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--------------------- - 1645 - Climate Science to better understand Mother Earth.
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- A Sonoma State University lecture given February 3, 2014 by Warren Wiscombe, NASA Gotthard scientists, retired. The subject was Climate Science.
-. He began his lecture with the statement that there were many untruths about climate science. Today it is too dominated with politics and missing the good science that is really being done.
-. Climate Science came from two disciplines:
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-------------------- Radiation energy imbalance, ERI
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-------------------- Atmosphere and ocean dynamics, essentially weather forecasting.
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-. The Sun sees 1/4th of the Earth's surface at any one time.
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---------------- The total solar energy * ¼ = 340 watts per square meter
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-. Earth reflects 30% of this energy. It absorbs 70% and re- radiates into space this energy this amount of energy at longer wavelengths, infrared.
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--------------------------- Total radiation = 340 watts per square meter.
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--------------------------- 340 watts in and 340 watts out means the imbalance is zero.
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-. If radiation is in perfect balance the environment on Earth is stable, no changes.
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-. If the radiation and re-radiation is imbalanced by 1/2 watt per square meter the Earth would be heating up.
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- Called the ERI, the Earth radiation imbalance, it is positive, but, just how much positive, what are the long-term trends, what counter-balances are likely to reverse things, just what is in store for Mother Earth, and what can we be doing about it?
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- The oceans are the greatest absorbers of our the excess energy, contrary to present beliefs, it is NOT the atmosphere. 90% of the heat goes into the oceans and it can sink below the surface and not necessarily even make contact with the atmosphere.
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-. The radiation measured covers the wavelength from 50 to 2,000 nanometers. Visible light is 400 to 700 nanometers, blue light to red light.
-. Even if we got an ERI , imbalance, of 0 watts per square meter things would still warm-up because the heat would eventually come out of the oceans. 70% of the Earth’s surface is oceans.
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-. If the ERI increased by 2.0 watts per square meter we would have a serious global warming problem. 2 watts is less than ½% increase. That is a very small change.
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-. But, we are not able to measure the ERI accurately enough today. We don't know if they ERI is actually 0.5 or 2.0. In fact, current measurements range from ERI = 0.60 to an ERI = 6.5, with measurement uncertainties that overlap each other. We do not have faith in these numbers, but, they are both positive, indicating the Earth is warming up, but how much?
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-. The biggest uncertainty in all the climate models is the “clouds“. Other factors less consequential are vegetation, aerosols, ozone, and photo-chemicals.
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- NASA would like to put 66 satellites with radiometer's into orbit to get good measurements of the ERI. But, budgets won't allow these program at this time, (See RAVAN for more details).
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-. These satellites would monitor 250 kilometers per pixel with 100,000 samples taken at the equator and 10,000,000 samples at the poles. These measurements would be accurate enough to give science an ERI with acceptable measurement uncertainties. We would know precisely how much the Earth was global warming.
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-. Climate measurements have a “badly butchered history“. Too many climatologist use the data to make themselves important. (a.k.a. Al Gore)
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-. In 1989 Jim Hansen, a well known climatologist, testified before Congress and from that point on politics has dominated the climate field.
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-. In 1990 the politics got a little complicated because there were top-secret reports that the Russians were going to put black soot on the Arctic ice to open shipping lanes. What was this going to do to climate change?
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-. Another fear arose when reports surfaced that a 2% decrease in solar content would take Arctic ice to the equator and return us to “Snowball Earth“. 2% is a very slight change for such a consequential outcome.
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-. Another discovery was that the water vapor in the atmosphere doubles the impact of CO2 in the atmosphere. Clouds that contain this water vapor are the greatest variable in modeling the climate.
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- Today the models concentrate on water, CO2, ozone, and clouds as the four variables. CO2 has risen from 150 parts per million to 600 parts per million due to the industrial age and the fossil fuel burning.
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-. The albedo, reflectivity of the Earth, is 30%, but, that can vary with cloud cover. We used to think it was 40% until satellites gave us a better measurement.
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-. Now we have NASA “Earth System Science“. Check it out on the Internet. Here is a few cliff notes from the 80 page report.
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- What is global warming?
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-. Since 1900 temperature in the US has increased by 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, or, 0.8 degrees centigrade. July 2012 was a hottest month ever recorded. 2012 was the warmest year overall in this record. 60%of the country experienced drought, there has been an increase in air and water temperature, a decrease in water availability, an increase in storms, floods, and sea level rise.
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-. Thermoelectric power generation is at risk of needing more water for cooling, then is available.
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-. Hydraulic fracturing is at risk for the availability of large amounts of water.
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-. Increased temperatures means increase in electricity demand.
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-. (None of the eight consequences of global warming use numbers they need to be qualified and prioritized. Without measurements and quantification numbers only decisions with high uncertainly can be made.)
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-. We cannot improve something we cannot measure, unless we just happen to get lucky.
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-. The temperature increase of 0.8 centigrade on average for the U.S. has caused more frequent heat waves, more wildfires, fires lasting from 7.5 days to 37 days, permafrost thawing in Alaska, farmers growing season that has increased by 2 weeks.
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-. Projections are for the U.S. temperature to increase from 1.4 centigrade to 4.4 centigrade by 2030, depending on the assumptions used in the climate models.
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-. Shale gas production has increased from 0 in the year 2000 to 34% of the U.S. natural gas production in year 2012. It will be 50% by the year 2030.
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-. The difference maker in energy production has been in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Fracturing injects high-pressure water and sand into the well to create small fractures in the rock shell releasing the natural gas. Fracturing uses from 2 to 5 million gallons of water for each well. It has significantly increased production output for natural gas making it a cheap energy alternative in today’s market.
- …………… The full report is available at NASA , Energy System Science.
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