EPS 7 midterm 2
What is a halocarbon?
A carbon atom with halogens stuck to it
What is a resonance?
A peak in K
How much of the burned carbon is hidden as bicarbonate in the ocean after calciumcarbonate dissolution? On what timescale?
About 80% 10,000 years
How does peat become coal?
As layers of overlying sediment weigh down on the peat, it dries out, loses almost all the oxygen and hydrogen, and becomes coal.
what is coal's empirical formula
C or CH
what is oil's empirical formula?
CH2
what is gas' empirical formula?
CH4
David Keeling's research on the Mauna Loa showed what rising in the atmosphere?
CO2
What happens to CO2 in the winter (NH)
CO2 is added
What happens to CO2 in the summer (NH)
CO2 is removed
What is the chemical formula for a carbonate ion?
CO3 --
Who woke up scientists to global warming?
Charles David Keeling
What are the 4 US Climate Models?
E3SM (DOE) CESM (NSF) GISS (NASA) GFDL (NOAA)
What units do we use to measure the amount of CO2?
Gigatons of Carbon Gt of carbon Gt of C GtC 1 GtC = 3.7 Gt of CO2
What is the chemical formula for a hydrogen ion?
H+
What is the chemical formula for carbonic acid?
H2CO3
What is the chemical formula for a bicarbonate ion?
HCO3-
What is an acid?
It is a molecule that can give up an H+ ion
What is global warming?
It is the response of Earth's steady-state heat budget to a positive forcing from extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
How does the atmosphere interact with radiation?
It scatters shortwave radiation It absorbs and emits longwave
What are the two ways the atmosphere interacts with radiation?
It scatters some shortwave it absorbs and emits longwave
Who woke the public up to global warming?
James Hansen
Who identified the gases responsible for the greenhouse effect?
John Tyndall
Who postulated the greenhouse effect?
Joseph Fourier
Who gave the first modern estimate of Earth's climate sensitivity?
Jules Charney
Where does oil come from and how long ago
Jurrassic 150 Mya
What three things are conserved?
Mass Momentum Energy
How do clouds scatter sunlight?
Mie scattering
What kind of feedback is the Lapse-rate feedback, and what happens
Negative feedback Warmer Lapse rate decreases tau = 1 emission layer warms faster than the surface tau=q layer emits even more longwave cooling tendency
What kind of feedback is the Planck feedback, and what happens
Negative feedback Warmer More T^4 longwave emission cooling tendency
Agriculture is the main culprit for what kind of positive forcing?
Nitrous oxide
What are the three processes in which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere?
Ocean acidification Dissolution of CaCO3 Silicate weathering
Where does methane hydrate reside?
Ocean sediments
T>>1
Opaque in terms of optical depth
What are some things that could burn?
Peat Permafrost Clathrates
Satellites have what kind of orbits? What can they also be described by?
Polar orbits Sun-synchronous meaning they ascend and descend over the equator at the same local time of day and night on each orbit
What kind of feedback is cloud feedback, and what does happens
Positive feedback warmer fewer clouds lower albedo more sunlight absorbed warming tendency
What kind of feedback is the ice feedback, and what does happens
Positive feedback warmer less ice/snow more sunlight absorbed warming tendency
Who wrote the book Silent Spring and what did it focus on?
Rachel Carson focused on the toxicity of chemicals - including DDT - and sparked the environmental movement
What are the plausible scenarios for future emissions?
Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)
Dissolution of calcium carbonate does what?
Returns the oceans pH to normal which allows more CO2 to dissolve in the ocean
Who first predicted global warming? And what year?
Svante Arrhenius 1896
255k is the temp of what layer of greenhouse gases?
T=1
What sea is much of today's oil formed in?
Tethys Sea
What is the preferential scattering of blue light called?
The "Tyndall effect"
What does pH measure?
The concentration of H+ ions in the water
What is a fingerprint of CO2 induced global warming?
The more CO2 is there, the more efficiently the stratosphere sheds the heat gained by UV, so the cooler it is Cooling higher up, warming lower
What is evidence for atmospheric scattering of shortwave radiation?
The sun is orange and the sky is blue Clouds are visible from space
What is carbonate chemistry?
These reactions, which move carbon between carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, bicarbonate, and carbonate
Increasing CO2 decreases outgoing longwave radiation, which creates a positive net flow of energy into the Earth.
This is a positive forcing.
How much higher will CO2 concentrations go? That is, what is the 3 useful
Three useful facts: 1. Americans emit 4x as much CO2 per person than the global average 2. At the current rate of combustion, CO2 is increasing by 2 ppm/year 3. Current population is 7 billion, and will rise to 11 billion by 2100
Examples of nitrous oxide
Used as an anesthetic, propellant for whipped cream, and fertilizers
In 1988 the IPCC was formed by what two agencies?
