in, less out?
Atm dT data don’t seem to be supporting the later at the moment.
Meiggs
Don’t waste your time trying to argue with Phil.
In the end it is always like that, wanting to keep looking at his ‘books’ instead of simply looking at what happens in nature…
(and I quote)
‘Yes they’re called Physical Chemists’
Now look where these wonderful people like Phil. have brought us. I suggest you watch until the end to get the whole message of the video.
https://youtu.be/pql1RuSfg1s
$154 billion spent on a complete non-issue. Terrible. Awful. What a waste.
You will wait in vain for Phil. to show any regrets for his nonsense stories about the CO2.
meiggs April 16, 2020 at 7:37 pm
So what excites atm CO2?
Sunshine?
Mostly IR. The main CO2 absorption peak is near the energy peak of the Earth’s emission spectrum. That excites the vibrational (and rotational fine structure) modes of the CO2 molecules.
Solar energy heats the surface and the surface temperature will increase until the loss of energy from the top of the atmosphere equals the energy entering. Increasing CO2 reduces the IR leaving the ToA until the surface temperature increases to compensate.
When the surface begins to warm at all, it radiates at a higher RATE. The rate is proportional to the 4th power of the change in temperature. It is a FANTASTIC thermostat. The entire surface of the earth and all of its oceans are continuously radiating toward space. SOME of those untold photons are intercepted by a CO2 molecule. But to think that the miniscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere can actually cause the surface to warm fails to recognize the billions of photons sent upward for every one sent down by CO2. Besides, only HALF of the CO2 molecules will be earth directed. Regardless, gas theory says the temperature of any gas is proportional to its temperature, pressure and volume. There is no special rule for CO2 or any other gas. CO2 cannot ‘warm’ the inactive molecules around them. (You can’t warm 2400 inert gas molecules with one CO2 molecule…)
Meiggs
Don’t waste your time trying to argue with Phil.
In the end it is always like that, wanting to keep looking at his ‘books’ instead of simply looking at what happens in nature…
(and I quote)
‘Yes they’re called Physical Chemists’
Yes, those of us who spend their lives researching the subject, and record our experience in ‘books’ so that those of those who follow can benefit from our experience. When I looked at what was happening ‘in nature’ using the facilities of my laser diagnostics laboratory I found that it agreed with what Stern and Volmer had observed a hundred years ago. However Henry prefers to make up his own theory which doesn’t agree with what’s observed ‘in nature’, that’s what happens when you despise ‘books’.
John Shotsky April 17, 2020 at 8:41 am
When the surface begins to warm at all, it radiates at a higher RATE. The rate is proportional to the 4th power of the change in temperature. It is a FANTASTIC thermostat. The entire surface of the earth and all of its oceans are continuously radiating toward space. SOME of those untold photons are intercepted by a CO2 molecule. But to think that the miniscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere can actually cause the surface to warm fails to recognize the billions of photons sent upward for every one sent down by CO2.
Where do you get ‘billions’ from? Look at the Earth’s emission spectrum, see that large dip that’s the absorption by CO2, more like 10% not billionths.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/~bagenal/3720/CLASS5/EarthBB.jpg
Besides, only HALF of the CO2 molecules will be earth directed. Regardless, gas theory says the temperature of any gas is proportional to its temperature, pressure and volume. There is no special rule for CO2 or any other gas. CO2 cannot ‘warm’ the inactive molecules around them. (You can’t warm 2400 inert gas molecules with one CO2 molecule…)
Really? Those CO2 molecules are intercepting ~13 W/m2/sr so ~80 W/m2, you don’t think that would warm the surrounding molecules?
1.15E+19 lbs atm
5.10E+14 m^2, surface area of planet earth
80 W/m2, CO2 affect
4.08E+16 W, retained by CO2
1.39E+17 btu/hr, retained by CO2
8760 hrs/yr
1.22E+21 btu retained in one year
442 deg F, atm dT in one yr
At 400 ppm of CO2, there are 2500 molecules of inert gases to each CO2 molecule. Those inert molecules let surface radiation pass through to space. Only the Co2 molecule (plus water vapor, etc) is subject to absorbing a photon.
If you want to do some math, calculate the number of molecules on the entire earth’s surface, including all surface water. And remember, those molecules are continuously radiating – based on their temperature alone. Raise that temperature *any* and the rate of radiation will increase.
Next, figure out how many Co2 molecules there are in the entire atmosphere. Figure out how many photons are continuously radiated from earth, and how many are radiated back to earth (at most, half). And also remember that Co2 can’t be a different temperature than the rest of it’s 2500 molecules, due to the ideal gas laws. Gases at the same pressure and volume are at the same temperature. That is a law, not a hypothesis.
Roger that.
And yes, I get it. The math may or may not be over my head but the principal remains the same:
T^4 looking at near absolute zero, indicates which way the heat go.
Atm dT data, even if credible on the + confirms that dCO2 impact on enthalpy of the atm approaches zero.
So does recent weather out in CO.
My money’s on Pool.
meiggs April 17, 2020 at 4:20 pm
1.15E+19 lbs atm
5.10E+14 m^2, surface area of planet earth
80 W/m2, CO2 affect
4.08E+16 W, retained by CO2
1.39E+17 btu/hr, retained by CO2
8760 hrs/yr
1.22E+21 btu retained in one year
442 deg F, atm dT in one yr
Mass of atmosphere 10^18 kg
Heat capacity 1 kJ/kg.K
Surface area 5×10^14 m^2
Heat retained by CO2 80W/m^2
So potential temperature rise in the atmosphere due to IR absorption by CO2 4×10-5 K/s
A day is a bit less than 10^5 sec so ~4 K/day
However that heat does not remain in the atmosphere as there is heat transfer back to the surface which has a high heat capacity so everything stays in balance. That represents the current radiational heat transfer from the surface to the atmosphere at current conditions. Increase the concentration of CO2 and the amount of heat retained will increase and the temperature of the surface will increase to return the system to balance.
Phil, where I live ave dT according to gov records is 0.8 K over 150 yrs.
Rainfall is way up though, from 36″ per annum around 49″ now, stronger trend that T. That’s a significant amount of latent heat.
