FAT FREDDY’S CAT LEARNS CLIMATE CHANGE @fatfreddyscat-blog - Tumblr Blog

Tipping Points

Climate change was likely to have exacerbated the drought in Syria, doubling or tripling the likelihood of such a prolonged drought, the extent of the pressure on society due to the drought is significant. My overall knowledge of the war and country is too limited for a confident response, but this is real and very important. The increased polarisation of wealth in the UK is significant and has been growing since 1980, since 2010 due to the 'Austerity' policies targeting the poorest and using the media as propaganda tools blaming individuals and local government. The use of targeted social media (dis)information probably utilised the effects of reduced income in 2016 and resulted in a vote against government which nominally, and later was politically usurped into a pro Brexit vote. The effect of climate tipping points will be surges of refugees and increasing inequality in and between economies.

#syria climate change polarisation of wealth

Wavelengths of radiation from the sun and emitted from a warm earth

Between 8 and 14 micrometres we have the “infrared atmospheric window” marked by the vertical black lines on the second distribution curve. Radiation within these wavelengths isn’t absorbed by greenhouse gases and pass out to space. I think this is something to do with water vapour not being excited at these lengths. Is it pertinent that it’s almost slap bang in the middle of this curve?

#radiation climate change infrared atmospheric window

Why short wave in and long wave out?

I understand at last. Think about a poker, heat it up till its red hot, heat it more and it becomes white hot. White is a mixture of all the colours, and on average the wavelengths of the radiation are shorter than red. Generalise this. The hotter the body, the shorter the wavelength of the radiation emitted. The sun shines hot and the short wave radiation goes straight through the clouds (water vapour) and other gases in the atmosphere. When it reaches the surface of the earth some bounces straight back and isn’t absorbed. On fresh snow 90% of the radiation bounces back out to space. This is the albedo effect. You can see pictures of the earth from space, dark areas and light. The darkest areas of deep sea only have an albedo of about 5%. Forests are around 20%, grasslands and deserts about 35%. On average 69% of the short wave radiation is absorbed, warms up the planet and is radiated back out, but because earth is much cooler than the sun the radiation is of longer wavelength and this radiation IS absorbed by the gases in the atmosphere, jiggles the molecules about and is then bounced back down to earth. Think of clouds on a night. They’re like a blanket. Clear winter nights are the coldest and you can imagine the radiation from the earth going straight out to space. Especially now that all the streetlights have LEDs in them and we can see the stars.

You think you were ok at maths

And then you find out that you never knew that the area of a sphere is 4π r2 and that is pretty fundamental to working out the amount of energy landing on the planet from the sun. It says ‘squared’ until I post it then it morphs into 2.

#surface area of a sphere

Time to play!

Well, not yet, so I’m posting the links to climate models that we CAN play with them later/so I don’t lose them when I’ve lost access to my free course. 1. The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change 2050 calculator http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk/#/home 2. The Java Climate Model nb start in experimental mode, and if it stops working, go back to experimental working http://jcm.climatemodel.info/index.html “The Java model highlights the complexity of the Earth system and the uncertainty in making projections into the future. It is calibrated to the IPCC models and so will provide a reasonably good idea of the vast number of parameters necessary to model the climate.” Problem Sheet https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-xUxTVEN76rNnZrdGJWRUNJYjg/edit Workspace https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-xUxTVEN76rWVRaaVJJVTF3V3M/edit Answer Sheet https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-xUxTVEN76rWEt2U20zM0F1MlU/edit

#climate change #climate model

Why do we believe climate change predictions?

Where does the confidence come from that human activity is warming the Earth? The Navier-Stokes equations are an example of mathematical tools to predict movements in a fluid and used in climate models of the atmosphere and oceans. Testing of models can be done by working backwards in time and using them to 'predict' climate of which we already have the data. If we only use natural variances we get very good fits to actual climate up until 1970. Thereafter we have to include anthropogenic factors - Greenhouse gas emissions - to get accurate fits, indeed using natural factors the models predict that the earth should have been cooling in the past 50 years. "Fingerprinting" means that each factor influences the climate, if not the weather. Projections on how the climate will change in the future are unsure because of 2 big factors. We don’t know OUT or IN. Future emissions or absorptions: how humans will affect the Earth, how many there will be, whether they’ll be using renewable energy, whether they’ll be chopping down the Amazon rain forest and we don’t know how our oceans trees and soil will behave, they currently absorb about half our emissions - will these be less? It’s unlikely to be more.

