Climate Change – Page 3

At’ta boy, Boaty

First of all – it’s good to be back. I apologize for the lengthy dry spell in my blogs, but it could not be helped (see blog post “Sorry-but there was an accident”, 6/29). I am glad to be back. And I am very glad that you are back reading my articles. I hope that my recovery will soon allow me to get back out to experience the joy of long hikes in the woods.

Recently, there have been numerous articles regrading Boaty McBoatface, and I want to salute the vessel, the drone, the scientists, and the findings.

First the vessel. You may remember in 2016 there was a public request by a British government bureau, the British Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), to submit names for a new scientific vessel. The vessel was a 425 foot (129 meter), $300 million ocean-going ice breaker and research vessel dedicated to the study of the oceans of the Antarctic regions.

I need to mention the importance of the protein provided by the oceans to the world’s population. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in 2014 “ten percent of the world’s population depends on fisheries for their livelihoods, and 4.3 billion people are reliant on fish for 15 percent of their animal protein intake.” [1] The oceans are an important resource and must be studied and protected.

The name for the vessel that the majority of people, those who visited the NERC website, recommended was Boaty McBoatface. I believe the world agreed it was a very funny, but a rather silly, name for a vessel of its size and importance.

The vessel, due to its expense and significance, was eventually named Royal Research Ship (RRS) David Attenborough after the famed broadcaster and natural historian. This name had also scored highly on the NERC website. But what then to do with that great and popular name of Boaty? The scientific community decided to use the name for a new and important drone vehicle. The new drone was planned for exploration of the oceans and specifically to collect data related to the temperature regions/levels of the ocean water surrounding Antarctica.

The new Boaty McBoatface submersible, is a research drone which can be launched and recovered from a larger research vessel. The submersible drone is a Autosub Long Range (ALR). Boaty McBoatface is the first of its class and is designated ALR-1. According to the NERC, the ALR submersibles can be at sea for weeks to months. This length of time and data gathering capability is far longer than research drones that are currently utilized by the NERC. Other autonomous vehicles of the Boaty class are planned for development, construction, and use for research of the Southern Ocean and perhaps others of the world’s seven seas.

ALR Boaty McBoatface, has been in the news recently for its data collection during its first scientific voyage. The data provides information regarding the effect of increasingly stronger winds on the rise of ocean surface water temperatures. This is one of the many feed-back loops related to global warming. According to an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) [2], ALR-1 (Boaty), traveled 112 miles on its first voyage. Its path took it through high walled underwater valleys of the Orkney Passage in the depths of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. The vessel measured temperature, salinity (saltiness), as well as the turbulence at different depths.

The findings of Boaty’s maiden voyage reveal how increasingly stronger winds on the surface of the Southern Ocean create turbulence deep under the surface. This turbulence results in a mixing of the warm water at the middle levels with the colder waters from the depths of the Southern Ocean. This mixing causes the temperature of the waters in the lower level to warm and move upward through the water column. This can be a significant factor in rising sea levels. As the warmer water raises the overall ocean temperature, the water tends to expand due to the warming and thus causes the sea level to rise. If the deep-water warming contributes to a warming of the ocean’s surface waters this may increase the rate of evaporation from the surface into the atmosphere which can contribute to more rain and snow inland and greater strength to ocean storms.

According to the PNAS article, the significance of the findings of this previously undocumented mixing mechanism of the overturning circulation in the Southern Ocean is a better understanding that the deep-ocean waters are rapidly laundered through intensified near-boundary turbulence and boundary–interior exchange. As the conditions triggering this mechanism are common to other branches of the overturning circulation, the findings highlight a requirement for representing the newly-understood circulation in computer models of the overturning in the Southern Ocean and its effect of rising ocean water temperatures.

Congratulations to Boaty and the entire research team.

The artwork for this blog post is based on Figure 2 of the PNAS article (graph (D) showing the potential vorticity in red and blue and the neutral density of the deep water shown by the black contour lines). The image of the ALR-1 is taken from the internet.

[1] http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/248479/icode/, Oceans crucial for our climate, food and nutrition

[2] Rapid mixing and exchange of deep-ocean waters in an abyssal boundary current, PNAS first published June 18, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1904087116

Permian Basin Texas

There are plenty of sights to see on the road through Texas. The country is starkly beautiful. It’s early Spring and some color is beginning to come to the grasses that line the roads and cover the fields. But one thing that I thought I would see, cattle, well I don’t see too many. But what I do see in the area around Midland Texas are pumps. I am driving through the area of the Permian Basin. Rank upon rank of oil pumps as far into the distance as I can see. If I use Google Earth I can see the area is covered with white specks. Each speck is an area around a pump or derrick where the grass has been beaten down and trucks are parked and various pieces of support equipment lay about. One thing of note is there are a lot of pickup trucks on the road and most are towing an open bed trailer. And they are all in a hurry. They are not being driven unsafely, just in a hurry. Out here time is truly money. it’s the ranks of pumps that draws my attention. As I drive down Interstate I-10 most of the pumps are nodding up and down driven by a massive cam and engine. Each one pulling crude oil out of the ground.

The Permian Basin contains more crude oil than any other location within the United States and is one of the great oil resources of the world.

Like it or not oil and gas extraction is part of our world. It drives industry. It enables us to get around. And this will continue until a different economically dependable energy source is developed. What is the good of extracting and burning the essence of years that passed millions of years ago? The resources that lie in the Permian Basin under Texas and New Mexico were lain in that place during the Permian age. This age preceded the time of the dinosaurs, and ended approximately 250 million years ago. Its end came with in a mass extinction of more than 90% of the species on earth. Then as the continents separated, the remnants of the age were overlain by the sediments of the following eras and were compressed onto the hydrocarbon slurry that is drilled for today.