Headed to the hills to watch the trees and sleep under the skies. I’ll think about 4 K/day but have not experienced that here. Even in places where we cut down all the trees. I do understand the concept of equilibrium and rise to it.
Have a good weekend!
meiggs, you said
‘are warming due to increased UV from our local star’
Yes, I had not answered you because I realized that most people here (like Phil.) donot really understand what is happening with GH gases in the atmosphere. The ozone, HxOx and NxOx is formed from the main components in the atmosphere TOA by the most extreme radiation that we get from the sun. If this formation were not happening we would all die. It is earth’s first defense system. Hence, do not go to Mars before you made an atmosphere…
Obviously, the lower the magnetic field strengths, the more of the extreme particles are able to escape from the sun and hence the more of these substances will be formed TOA>
Now, as it happens, particularly O3 and HxOx, have absorption in the UV area. We have all learned now what this means? See previous comments. It means that the more of these substances are formed TOA, the less UV goes into the oceans ( as more of it is deflected off from earth), and hence the cooler it gets.
Isn’t there a strange paradox here? My way of thinking (i.e. absorption means deflection) reveals that ozone destroying chemicals could be a cause for AGW….The CO2 is just a red herring.
Still, yes, it is the sun, that we all depend on.
Whilst I am at it, perhaps I should tell you.
we all know that when UV hits your skin, the water underneath gets to boiling point and you burn.
\
So when the UV hits on the top layers of the oceans, the water gets to boiling point and forms water vapor and also releases CO2 from the ocean.
Did you ever read in a book that it is the UV that causes clouds and CO2 in the atmosphere and that all of this subsequently made YOU?
Did you hear this for the first time>?
Click on my name to get an understanding about the false accusations relating to CO2.
Henry Pool April 15, 2020 at 9:03 am
Whilst I am at it, perhaps I should tell you.
we all know that when UV hits your skin, the water underneath gets to boiling point and you burn.
Actually that’s something we all know doesn’t happen, thank God.
So when the UV hits on the top layers of the oceans, the water gets to boiling point and forms water vapor and also releases CO2 from the ocean.
It does not get to boiling point, as the surface temperature increases the equilibrium vapor pressure increases and as some water evaporates the surface temperature will cool thus a slightly warmer surface temperature is reached where the radiative energy entering the surface is balanced by the increased loss of latent heat.
Phil. says
It does not get to boiling point,
Henry says
So how, exactly, do you get vapor from a liquid?
Come on., Phil. You disappoint me. You are a physical chemist. Are you not even aware that to transit from the liquid to the gas phase, the liquid has to reach boiling point [of the liquid] at 1 atm??
So, for those interested here, do not be misled by Phil. He has not read his books properly.
The top layer of molecules of the water of the seas an oceans get transformed by the UV being allowed through the atmosphere. Hence it is the amount UV that determines the temperature on earth. Mostly.
Henry Pool April 19, 2020 at 9:37 am
Phil. says
It does not get to boiling point,
Henry says
So how, exactly, do you get vapor from a liquid?
Come on., Phil. You disappoint me. You are a physical chemist. Are you not even aware that to transit from the liquid to the gas phase, the liquid has to reach boiling point [of the liquid] at 1 atm??
No it does not, for all the water to convert from the liquid phase to the gas phase requires the temperature to exceed the boiling point. To have liquid and vapor phase water coexist requires the temperature be between the triple point and the critical point. The higher the temperature the higher the vapor pressure in equilibrium with the liquid water.
If your surface water is at 10ºC the vapor pressure of water is 1.23 kPa, increase it to 15ºC and the vapor pressure increases to 1.7 kPa. That’s what happens not boiling!
The boiling point of water is reached when the vapor pressure equals the atmospheric pressure, a vapor pressure of 1 atm requires a temperature of 100ºC, that’s boiling.
The top layer of molecules of the water of the seas an oceans get transformed by the UV being allowed through the atmosphere. Hence it is the amount UV that determines the temperature on earth. Mostly.
The top layers of the seawater gets heated by all radiation incident on it, UV, Vis and IR, visible penetrates the deepest.
Henry: As an armchair quantum mechanic I can see UV chipping liquid H2O molecules off of the surface of ocean… through the classically accepted notion of phase change is something no one really seems to understand but it is observable in nature and thus real for purposes of this discussion.
So it’s also real that it takes a certain amount of energy to make water change phase at 14.7 psia. That’s a fact. It’s called “latent heat of vaporization” or some such.
I understand that you are using the expression “boiling point” to mean “phase change.” In this case from liquid to solid. Happens every day. And condensation happens every night.
As Phil points out (I think) evaporation cools the ocean. And as I will point out, condensation of same causes cooling of the atm as the quantum energy captured at the SST is liberated back into the deep space heat sink.
Phil: I agree, the entropic state of the surface of the ocean does not rise to “boiling” when struck by various photons (at least on a normal day, GRBs and the like excluded). However, if I understand quantum mechanics and statistics (and I don’t) then it is still quantumly and statistically possible for an H2O molecule at the surface of the ocean to undergo phase change while it’s immediate neighbors may not.
That said, how can one tell that a single H20 molecule is in liquid or vapor phase? I have no clue. But, I do know that water evaporates especially when you put some bright sunshine on it. So I will think of one molecule of many jumping in energy state several X times it’s neighbors when struck by a UV photon and that several X jump causing a phase change of a few (but not many) of the H2O’s present.
That said, and re: “as the surface temperature increases the equilibrium vapor pressure increases and as some water evaporates the surface temperature will cool thus a slightly warmer surface temperature is reached”
Not sure what this means, logically I think it reads: warming causes evaporation, evaporation causes cooling and thus cooling causes warming? I’m lost on that one though my guess is you are saying that phase change (mechanism irrelevant) off sets most, but not all of the effects of radiation. Though I think that is a technically defensible stance it still support’s Pools’s notion that temperature of the ocean surface is a function of the energy output of our local star, sometimes it delivers more energy and some times less. This is sensed by biological forms of our nature as “warmer or cooler.” It also affects the measurable temperature of the SST.
