Whoa...wait a second...am I hearing this right Dan and ricky? You're contending that CO2 particles slamming into each other at a higher rate cause wind? The heating of the CO2 in the atmosphere is causing (or will cause) higher wind? Please tell me I'm misunderstanding you. And if I'm not...please point me to where you got the information you're feeding to poor Ray Jay.



{aside to other Redscapers}

"Is my browser the only one where each of ricky's posts has weird pagination? It's like a bad pan in a movie..."

danivon wrote:Redistributive taxation... is Min X's greatest fear.

LOL. Hardly. I've been participating in it all my life and have never voted for a single person who's against the basic system. If it were my greatest fear I'd never have come out from under my bed these last many decades!

(The smilies do show up on everyone's screens, I hope. Should I do something even more obvious when I'm trying to amuse more than inform or opine?)

pc

Whoa...wait a second...am I hearing this right Dan and ricky? You're contending that CO2 particles slamming into each other at a higher rate cause wind? The heating of the CO2 in the atmosphere is causing (or will cause) higher wind? Please tell me I'm misunderstanding you

Wind is caused by the uneven heating and cooling of the earths surface. Well, thats what I learned in Grade 4 anyway.

CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap more solar radiation in the atmosphere, warming the atmosphere. Solar radiation is energy. Energy usually released as heat.
It isn't CO2 particles bumping into each other....Its increased physical responses to an accumulation of energy....

As to sources: I'll see if I can find online the recent report from the Oregon State University. They've revealed that the hundred-year wave height in the Pacific Northwest, measured at 33 feet in 1996, was now 46 feet at least and might be as high as 55 feet.
[url]
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=oreg ... Lang=en-CA[/url]

There you go. Thats one. If you want an authoritative source try lloyds of London. In a recent bulletin they wrote: "The future of the UKs coastal cities is in jeopardy due to rising sea levels". They take the threat very seriously. Becasue its their business to assess risk.

whew...ok...you're calling greater wind an overall effect of global warming. Higher temps cause more intense high pressure areas...and I assume other places will cool off more dramatically forming deeper low pressure areas. Higher highs + lower lows = higher winds.

I thought you were arguing that energy builds up over time in the C02 particles in the atmosphere and must release itself from time as wind. That's a relief...I was about to call supremely bad science.


{and cheers for the better pagination}

And giant waves result from; increased top end wind events. And from geological events that may be caused by the effects of warming as well.

For instance, when undersea earthquakes occur, the resulting dislocation in the tectonic plates creates energy waves. Waves aren't the displacement of matter, but rather energy flowing through the medium. In the case of the ocean, the only actual displacement that takes place is as the energy is focussed on the edge of the medium (the water) and then forces the water onto the land. The increasing of an ocean by one inch increases the weight upon the tectonic plates enormously. By 1 foot? That additional weight is going to cause more geological events capable of triggering tsunamis.

The reason coastal communities are threatened by warming is not the perhaps foot high increase in water. its the resulting 100 foot waves that occur. (Once thought impossible, by the way, but now regularly measured) . Greater wave activity erodes the coast line faster, greater storm surges push up and often poison land near the ocean, and occassional roques (which are increasing in frequency as per Oregon research) can destroy entire communities.

Anchorage lost an entire suburb in 1964. Lisbon was utterly destroyed in 1755. A wave the size of the one that hit Lisbon would utterly destroy most American coastal communities. By increasing the energy in the artmosphere....inevitably we move towards the greater frequency of events like that.... And for daily disrutpion, we make ocean commerce more difficult, as higher average wave heights are sinking 2 large ships every week.

And remember, it was in 1855 that the theory of CO2 trapping of heat was first demonstrated in the lab. And 1898 when the idea that the phenomenon demonstrated in the lab in 1855 was first postulated to be affecting the to the atmosphere as a whole. The notion that anything being put forward about climate change today is new, or revolutionary, or poorly understood is nonsense. We know the physical effects, we just have had difficulty measuring them. What advances in satellite and computer technology have done is provide an increasingly focussed view of whats happening, and what is likely to happen.

rickyp wrote:CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap more solar radiation in the atmosphere...

