Questions tagged [climate-science]
The climate-science tag has no usage guidance.
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If ice melting does not change the water level in a container - Why is everyone afraid of sea levels rising drasticing from ice sheets [duplicate]
I saw this experiment and am now wonder what I am missing in understanding if ice sheets melt why should they causing the sea levels to rise if it doesn't in a container ?
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Do most climate models use the absolute temperature or the temperature anomaly under the hood?
Climate models for the climate impact of anthropogenic global warming almost never report the climate impacts of the average global temperature reaching some absolute threshold. Instead, they almost ...
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Do forests create wind?
Forests evapotranspire more water vapor into air than surrounding areas, have more clouds, and are usually cooler (because of evaporative cooling). How does this affect the air pressure of forests? ...
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Does the global oxygen levels drop during winter months? [closed]
I had a thought while I was trail walking the other day and no one could provide a clear answer.
In the winter months, most of the plants are in hibernation mode. Having lost their leaves they are ...
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How can I calculate to how fast heat is transferred from the surface of a massive hall to the ceiling?
I have asked something similar to this question before but couldn't get an useful answer: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/213240/i-am-building-an-isolated-indoor-temperate-rain-...
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Radiation Experiment, Can back radiation increase temperature?
I have just completed an experiments to determine if back radiation can increase the temperature of an object.
I wanted to perform an easy experiment that would emulate the effect of back radiation to ...
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What happens to a nuclear plant when you stop cooling it?
An IEA report says that many nuclear plants use freshwater for cooling, and that due to climate change, a growing portion of them are going to find themselves in high water stress areas. Does it mean ...
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How do climatic general circulation models numerically incorporate phenomena occurring at smaller and faster time/spatial scales
I am interested in the numerical methods used to solve climate models, such as hurricane models or general circulation models.
Now a general circulation model for something like the ocean, has ...
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Extent of verification of household-name physical concepts? [closed]
I was listening to some news coverage of the IPCC's newest report, which included a statement that "the evidence that climate change is real is now provided by over 14,000 studies worldwide."...
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Why do lighter isotopes evaporate faster than heavier isotopes?
I have just read that we are able to estimate the temperature of the earth thousands of years ago by measuring the ratio of certain isotopes present in ice cores that froze thousands of years ago.
My ...
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Do clouds get hotter while producing raindrops and snowflakes?
I know that in clouds water particles condensate to form raindrops. I believe surface energy should be released in form of thermal energy. Will this newly created thermal energy increase the average ...
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Evidence of Anthropogenic Climate Change
I'm not sure this is a good place to ask this but I would like academic sources showing how atmospheric physicists account for where CO$_2$ in our atmosphere is coming from. I would like primary ...
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Can we cool Earth by shooting powerful lasers into space? [closed]
In a sense, the climate change discussion revolves around the unwanted warming of the earth's atmosphere as a whole.
It seems a bit too obvious to be true, but could we cool the atmosphere by simply ...
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(Hypothetical Scenario) How quickly the temperatures would rise if say 300Gt $\rm CH_4$ were released in less than one day( or within hours)?
Yes, I know sounds a bit dumb but I wondered how quickly the temperatures would rise in this extremely unlikely scenario, how long it would take (days, weeks).
I'm asking this because sometimes I ...
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Is there no way to bypass greenhouse gasses by converting excess heat to longerwave radiation?
The problem with greenhouse gases, as I understand it, is that they absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range leading to increased temperatures on Earth. According to some sources, ...
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Paradox about greenhouse effect?
I know about the greenhouse effect, but isn't earth receiving the same amount of energy but getting hotter than with that same amount of energy?
My guess is that earth reflects less light, but then ...
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Does burning natural gas reduce its greenhouse effect if it were to be released into the atmosphere?
Burning natural gas produces CO$_{2}$, a gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect. However, natural gas itself is a greenhouse gas, and its primary constituent, CH$_{4}$, has a GWP100 of about 30....
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Role of methane in global warming
I am a young student in physic and I am doing a little presentation on how does climate change works. So I went on the wikipedia page for greenhouse gases.
I don't understant why methane is more ...
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Which way might commercial fusion power affect the earth's energy balance?
The ITER fusion-energy project might prove the feasibility of commercial fusion-energy generation by mid-century.
This would be a comparatively clean method of energy generation, and subject to ...
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Why do ice sheets break into such big pieces?
Another massive chunk of the Antarctic ice sheet broke free. Giant crack frees a massive iceberg in Antarctica. The article has a map that shows more cracks. It looks reasonable that they will lead to ...