Meanwhile, the 1.36x increase in latent HX phenomena over the past 150 yrs in my hood leads me to believe that the oceans are cooling. That’s a sense, not a fact. But 119 yr record cold broken in Denver, CO this month in spite of ~115 ppm more CO2 over those same 119 yrs. They’ve set at least 4 record lows in Denver this month, CO2 or no that beings to hint that we are in a NA cooling trend despite CO2.
meiggs April 19, 2020 at 5:38 pm
Phil: I agree, the entropic state of the surface of the ocean does not rise to “boiling” when struck by various photons (at least on a normal day, GRBs and the like excluded). However, if I understand quantum mechanics and statistics (and I don’t) then it is still quantumly and statistically possible for an H2O molecule at the surface of the ocean to undergo phase change while it’s immediate neighbors may not.
Yes that’s what happens all the time, if you have a water surface in equilibrium with the atmosphere above it you have a steady flow of water molecules leaving the surface balanced by water molecules in the gas phase reentering the surface.
That said, how can one tell that a single H20 molecule is in liquid or vapor phase? I have no clue. But, I do know that water evaporates especially when you put some bright sunshine on it. So I will think of one molecule of many jumping in energy state several X times it’s neighbors when struck by a UV photon and that several X jump causing a phase change of a few (but not many) of the H2O’s present.
That said, and re: “as the surface temperature increases the equilibrium vapor pressure increases and as some water evaporates the surface temperature will cool thus a slightly warmer surface temperature is reached”
Not sure what this means, logically I think it reads: warming causes evaporation, evaporation causes cooling and thus cooling causes warming? I’m lost on that one though my guess is you are saying that phase change (mechanism irrelevant) off sets most, but not all of the effects of radiation. Though I think that is a technically defensible stance it still support’s Pools’s notion that temperature of the ocean surface is a function of the energy output of our local star, sometimes it delivers more energy and some times less. This is sensed by biological forms of our nature as “warmer or cooler.” It also affects the measurable temperature of the SST.
Basically you’re right, it’s a negative feedback effect, as the temperature of the water surface increases more molecules leave the surface taking the latent heat of vaporisation with them, consequently the vapor pressure increases slightly reaching a new balance point. The water molecules get excited and if they acquire enough energy they can break the hydrogen bonds that hold them to the neighboring and escape the surface
meiggs
I do know that it is the amount of UV that gets into the oceans that largely determines the cloud formation and Tmean on earth.
There is some evidence suggesting that the discovery of the ‘ozone hole’ may have been biased, as instead they found much more peroxides in the hole. {OH radicals may be more prominent above the so-called hole]
As you will see from the spectra, the H2O2 and O3 look very much the same, so it does the same job TOA>
Perhaps Phil. might agree with me that ozone destroying chemicals could possibly have been a cause for the extra energy that came into the oceans?
Personally I am not yet sure about the amount of influence by man or sun on the incoming amount of UV at sea level since nobody has properly investigated it.
Henry: Thanks for the education, a topic of keen interest during this period of reduced ACO2…it’s good that over all it is at a high but that will not stop the alarmists from claiming that the record breaking cold in NA was due to…..drum roll….reduced human generated CO2…
Didnt you show earlier that CO2 was still rising?
Best wishes.
hp
No, just show showed the power required to explain 0.03F dT per annum of the atm…cause unknown…blame it on ACO2 or other natural variation including bad math.
But if the math is bad it’s not yet been refuted…I expected someone to at least start ranting about the various spheres of the atm. My come back to that would simply have been tell me the mass of your sphere and after that for purposes of discussion it still boils down to q=m*c*dT. Simple.
Now, where did the q come from and why is it here? Let the games begin!
This prediction was credible, random luck or real science in action?
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/have-global-temperatures-reached-a-tipping-point-2573-458X-1000149-100084.html
Meiggs
Don’t waste your time trying to argue with Phil.
In the end it is always like that, wanting to keep looking at his ‘books’ instead of simply looking at what happens in nature…
(and I quote)
‘Yes they’re called Physical Chemists’ ” Didn’t you check MY book”
Now look where these wonderful people like Phil. have brought us. I suggest you watch until the end to get the whole message of the video.
https://youtu.be/pql1RuSfg1s
$154 billion spent on a complete non-issue. Terrible. Awful. What a waste.
You will wait in vain for Phil. to show any regrets for his nonsense stories about the CO2.
Meiggs
Note my comment here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/08/march-2020-co2-levels-at-mauna-loa-show-no-obvious-effect-from-global-economic-downturn/#comment-2964859
I included a link there to show you the volume of the water on earth.
I had hoped that maybe you could use a calculation to see how much energy is needed to raise the temperature of all the oceans by about 0.6 degrees, as indeed has happened over the past 60 years. From that amount of energy needed and even comparing this with the amount of energy ‘calculated’ by Phil. & his ilk of 1.7 or 2 W/m2 for the 100 ppm or so of CO2 that was added to the atmosphere, it should be clear that the warming or cooling of earth is caused by the varying amount of energy (e.g. UV) going into the oceans. Indeed, in my final report I show you that it is rather the other way around: the heat in the oceans determines the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. By far. That is Henry’s Law. Click on my name to read that report.
Note that the amount of energy calculated by Phil.’s and those other physical chemists came from the AR reports 2004 and 2007 from the IPCC where it was assumed that the warming in the atmosphere is caused by CO2, mostly, as proposed by Arrhenius and Tyndall. They looked at the observed warming in the atmosphere and then apportioned a weighted average linked to the added CO2.
Crazy.
sorry. I forgot to give this link
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1960/plot/hadsst3nh/from:1960/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1960/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1960/trend
Phil, more bad math below but even if off by orders of magnitude the principal remains the same. How does CO2 put more energy in the ocean than it does the atm?
If mechanical (mostly convective HX) mixing is the explanation, I don’t buy it given the surface area to volume ratio we are discussing. That could be calc’d too.
If it’s UV, I get that, a very very small increase (~0.006x) increase in radiant UV energy could explain the dT and seems like could be explained by natural variation. Plus geothermal can’t be counted out. Geothermal + UV is credible and technically defensible in terms of orders of magnitude. I’ll put that up against 1 out of 2500 molecules in the atm.
