Extreme weather

[Alan Klein]

I just found Bart's favorite Mauna Loa Hawaii CO2 chart in an article about CO2.
https://www.inverse.com/article/59351-earth-atmosphere-carbon-dioxide-global-warming

What I'm curious though is something that hit me while reading it and what casues the earth to get warmer.  (CO2, methane, etc. says the article)> 

But how about something else.  I live in mid-New Jersey.  40 years ago it was practically all farm land.  Today, while there are still lots of ground and tree, there has been a lot of building going on.  Sidewalks, homes, asphalts, etc.  These things heat up from the sun a lot more than grass and trees.  Have the scientists calculated just how much the earth is warming up due to increasing population changing the landscape?  If so, what percentage do they claim?  (Ray?)

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I just found Bart's favorite Mauna Loa Hawaii CO2 chart in an article about CO2.
https://www.inverse.com/article/59351-earth-atmosphere-carbon-dioxide-global-warming

What I'm curious though is something that hit me while reading it and what casues the earth to get warmer.  (CO2, methane, etc. says the article)> 

But how about something else.  I live in mid-New Jersey.  40 years ago it was practically all farm land.  Today, while there are still lots of ground and tree, there has been a lot of building going on.  Sidewalks, homes, asphalts, etc.  These things heat up from the sun a lot more than grass and trees.  Have the scientists calculated just how much the earth is warming up due to increasing population changing the landscape?  If so, what percentage do they claim?  (Ray?)

Alan, virtually all of Earth's heat comes from the sun (and a minuscule part from volcanic activity, and we create some heat by burning stuff). Part of the sun's heat is temporarily absorbed, and part is reflected as longer wavelengths of light/heat. If we would not have an atmosphere and a similar Albedo, we would have a similar average temperature (-23 Celsius, ) and day/night swings (-173 C to +127 degrees Celsius, -280 F to +260 degrees Fahrenheit) as our moon which is at the same distance from the sun. The atmosphere traps some of the reflected and re-emitted heat so our Earth's surface temperature is roughly an average of +15 degrees Celsius instead of -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperature on earth is constantly being redistributed by the atmosphere and water, but it tries to escape into space unless it is blocked by Greenhouse gasses.

The amount of heat collected during daytime, depends on how of it much reaches the surface, and how dark that surface is. So part doesn't reach the surface because it is reflected by aerosols and clouds, back into space before it heats up stuff. The other/transmitted part reaches the ground/oceans and its Albedo determines how much is absorbed and how much is reflected. Darker surfaces, like soil or clear oceans, absorb more heat during daytime, but they re-emit some of it at night. It attempts to reach an equilibrium at absolute zero Kelvin (-273.15 Celsius, -459.67 Fahrenheit). Brighter surface areas, like snow and Ice, reflect most of the light/heat that reaches the surface.

You are correct in assuming that built areas like cities and dark roads, absorb more heat during daytime. Moist ground cools a bit due to evaporation, and biomass has a cooling effect caused by evapotranspiration. Cities, in general, become several degrees Celsius (2-5 C, depending on how many darker surfaces/roofs/roads there are) warmer on average than the areas with vegetation that surround them.
Even parks in a city can be several degrees Celsius cooler than the city itself from the combined effects of higher reflection, shadow, and evapotranspiration.

But at night, that heat tries to escape into space. Cloudy nights show less cooling than clear nights. Greenhouse gasses prevent all the heat from excaping.

Cheers,
Bart

[Alan Klein]

Bart,  Thanks for statistics. But is doesn;t answer my specific question.  How much of the increase in earth's overall temperature (so-called "climate warming") is caused by the change in land use from vegetation to human material like asphalt, concrete sidewalks, exterior building walls, etc.?  Do you know?

[Ray]

I just found Bart's favorite Mauna Loa Hawaii CO2 chart in an article about CO2.
https://www.inverse.com/article/59351-earth-atmosphere-carbon-dioxide-global-warming

What I'm curious though is something that hit me while reading it and what casues the earth to get warmer.  (CO2, methane, etc. says the article)> 

But how about something else.  I live in mid-New Jersey.  40 years ago it was practically all farm land.  Today, while there are still lots of ground and tree, there has been a lot of building going on.  Sidewalks, homes, asphalts, etc.  These things heat up from the sun a lot more than grass and trees.  Have the scientists calculated just how much the earth is warming up due to increasing population changing the landscape?  If so, what percentage do they claim?  (Ray?)

Alan, this is my take on it.

