Climate, stabilty and feedback

[Billy T]

I'm replying to Trippy's question at end of his post 38. (This new sciforums reply page does not show that which makes it impossible to know if it will appear in this post - and worse - gives no option to edit his post down to just that final question.)
Yes, I think I must have at least skimmed it but not sure what link you refer to. Your post 34 refers to a link but new format does not even show it!

I am rapidly losing interest in the Stratosphere that I had when falsely thinking the top of the Hadley cells was there. From some ref you gave, I think, the aerosols in the stratosphere were stated to come from a circulation there, much like the Hadley cell circulation and with time scales of years, as I recall for full loop. No water droplet clouds up there - Those drops of clouds in the troposphere, if clean scatter mainly in the near forward direction dozens of times (as I have explained at least twice) before the random walking in angle space photon is ceasing to go ever deeper into the cloud. Thus a very tiny fraction of black aerosol soot added to the cloud drastically reduces cloud's ability to reflect incident sun light back into space.

In the Physics & Math forum, I have new thread telling six not too bad approximations, I think, could be used in Monte Carlo analysis to get a good guestimate of what fraction of black soot (compared to water drops) is required to say cut the reflectivity of the cloud in half - For example drop r from 2/3 down to r =1/3 , which doubles the heating taking place in the cloud. This internal heating shrinks the water droplets mass and density as drops become transparent to visible sunlight, so it is not only the cloud that gets hotter, but the earth below it too and with more of the most powerful GHG (water vapor) above it that hotter earth's IR is better blocked from escaping to space.

As I have several times suggested - burning large part of rain forests (which don't now get their needed rain) is probably the fastest path to very serious GW problems. In 2005 the Amazon was dying back so fast and new growth so slow that it was a net source of CO2 release, not a sink as often assumed. If could burn, I think in massive fire lasting some months. - A huge "burp" of CO2 quickly released would be bad, but worse I think, is Hadley cloud tops converting from reflectivity to ~0.67 to 0.17 or so. - more than 250% increase in the heating of the cloud by the sun.

BTW in the Climate-gate thread, where I told my invention idea that can help mother nature kill the CH4, and why ceasing patent & promotion efforts. (Not economically profitable now with carbon off-set prices so low than even most exchanges they traded in are now closed) Profit was never for me, but to make a significant difference more than 1000 of my devices would need to be deployed. (I liked the irony that profit motive, which caused the GW problem, might be used to partially solve it.) Any way I plan a post in that thread telling that when things get really bad, my idea may be funded by governments, perhaps even Brazil as a Southern Hemisphere defense - a life boat for small part of humanity.

 

[Trippy]

Today's the first dayI've been able to log in and post.

I'm replying to Trippy's question at end of his post 38. (This new sciforums reply page does not show that which makes it impossible to know if it will appear in this post - and worse - gives no option to edit his post down to just that final question.)
Yes, I think I must have at least skimmed it but not sure what link you refer to. Your post 34 refers to a link but new format does not even show it!

Links do show up, unfortunately they're not underlined like they used to be and the differences between them and text hard to see. This has the disadvantage that unless you mouse-over every word there's a high chance you're going to miss links.

 

[Billy T]

Today's the first day I've been able to log in and post.

Links do show up, unfortunately they're not underlined like they used to be and the differences between them and text hard to see. This has the disadvantage that unless you mouse-over every word there's a high chance you're going to miss links.

Thanks. That color came with the mouse, as you said, but left click on it gave nothing, yesterday. Then I guessed correctly that this is another "two click case" where one must right click and then select "open" from the list of actions that appear. I sure hope the old system than made links obvious and only one click away can be restored. Following is from your link:

Recent observations and analyses presented by Brock et al. (1995) strongly suggest a tropical source for the non-volcanic stratospheric sulfate particles.
In this paper we accept the existence of a background non-volcanic aerosol and we study the microphysical processes that maintain it. Our intention is to sketch picture of the life cycle of the stratospheric aerosol.
Unfortunately their summary graphic will not copy and post from the PDF file, but it and cloud classe and distribution by altitude show that cloud effects upon GW are almost entirely in the troposphere - a large part of why I now have little interest in the stratosphere except for its absorption of the harsh UVc that could destroy CH4, if the OH radical produced there could diffuse or be convected down to where we live and the CH4 is significantly, and ever increasingly, adding to GW (both by growing half life and concentrations).