I did get Phil’s number, looks like they use the thermocline at 1000 meters and go from there.
Using the same 1000 m of ocean depth it would be interesting to see how much of the volatile “excess” CO2 is liberated by the 0.6C(?) dT…a mass balance between what came out of the ocean vs rise in atm CO2 mass should be in reasonable agreement. May over a few beers after my weekend back pack.
https://www.livescience.com/6470-ocean-depth-volume-revealed.html
7.975E+20 lbs wtr in the ocean, appx, in upper 1 km
1.1 F dT (assumes 0.6 C dT)
0.96 btu/lbF spec ht sea wtr
8.422E+20 btu absorbed by upper 1 km
60 yrs
525600 hrs in 60 yrs
1.602E+15 btu/hr
4.695E+14 W, power driving ocean dT assuming 0.6C dT of upper 1 km
469 TW,
2.77E+15 sq ft ocean surface
2.54362E+14 sq m ocean surface
1.8 W/m^2
1067 ocean heat cap/atm heat cap
0.00173 W/m^2 atm cap for same dT
83640 TW, solar power reaching surface of planet
164 W/m^2, solar power flux surface of planet
1.13E-02 ocean power flux/solar power flux
5.61E-03 power absorbed by ocean/solar power at surface of planet
1.83E+10 W, power driving atm dT based on NC dT
3.89E-05 atm warming power/ocean warming power
25691 CO2 powers the ocean 26000X more than the atm
John Shotsky April 17, 2020 at 4:35 pm
At 400 ppm of CO2, there are 2500 molecules of inert gases to each CO2 molecule. Those inert molecules let surface radiation pass through to space. Only the Co2 molecule (plus water vapor, etc) is subject to absorbing a photon.
Those inert molecules let the radiation pass through until they hit the next CO2 molecule, there are about 10^30 molecules above each m^2, of which ~4×10^26 are CO2.
If you want to do some math, calculate the number of molecules on the entire earth’s surface, including all surface water. And remember, those molecules are continuously radiating – based on their temperature alone. Raise that temperature *any* and the rate of radiation will increase.
Next, figure out how many Co2 molecules there are in the entire atmosphere.
See above.
Figure out how many photons are continuously radiated from earth, and how many are radiated back to earth (at most, half).
About 4×10^22 photons/m^2/sec from earth’s surface.
And also remember that Co2 can’t be a different temperature than the rest of it’s 2500 molecules, due to the ideal gas laws. Gases at the same pressure and volume are at the same temperature. That is a law, not a hypothesis.
Of course it can, the Gas Law is an average applied over the volume, all the molecules are bouncing around off each other at different velocities, exchanging energy via collisions. The distribution of energies is described by the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, due to the kinetic theory of gases. Any CO2 molecules in air that absorb a photon become vibrationally excited, if they collide with another molecule they exchange kinetic energy which can result in loss of vibrational energy and a corresponding increase in kinetic energy of the colliding molecule. That’s what the gas laws say, the more energetic molecules will give up energy to the less energetic.
Finally, someone says something I emphatically agree with. “That’s what the gas laws say, the more energetic molecules will give up energy to the less energetic.” Let’s say a CO2 molecule absorbs a photon and increases its energy by a photon…will it ‘warm’ 2500 nearby molecules? Of course not – it will lose that excess energy in one collision. But, that CO2 molecule is going to continue to lose energy because it is a radiative molecule and will radiate continuously. So, it will COOL, if you will, (lose energy) by radiating and there are 2500 inert molecules adjacent to help it gain that energy back. That means that CO2 helps COOL the atmosphere, not the other way around. if there was no CO2, or other greenhouse gases, the atmosphere would not be able to radiate any energy at all – and the daily heat gain from the sun would have to be handled by the surface alone. In order for that to happen, the surface would to be significantly warmer than it is now – to support the higher radiation required. It is, after all, a thermostat that is controlled by temperature. If you heat the earth, it is going to radiate at the 4th power of the additional heat energy. Most people can’t even fathom what that means. But it does mean that CO2 helps cool the atmosphere not the other way around. Think about it. Earth with no gh gases would be significantly warmer, because the surface would be responsible for sending all excess energy to space.
John Shotsky April 18, 2020 at 8:37 pm
Finally, someone says something I emphatically agree with. “That’s what the gas laws say, the more energetic molecules will give up energy to the less energetic.” Let’s say a CO2 molecule absorbs a photon and increases its energy by a photon…will it ‘warm’ 2500 nearby molecules? Of course not – it will lose that excess energy in one collision.
It could, but it’s unlikely more likely to lose it to multiple collisions (that’s what the measurements show).
The average molecule at 25ºC has a kinetic energy of ~6×10^-21 J whereas the vibrational excited state of CO2 gains about 5x that, so one absorbed photon will increase the energy of the surrounding 2500 molecules by ~0.1%. Even if by chance it gave up all its energy to a single N2 molecule that molecule would continue to share that energy with its neighbors at the rate of ~10 collisions/nanosec.
But, that CO2 molecule is going to continue to lose energy because it is a radiative molecule and will radiate continuously.
No it will not radiate continuously, once it has lost that photon it’s back at the ground state and has no excess energy to emit, until it absorbs another photon.
So, it will COOL, if you will, (lose energy) by radiating and there are 2500 inert molecules adjacent to help it gain that energy back. That means that CO2 helps COOL the atmosphere, not the other way around. if there was no CO2, or other greenhouse gases, the atmosphere would not be able to radiate any energy at all – and the daily heat gain from the sun would have to be handled by the surface alone.
Which means that the surface will cool since without any greenhouse gases all the heat radiated from the surface will go straight to space, thus causing the surface to cool per the fourth power law you referred to until equilibrium is reached
In order for that to happen, the surface would to be significantly warmer than it is now – to support the higher radiation required.
Cooler to support lower radiation.