I think it's too complex to calculate accurately what the percentage influence is of the many factors which affect climate. The IPCC can't even be confident that floods, droughts and hurricanes have been increasing globally since 1950, despite the plethora of modern instrumentation and news reports of every major disaster that tends to be broadcast.

However, the IPCC is confident that we are currently in a warming phase, following the Little Ice Age, and that heat waves and precipitation have been increasing in intensity since 1950, which is what one would expect in a warming climate.

The degree to which heat waves are exaggerated by the Urban Heat Island effect (buildings, sidewalks, asphalt roads, heat from vehicles burning fuel, and so on) is also difficult to accurately calculate. I've seen reports that temperatures in big cities can be 2 or 3 degrees C hotter, or even more, than the surrounding countryside, which is a greater increase than the claimed global average increase in temperature during the past 150 years.

My impression, from my research and inquiries, is that there are broadly 5 major areas of contribution to the current change in climate.

1. Deforestation for the purpose of agriculture.

2. The Urban Heat Island effect resulting from population growth, increased urbanization, growth of cities and black asphalt roads, and so on.

3. Natural forcings due to changes in the activity of the sun, volcanic eruptions, changing ocean cycles, changes in the Earth's orbit or tilt, changes in the amount of cosmic rays from outer space reaching the Earth, and no doubt many more natural influences which are not understood.

4. Greenhouse gas emissions from mankind's activities, such as CO2 and Methane, and pollutants such as aerosols and smog which can actually have a cooling effect on climate, counteracting to some degree the slight warming effects of CO2 and Methane.  https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/aerosol

5. The great variability of water vapor, which is by far the most significant greenhouse gas. Water vapor doesn't just absorb infrared like CO2, it also transports heat from the water which has been evaporated (evaporation causes a cooling effect), and carries that heat higher into the atmosphere where it is released when it forms clouds and rains. Some of the released heat, or latent heat' tends to rise further, eventually into the upper troposphere from where it is radiated back into space.

I would suggest that Bart's final sentence in his post, "Greenhouse gasses prevent all the heat from escaping", is simply not true.

[Alan Klein]

Ray, let me ask a loaded question.  If they can't calculate how much asphalt and other changes to land use effects an increase in temperature, how come they blame CO2 and fossil fuels entirely?

[jeremyrh]

Ray, let me ask a loaded question.  If they can't calculate how much asphalt and other changes to land use effects an increase in temperature, how come they blame CO2 and fossil fuels entirely?

"They" don't, as Ray said - he gave list of other factors.

[Ray]

Ray, let me ask a loaded question.  If they can't calculate how much asphalt and other changes to land use effects an increase in temperature, how come they blame CO2 and fossil fuels entirely?

Alan,
I can think of a couple of major reasons, but it would be too difficult to calculate the percentage significance of each reason. 

(1) There is a major health concern about uncontrolled pollution from the burning of fossil fuels without adequate emissions controls. Whilst such 'real' pollutants can be controlled with 'state-of-the-art' technology, one can't enforce such controls on other less developed countries that are struggling to get enough energy in order to develop. Pollution and smog from forest clearing and fossil fuel burning can travel long distances by wind. Singapore and Malaysia experience regular haze every year from Indonesia, as a result of their burn-off practices, and Japan receives a lot of pollution blown in from China.

Since CO2 is the most abundant emission from the burning of fossil fuels, and the most expensive to eliminate, demonizing it and putting it in the same category as the harmful pollutants that affect human health, tends to increase the political motivation to make the transition to renewables which are cleaner than most existing coal plants, but unfortunately have their own problems of unreliability.

2. We've had major oil supply crises before, and there is the concept of 'peak oil'. Fossil fuels are a limited resource. As undeveloped countries strive to reach an American standard of living, the use of fossil fuels would increase dramatically, and at some point in the future there would be a major economic crisis as oil, coal and gas become scarce and expensive. Being prepared before this happens is sensible, and creating a scare about the bad effects of CO2 for everyone, will ensure that we will not have an economic collapse in the future due to a scarcity of fossil fuels, although we might have a major economic collapse for other reasons, and a major recycling problem as huge quantities of solar panels come to the end of their life. We might also experience an eventual scarcity of lithium and heavy metals used in batteries and solar panels, which could have serious economic consequences unless we developed alternative technology that uses other materials that are not scarce.