 

[Trippy]

Unfortunately their summary graphic will not copy and post from the PDF file, but it and cloud classe and distribution by altitude show that cloud effects upon GW are almost entirely in the troposphere - a large part of why I now have little interest in the stratosphere except for its absorption of the harsh UVc that could destroy CH4, if the OH radical produced there could diffuse or be convected down to where we live and the CH4 is significantly, and ever increasingly, adding to GW (both by growing half life and concentrations).

Cloud effects might be largely tropospheric, however, methane effects - including its destruction are both tropospheric and stratospheric. You simply can not afford to ignore the stratosphere. If you do, it will lead you to wrong conclusions. Methane oxidation is one of the most important sources of stratospheric water vapour.

 

[paddoboy]

Climate detectives reveal handprint of human caused climate change in Australia:


extract:

According to the research papers presented in BAMS, the impact of climate change significantly increased the chances of record heat events in 2013. Looking back over the observational record the researchers found global warming over Australia (see attached graphic): doubled the chance of the most intense heat waves, tripled the likelihood of heatwave events, made extreme summer temperature across Australia five time more likely increased the chance of hot dry drought-like conditions seven times made hot spring temperatures across Australia 30 times more likely.

But perhaps most importantly, it showed the record hot year of 2013 across Australia was virtually impossible without the influence of human-caused global warming. At its most conservative, the science showed the heat of 2013 was made 2000 times more likely by global warming.

"When it comes to what helped cause our hottest year on record, human-caused climate change is no longer a prime suspect, it is the guilty party," said ARCCSS Australian National University researcher Dr Sophie Lewis.



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-climate-reveal-handprint-human-australia.html#jCp

 

[Billy T]

Cloud effects might be largely tropospheric, however, methane effects - including its destruction are both tropospheric and stratospheric. You simply can not afford to ignore the stratosphere. If you do, it will lead you to wrong conclusions. Methane oxidation is one of the most important sources of stratospheric water vapour.

Yes. I agree but better to kill it even before it gets up there. Possible with man-made UVc as I have suggested.

In your first "surface graph" the two hot spots are not flared adequately oil and or gas wells. Argentina does not enforce the laws (or much else now in a state of near collapse) and no one is in control in the strife torn Mid east. The more wide spread light yellow areas are where there are large swamps or extensive rice fields. The Siberian orange spot is where Russia is getting natural gas. It will be larger by expansion eastward by 2018 when the 400 billion dollar pipeline to China is being filled.

In the second graph, I think, CH4 is being brought up from the surface by Hadley cells - those two go twice as high as the two other pairs. -You can see this in recent graph I posted and commented on pointing out the false impression all drawing I have ever seen that ignore the Corolla's effect making them twist, and not be closed loops at one longitude sector as all the graphs show. Your second graph with the Stratosphere distribution of CH4 follows naturally from fact the main pump up is these two Hadley cells. A constant fresh input of CH4 coming up via this Hadley pump and then spreading towards the poles, but up there in the stratosphere the solar UVc is strong* and making both ozone and OH radical so destroys most of the rising CH4 before it gets much out of the tropics - I.e. CH4 concentration in the polar lower troposphere is the highest (except for man- made sources) but is the lowest in the polar stratosphere.

* Not only is it strong, but at high latitudes the photon path thru thin air is much longer. Why the "ozone layer" is at the poles and not where the solar UV gets quickly down into denser air.

 

[Billy T]

... The positive feedbacks are a lot more worrisome. One common one is methane release from frozen sequestration (tundra, clathrates.) As these materials melt methane and CO2 are released, and methane is a strong greenhouse gas. (CO2 is relatively weak in comparison.) Thus more methane = more temperature increase = more melting = more methane. Another is albedo change; as snow and ice melt, darker surfaces are exposed to the Sun and absorb more heat. ... uncertainty, on the surface, is a bad thing because it leads one to believe that we can't predict what will happen in the future. Fortunately, we have some other tools - behavioral observation. ... However, we are fortunate in that we have historical proxy records in the form of ice cores, sedimentation, tree growth rings etc that allow us to see what has happened in the past. Thus we can look back in time at other "step changes" in the climate and see how the planet has reacted.