It is, after all, a thermostat that is controlled by temperature. If you heat the earth, it is going to radiate at the 4th power of the additional heat energy. Most people can’t even fathom what that means. But it does mean that CO2 helps cool the atmosphere not the other way around. Think about it. Earth with no gh gases would be significantly warmer, because the surface would be responsible for sending all excess energy to space.
That ~80W/m^2 that is blocked by CO2 will now go directly to space so the surface will cool until it’s radiating 80W/m^2 less.
Phil: See my questions to Shotsky re IR re the general topic of discussion.
Re: “The average molecule at 25ºC has a kinetic energy of ~6×10^-21 J whereas the vibrational excited state of CO2 gains about 5x that, so one absorbed photon will increase the energy of the surrounding 2500 molecules by ~0.1%.”
OK, photos are traveling at the speed of light yet massless (acc to theory) and + 5x the energy of the ave molecule when they impact CO2. At that point (I think) you indicate half that energy finds it way to the big heat sink in the sky while the other half finds it’s way back to the surface of the earth, swimming as it were against the stream and I accept that argument as there occasionally seem to be examples of that in nature though they usually or perhaps always seem to be associated with biology. But the indigenous of the Western hemisphere believe the planet and all else are alive so it may well be that reality does not cooperate with physics and thermodynamics.
However, if it does then 0.001* 84000 TW at surface of planet earth due to insolation = 84 TW bounced back (upstream of normal heat flux vector) to the surface < 469 TW needed to explain a 0.6C rise in Pools wood for trees plot in the rise of the ocean temperature.
I've got sun burns more than once on a cold day. The IR did not burn my skin. Sun screen blocks UV, not IR or you'd feel cold when you put the stuff on. I've never got a sun burn sitting in front of a wood fire yet many of times not frozen to death due to a wood fire. A steel surface at 800F can cause dry wood to burn at about a meter away but 20F air does not burn my skin…yet, it I don't stay covered on a clear winter day my melanin challenged skin will burn due to the UV.
meiggs April 19, 2020 at 5:03 pm
Phil: See my questions to Shotsky re IR re the general topic of discussion.
Re: “The average molecule at 25ºC has a kinetic energy of ~6×10^-21 J whereas the vibrational excited state of CO2 gains about 5x that, so one absorbed photon will increase the energy of the surrounding 2500 molecules by ~0.1%.”
OK, photos are traveling at the speed of light yet massless (acc to theory) and + 5x the energy of the ave molecule when they impact CO2. At that point (I think) you indicate half that energy finds it way to the big heat sink in the sky while the other half finds it’s way back to the surface of the earth, swimming as it were against the stream and I accept that argument as there occasionally seem to be examples of that in nature though they usually or perhaps always seem to be associated with biology.
No that’s not what I’m saying, near the surface there are two things that can happen when the photon is absorbed: The vibrational energy can be lost as kinetic energy to neighboring molecules via collisions or a photon can be emitted.
Collisional quenching is most likely near the surface where the pressure is highest.
The other possibility is that a photon is emitted, this becomes more probable as the pressure decreases (fewer collisions), the average time for emission is much longer than the rotation/vibration time so the direction in which the photon is emitted is random. Consequently ~half of those emitted photons are towards the surface and ~half are away.
So near the surface the balance favors heat transfer to the surrounding atmosphere and near the tropopause favors emission.
But the indigenous of the Western hemisphere believe the planet and all else are alive so it may well be that reality does not cooperate with physics and thermodynamics.
Not quite sure what this means.
I’ve got sun burns more than once on a cold day. The IR did not burn my skin. Sun screen blocks UV, not IR or you’d feel cold when you put the stuff on. I’ve never got a sun burn sitting in front of a wood fire yet many of times not frozen to death due to a wood fire. A steel surface at 800F can cause dry wood to burn at about a meter away but 20F air does not burn my skin…yet, it I don’t stay covered on a clear winter day my melanin challenged skin will burn due to the UV.
What heats your skin is IR, the trouble with UV is it can damage your skin but you can’t feel it!
As you say you can get sunburned by UV on a cold day.
What happens with UV is that it causes damage to the DNA in your skin. This induces repair mechanisms and also destroys the damaged cells (apoptosis) and sloughs off the dead skin.
Also melanin is produced to prevent further damage to the skin (melanin very efficiently absorbs the UVB). The damage by sunburn causes an inflammation by producing chemicals that increase the sensitivity to heat and overproduces a protein that activates nerve fibres causing pain. So sunburn doesn’t burn your skin, it just makes it feel that way!
Shotsky: Thanks for making a very clear and (what appears to me to be a) very defensible point technically. I had not thought of the issue in such terms (simple is good). If the www is credible the surface of the moon can reach 260F, 136F on earth, while that of Mars 68F. Throwing T^4 into that mix and accepting the earth and moon at the same distance from Sol it appears the earth’s atm helps keep earth’s surface cool during the day time. Meanwhile it is impressive that Mars can make it to 68F but it has virtually no atm (though it’s mostly CO2 so perhaps that explains max surface T on Mars)…but we must not forget Mars is around 43 million miles further away and thus radiant flux at earth (and it’s moon) is twice that of Mars…yet the mass of CO2 in the Martian atm appears to be the same order of magnitude that of earth…how can earth with twice the radiant flux from Sol achieve only ~1.12x the max surface temp of Mars (absolute) when enshrouded in the same mass (more bad meiggs math?) of CO2? And, if I followed your earlier posts 1/2400 molecules on earth are CO2 while ~95/100 on Mars are CO2 would Phil argue that Mars should be on average hotter than Earth???
But wait, not much water vapor in the Martian atm…
Looking at wiki leeks re Martian atm:
Thermosphere (≈100–230 km): The layer is mainly controlled by extreme UV heating. The temperature of the Martian thermosphere increases with altitude and varies by season. The daytime temperature of the upper thermosphere ranges from 175 K (at aphelion) to 240 K (at perihelion) and can reach up to 390 K, but it is still significantly lower than the temperature of Earth’s thermosphere. The higher concentration of CO2 in the Martian thermosphere may explain part of the discrepancy because of the cooling effects of CO2 in high altitude.