Not quite true. The energy we get from the sun that ends up as heat here on earth comes in the form of light. The atmosphere in general and CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are largely transparent to visible light. When that light hits a dark object it warms it. That object then radiates the heat in the infrared wavelengths, and the greenhouse gasses are less transparent to energy in that form. They absorb some of it, which energizes those molecules, which has the effect of heating the atmosphere. Infrared radiation (heat) is emitted by objects at the surface of the earth (and clouds, etc.) regardless of what heated them. It doesn't have to have been "solar radiation" (by which I assume you meant visible light since UV, X-Rays, Gamma waves and radio waves don't create what we call heat). The earth has its own source of heat. Radioactive decay generates heat and some of that radiates away in the IR and CO2 molecules can't tell the difference between IR created that way versus IR caused by something being heated by the sun.



In the above diagram, the orange 33 PW line represents solar energy converted to heat within the atmosphere due to the fact that the atmosphere isn't 100% transparent. It isn't greenhouse gasses primarily at work at this stage, but rather water vapor and dust and whatnot. Yellow is solar radiation (light waves) and red is radiating heat (Infrared). Orange is heat held within a mass, in this case the atmosphere. It's that second orange arrow, the one numbered 26, that concerns us with AGW. This is the heat absorbed by greenhouse gasses and other things up there. Greenhouse gasses are called that because they are particularly good at absorbing IR. When the atmosphere gets more greenhouse gasses it can absorb more heat radiating away from the earth. Normally, that heat would radiate right through and out into space, as indicated by the red arrow quantified as 10 PW. If, instead of escaping the planet altogether, marginally more IR is absorbed in the atmosphere, the atmosphere warms. It, in turn, radiates more heat. We feel some of that on the surface (not depicted in the diagram), some escapes to space, and some gets re-absorbed by the atmosphere.

More greenhouse gas = less energy in the form of IR escaping to space. That's what global warming is all about. There's no question that, everything else being equal, adding CO2 and other greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere means less IR energy escaping to space. So unless we have less energy coming in (a less energetic sun, less radioactive decay in our core) or in some other way make up for the excess (i.e. more of the certain types of clouds that cause the yellow line at 35 PW), we get warmer. By "we" I mean the planet as a whole, which includes oceans, atmosphere and everything else.

The questions then become:
• How much extra heat?
• Where is it?
• What happens because of it?

One might also question whether the excess greenhouse gasses are coming from human activity or from some other source, but there's no question that we create such gasses in large quantities.

BTW, there's one other partial explanation for why AGW leads to "extreme weather". Just partial. Think about what constitutes "normal" weather for Seattle, WA versus what's normal for Las Vegas, NV. If these two locales were to somehow switch weather with each other, we'd be getting news reports of many broken records and lots of "extreme" weather - a horrible drought in Seattle and crazy flooding in Las Vegas, yet overall the combined temps and precip for the two places might be completely normal. So... Anything that causes weather patterns to shift a little, or alters the typical path of the jet stream, or an ocean current, may create a certain amount of "extreme" weather without creating any more "weather" than normal - just changing where or when it happens.

Obviously, two cities don't end up trading weather, but consider how different the "typical" conditions can be in two places that aren't far from each other, or are similar in many ways. For instance, Naples on the west coast of Italy is at the same latitude as the coast of California north of San Francisco, yet the weather is vastly different. In New Hampshire, Mt. Washington (highest peak in the state) at 6288 feet gets perhaps the craziest, most extreme weather on earth. But Mount Marcy (highest in New York State) at 5343 feet is as placid as could be. (I've climbed both - Mt. Marcy could be handled by my grandmother; on Mt. Washington I was nearly killed three different times on one climb.)

I'm not trying to be contrary, just trying to understand. The IPPC puts energy transferinto the atmosphere at being pretty low. Pretty low for landmasses as well while oceans are absorbing huge amounts. This doesn't disprove the thesis of higher winds, (higher temps of the ocean cause more heat to rise which creates a high pressure area...see Trade Winds) but I have to wonder why there wouldn't be more energy transfer to the atmosphere. Water is obviously more prone to energy transfer...but there's tons of water in the atmosphere.

x

I was nearly killed three different times on one climb.)