As you can see, I'm not opposed to the development of alternative energy supplies. 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

[...]
3. Natural forcings due to changes in the activity of the sun, volcanic eruptions, changing ocean cycles, changes in the Earth's orbit or tilt, changes in the amount of cosmic rays from outer space reaching the Earth, and no doubt many more natural influences which are not understood.

Solar activity, besides the approx. 11-year sunspot cycles, is rather stable over multiple decades and centuries, temperatures are not and they are rising faster than ever before. Earth's orbit and tilt are also pretty stable. It takes many centuries to create a measurable change. So those are not the cause.

I would suggest that Bart's final sentence in his post, "Greenhouse gasses prevent all the heat from escaping", is simply not true.

I agree, 'all' the heat is a bit much. However, without the buffering and distribution by oceans and the thin layer of atmosphere, night temperatures would drop towards -173 Celsius (-459.67 Fahrenheit). The buffering/trapping/redistribution effect is pretty significant.

Ray, let me ask a loaded question.  If they can't calculate how much asphalt and other changes to land use effects an increase in temperature, how come they blame CO2 and fossil fuels entirely?

One can measure it. The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) properties of e.g. Methane, CO2, and water-vapor are known. The concentration of those elements in the atmosphere can be measured, and hence the effect on the energy transfer is pretty well known.

One can measure incoming solar energy above the atmosphere, and how much of that reaches the ground in the lower atmosphere.
One can measure how much surface energy in the lower atmosphere is reflected and emitted, and how much of that escapes the atmosphere.

I don't have the time to do your homework, but I assume that the IPCC reports or links to their sources can shed some more light on that difference between urbanized areas and various other surfaces.

Cheers,
Bart

[Ray]

Solar activity, besides the approx. 11-year sunspot cycles, is rather stable over multiple decades and centuries, temperatures are not and they are rising faster than ever before. Earth's orbit and tilt are also pretty stable. It takes many centuries to create a measurable change. So those are not the cause.

All these influences combined are having some net effect continuously, including influences from varying degrees of cosmic radiation, and likely other influences we haven't yet discovered or cannot measure. All this contributes to uncertainty.

I agree, 'all' the heat is a bit much. However, without the buffering and distribution by oceans and the thin layer of atmosphere, night temperatures would drop towards -173 Celsius (-459.67 Fahrenheit). The buffering/trapping/redistribution effect is pretty significant.

Of course it's significant. We absolutely need greenhouse gases. But the significance of that 'heat trapping effect' as applied to each single CO2 molecule surrounded by close to 2,500 nitrogen and oxygen molecules, is likely very low.

Whilst it's true that CO2, like water vapor, has the characteristic of absorbing infrared frequencies associated with heat, it is also constantly emitting that radiation in all directions. That emitted radiation (or heat) is constantly being absorbed and re-emitted by other greenhouse gases, water vapor being the main one. But some of that heat (or energy) is also transferred to the non-greenhouse gases such as Nitrogen and Oxygen through conduction. All the gas molecules in the atmosphere are constantly colliding with each other as they vibrate with energy, and they transfer some of that energy or heat to non-greenhouse gases. The convection of rising warm air and strong winds distributes that absorbed heat from the Earth's surface throughout the atmosphere, and into the upper atmosphere where most of it is radiated back to space.

One can measure it. The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) properties of e.g. Methane, CO2, and water-vapor are known. The concentration of those elements in the atmosphere can be measured, and hence the effect on the energy transfer is pretty well known.

In a laboratory, yes, or a theoretical computer model. But the climate is a complex, non-linear, chaotic system with so many interacting variables that measuring the effect of each of the many variables is largely guesswork. The effects of the major greenhouse gas, water vapor, is often excluded from computer models because its variability in concentration is too great and because of the difficulty in quantifying the albedo effect from clouds, which might counteract any warming effect from CO2.

How many times have you seen a round chart which appears to show the percentages of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but completely excludes the main greenhouse gas, which is water vapor? Ridiculous! 

[Alan Klein]

...

How many times have you seen a round chart which appears to show the percentages of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but completely excludes the main greenhouse gas, which is water vapor? Ridiculous! 

Ray, So if there are many gases and water vapor affecting a rise in earth's temperature, what percent is attributable to CO2 and to each of the others?  Is the rise claimed by science of let's say 2 degrees only due to CO2 or a combination of all the influences? 

[Ray]

Ray, So if there are many gases and water vapor affecting a rise in earth's temperature, what percent is attributable to CO2 and to each of the others?  Is the rise claimed by science of let's say 2 degrees only due to CO2 or a combination of all the influences?