CO2 cools “higher altitude” …very interesting! Sounds like what Pool is saying about Earthshine is credible, at least on Wiki…if Mars is cooled by CO2 in it’s upper atm it’s moons would reflect that, literally and figuratively.
Meanwhile, if I happen to be running around with a FLIR camera on a big air cooled H2O condenser that’s rejecting 1000 MW in January I can find air pockets as condensing water is always warmer than the trapped supercritical fluid (air, in-leakage)…but the sky above appears black on FLIR and pegs the camera’s low of minus 40F even though ambient air temperature was around 20F.
And why should the sky read minus 40F on FLIR when local air temperature where I was standing was more like 80F? If the CO2 was reflecting radiant heat back at me to the tune of 80 W/m^2 why would the sky read minus 40? Asked differently, the heat flux on said ACC was around 2.7 W/m^2 in terms of effective HX area, while if the CO2 in the sky above is worth 80 W/m^2 it seems like the sky should have been bright (hot) white rather than (cold) black on the FLIR camera scale?
But the condenser was indicated at 88F in the condensing zone to 32F (yes, we had some ice in the darn thing). Air below and well above said ACC was 20F…why was the sky minus 40 in the mind of FLIR?
I can answer about the flir camera – I used to design infrared thermometers, and you had to employ filters to work only with the ‘atmospheric window’ –that which can pass through the atmosphere. We designed and built these thermometers for industry, such as electrical line maintenance, where they were used to determine the temperature of pole-mounted transmission transformers. They looked like rifles, with scopes. They cost over $1000 in the 70’s, but now you can get a hand-held one for under $30…I have one, of course.
https://gisgeography.com/atmospheric-window/
Shotsky: re “As a result, we only see specific portions of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. This phenomenon is known as the Earth’s “atmospheric window”.”
I understand that. But is Phil saying some photons make it through the atm window, are absorbed by various molecules at the the surface (mostly H2O) and then re-emitted at a wave length that no longer has an open window? The surface acting as a wave length modulator and the atm as a check valve. I can see that causing +dT but do not know if that is what is going on and even if it is it’s impact on atm T which appears to be slight.
On the other hand I follow the rotisserie analogy but the planet is not always warming over time any more than it is warming over 4 seasons, at least in the temperate zones. With the rotisserie the “seasons of the sun” rule just as the tilt of the earths axis rule the seasons. Or maybe it’s the seasons of the geothermal, whatever the variable energy source may be.
meiggs April 19, 2020 at 7:29 pm
Shotsky: re “As a result, we only see specific portions of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. This phenomenon is known as the Earth’s “atmospheric window”.”
I understand that. But is Phil saying some photons make it through the atm window, are absorbed by various molecules at the the surface (mostly H2O) and then re-emitted at a wave length that no longer has an open window?
The ‘atmospheric window’ is in the outgoing light.
What I say is that irradiation from the sun mostly passed through the atmosphere and about 30% is reflected away, the remainder heats up the earth’s surface (and subsurface in the oceans). That heated surface emits IR, and in the case of a transparent atmosphere will continue to heat up until the temperature of the surface reaches the point when outgoing equals incoming. If you have an atmosphere like ours some regions of the spectrum don’t allow those wavelengths to freely exit the atmosphere. In that case some of the IR which would have left the atmosphere now can’t, consequently the surface has to continue heating until the outgoing equals incoming.
meiggs’ April 19, 2020 at 4:31 pm
Meanwhile it is impressive that Mars can make it to 68F but it has virtually no atm (though it’s mostly CO2 so perhaps that explains max surface T on Mars)…but we must not forget Mars is around 43 million miles further away and thus radiant flux at earth (and it’s moon) is twice that of Mars…yet the mass of CO2 in the Martian atm appears to be the same order of magnitude that of earth…how can earth with twice the radiant flux from Sol achieve only ~1.12x the max surface temp of Mars (absolute) when enshrouded in the same mass (more bad meiggs math?) of CO2? And, if I followed your earlier posts 1/2400 molecules on earth are CO2 while ~95/100 on Mars are CO2 would Phil argue that Mars should be on average hotter than Earth???
Mars has a very elliptical orbit which makes comparing max values tricky since Earth’s orbit is closer to circular.
However you have to remember the T^4 effect, without considering the atmosphere the temperature will be proportional to the fourth power of the radius, which gives a ratio of ~1.2. Earth without an atmosphere would be 255 K and Mars 209 K (average).
Similar amounts of CO2 in each atmosphere won’t give the same absorbance because of something called pressure broadening so in the Earth’s atmosphere CO2 is more effective, also Earth has additional absorbers.
Even if the CO2 on Mars had the same effect Mars would still be cooler than Earth because it wouldn’t be able to overcome the initial difference of ~50º.
meiggs’ April 19, 2020 at 4:31 pm
And why should the sky read minus 40F on FLIR when local air temperature where I was standing was more like 80F? If the CO2 was reflecting radiant heat back at me to the tune of 80 W/m^2 why would the sky read minus 40?
Because the range of wavelengths imaged have to exclude those emitted by CO2 otherwise you’d only be able to image over a few metres. As Shotsky says you have to observe in the ‘window’.
Asked differently, the heat flux on said ACC was around 2.7 W/m^2 in terms of effective HX area, while if the CO2 in the sky above is worth 80 W/m^2 it seems like the sky should have been bright (hot) white rather than (cold) black on the FLIR camera scale?
The CO2 heat flux is in the wavelengths above 14 microns your FLIR doesn’t see those wavelengths.
That is why they are called INFRARED thermometers. They don’t ‘see’ colors, which is why IR cameras are not in color.
Shotsky: understood that IR is not “color” but the monkey using the FLIR can only see in “color” and thus (as I am sure you know) the IR info is translated into a relative scale of colors to communicate Temperature info to the IR blind user (just like Nullschool does with colorless things like humidity). That said I have no idea which bands of IR the FLIR can or cannot sense. What I do know for a fact is the air exiting the ACC was around 88F while not too far above that it was 20F or less. Never the less the FLIR saw only “cold” when pointed at space.