One should never go mountain climbing with one's wife. (nice chart...)

Water is obviously more prone to energy transfer...but there's tons of water in the atmosphere

.

What creates hurricanes? Warm, moist air accumulating over very warm water. (I know this is a short cut but I don't have a chart....)

PCHiway wrote:Whoa...wait a second...am I hearing this right Dan and ricky? You're contending that CO2 particles slamming into each other at a higher rate cause wind? The heating of the CO2 in the atmosphere is causing (or will cause) higher wind? Please tell me I'm misunderstanding you. And if I'm not...please point me to where you got the information you're feeding to poor Ray Jay.

No, PCH, it's not quite like that...

It's not the 'particles' it's the air as a whole. CO2 warms up, and so it warms up the air containing it.

If you have two blocks of air, one cooler than the other, then the warmer one will tend to rise and the cooler one fall (this is because warmer air is less dense). Depending on where they start in relation to each other, this causes wind patterns (and if a warm humid block of air meets a cold dry block, you will often get rain).

But when they do so, there is energy transfer

This is school-level physics.

danivon wrote: CO2 warms up, and so it warms up the air containing it.

This is school-level physics.

It may just be that you and ricky are bad at explaining this. See...the way you make it sound is that that CO2 warms up and then all that extra nitrogen and oxygen gets hot too. And both of you refer to energy stored in the atmosphere like a giant battery of doom to be released in the form of storms and wind eventually.

I get that CO2 traps solar energy in the atmosphere and that trapped energy raises the heat of all the molecules...particles if you will...that make up the atmosphere (mainly nitrogen BTW....heck my school taught me there's more argon than CO2) but the IPCC in the link I provided before says that the energy transfer to the atmosphere is actually pretty low.

Does this represent a disconnect between your understanding and the IPCC's? Or is there a way that you can have both minimal energy transfer to the atmosphere and also massive potential energy stored there that will eventually be released in the form of rougher storms and waves?

If there's no disagreement here I'll be happy to drop it. But if there is...this is a wonderful opportunity. If ricky and Dan are wrong...if there actually isn't that significant an energy transfer to the atmosphere...then we can determine where they got their theory and assess the source's value. Did they come up with it themselves based on their own knowledge? "The air's heating up...that energy has to go somewhere...that's school-level physics!" Or did they get it from an errant source? Or perhaps the IPCC is wrong? Or perhaps I'm misinterpreting the IPCC's data?

here's the link again for reference.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_dat ... 2-2-3.html

PCHiway wrote:...the IPCC in the link I provided before says that the energy transfer to the atmosphere is actually pretty low.

I think you may be misinterpreting what the IPCC report says. It seems that all they are looking at is the change in "energy content" over time of the various components of the planet. Of all the components, the largest change can be seen in the oceans. I can't see where, in here, they discuss anything about the dynamics of heat movement/transfer/dispersion within the atmosphere. In fact, transfer from one planet component to another is not discussed here. You say the page is saying "that the energy transfer to the atmosphere is actually pretty low" but it looks to me that it's saying that insofar as the energy content has changed over the two time frames, most of the difference has ended up being stored in the oceans. These are not the same things at all. Perhaps an analogy can help...

Say I boil some water in a metal pot over a gas stove and then separate stove, pot and water. Where is the heat energy and what happens over time? Initially, the energy is in the gas. It gets converted to heat when the gas is combusted and the blue-yellow flame we see on the stove-top is air that's gotten heated and that contains the by-products of combustion. That air touches the metal pot and heat (energy) is transferred to the metal. Metal is usually a good conductor of heat. The pot itself gets hot and in turn some of that energy is transferred to the water in the pot. It boils. We now turn off the gas burner, take the pot off the stove, and pour the water into a coffee mug. Wait two minutes. Where is all the heat now? The air near the burner is back to normal room temperature; the metal pot has cooled considerably; but don't stick your finger in the water - it has held onto a great deal of energy and you'll burn your finger.

