Newsgroups: lter.ced Path: LTERnet!news From: Bruce Hayden Subject: CED Oct/Nov part 2 Message-ID: <1994Oct31.193214.27470@lternet.washington.edu> Sender: news@lternet.washington.edu Organization: Long Term Ecological Research Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 18:37:30 GMT ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** THE SECRET OF NOT FINDING THE WARMING *** *** IT IS LOST IN THE BOUNDARY LAYER *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** My current thoughts are that we will not be able to find a greenhouse effect due to CO2 by looking in the boundary layer of our atmosphere for it. After all, the daily weather forecasting models we use are not used to directly predict surface weather conditions. Our National Weather Service predicts things about the free air above the boundary layer and then use STATISTICAL EQUATIONS to make their surface predictions! So it is not clear how the GCM that make the CO2 predictions can make direct surface temperature predictions because these models are just like weather forecasting models but not so good. To find the greenhouse warming we have spent so much money hypothesizing, we will need to look at the layer from 1,000 feet to 25,000 feet above the surface. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** BALLOON RECORDS *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Jim Angell and Spencer and Christie are our heros who chart the temperature history of the free atmosphere above the boundary layer and up to some 70,000 feet and call the story as the observations dictate. Angell uses data from the global network of weather-balloon, stations. Our GCMs tell us that the troposphere will warm and stratosphere will cool in response to increased CO2. The Stratosphere begins at about 50,000 feet over the equator and at about 35,000 feet over the poles. The current generation climate models also tell us that the tropospheric warming and the stratospheric cooling will be greatest in the high latitudes and not much in the low latitudes. Angell says the changes from the 1958-1972 period to the 1974-1988 period shows a marked cooling above 30,000 feet at all latitudes (that is in the upper troposphere). The greatest warming and the most cooling are in the equatorial regions not the polar regions. The amount the models say should things warm is, in addition to being in the wrong place, is six times greater than observed. So, either the changes we have seen to date are not due to CO2 or the models can not yet get the basic pattern or the amount of warming correct. Time and more data will tell. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** OXYGEN THERMOMETERS IN SPACE *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Heros Spencer and Christie are NASA scientists who spy on vibrational motions and radiations of oxygen molecules as proxies of temperature. They do all this with the MSU2R satellite which has the right sensors to do this. This part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth is now 14 years old and running. They look at the whole thickness of the earth's atmosphere, i.e. all the oxygen molecules in the column. They find "no statistically significant warming since 1979. Actually they report an insignificant cooling. If you look at the month by month average of Spencer and Christie's temperature record and at the record of surface weather stations (for example the Jones and Wigley or Karl temperature histories, we find the same ups and the same down in the record. The two records track themselves rather well. The surface temperature record (the thermometer record) however shows a slight warming trend of 0.5 C in the last 100 years (0.05 C per decade) and 0.03 C per decade for the last 50 years. The satellite does not see any such trend when it looks at the whole atmosphere through its depth. So the surface trend in the last 50 years [10 times less than the GCMs say it should be by now] is probably due to things going on at the surface and not due to CO2. That is my read on it right now. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** SO WHERE IS THE WARMING? *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** This question is on the lips of modelers and empiricists alike. Signal is a publication of the Walter Orr Roberts Institute at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, Boulder, CO. Tom Wigley of Jones and Wigley global temperature record fame and formerly of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Wigley "suspects" that "natural variation is more than enough to explain any remaining discrepancy." Perhaps the warming is still hiding in the data or in the data yet to come. Jim Hansen (NASA Goddard, NY) said the warming was already here in his 1988 testimony to congress. Admitting that the warming is missing, this past July 22 he said the warming will be detectable by the year 2000! Hey! That is just around the corner. Hansen suggests that our cutback on CFCs, 1991 Mt. Pinatubo, cloud drop forming sulfates, and reduced emissions have canceled out the CO2 warming or perhaps the warming is hiding in the deep oceans.. Well the CFC last for decades, it will be a while before they stop acting like greenhouse gases. There is not much left of Pinatubo's "detritus". Sulfates? Well where the sulfates are most abundant there is the most warming (at night) and where sulfates are not present we see little or no warming. Reduced emissions. In the US they have increased a bit since 1990. In the developing nations emissions increased 82% since 1970 and increase faster each year. It is hard to make the case of the missing warming being the result a decline in greenhouse gas emissions. The hunt for the missing warming is hot and soaking up disposable research dollars and so we will just have to go on waiting for the answer for a bit longer. I will keep you posted. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** JUST CROSSED MY DESK *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** The London Sunday times is always a source insight and an occasional British guffaw. This one should elevate our concern about the coming hot house earth of elevated CO2. The Times of July 24th reports, "The heat has been blamed for an international outbreak of irrationality, attributed by doctors to an increase in blood volume that starves brains of their normal levels of oxygen." We will have to remember not to have any Coordinating Committee meetings at the height of summer. It looks like we put the Network Office in the right place. I wonder what these fellows think about those of us who live in more torrid climes. At a related level of clear thinking is found the mid-October report from Chuck Shepard in his column News of the Weird. A California based environmental specialist has warned of the dangers to our planet from tall people. The claim is made that tall people require more of earth's resources than their fair share and so put us all at risk. Adult males less than 5' 0" and about 100 lbs are called for. This would take some nifty eugenics or something worse. Not really, this deep thinker seems to think that diet restrictions during childhood would do the job. Gee, I wonder just how tall the proposer of this idea is? ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** NEW GREENHOUSE PHYSICS *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** The electronic machinery of the rapid deployment forces of scientific communications are hot this last week in October [see New Scientist 8 October 1994]. According to NS a paper will appear in the next issue of Spectrochemica Acta by Jack Barrett of Imperial College London that offers a new physics for our earthly greenhouse.. First the Old Physics: Put more CO2 in the air and more photons of terrestrial light upwelling toward space are absorbed by the electrons of the CO2 molecule. In turn one of the CO2 electrons releases a photon that can go any direction -- up, down or sideways. The downwelling of such photons are captured by the electrons of molecules nearer the surface or by the surface itself. This extra downwelling of photons keeps the surface of our homey planet warmer than it would otherwise be, aka the greenhouse effect. The time (half-life) between an electron absorption of a photon and the electron release of a new photon is 10 microseconds. That is in 10 microseconds there is a 50% probability that a photon has already been released. In 20 microseconds there is a 75 percent chance the photon has already been released. This is a lot like the dance of your youth called the "bug." You had to get rid of it to another dancer before something hatched! In this model, photons are absorbed and re-emitted. Photons cascade upward toward space and downward toward terra firma. Photons go fast, the speed of light, and even with their average 10 microseconds of pause at each step in the cascade of light upward or downward, they still go fast. This is a radiative model: photons caught and then new photons emitted. [The best book on this photo/electron stuff is QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman published in the Princeton Science Library series.] Next the New Physics. The new physics about all this comes from the addition of another well known aspect of the physics of molecules and energy. At atmospheric densities, near sea level and near the surface of the earth the molecules of the air are very busy indeed. In 10 microseconds the molecule that had the electron that caught the photon would have had 10,000 collisions with other molecules. At each bump, the extra photon energy, now in the form of energy of one of three molecular motions (translation, rotation and springy) gives up some its energy in each collision. In short the photon-catching, CO2 molecule gives off its energy mechanically before it can emit the photon that might downwell to the surface and keep us all just a little bit warmer. Our friends at Imperial College tell us that in the lower reaches of our atmosphere the density of molecules is so great and average distance between molecules is so small that once a CO2 catches a photon it is not likely that the energy gained will be lost through the emission of a new photon. Rather the energy gets moved around from molecule to molecule by molecular collision, i.e. a mechanical process. Now, while these molecules are dancing the bug they do produce photons according to their temperature which in turn is a function of their molecular velocities. These photons don't get very far before they are absorbed by a greenhouse gas molecule. That is, the downwelling and the upwelling of photons is not very much or very far when the air is very dense! Under these conditions the movement of energy is by collision, conduction and diffusion. Now, this is not a very fast process in our air. Air is not a great conductor of heat (molecular motions) and triple-pane storm-windows and grandma's quilts show that value of air very nicely. So our politically incorrect Mr. Jones of the University of East Anglia in reviewing the yet-to-hit-the-streets paper, notes in The New Scientist "I would tend to believe the IPCC consensus regarding carbon dioxide and global warming rather than Barrett's personal view." We should not expect to see the greenhouse effect at the surface of our lovely planet. To see it (the old greenhouse method) work in its photon capture photon release, photon capture photon release, photon capture photon release, etc stuff, we need to look higher up in the atmosphere where the distance between molecules is longer and the chance of a collision less. To have an equal chance of giving off a photon or to give up the energy in a molecular collision we need to increase the distance between molecules by a factor of 10 to the fourth. At the surface molecules are about 10 to the -7 cm apart. At 50 km up they are 10 to the -3 cm apart. With the molecules only 10 to the -7 cm apart the chance of emitting a photon vs giving it up the dancing the bug method is 1 in 10,000! Now, all the molecules that are doing the bug with the old photon energy each have a chance to give up a photon. It it is in wavelengths that greenhouse gases absorb then it is not likely that the photon will either escape to space or reach the surface. However, the photons produced that have wavelengths in the atmospheric window can will make it out to space or down to the ground! Our atmosphere is transparent to the photons of this quality. They escape being absorbed and they leave the dance floor of the bug! So the new theory is that mechanical processes dominate at the bottom of the atmosphere and electron/photon radiative processes dominate at the top of the atmosphere and we gradually shift from one to the other as we go up through our atmosphere. So, will we then not be able to see the greenhouse effect at the surface because any more CO@ is just redundant? Do we have all the effect of CO2 we can get because the molecules are too close together? So maybe the missing warming is not missing at all just impossible! This is neuron warping stuff. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** *** *** *** *** *** ALSO HOT *** *** *** *** *** ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** Bruce Sellwood, Greg Price and Paul Valdes at the University of Reading [Nature vol. 370:453-] have new temperature calculations on Cretaceous (144 million to 65 million years ago). The cretaceous is thought to have had around 2000 ppm of CO2 (8X current levels). This research team works on oxygen isotope ratios in fossils (Rotalpora and Hedbergella shells) of the period. They find Cretaceous temperatures about like today or perhaps a bit cooler. Boys of the IPCC put Cretaceous temperatures at 5C top 10C warmer than today: toasty. So perhaps Barrett is right; putting more CO2 into the atmosphere is just redundant. It promises to be a fine year for science.