One of the big worries for some is that the climate is inherently unstable. Give it a step change and first all the methane is released from melting permafrost, and that warms us 20 degrees. Then the oceans evaporate, and all that water in the atmosphere traps all our heat and raises it another 50 degrees. Then some of the water turns to steam and that raises the temperature even more. (Same fear for the other direction - it snows, the snow reflects more light, it gets colder, it snows more, the oceans freeze, it gets colder still etc.) In an inherently unstable climate, a large enough step change will cause an irreversible slide in one of these directions as the positive feedbacks outweigh the negative ones.

Fortunately, in our entire 4.5 billion year history, that has never happened - and that is a strong argument for negative feedback dominating over positive feedback in the long run. However, there are good indications that positive feedback is a significant event in the short term. We have seen several rapid warming periods where a step increase ... The biggest one of these, the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, resulted in a 6 degree C rise in temperature - higher than almost every conceivable scenario that we could drive by 2100. Fortunately, that data shows that those positive feedbacks are eventually swamped by the negative feedbacks. One of the strongest drivers of this is likely blackbody radiation. It is a small negative feedback at first, but since it increases by the fourth power of temperature, it very rapidly becomes significant and slows down further temperature rise - and thus the Earth stabilizes at a new, higher temperature. ...

That is a comforting line of reason, but 100% false because: "This time is different" in that the RATE of CO2 release is about 50 times greater than ever before.

Thus the rate of global warming is about 25 times faster than ever before. Only 25% because about 50% of the heating due to increase of IR escape blocking by Green House Gases, GHG, is being currently stored in in the deep ocean where the temperature rise is faster (% change in Kelvin) than the surface which cools by evaporation (7% more water vapor in air's global average, for each 1degree C rise of ocean surface temperature). I. e. We are not paying for the damage man is doing - We will only have paid the full bill for 2014's CO2 release after ~ 5 decades (circa 2065) and of course with more CO2 being released each year (especially buy China) the "future bill" is rapidly increasing. Man is like the user of several credit cards, who pays one off with the other, so ever year his total credit card debt increase, even if he does pay half what is currently due in cash.

This ~25% faster GHG caused heating of the land (especially the artic tundra) is making the release of CH4 much faster (factor of 10 times?) than it has ever been in at least the last 800,000 year for which we have ice core data on atmospheric CH4 concentrations. (now CH4 concentration is ~3 times higher than the peak of last 800,000 years and climbing still.

Must take about an hour break before continuning to show your ideas about T^4 saving us are nonsense too. Posting now to not lose above.

 

[Billy T]

Editing time limit expired so continuing post47 here:

The rate that harsh solar UV could make the OH- radical was always in the past much greater than the CH4 release rate - That is why the CH4 concentration "forever" was low as OH- is the main destroyer of CH4. Now "the tables have turned" The CH4 release rate is much higher than the OH- production rate, which is limited by the essentially constant energetic solar UV. So the cocentrtion of CH4 is climbing and that of OH- is falling. This means each molecule of the very powerful GHG, (A kg of CH4 causes more global warming than 100Kg of CO2 in the first year after simulatnous release of both. Or 84 times more in the first decade after release) has a half life that is now increasing at 0.3year every year that passes. (In 2003 the CH4 half life was 9.6 years but in 2013, it was 12.6 years. Soon it will be 13 years, etc. and do 100 times more damage per kg released than CO2 when averaged over a decade, etc.) I explained why CH4 is such a powerful GHG to Billvon and part of why it will eventually be more important than CO2 as cause AGW at:
http://www.sciforums.com/threads/is-global-warming-even-real.143423/page-16#post-3273029 the end of that post was:
Again: the real extinction threat is CH4 (assuming ocean acidification and AGW's rainfall shifts, etc. do not destroy the bottom of the food chain first.)