The point is that where heat originates and where it ends up depend on a large number of factors. If global warming is occurring and is due to the greenhouse effect, then the following must be true: that the extra heat being generated in this way starts out as the energy in light waves, is converted to infrared energy when those waves hit something dark on the surface of the planet, and then is absorbed by the greenhouse gasses when some of that infrared would otherwise radiate out into space. Picture a blanket you get under on a cool night: your body gives off heat in the infrared and as it radiates away some is intercepted by the blanket. Now if all that heat were held in the blanket it would not do you any good to be under it. You wouldn't care if your body heat ends up on the ceiling or in the blanket - except the blanket in turn radiates some of that heat it's absorbed and some of it is radiated back to your body - you sense it as "being under (or wrapped in) a warm blanket". In similar fashion, when the molecules of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere absorb the heat radiated from the surface, they re-radiate it in all directions. Some is transferred to other molecules in the air, some is transferred out into space, and some is radiated back down to the surface and absorbed by whatever it hits there: earth or water or you. Some is reflected of this or that - heat is just bouncing around all over the place.

The graph on the page to which you linked is showing where most of that heat ends up. Why should it end up more in one place than another? Because one place (or type of material - in this case ocean water) might be better at holding the heat - worse at re-radiating it elsewhere. Oceans - I think, I'm doing some guessing here - are effective "heat sinks" for a couple of reasons. One is that currents are constantly churning the water and heat absorbed at the surface can spread throughout the oceans that way. Another reason is that water is very dense - a cubic meter of water holds a lot more molecules than a cubic meter of air. So, unlike rock and whatnot at the surface of the earth, oceans churn, and unlike air, water is thick.

Also look at it this way: two-thirds of the surface of the planet is water - nearly all of it ocean water. What part of the non-water surface gets heated by IR reflected from the atmosphere - to what depth? Dig down in the desert sands - it's very much cooler just an inch below the surface. But when ocean water warms it warms to depth. So where are most of the molecules that are going to get effected by a change in the energy budget: in the atmosphere, oceans, or top few inches of dirt? Answer: oceans. And that's where most of the heat ends up.

This has nothing to do with how molecules of greenhouse gas transfer energy to other molecules. I can't quite figure out what is giving you difficulties. Is it that? How energy can move from one molecule to another? Or is it how molecules in the form of a gas can transfer energy to molecules in liquid or solid form? I've been unable to appreciate your comments.

Maybe you are bad at explaining it - not just Ricky and Danivon.

danivon wrote:
As CO2 absorbs heat energy, the more of it there is the more energy will be in the atmosphere. Heat differences in gases cause them to move against each other, essentially heat energy is converted into kinetic energy.

Kinetic energy in the atmosphere manifests itself as wind. As in air moving about. The more kinetic energy there is, then the more air is moving or it is moving faster, or both.

rickyp wrote:And the HAVE to happen because there is more energy in the atmosphere and the oceans due to CO2 trapping solar radiation.... and that energy goes somewhere, reacts somehow, always.

CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap more solar radiation in the atmosphere, warming the atmosphere. Solar radiation is energy. Energy usually released as heat.

Ray Jay asked how AGW causes more extreme weather specifically stronger winds. From the quotes above I pieced together the following formula:

More trapped energy = hotter atmospheric gasses = more kinetic energy = stronger winds

Now X is explaining to me that the IPCC graph doesn't show how energy transfers...just where it ends up. Well...that seems to fox the above formula then doesn't it? If the energy isn't being stored in the atmosphere...it doesn't need to be released from there.

Perhaps middle school physics and meteorology aren't sufficient to make the case for the inevitability of stronger winds....

pc

Now X is explaining to me that the IPCC graph doesn't show how energy transfers...just where it ends up. Well...that seems to fox the above formula then doesn't it? If the energy isn't being stored in the atmosphere...it doesn't need to be released from there.

First, it indeed shows that energy is stored in the atmosphere. Its just that the amount of energy stored in the atmospehere relative to other end locations is relatively low. The factor that the oceans are great at sopping up so much energy is one reason modellers predict that there is a maximum average temperature that could possibly be achieved on earth.
However, that accumulated energy in the atmosphere still is more than it has been for many millenium and the increase in the energy level there is significant versus the status quo for thousands of years...

The graph X shows is where solar energy ends up. Not a comparison of absolute levels of energy in each part of the biossphere... Lets say that it used to be 32 PSw and now its 33 PSW becasue of Co2.... Thats a 3% increase in energy , every day. And it builds up over time.