WMO and UNEP
What are the greenhouse gases that readily absorb emitting infrared radiation
Water Vapor (H20) Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Methane (CH4)
What is acidic water?
Water with a lot of H+ ions in it
Why worry about permafrost?
With global warming, it is thawing, and thawed permafrost can decay, emitting carbon dioxide
What organization was created in 1873, but renamed in 1950, to exchange weather data between countries?
World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
What is a clathrate?
a chemical substance consisting of a lattice of cages that trap other molecules
What is global warming caused by?
a decrease in outgoing power
What is the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU)?
a fancy antenna that picks up microwave signals emitted by Earth's atmosphere
How much of the burned carbon can be hidden as bicarbonate in the ocean from equilibriation of the atmosphere and ocean? and on what timescale?
about 60% 1000 years
middle clouds
altostratus altocumulus
Forcing (+ or -)
an externally applied change in flows that tends to increase (+) or decrease (-) the stock
what is forcing
an externally applied change in the flows
What is a flow
are the inputs and outputs for a container of stuff
Reality scenario of ppm (business as usual)
around 1000ppm
What form of carbon is hidden from the atmosphere?
bicarbonate
what is Gya
billion years ago
What did DDT do?
bioaccumulated destroying egg shells of raptors bald eagle and peregrine falcon populations decreased to only a few hundred pairs
Where do sulfate aersols come from
car and factory emissions
after respiration where is carbon and what does it generate
carbon is on the oxygen generates water and carbon dioxide
after photosynthesis where is carbon and what does it generate
carbon is on the water generate plant matter and oxygen
How do silicate rocks weather, what does this make, and what does it do?
chemically weather make calcium carbonate locks up the C in new limestone
high clouds
cirrus cirrostratus cirrocumulus
What is mie scattering? Why are clouds white?
cloud drops are bigger than N2 molecules, therefore no wavelength preference (that is why they are white)
Which feedback is the most uncertain
cloud feedback
What are the three types of fossil fuels
coal oil gas
How does plankton become oil
compressed to high pressures and temps
How do you date different depths of ice?
counting annual layers which gives minimum age
Where does calcium carbonate dissolve from and what does it do?
dissolves from the ocean floor and on land, raising the pH, and allowing more CO2 to dissolve into the ocean It does this by the carbonate grabbing an H+ ion
What is climate sensitivity sometimes called? and why?
equilibrium climate sensitivity to emphasize that we wait until the Earth equilibrates (~100 years) to the new CO2 level before differencing the mean temperatures
What does final perturbation equal
forcing / |feedback parameter|
What are conservation laws?
fundamental principles of physics that tell us that certain things are neither created nor destroyed.
cirrus
hair
cumulus
heap
cumulous
heaps
cirrocumulous clouds
heaps of hair
T = 1
in between in terms of optical depth
How do you get a higher optical depth between two locations
increase distance or density
Sulfate aersols do what to earths albedo
increase it
Global warming is a positive forcing because it
increases the planet's stock of heat
What is IPCC
intergovernmental panel on climate change
What is a super computer?
is made up of individual computers no more special than your laptop A supercomputer is "super" because it is made of thousands or millions of computers wired together for parallel computing
What is climate sensitivity?
is the change in mean global temperature for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 (e.g., from 280 ppm to 560 ppm).
stratus
layer
cirrostratus
layer of hair (halo)
stratocumulous
layer of heaps
What is an active layer
layer of soil that thaws out at some point during the year
How does peat become coal
layers of overlying sediment weigh down on the peat, it dries out, loses almost all the oxygen and hydrogen, and becomes coal.
For a longwave atmosphere what is the scattering like. Also how is the absorption and emission?
little scattering, a lot of absorption and emission
who classified clouds
luke howard
What are some places that can make peat?
marsh quagmire swamp peatland fen mire bog wetland
alto
middle
altocumulous
middle heaps
altostratus
middle layer
what is Mya
million years ago
perturbation (+ or -)
more (+) or less (-) stock than usual
clouds w vertical development
nimbostratus cumulonimbus
Which gases are transparent to infrared radiation?
nitrogen (N2) oxygen (O2) argon(Ar)
Why is the timescale for ocean acidification so long?
ocean is big
What do we call a gas that is opaque to radiation
optically thick
what do we call a gas that is transparent to radiation
optically thin
What are some examples of a gas radiating thermal energy from its tau = 1 surface
our atmosphere the sun
in the summer...
photosynthesis > respiration
What kind of feedback is the water-vapor feedback, and what happens
positive feedback warmer air holds more water vapor more greenhouse gas warming tendency
nimbo
precipitation
cumulonimbus
rain heap
nimbostratus
rain layer
What does the production of bicarbonate release and do to the ocean?
releases H+ and acidifies the ocean
in the winter...
respiration > photosynthesis
What is rayleigh scattering?