That drilling provides jobs in Texas. The taxes derived from those jobs built the road I drove down. But the economic reach of the oil extracted from the Permian Basin extends well beyond to local area. It enables many American to drive and to produce and to build. It enables us to create and to sell. But this comes at a substantial price. The burning of the refined extract causes pollution in our neighborhoods and smog in our cities. It pollutes the air and dumps chemicals into the atmosphere. These chemicals included CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” which are causing global warming and causing the acidification of the oceans.

But today I see work and prosperity. I see people going to their jobs, being proud of the work they are doing, and doing good work. But beyond here, the same companies that are operating the wells and refining the oil into the world’s fuel, are also working on what may be “a different economically dependable energy source”, which may power people’s jobs and give them economic independence, and provide them with food, shelter, heathy lives, and pride in their existence.

All 8 Billion of us!

(*Just_a_Note) – Wallace Broecker

News sources around the world have reported the death of Wallace Broecker. As a climate scientist, he penned an article that was published in the journal Science in 1975. This article was among the early warning calls of the effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) to cause a rise in the global mean temperature. Dr. Broecker titled the article “Are we on the brink of a pronounced Global Warming”. Through his article, and many others that followed, the term “global warming” has come into common use and is readily understood by all to imply a continuing rise in the global temperature to the point that it has a detrimental effect on the oceans, wildlife, agriculture, and human society.

As Broecker stated in his 1975 article, “… the exponential rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide content will tend to become a significant factor and by early in the next century [the ‘next century’ started in 2000] will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years.”

Further in the article Broecker predicted, “As the CO2 effect will dominate, the uncertainty … lies mainly in the estimates of future chemical fuel use and the magnitude of the warming per unit of excess atmospheric CO2.” When any of us is outside we can see and often smell the exhaust of the continuing use, and increased use, of fossil (chemical) fuels by the world’s expanding population.

So when in his article Broecker asks, “Are we in for a climate surprise?”, the answer is both yes and no. Yes, it is happening, CO2 continues to clog our atmosphere. But no, in 2019 it is not a surprise.

The 1975 article may be found at – https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu//files/2009/10/broeckerglobalwarming75.pdf

The picture is taken from the 1975 article.

CO2 – the Keeling Curve

Many things lie at the heart of climate change. Fundamental in this is global warming due to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). The primary source of the CO2 is the consumption of fossil fuels by each and every one of us. We drive our cars, and CO2 is emitted in the exhaust. We turn on lights and use electricity generated from burning coal or gas. These methods of generating electricity result in the emission of CO2. These emissions have a direct effect on wildlife, the oceans, and the weather.

The mention of automobiles might put us in the mind that this problem only started since cars have been around. But it is not just the recent use of fossil fuels, we have been burning coal for a long time. Once emitted by burning of fossil fuels CO2 does not dissipated; it accumulates. Some of the CO2 may be taken up by trees and other plants in their respiration cycle. They take in CO2 and during photosynthesis the CO2 is converted into oxygen (O2). Carbon can be locked up in dead plant material too. When a tree falls in the forest its use is not over. There are kingdoms of plants and animals that will use the dead tree for food and homes in their own lives. As these plants and animals devour the now decomposing tree, they consume the carbon and lock it in their own bodies. But then as they die their carcasses, as small as they are, store some tiny bit of carbon to be released into the atmosphere and earth as the plants and creatures decompose into the earth. Over millions of years the decomposition of ancient organic matter, dead plants and animals, has produced the current fossil fuels that we use.

But how do we know that the level of atmospheric CO2 is increasing? First we can read the levels of atmospheric CO2 in ice cores. These cores are from specialized drills that penetrate deep into glaciers. When the core is drilled and extracted for examination, the levels of CO2 from past centuries can be measured. As the drill goes deeper and deeper into the glaciers the cores show what the atmosphere was like in the times past. The deeper the core is drilled, the further back in time the sample goes. When snow and ice accumulated on the surface of the glacier centuries ago it captured a signature of the gases that made up the atmosphere. From these cores the CO2 from ancient fires, and human use of wood and coal as a fuel, and emissions by ancient volcanoes can be studied. It has been established that accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere has been going on from preindustrial times, hundreds of years ago. Since the introduction of factories and industry that used fossil fuels to operate and manufacture goods, the CO2 in the atmosphere has increased at a higher rate.

A key tool in understanding the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere has been the work of Charles D. Keeling. In 1956 he began a program to measure atmospheric gases, including CO2, at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii. As these observations are plotted over time, they show an increasing level of CO2 with each passing year. The graph that shows this increase, known as the Keeling Curve, also shows the change of the seasons in the northern hemisphere. The upwards spikes of the saw-tooth curve indicate rising CO2 in the Winter months when the leaves are off the trees and are not converting CO2 into O2. The downward slope of each “tooth” indicates the activity of the trees and other plants in the growing seasons of Spring and Summer as they remove CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into O2. But with each passing year the curve goes every upward.

From these two studies, we can determine that CO2 continues to increase based primarily on human activity. The rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere result in a continually rising average global temperature. This is due to the greenhouse effect as the CO2 and other gases trap energy from the sun in the atmosphere. The rising levels of CO2 also result in ocean acidification.

A copy is the Keeling Curve from the Scripps Institute CO2 program is inserted below.

The Scripps Institute CO2 program website may be found at http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/