That there is elevated energy means that the relative effects of wind will increase. and waves.
Thats settled science. what isn't settled is the extent to which a 1 degree rise in average temperature will have on the extremes of weather events. There is still some debate as well about frequency of weather events, but from what I've read the largest portion of the modelling community feel extreme events will not increase so much in frequency but are likely to be much greater in intensity.

PCHiway wrote:Ray Jay asked how AGW causes more extreme weather specifically stronger winds.

So is that the question you want answered? If so, allow me to make several observations.

1) I don't know the answer. Chances are that neither do Ricky or Danivon in any comprehensive way. That doesn't mean that no one knows the answer.

2) There's nothing that says climate science or AGW has to be simple enough for laymen to grasp all aspects of it after just an hour of wandering the WWW.

3) However, on an intuitive level it does make some sense to suggest that if you add energy to a system you're going to see more energetic behavior from it.

4) Perhaps this paragraph from the Wikipedia page on thunderstorms will provide a useful hint:

Thunderstorms occur throughout the world, even in the polar regions, with the greatest frequency in tropical rainforest areas, where they may occur nearly daily.... Thunderstorms are associated with the various monsoon seasons around the globe, and they populate the rainbands of tropical cyclones. In temperate regions, they are most frequent in spring and summer, although they can occur along or ahead of cold fronts at any time of year. They may also occur within a cooler air mass following the passage of a cold front over a relatively warmer body of water. Thunderstorms are rare in polar regions because of cold surface temperatures.

5) Another hint can perhaps be found in the section earlier on that same page where the mechanism of thunderstorms is explained:

Warm air has a lower density than cool air, so warm air rises within cooler air, similarly to hot air balloons. Clouds form as relatively warmer air carrying moisture rises within cooler air. As the moist air rises, it cools causing some of the water vapor in the rising packet of air to condense. When the moisture condenses, it releases energy known as latent heat of fusion which allows the rising packet of air to cool less than its surrounding air, continuing the cloud's ascension. If enough instability is present in the atmosphere, this process will continue long enough for cumulonimbus clouds to form, which support lightning and thunder. Meteorological indices such as convective available potential energy and the lifted index can be used to assist in determining upward vertical development of clouds. Generally, thunderstorms require three conditions to form:

1. Moisture
2. An unstable airmass
3. A lifting force (heat)

I'm sorry to report that I haven't the time to learn about "latent heat of fusion" or "convective available potential energy." But it looks to me like heat has something to do with thunderstorms. Of course, thunderstorms aren't the only form of severe weather or type of strong wind event. But heat is also involved in hurricane formation and hurricanes occur more in the tropics than the arctic.

6) If you are under the impression that global warming means that every breeze, gust or hurricane everywhere all the time will become 2% faster (or something like that), I suspect you're not on the right track.

7) If you are under the impression that Ricky sometimes guesses at things and makes it sound like he knows for sure, but is in fact wrong, I suspect you're on the right track.
(Which of us is completely innocent of that crime?)

rickyp wrote:pc

Now X is explaining to me that the IPCC graph doesn't show how energy transfers...just where it ends up. Well...that seems to fox the above formula then doesn't it? If the energy isn't being stored in the atmosphere...it doesn't need to be released from there.

First, it indeed shows that energy is stored in the atmosphere. Its just that the amount of energy stored in the atmospehere relative to other end locations is relatively low. The factor that the oceans are great at sopping up so much energy is one reason modellers predict that there is a maximum average temperature that could possibly be achieved on earth.
However, that accumulated energy in the atmosphere still is more than it has been for many millenium and the increase in the energy level there is significant versus the status quo for thousands of years...

The atmosphere is a pretty small component of the planet, by mass, or by number of particles, and is not itself a good store of energy, so it is right to say that very little extra energy will end up there. But that is still more than before.

Additionally, warm oceans lead to warm damp air blocks being formed. The more of them (or the warmer they are), then the greater the interaction with other blocks of air (cooler/dryer). The end result will likely be energy released from the atmosphere, so the net transfer may well be low, but that doesn't mean more wind or rain.