scattering by molecules which directs photons into a new direction short wavelengths are much more strongly scattered than long
What are some forms of calcium carbonate (CaCo3)?
sea shell chalk marble snail shell limestone eggshell
How is the remaining carbon put into the atmosphere by humans removes? On what timescale?
silicate weathering 100,000 years
what is plankton
small organisms that live in the ocean
What is permafrost?
soil that is frozen throughout the year
For a shortwave atmosphere what is the scattering like. Also how is the absorption and emission?
some scattering, little absorption and emission
low clouds
stratus stratocumulus cumulus
examples of anthropogenic aerosols
sulfate aerosol
What tau level does gas emit to space from
tau = 1
what is a positive feedback
tends to increase the size of the perturbation
what is a negative feedback
tends to reduce the size of the perturbation
where does coal come from and how long ago
the Carboniferous 300Mya
First weather forecasts were made by who?
the Smithsonian
What is a stock
the amount of stuff in the container
What is a feedback parameter
the change in net inflow per change in stock
What is perturbation
the current stock minus the stock in the original steady state change in stock
What is borehole paleothermometry?
the measurement of old surface temperatures by lowering a thermometer down a borehole
what is feedback
the response of the flows to the perturbation
Feedback (+ or -)
the system's natural change in flows in response to a perturbation, which tends to amplify (+) or reduce (-) the size of the perturbation
What is a timescale
the time it takes something to get mostly done
What is peat
the wet soil at the bottom of a swamp
What is peat
the wet soil at the top of a swamp
What do borehole temp profiles tell us about the warming from preindustrial temps?
they have warmed up about 1K
what is kya
thousand years ago
T << 1
transparent in terms of optical depth
What are the four main things that provide evidence that global warming is occurring?
tropical glaciers borehole temperatures surface-air thermometers satellites
How much more radiation does the atmosphere radiate to the surface compared to the sun
twice as much - this is called greenhouse effect
How much carbon is in methane clathrates?
uncertain because they are difficult to map. Estimates lie in the range of 1,000 - 10,000 GtC
What is ozone created from
urban smog
Examples of halocarbons
used as the refrigerant in air conditioners and as blowing agents in the production of foams
What is a stevenson screen?
used for surface-air temperature measurements, is a thermometer enclosure that shades and ventilates
Examples of natural aerosol
volcanic ash pollen sea salt soot
For methane clathrate, or methane hydrate, the cages are made of ________ and the trapped molecule is __________
water, methane
What is serial computing?
when a single computational problem is solved by a single computer
What is parallel computing?
when a single computational problem is solved by multiple computers in parallel by breaking the problem into smaller chunks (one chunk for each computer) and having the computers talk to each other
what is a steady state
when the total flow in equals the total flow out
How much positive forcing does CO2 have?
+2 W/m^2
What is Earth's total feedback parameter?
-1 W/m^2/K
Over all depths, permafrost contains how much GtC?
1,500
Why is climate sensitivity defined in terms of a doubling?
1. A doubling is convenient (will happen soon) 2. Each doubling gives roughly the same amount of warming
What is the best estimate of earth's climate sensitivity?
1.5 degrees C to 4.5 degrees C
Land warming is ________ the global mean warming
1.5 times
What are the current global emissions of 10 GtC/year? How often do they double?
10 GtC/year Every 23 years
Coal, oil, and gas are made from organisms that lived roughly how many years ago?
100-300 Mya
How long ago was the big bang
14 Gya
How much oil has the world used so far
150 GtC
Fantasy-land scenario #2
1500 ppm More than a quadrupling
What acts/agencies were formed in the environmental movement?
1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) 1970 Clean Air Act 1970 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 1972 Clean Water Act 1973 Endangered Species Act
One ppm equals how many GtC'S?
2 GtC's
Compared to no warming, how much hotter is Berkeley's temps?
2 K
How much is the coal has the world used so far
200 GtC
OF the 1500 GtC in soil down to 1 m, peat accounts for how much GtC
200 GtC
How much oil/coal/gas does the average human consume each year?
22 barrels of oil 3 tons of coal 2400 m^3 of gas
What is the temp at which Earth radiates to space?
255k
What was the preindustrial CO2 concentration?
280 ppm
What is earth's predicted temperature
288 K
Earth has only warmed 1 K, but what is it projected to warm?
2K at today's levels
Doubling of CO2 causes how much radiative forcing?
3 W/m^2
Of the 1500 GtC in soil down to 1 m, permafrost accounts for how much gtc?
350 GtC
What is earth's climate sensitivity around
3k
how long ago was earth formed
4.5 Gya
Where does emission of longwave radiation to space occur?
5 km
How much gas has the world used so far
50 GtC
What did Arrhenius predict climate sensitivity would be? What is it actually?
5k actually 3k
What is the lapse rate for an atmosphere with water?
6.5 K/km
Fantasy-land scenario #1
600 ppm More than a doubling
