GREENHOUSE GAS ACCUMULATIONS CHANGE THE WEATHER |
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Globally,
heat waves during the last decade have killed more persons than
tornados, hurricanes, and lightning combined. by
Roy McAlister Regardless of
everything else you have heard, Earth’s atmosphere is a giant heat
engine. Like all heat engines it operates by receiving heat, doing work,
and rejecting heat that has not been converted into work. Solar
energy heats Earth’s atmospheric engine and heat not converted into
work is radiated to the cold black vacuum of space surrounding our
planet. Work accomplished by Earth’s atmospheric engine includes
evaporation and transport of enormous amounts of water from the oceans
and continents to other locations where it precipitates as snow, hail,
and/or rain. Closely
related to astonishing amounts of water transported is the enormous work
of moving air masses by what we observe as breezes, winds, tornadoes,
and hurricanes. Earth’s atmospheric engine also powers generation and
discharge of electricity, sometimes by astoundingly hot plasmas we call
lightning. Compared
to our Sun, the spectrum of radiation wavelengths from stars is shorter
at higher frequency from hotter stars and longer at lower frequency from
cooler stars. In other words the higher the temperature of a radiation
source, the shorter and more energetic the average radiation. Most
radiation reaching the Earth is from our Sun, the closest star, and is
called solar energy. Radiation
reaching the Earth consists of a spectrum of wavelengths that relate to
the astronomical temperature of the Sun’s surface. About 4% is in a
band of wavelengths that are too short to be detected by sight. And
about 44% is in a band of wavelengths that are too long to be detected
by our eyes. The remaining visible spectrum is the rainbow of colors
that are separated by refraction when sunlight passes through a prism. Civilization
now depends upon burning more than one million years’ of fossil
accumulations each year. Mining
and burning Earth’s fossil reserves after being stored for some 100 to
600 million years changes the atmosphere by additions of carbon dioxide,
methane, oxides of nitrogen, and particulates. We add even more methane
but lesser percentages of carbon dioxide from anaerobic decay of our
sewage and garbage, feedlot wastes, and forest biomass.
Analysis of Artic and Antarctic snow cores show that Earth’s
atmosphere now has 30% greater concentration of carbon dioxide and over
100% greater concentration of methane than at any time in the 160
thousand years preceding the fossil-fueled Industrial Revolution Greenhouse
gases added to the atmosphere allow most wavelengths of solar radiation
to pass through the atmosphere to impinge upon and heat Earth’s land
and water surfaces. But the temperatures achieved by radiative heating
of such surfaces are far cooler than the temperature of the Sun. Thus the wavelengths of radiation from such sources are far
longer than solar radiation. Greenhouse gases selectively absorb
substantial amounts of these longer wavelengths and cause the enormous
atmospheric engine to gain more energy than before greenhouse gases
accumulated in the atmosphere. With
more energy the atmospheric engine is doing more work.
According to scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology
(Georgia Tech) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR),
the average annual number of major hurricanes has doubled since 1970.
Hurricanes
draw energy from heat stored in tropical oceans. The cyclonic winds of a
hurricane increase in velocity as heat from tropical waters is added,
largely in the form of evaporated water vapors that are lifted into
clouds that reach high above the surface. As the vapors condense into
rain droplets enormous energy is added to the winds rotating around the
eye of the hurricane. Category
4 and 5 hurricanes reaching extremely dangerous wind velocities have
nearly doubled in the last 35 years in close correlation to increases in
greenhouse gas accumulations and global burning of the Earth’s fossil
reserves. In addition, category 4 and 5 hurricanes are making up a
larger share of the total number of Earth’s hurricanes in correlation
to accumulations of greenhouse gases. Even
if a way to cancel forming hurricanes is developed, such as spreading
polymer films to reduce evaporation from the surface of the ocean, it
will not overcome ominous climate changes. In addition to hurricanes,
insurance company records show other alarming trends correlated to
increased air and water temperatures such as more losses and casualties
from heat, drought, lightning, and floods.
Europe’s record
heat wave in 2003 killed more than 35,000 persons. This is 19-times the
SARS deaths and 10-times the deaths caused by 9-11-01 terrorist attacks.
These heat-wave fatalities were exacerbated because central power plants
could not reject enough heat to the exceptionally warm environment to
enable production and distribution of the electricity demanded to cool
heat-distressed Europeans. (Central power plant heat engines using
radioactive or fossil fuels reject about two units of energy to send one
unit of energy to customers.) This underscores the
fragility of homeland security and defense measures that are powered by
central power plants. Regardless of whether or not you live in regions
where tornados or hurricanes occur the greenhouse-gas intensified
atmospheric engine is threatening the good life we seek by dependence
upon burning Earth’s fossil reserves. Globally,
heat waves during the last decade have killed more persons than
tornados, hurricanes, and lightning combined. All of these
weather-related events are intensified by carbon dioxide emissions. Vehicles
converted to operation on hydrogen instead of gasoline overcome the
problem of annually emitting over 2-times the weight of the car as
carbon dioxide. Molecule-to-molecule comparisons show that methane absorbs about 23 to 27 times more radiation than carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide still causes more atmospheric warming because it is in far greater total concentration but methane concentrations are rapidly rising along with many other volatile carbon compounds released by human activities. One
hundred and twenty-five year studies show that summers are being
extended by warmer fall and spring seasons.
October of 2004 was the warmest October in the history of
temperature measurements, which began in 1880.
March also broke the record for the warmest March in recorded
history. February of 2004 was the second warmest.
This
warming trend means there is more energy trapped in the atmosphere to
melt glaciers and polar ice caps, evaporate the oceans etc., and is
correlated to greenhouse gas accumulations in the atmosphere. As noted,
greenhouse gas accumulations are also correlated to increased occurrence
and severity of weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning
strikes, floods, ice storms, and soil erosion. Our
planet receives more solar energy every day than all the energy stored
in fossil oil produced on Earth from 600 million years ago to the time
oil was first extracted to begin the Oil Age.
This clean, dependable, friendly, solar energy can be harnessed
to produce hydrogen and/or electricity to replace present dependence
upon burning the fossil equivalent of more than 200 million barrels of
oil each day. This
enormous amount of solar energy arriving daily is increasingly trapped
in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases such as halogenated hydrocarbons,
methane, and carbon dioxide. Weather extremes due to greenhouse gas
accumulations also remind us of the enormous power of solar energy and
that there is plenty of renewable wind and wave energy to harness, even
in areas that do not receive large amounts of direct solar energy. References:
Space Studies report at http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Temp/2004.htm.
For additional trend data see http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Temp/Temp_data.htm.
Also see Kerry Emanuel’s study of hurricane energy in
August 2005, Journal of Nature. Another
recent reference is a 19 Sept 05 entry on hurricane severity and
frequency at: http://usinfo.state.gov.
Also see article correlating hurricane severity to global warming
by Thomas K. Knutson and Robert E. Tulea of Geophysical fluid Dynamics
Laboratory (FFDL) in the Journal
of Climate, September 2004 |