Alan, the water vapor has both positive and negative effects on temperature, which tends to result in a balance.

Any slight warming, whatever the cause of the warming, will result in more water vapor rising into the atmosphere, due to increased evaporation.

The 'alarmists' claim that because water vapor is a greenhouse gas, any increase will cause further warming, and that further warming will result in yet more evaporation which will also cause yet more warming, possibly resulting in a runaway warming effect. Very alarming! This known as positive feedback.

Fortunately, water vapor also has a cooling effect as the liquid water is converted to a gas. When the water vapor condenses into clouds, the clouds reflect the incoming solar radiation, known as the albedo effect.

The positive feedback is thus counteracted by the negative feedback.

[Alan Klein]

Ray, to get back to my question, how much of the temperature rise is attributable to CO2? 

[Ray]

Ray, to get back to my question, how much of the temperature rise is attributable to CO2?

Alan,
In my humble opinion it is not known, due to the enormous complexity, chaos, and non-linearity of climate, and due to the multitude of interacting forces that affect climate, with varying degrees of positive and negative feed backs.

If it was known, we could then truly claim, 'the science is settled', and as a consequence the money (or energy) used to support Climate Research Centres could more sensibly be directed towards research into improving the technology of renewable energy, and retraining some of the climate scientists for more productive jobs. 

However, my impression is, that great authority on climate, the IPCC, is of the view that about 70% of the current warming is due to human emissions of greenhouse gases. The other human activities such as deforestation and urbanization would increase that effect to greater than 100% if it were not for the cooling effect of aerosols and the cooling effect of the natural influences on climate.

In other words, we would still be in the Little Ice Age, were it not for the effects of industrialization.

Below is an interesting chart from the latest IPCC report, the AR5. However, it doesn't separate the effect of CO2 from the other greenhouse gases such as Methane and Nitrous oxides.

The black bar represents the HadCRUT4 observed warming from 1951 to 2010, which is shown to be about 0.65 degrees C.

The Green bar represents the amount of warming caused by human greenhouse gas emissions during the same 59 year period, which is significantly greater, at 0.9 degrees, than the observed warming at 0.65 degrees C.

The orange bar represents the combined human effect of GHG emissions plus all other human activities, including the emission of aerosols which have a cooling effect. Despite the cooling effect from human emitted aerosols, the warming effect shown in the orange bar is still slightly greater than the observed warming shown in the black bar. This indicates that the 'natural effects' on climate must also contribute some cooling.

The yellow bar represents the cooling effects due to human activities such as aerosols.

Below the yellow bar are shown the variability of the natural forcings from the sun and volcanoes, etc, and the natural internal variability due to changing ocean cycles, and so on.

Oops! Have I just promoted 'climate change alarmism'?   

[Alan Klein]

The recent hot weather, over 93 degrees, here in New Jersey cause my bush outside to grow new flowers after the season was over.  Compare the old colored out ones with the newly grown white ones.  Isn't warm weather great?

[Ray]

The recent hot weather, over 93 degrees, here in New Jersey cause my bush outside to grow new flowers after the season was over.  Compare the old colored out ones with the newly grown white ones.  Isn't warm weather great?

A moderate degree of warming, plus a moderate degree of increased rainfall, plus a moderate degree of increased CO2 levels, should, on average, be very good for the environment.

The claimed average increase in global temperature, of 0.8 to 1 degree Centigrade since the end of the Little Ice Age, about 170 years ago, seems very moderate to me. 

[Alan Klein]

A moderate degree of warming, plus a moderate degree of increased rainfall, plus a moderate degree of increased CO2 levels, should, on average, be very good for the environment.

The claimed average increase in global temperature, of 0.8 to 1 degree Centigrade since the end of the Little Ice Age, about 170 years ago, seems very moderate to me. 

You've be claiming that and I've been supporting that viewpoint agreeing that the world now has much more arable land because of warmer weather and higher CO2.    We've also been getting a lot of rain here, the highest amounts ever. I've thought my bushes and plants were thicker this year.  But I figured that was just an illusion; wishful thinking on my part.  But now with the new flowers in October, I can see the proof.  Warmer and wetter are better.

[LesPalenik]

Warmer and wetter are better.

That's what I've been telling my lady friends.

[Alan Klein]

A new benefit from climate change.

[Rob C]

That's what I've been telling my lady friends.

You can expect a thermos flask for Christmas.

:-)

[degrub]

Or a K-Y brand warmer.