Calculus

This is a public confession. I am afraid of calculus. The Navier-Stokes equations “for instance, the Navier-Stokes equations” says the man on the video giving a brief overview of how climate change models are made. “The Navier-Stokes Equations?”. Used to calculate the motion of viscous fluids. Sea water and air aren’t viscous I ponder, but the delta signs have already terrified me. Probably why I dropped out of my chemical engineering course decades ago. You don’t translate an ease with Mathematics at O level to understanding Pure Maths at A level. Felicity wasn’t having a lie in on Saturday mornings, her private tutor - no disclosure needed for the Sutton Trust - was cramming her for Physics and Maths A levels: justification? Mummy’s degree was in Film Studies and Daddy has dyslexia. You don’t need to go to a state school to afford maths tutors but you have to be twice as quiet if you’re at a private school. I’ve digressed. My state school had very few children studying maths and I could have asked for help. I want to get over this fear.

#navier-stokes #climate change #private schools #maths a level

Back to Planck

I copied this because its beautiful and simple and I can’t improve on it.

Every climate model has a Planck feedback

The Planck feedback is the most basic and universal climate feedback, and is present in every climate model. It is simply an expression of the fact that a warm planet radiates more to space than a cold planet.

Some words on assessing old climates.

Heavy isotopes of hydrogen (Deuterium H2) and oxygen (O17 and O18) condense out of rainfall more readily if it's cold, so as air moves to the poles the water vapour left to snow up there is made up of lighter isotopes. The colder it has been, the more the water has differentially lost heavy atoms of H and O. And we can measure the composition of the ice for these isotopes from way back. The type of pollen grains in the mud layers of lakes and sea tell us which plants (and therefore the conditions) were growing nearby. If it's warm there's more meltwater to wash sediment into lakes so bigger layers of sediment indicate warmth. Corals are picky about their conditions, so their presence or absence indicate how deep and acidic the sea.

Just a little aside on the cost of public transport in the UK

The RAC produces some interesting stuff. Is it obvious that increased cost of bus and coach travel impacts on the poorest but also drives up emissions (pardon the pun)

Climate Change and World War 2

The graph below suggests that global warming occurred as the world geared up for war, it would be good to find measurements of CO2 produced as a result of the increased manufacturing of arms. Then as the world was in the grips of war and manufacturing declined the world cooled, then temperatures plateaued before climbing again. Was the cold winter of 63 due to the effects of WW2?

Temperature vs Solar Activity

#ww2 climate change

Methane, carbon dioxide on speed, or maybe cocaine. I’ve always been a coffee drinker myself.

The science is to come!

#methane climate change

How much is a lot

Some definitions. Warming. Lets be a bit more specific. Scientists use “observed global mean surface temperature” (GMST) and their estimates of increases in temperature have turned out to be within 20% of actual increases. Warming over land is generally more than sea, and the Arctic is warming at 2 to 3 times greater pace than the average. I think this means that if average temperatures are expected to rise 0.2 C in ten years, they’ll rise between 0.4 and 0.6C in the Arctic. Effects include swinging between drought and heavy rain, more hot days especially in the tropics, rising sea levels, extinction of species, loss of islands, lots of insects.

#climate change the science global warming

1.5 degrees Celsius or 2 degrees. AKA shit or shittier

1.5 more than when, what, where before we come onto the how or why.

To find ‘When’ I discovered is not a simple task of sticking the question into google and a date appearing. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and UN agreements on climate don’t give an exact date. You have to remember the definition of ‘weather’ and ‘climate’. So the latter being an average (over 30 years? don’t get pedantic on that there’s too much to learn) it’s reported widely that 1720 - 1800 would be a good date range to use to define ‘pre-industrial’ for lots of reasons to do with natural variations, but there’s a problem. It was pre-industrial. So there weren’t precise measurements around. At least not globally. So the starting point for MEASURING change is taken as 1850 - 1900 because we have figures for then, though we can chummily agree that it was cooler before 1850. Probably.

And I’ve already started framing ‘What’ when I said ‘globally’, because we’re talking about a planet, our Earth. Some places have become a lot hotter than other places. Where? I don’t know too much about that so I’ll come back to it later.

How and why - burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide has gone up a LOT. The average temperature has gone up a LOT. Postive radiative forcing - ice and snow melts and the resulting water absorbs radiation, little albedo.

The Difference between Weather and Climate

Weather = the elements, rain, wind, snow, sunshine. A picture at a moment. Climate is the average weather over a long period.

Greenhouse Gases

There may be few parts per million but they’re radiatively forcing the planet, and it’s the increase you need to note. The key GHG are water vapour (with feedback loop so I think that means its self regulating?) Carbon Dioxide 400ppm (an increase from 280 ppm in 1800) Methane 1.9ppm Nitrous Oxides and ground level Ozone

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