From the Penn State and the “I don’t believe this for a minute because it looks like another ‘we hate big oil’ push” Department.
Oil-field emissions reshaping regional atmospheric processes, researchers report.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The climate is changing and nowhere is it changing faster than at Earth’s poles. Researchers at Penn State have painted a comprehensive picture of the chemical processes taking place in the Arctic and found that there are multiple, separate interactions impacting the atmosphere.
Using two instrumented planes and ground-based measurements from a two-month long field campaign to compare chemical processes in two regions in the Arctic — and the largest oil field in North America — to surrounding areas, researchers made three discoveries. The findings were: openings in the sea ice — called leads – significantly influence atmospheric chemistry and cloud formation; emissions from the oil field measurably alter regional atmospheric composition; and together, these processes contribute to a feedback loop that accelerates sea-ice melt and amplifies Arctic warming.
The research was recently published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The work was part of a larger multi-institutional project called CHemistry in the Arctic: Clouds, Halogens, and Aerosols, or CHACHA. Led by five institutions, CHACHA examines chemical changes that occur as surface air is swept into the lower atmosphere, resulting in interactions among water particles, low clouds and pollution.
“This field campaign is an unprecedented opportunity to explore chemical changes in the boundary layer — the atmospheric layer closest to the planet’s surface — and to understand how human influence is altering the climate in this important region,” said Jose D. Fuentes, professor of meteorology in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science and corresponding author of the paper. “The resulting datasets are producing an improved understanding of the interactions between sea-spray aerosols, surface-coupled clouds, oil field emissions and multiphase halogen chemistry in the new Arctic.”
To study the chemistry of the boundary layer of the Arctic, researchers sampled air over snow-covered and newly frozen sea ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, over open leads and across the snow-covered tundra of the North Slope of Alaska, including the oil and gas extraction region near Prudhoe Bay. The campaign was conducted out of Utqiaġvik, Alaska, between February 21 and April 16, 2022, shortly after the polar sunrise — a period of continuous sunlight following two months of darkness — when the increased UV rays intensify the chemical changes at the surface and in the lower atmosphere.
Researchers found that leads — ranging from a few feet to a few miles wide — created intense convective plumes and cloud formations, while lofting potentially harmful molecules, aerosol pollutants and water vapor — all things that can contribute to warming the climate — hundreds of feet into the atmosphere. These processes accelerated sea-ice loss by forcing even more convection and cloud formation, which increased moisture and heat transfer and led to the formation of even more leads, Fuentes said.
The team identified another feedback loop on land, with chemicals found in the saline snowpacks along the coast reacting with the emissions from the oil field. During the CHACHA campaign, researchers specifically observed bromine production along saline snowpacks — a phenomenon unique to polar regions. These bromine molecules rapidly depleted ozone in the boundary layer, creating another feedback loop that allows more of the sun’s rays to reach the surface, warming the snowpacks and releasing more bromine.
Additionally, during the field campaign, researchers found massive boundary layer changes over the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. Gas plumes from the extraction area reacted in the lower atmosphere, acidifying the air mass and producing harmful substances and smog, Fuentes said. They also found that halogens react with oil field plumes to create free radicals, which then form more stable substances that can travel long distances. Fuentes said these substances can contribute to regional environmental changes.
Fuentes said CHACHA researchers are now investigating how these reactions affect the broader Arctic environment, including the formation of smog plumes that, despite occurring in an otherwise pristine region, reach pollution levels comparable to those found in major urban areas such as Los Angeles. For example, nitrogen dioxide levels reached about 60-70 parts per billion, levels associated with the noxious gases blamed for urban smog.
The next steps, researchers said, involve creating datasets that numerical modelers can use to better understand how global climate may evolve as a result of these localized factors in the Arctic.
Other CHACHA team members were from Stony Brook University, the University at Albany, University of Michigan and University of Alaska Fairbanks. This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
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A nice piece of junk science to end the year with.
Scamers gotta scam..
😉
“This image, taken from the aircraft King Air — the left wing is visible at the bottom right, shows an open lead and the overlying nascent clouds commonly referred to as sea smoke.”
These “left wing” researchers are smart. They have cleverly figured out how to fly a Beech King Air backwards in the Arctic. That is not the left wing but the right, assuming 1) the picture was taken from inside the aircraft and 2) The image itself has not been flipped.
About the technical matters of the study… zzzzz.
My guess is that the pilot was a female DEI – those love to land their planes upside down(aka Kendal’s Swansong).