But if I go back the the ACC IR shots and scrutinize several I do see what appears to be the warm air “films” that formed on the big ducts feeding the heat transfer surfaces. Depending on camera angle the sky can be deep black though I can make out deep dark blue clouds in the black in some images. I’ll guess that was air warm enough to radiate at a wave length that could be sensed by the FLIR.
I don’t have the spec sheet for the FLIR it was a loaner but could find little ice patches in a big warm condenser. Fairly sensitive but sounds like Phil is saying it can’t see the wave length(s) of interest.
Meanwhile, my color camera when the images it captures are converted to “black & white IR” always seem to imply that something is going on with plants.
Surely someone has an instrument that can measure the IR reflected back at us by CO2??
meiggs says
25691
CO2 powers the ocean 26000X more than the atm
Henry says
exactly. It is impossible.
Don’t expect Phil. and those who keep fueling AGW thinking, to ever apologize for the physical impossibility that they promote. Their salaries depend on it….
My salary depends on the opposite so my bias is certainly obvious. But as a man of reason all I need are the facts and the basic facts/metrics seem to be lacking in the alarmist and denier camps. I recognize that a planetary climate system is beyond human comprehension and human machines such as computers. So we have to go with thought experiments and measurements and then judge based on our calculation, experience and intuition.
That said, how much “volitile” CO2 would be liberated by a 0.6C +dT in the upper 1 km of the ocean? Though in some time constants of the Carbon cycle at clearly demonstrate where the alleged increase in CO2 came from?
Surely that’s already been done?
Hi meigg,
“I recognize that a planetary climate system is beyond human comprehension and human machines such as computers. So we have to go with thought experiments and measurements…’
If we ask a simple question, and then measure something that validates either the “no” or “yes,” we can get a solid fundamental. For instance, this question:
“Is the earth experiencing abnormal heating or cooling with respect to the Holocene normal?
… and then we measure [GHCN TMAX 500,000,000 times or USCHN 50,000,000 times] we can get an answer.
Without comprehending how climate works!
https://theearthintime.com
Right?
Agree. The measurements seem to concur with reality. But the question becomes what is the driver?
I’m fairly certain it is not humans since they have not been around long and have yet to amount to much.
The deep answer is: what is the driver of the Pleistocene Ice House? Yes, the glaciation cycles whip CO2 around like crazy. Yes, human-release might have some amplification effect. But climate scientists do not really comprehend the driver of the Ice House.
The incredible fortune to have the fossil fuel deposit, which gives life and easy to billions, is taking the blame.
It is a distraction. Keeps our eye off the prize. The prize is: how to bring the driver of our star down to earth and make energy for all too cheap to meter. We should be grateful the coal is there to keep us warm while we discover how. Even if it takes two more centuries.
Yes, the accepted value is around 16ppm CO2/ºC, so a rise of 0.6ºC would give a rise of ~10 ppm CO2.
Phil: I’m going to have to think about CO2 off gassing in the ocean due to +dT. It’s easy to think of as tiny bubbles effervescing but those bubbles would be small and perhaps intercepted by biological organisms. I have no way of knowing but would simply assume that all CO2 liberated would make it to the atm whereupon atm CO2 ppm would rise and then compare that to alleged rise over the past 100 or so yrs. I think you are saying that 0.6C rise in ocean above it’s thermocline results in only +10 ppm impact on atm CO2. Seems like a small number. I’ll have to find some time to look at it.
When you have the chance look it up under Henry’s Law, the temperature sensitivity should give you the answer.
Phil:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OceanCarbon
“After 30 years of measurements, the ocean carbon community is realizing that tracking human-induced changes in the ocean is not as easy as they thought it would be.”
Hmmm.
I am familiar with Henry’s law and I think have even been paid to apply it before. But discussions without boundaries are more or less meaningless no matter how simple or complex the topic may be. So, if the oceans are warming and if that is caused by ACO2 in the atm my question remains: how much CO2 is liberated by the warming of the upper 1 km of the ocean by the alleged 0.6C? Or the ocean is absorbing ACO2…even if it’s surface is thought by some to be saturated with ACO2?
Saturation is a real barrier in nature, no way around it, either way.
So, start with assuming the upper 1 km is already saturated with CO2 and calculate how much CO2 would come out of solution. Which is what I did, math or inputs or model correct or not that idea sets the maximum theoretical output of CO2 from the ocean.
Now, I realize that my maximum output of CO2 model is too simple for the situation. Nevertheless it puts an upper bound on the question.
But perhaps, as Arthur Viterito hints geothermal flux, mid-ocean seismicity, thermohaline circulation are somewhere in the mix?
NASA, a gov org that I consider to be rather biased and hypocritical (ever seen how much pollution their rockets put out?) even admits the ocean does not behave according to AGW theory.
I’ve had to test sea water, it has a surprisingly high pH. We both know what that means.
Yes, some surface waters can be acidic (mostly biology aka tannins from tree leaves) but compared to the ocean they are a drop in the bucket. So the bucket remains basic.
meiggs April 21, 2020 at 6:13 pm
I am familiar with Henry’s law and I think have even been paid to apply it before. But discussions without boundaries are more or less meaningless no matter how simple or complex the topic may be. So, if the oceans are warming and if that is caused by ACO2 in the atm my question remains: how much CO2 is liberated by the warming of the upper 1 km of the ocean by the alleged 0.6C? Or the ocean is absorbing ACO2…even if it’s surface is thought by some to be saturated with ACO2?
Whether the surface gives up CO2 depends on Henry’s Law, it’s the surface conditions that count not what’s happening 1km down. Solubility increases as you go deeper in the ocean.
NASA, a gov org that I consider to be rather biased and hypocritical (ever seen how much pollution their rockets put out?)
Well their fuel is hydrogen so the emissions are water so I’m not sure what pollution you’re referring to?
Phil.
So. H2O (g) is not a ghgas?
Phil: Understood that CO2 solubility in H2O is not only a function of temperature but also of pressure. Nevertheless if the surface of the body of water is saturated with CO2, then it seems to me that the only mechanism for quantifying rate of off gassing or absorption of CO2 becomes primarily mixing. And that, in my experience can become very complex, very quickly.