Now I will explain the other part of why Billvon's idea that the T^4 law gives a "negative feed back" that will save us is NONSNESE by quoting some text from the post where I have already explained that to Billvon:

"In the absorption band wave length where the optical depth is less than the thickness of the atmosphere - the IR radiation from the surface, which is that of a BB reduced by a less than unity factor (e, the emissivity) will not cool the Earth as you state. It will be absorbed. If that absorption point is in the first layer of the atmosphere, where most of the gases are, the troposphere, then the absorbing layers are colder than the surface and are BB radiation limited to a much lower rate than the surface rate, again by the ratio (t/T)^4, where t is the temperature at the elevated point in the atmosphere approximately one optical depth from outer space (not from the surface) and T is the surface temperature. (In the troposphere the temperature decreases with altitude adiabatically - a warm mass of air rises and expands cooling as it does so.)

The strongest absorber (of the three main ones: H20, CH4 & CO2, in that order per molecule or per Kg) is H2O. There is essentially unlimited H2O on Earth and the amount in the atmosphere increases (on average) by 7% for every degree C of temperature rise. Thus it is well know, but not easy to demonstrate mathematically (but has been done several times)* that no matter how hot the Earth surface becomes there is a maximum rate at which IR can escape to space in the many and wide H2O absorption bands. - Exactly the opposite of your assertion.

What you say about BB cooling the surface is true ONLY for wave lengths where the atmosphere is "optically thin." Because of "pressure broadening" of spectral lines as more H20 is added to the atmosphere these optically thin "windows" narrow. (Doppler broadening is less important but also helps to close these windows in the IR.) Visible light will still heat the surface, if not reflected by clouds, but GW is increasing the amount of carbon soot put into the clouds by large fires, reducing their effectiveness.

Although the math showing this is complex, understanding approximately how this comes to be is easy: As the surface temperature increases, the H2O in the atmosphere increases, and the layer, one optical depth from space, from which the H2O radiation can escape moves to higher altitude, where the air is colder.

We certainly do have the power to make life on much of the Earth impossible, and if present rate of GHG continues that is certain where every the wet bulb temperature reaches 35C for all warm blooded creatures, except the very tiny ones, like miniature mice. Just sitting in a chair, humans generate ~100W, which they must transfer to their environment or die in less than an hour. Most of the transfer, when not in cold water but thermally stressed (sweating) is by evaporation of water from the skin (and moister leaving in your breath). Your 37C body can not cool adequately in 35C wet bulb temperature - you will die. Civilization will collapse and as it does so, the release of aerosols will dramatically decrease. That leads to at least a 2degree C step increase in air temperature (On the same time scale as the collapse, which can be weeks with no power or drinking water coming from your water faucet. More than 10 million bodies will be unburied in the first month post collapse, climbing to more than 100 million in less than a year, creating global plagues that kill most, if not all who live closer to the Poles where 35C will not occur for decades."

SUMMARY: A little knowledge (about IR transfer, and the T^4 law in this case) is a dangerous thing. How dangerous may be best told here: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/is-global-warming-even-real.143423/page-18#post-3287822 (my reply to Origin) which concludes with:
SUMMARY:
When you brand SCIENTICALLY BASED CONCLUSIONS as "absurd" as they conflict with your opinions / beliefs,
You place yourself squarely in the "denier's" camp.
and that applies to Billvon but his problem may be more "a little dangerous knowledge."

 

[billvon]

When you brand SCIENTICALLY BASED CONCLUSIONS as "absurd" as they conflict with your opinions / beliefs,
You place yourself squarely in the "denier's" camp.
and that applies to Billvon but his problem may be more "a little dangerous knowledge."

Good! If you think I'm a denier, and far right wing conservatives think I'm an alarmist, I must be doing something right.

 

[sculptor]

Leave us not to forget the appetites of the primary producers!

 

[RainbowSingularity]

Although the math showing this is complex, understanding approximately how this comes to be is easy: As the surface temperature increases, the H2O in the atmosphere increases, and the layer, one optical depth from space, from which the H2O radiation can escape moves to higher altitude, where the air is colder.

is this going to raise the precipitation level between the sea level ad the area above it making the human habitable zone much more saturated with water ?

 

[exchemist]

is this going to raise the precipitation level between the sea level ad the area above it making the human habitable zone much more saturated with water ?

You are replying to a post from 4 years ago and the person to whom you are addressing your question has since died: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/is-it-true-billy-t.157503/#post-3449129