Therefore it may indeed be a left-wing on both accounts without being redundant.
That would make sense if the plane was an Aero Commander 690 or a Mitsubishi MU-2, but the King Air is a low wing aircraft.
OTOH, I did appreciate the sense of humor.
trans-female DEI no doubt.
Isn’t there a windfarm just upwind?
The Mann teams couldn’t come back empty handed now could they.
Nothing to do with Mann!
Yes, even though Dr Mann has left State College and gone to Philadelphia, those left behind feel compelled to make a name for themselves by continuing to publish this sort of stuff.
Hardly, the lead author is in a different department at Penn State from where Mann was and never coauthored a paper with him!
I just this search: What is the temperature in Fairbanks, AK? The result is -38° C. There may be a little warming in the Arctic, but temperature will always be well below 0° C in winter.
I don’t think Fairbanks is in the Arctic. Close maybe.
Yes, Fairbanks is well south of the Brooks Range. Point Barrow is on the edge of the ocean, and in April, is more likely to be right around 0° C.
Indeed. And even if arctic is more than a little wsrmer compared to the rest of the world, still cold and no more alarming than slightly warmer nights.
I am sure this will convince CNN that the arctic is melting.
And yet they don’t. Imagine that? Environtards telling lies.
The largest oil field in North America is Prudhoe Bay. It covers about 200,000 acres or a square just under 18 miles on a side or about 300 square miles. The arctic including ocean and land is about 7,700,000 square miles. So Prudhoe Bay is about 0.004% of the Arctic. I imagine that emissions from this area, if any, would rapidly decline with distance from the field. Surely these researchers measured the fall off of emissions with distance from the field in coming to their conclusions regarding the Arctic. No? I ask because it seems difficult to appreciate that emissions from an 18 mile^2 area can have any influence in the whole of the Arctic. The other thing I can imagine is that these “researchers” were paid for what they did. I further imagine that the money that they were paid was my money, and yours.
Or Soros’?
Yup: This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
The spread of emissions should follow spherical volume or 1/R^3.
The dilution aspect almost never comes up as it doesn’t support environmentalists’ agenda. They much prefer linear extrapolations with local data and generalise this based on models.
The paper illustrates flight paths on only three days out of the 65 or so of the field project, but what is shown there doesn’t indicate much like an ability to demonstrate the trend of concentrations away from the “perturbation” of this small industrialized area.
Oh no! That means glaciation will quicken…or the Earth will explode in flames or something, right?
We should protest!
It seems the only thing to do is splash tomato soup on more paintings.
Or maybe glue yourself to a polar bear?
From the linked paper –
No, climate is the statistics of weather observations, and is responsible for nothing at all. The researchers also refer to mythical concepts like “greenhouse gase” and so on.
The paper is nonsensical.
Possibly connected to the faker, fraud, scofflaw and deadbeat Michael Mann, who is stupid enough to believe that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter.
There is one silver lining though. Penn State say –
Oh dear, what a pity. Maybe they should get Michael Mann to stamp his little foot, and demand more funding!
Now they can apply the same studies to the effect of wind turbines.. 😉
The feedback loop becomes self sustaining and grows…… bringing all things that contribute to climate warming to an irreversible and inevitable tipping point…. it is Mannifest destiny…we are just doomed baby.
“Earth’s climate is shifting rapidly, with the most dramatic changes occurring in polar regions.”
Actually, that should be the “Arctic,” not “polar regions.” While West Antarctica appears to be warming, the cause is confounded by the geothermal activity of the area; East Antarctic is problematic for the claim.
CO2 is typically characterized as being “well-mixed”; however, “well-mixed” is rarely defined. Interestingly, when one examines the seasonal variations by latitude, it is obvious that the seasonal range is much greater in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth. [See here:
] This variation is accepted as being biogenic in origin. While we are told that global warming is driven by anthropogenic CO2 emissions, the empirical evidence provided by the linked graph, does not support that claim. Clearly, the annual northern hemisphere variations are driven by Winter microbial/fungal decomposition of organic material, aided by boreal forest respiration, and Summer photosynthetic withdrawal. There are many complications, but this isn’t the place to address all of them.
“The campaign was conducted out of Utqiaġvik, Alaska, between February 21 and April 16, 2022, shortly after the polar sunrise — a period of continuous sunlight following two months of darkness — when the increased UV rays intensify the chemical changes at the surface and in the lower atmosphere.”