How saturated is the sea with CO2? Don’t know, but some more bad math:
2.900E+21 lbs wtr in the ocean
1.13E+19 lbs air in the atm
2.77E+15 sq ft ocean surface
1.05E+06 lbs ocean/ft^2 ocean/atm interface
4.09E+03 lbs atm/ft^2 ocean/atm interface
2.00E-03 lbs CO2/lb water nom max at ~STP saturation
2.09E+03 CO2 flux/ft^2 to saturate the wtr column below
7.04E+15 lbs CO2 in the atm
2.54E+00 lbs CO2 above the water column
implication: CO2 flux vector favors sea to sky
re NASA rockets: It takes a “whole bunch” of CO2 to produce liquid H2 and liquid O2 to fuel their rockets and other tax funded junkets. And, the solid fuel is even nastier … the primary propellants are ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer) and atomized aluminum powder (fuel).
The power plants used to produce the NASA liquid fuels are held very low Cl & Al emissions…why is it OK for those of the “ocean carbon community” to pollute the way they do?
Henry Pool April 22, 2020 at 8:29 am
Phil.
So. H2O (g) is not a ghgas?
Why do you ask?
Henry:
0.006 g CO2/100g wtr per C
3.621E+23 g H2O in upper 1 km of the ocean
0.6 deg C dT over 60 yrs
3.621E+21 hectograms water
0.0036 g CO2/hg liberated
1.303E+19 g CO2 liberated
13034 gigatonnes CO2 set free from the sea in 60 yrs
217 gigatonnes CO2 per year off gassed by ocean
10 gigatonnes CO2 attributed to humans per year, max
0.05 human/ocean CO2 (supports the 5% human CO2 stance)
3200 gigatonnes CO2 in the atm at present
821 GT in the past 60 yrs CO2 net gain by atm, measured
14 GT/yr
0.06 net atm gain of CO2
0.003 human portion of net atm CO2 gain
Oceans not warming and/or biology doing well on planet earth?
I may post this separately, but this is what I believe about why earth is at the temperature it is.
Like the greenhouse effect, it needs to have an understandable mechanism by laymen. It needs to be believable. So far, there is only one hypothesis offered, and it has been picked at for decades, but never been disproven, so it stands as a hypothesis. The IPCC has blamed CO2, and politicians and businesses have jumped on the bandwagon to ‘control. CO2. That is, in my mind, utterly useless.
Here is why:
The earth operates like a rotisserie. (Yes, that is a simple, understandable analogy.) At the poles, if you were standing on the axis, you would rotate one time in 24 hours but you would not move any distance. But if you were on the line closest to the sun (like the equator when the sun is directly over the equator), you would travel 24,000 miles in 24 hours. THAT is the rotisserie. The sun is always present, and it is always warming earth – either in the atmosphere, or the surface or oceans, when it is present. It is very powerful and can warm things very fast. Heating from the sun happens quickly.
At night, things are different. At night, the earth cools SOLELY by radiation. That is a slower process. It looks like a sawtooth – heating is fast, cooling is slow.
During the day, the air heats up that we all walk around in. That is because the surface that we walk around of is heated, and that heat rises. We measure it as, uh, temperature. It is not the temperature of Co2, it is the temperature of the AIR. There is a reason it is measured at 2 meters above the surface – it is the establised point at which temperature readings are taken.
But as the earth turns, the sun shines somewhere else, heating it. Meanwhile, earth’s radiation is cooling where the sun previously was. There is a RATE at which it cools, and that rate decreases all night as the temperature cools. But, radiation at night is not as powerful as sun during the day.
And that is the key. The rotisserie is always turning and by the time the sun returns, only a certain amount of the previous day’s sun has been radiated. Presto…it is warmer than the black body radiation mode. it is BECAUSE we are on that rotisserie that we can never get back to the black body state because the SUN returns before it can.
Change the rotation rate of earth: change the climate. Longer days mean hotter days and colder nights – more heating in one day, and more cooling on one night. Increase the rate of rotation: It won’t heat as long, nor will it cool as long. But at no time, does the earth stop rotating under the sun, and it always brings its heat before earth can shed it.
The most obvious proof of this idea is our own seasons, ,which control the amount of sun vs dark each day, each season. You can literally SEE this happening every year. Yet it is discarded even though right in front of our eyes, in favor of some insignificant gas.
Ever used a rotisserie? It cooks things as long as it is on. Ours is always on. It will never get back to black body temperature with that rotisserie in operation.
meiggs
let us go back to some basic thinking about the 0.6K that was added (by the sun) to the oceans over the past 60 years.
I want to establish if you agree with me on this:
Assume we have a 1000m column of water exactly 1 m2
That is 10^6 kg/m2
To heat one gram by 1 degree K you need 4.18 J
so for 0.6K we need 2.51 10^9 J/m2 (for the whole column)
This energy arrived over 60 years. That is 1.89 x 10^9 seconds. Assuming linearity, that gives us 1.32 W/m2.
Note that the surface of earth is 70% water.
So the answer to our problem about the amount of heat which we know is specifically not coming from ‘GH gases”: about 1 W/m2 of warming. This is natural warming, I would say. Unless, like I said before, we destroyed some of our ozone layer, which could have been the cause of some more UV (heat) coming through our atmosphere, landing in the ocean and subsequently causing more evaporation and subsequent condensation.
Agree?
Henry: the ocean is a HUGE thermal capacitor being constantly irradiated from above while being constantly or intermittently heated from below. Seeing 0.6C dT now may or may not be due to current/recent atm/solar or geologic factors. I have not followed the ozone. The UV makes sense but our local star is a variable energy source as well. Could simply be putting out the same power but at different wavelengths, I don’t know.
This I believe, precip in my neighborhood as trended significantly upward in the past 150 yrs. The question becomes does this mean that the oceans are warming or cooling? Or just a slip in the prevailing atm currents and/or oceanic? I know not.
Evaporation along with effervescence of dissolved gases is a cooling process for the liquid reservoir left behind. My gut tells me it means the oceans are cooling which forebodes a larger cooling trend for the planet. But don’t know that I will live long enough to know as these things take time. Would be hilarious though if there were a sharp atm dT downward in my lifetime.