Were measurements of surface UV flux measured during the campaign? If so, why wasn’t it mentioned in either this article or the source AMS article? Having personally spent the month of April in what was then known as Point Barrow, I can assure readers that one doesn’t get a sunburn at that latitude, let alone even a tan. One is lucky to even see the sun through the snow and rain clouds.
The source AMS article remarks, “Following polar sunrise, Br2 molecules undergo photolysis to produce bromine (Br) atoms that rapidly react with O3, leading to near-surface ozone depletion events (ODEs) in the ABL … These events can last up to 12 consecutive days and lead to ozone-free air layers extending from the surface to as much as 2 km …” One doesn’t expect to observe much ozone below the stratosphere, except in places like Los Angeles!
Photolytic destruction of ozone has been documented in Antarctica on the surface of stratospheric ice crystals with adsorption of halides, and associated sunlight. Indeed, the point has been made numerous times that the so-called Antarctic ‘Ozone Hole’ is the result of the Austral circumpolar vortex, which excludes tropical stratospheric ozone transported by Brewer-Dobson circulation, and also allows extremely cold air to form, which creates the essential reactive ice crystals. In warm years, with either a weak circumpolar vortex, or early break-up, the stratospheric ‘Hole’ has minimal area.
Surface ozone is a completely different phenomenon. It is essentially smog, and not susceptible to the cold photolysis. One should note that all of the indigenous people in Point Barrow own at least one snowmobile and usually a pickup truck. Their homes are heated with natural gas, and diesel generators create electricity for homes, the Army base, and other numerous installations in the area. What the researchers are probably observing is ground-level smog that accumulates and then gets blown away by winds every week or two.
Once again, expensive field research doesn’t seem to have the expected sophistication of good design and comprehensive understanding of the situation.
And who cares, if some other ignorant and gullible people are paying?
And also, the climate is always shifting rapidly, a truly stable environment would be the real puzzler.
“Once again, expensive field research doesn’t seem to have the expected sophistication of good design and comprehensive understanding of the situation.”
As the GUM states the FIRST thing one has to do with measurements is to define the measurand as completely as possible. It’s not obvious that climate science knows how to do this with anything.
The Climate Hysterics do define the measurand as completely as possible with completely and possible under their definitions.
Example: GUM? GUM? We don’t need no stinking GUM.
Once again a hijacked redefined/repurposed term. Smog originally was the combination of smoke and fog. It is now used for anything anyone wants to claim is pollution.
Still trying to figure out how pollution affects a statistical average.
Having lived in the San Fernando Valley (north of Los Angeles) in the 1950s, when the ‘smog’ was often so bad that it was difficult to see the homes across the street from the school yard, I have more than a passing personal acquaintance with the topic.
My recollection is that the newspapers and TV started using the term “smog” as a way to describe to the public what was truly pollution. That was in the days when fumes from car crankcases were vented directly to the air and outdoor burn barrels were common for many, if not most, homes as a way to dispose of home garbage.
Over time, as we learned more about ‘smog’ it was realized that fog was not an essential constituent. Instead, smoke from fireplaces and burn barrels, along with unburned hydrocarbons from cars, trucks, and buses, reacted with sunlight to produce ozone and nitrogen oxides to produce a chemically active haze. Later, it was discovered that natural terpenes (as from trees in the Great Smoky Mountains) could react with sunlight to produce ‘smog.’
When I was doing my senior-year geologic field mapping (1969), we were working north of Los Angeles for a month. Things were generally fine in the morning. However, in the afternoon, we could see a brown haze rise up to the south and move towards us. By the time it reached us, most of us started coughing. It is indeed pollution, whether one calls it “smog,” or a photo-reactive haze.
“in the new Arctic”
I have examined maps and globes old and new and nowhere can I find the “new Arctic.”
These processes accelerated sea-ice loss by forcing even more convection and cloud formation, which increased moisture and heat transfer and led to the formation of even more “leads, Fuentes said.”
Ah. The latest spin on the “runaway greenhouse effect.”
Feedback is another of those hijacked, redefined/repurposed word with a legitimate engineering definition, that when reading inspires me to pop another beer and release more CO2.
Always amused that the Church of Warming can constantly find methane emissions in the oil field and cow farts, but never mention the 66 Bcf of gas that blew into the atmosphere when they blew up Nordstream 2 pipeline.
Air sampling procedures were rigorously followed, in fact one days sampling had to be discarded after noticing trace gases of a few ppb were found. Three of the scientists, it was later determined, had a serving of beans with their morning breakfast. (This “rumor” hasn’t been confirmed…).