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Nature of relationship between atmospheric $\rm CO_2$ and temperature
So I had a simple thought:
Venus is ~400C with 95% CO2, and Earth is ~15C with 0% CO2..
Assuming linearity, this equates to 1C for 1% atmospheric CO2.
Why is the relationship assumed to be so much ...
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How bad would it be to dump nuclear waste into the atmosphere?
Before I say any further, this is just a thought experiment, it's a crazy idea and I'm not suggesting otherwise!
A key pro/anti nuclear argument goes like so: nuclear waste storage is hard, but on the ...
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Greenhouse or compression?
Convection driven compressional warming is accepted here on Earth by scientists( Chinook winds, Santa Anna winds) when there is such low pressure, 1 bar = 14 psi. Scientists also agree that Jupiter’s ...
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Why is it not possible to run electrical plants on oxygen (rocket fuel) or hydrogen rather than coal?
Title basically says it all.
I'm not a physicist by any stretch. I'm an IT professional with slightly more than a passing interest in mechanics.
I got to thinking the other day how much power is ...
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Doesn't Increase of Potential Temperature with Height contradict Adiabatic Nature of Processes within Troposphere?
According to my education as a sailplane pilot our troposphere is in good approximation subject to adiabatic processes.
Using adiabatic equations of (nearly ideal) ...
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Is there a tabulated reference for CO$_2$ reactions showing entropy and free energy?
With all the climate change attention I am hoping to find a CO$_2$ reference that can help me find a $\text{CO}_2$ reaction with $\Delta \text{S}^{\circ}$ less than zero, and ideally $\Delta \text{G}^{...
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Climate Change and Degrees of Freedom of Gases
I studied a sciences of climate change module with the OU a while ago, I'm half remembering something that's bugging me and wonder whether any could help provide some clarification?
I remember that an ...
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How can global warming occur in spite of Energy Balance?
The Greenhouse Gas Theory maintains that an increase in carbon dioxide will cause a corresponding increase in Earth's temperature. But this temperature increase will cause an increase in the flow ...
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Relation between vertically integrated precipitable water and precipitation
My background is not in meteorology, but I am interested in climate models of tidally-locked planets of red-dwarf stars. I recently found a great review of different conditions on such planets modeled ...
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Why does the earth and oceans emit primarily infrared photons?
Climate on earth depends a lot on infrared photons being emitted by the earth and its oceans.
I want to know why the atoms in earth elements emit infrared photons after absorbing visible light, UV ...
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I have a couple of questions regarding the physics of planet Miller and the black hole it's orbiting from the movie "Interstellar" [closed]
I watched the movie and thoroughly enjoyed it. I had a couple of questions regarding the physics, so I looked for answers. I got them, but I was left even more questions.
I know that a lot of these ...
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Does human made global warming of atmosphere drive the increase of volcanic and tectonic activity?
I read in the handbook that the heat transfer coefficient between magma and soil is very small. What then is the mechanism of the predominant influence of global warming due to greenhouse emissions on ...
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Can anyone explain the REAL reason why CO$_2$ increases global temperatures (not the simplistic greenhouse analogy provided for public consumption)?
The greenhouse effect analogy of global warming is that atmospheric carbon dioxide CO$_2$ absorbs some of the infrared radiation emitted by the Earth, and redirects a portion of that radiation back ...
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Bush fires and heat waves, the real mechanics?
Like many others, I have been following the sad development of the bush/forest fires in Australia recently. A claim that gets repeated is that one of the contributors to this blaze is the ongoing >45°...
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Human infrared emission resonance [closed]
I understand (please correct if misinformed),
the human body generates approx 100W of infrared energy, which seems (to an old engineer) an incredible amount of energy from a biological.
In recently ...
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Why is Methane a more effective greenhouse gas compared to Carbon dioxide? [duplicate]
Over 100 years, Methane has a Global warming potential 34 times bigger than Carbon dioxide. Over 20 years, it's even 86 times bigger. How does one arrive at these numbers?
Looking at the following ...
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Why do CO₂ and other greenhouse gases interact with infrared radiation but not ultraviolet wavelengths?
When ultraviolet and visible wavelength photons get sent from the sun they seem to not interact with CO₂ and other greenhouse gases. When that electromagnetic energy gets to the earth, the earth ...
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Why can visible light go through green-house gases? [duplicate]
I understand that visible light can (largely) go through greenhouse gases, but infrared radiation can get reflected back... why can visible light go through green-house gases?
Does it have to do ...
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Is there a way to visualize the properties of $\rm CO_2$ regarding IR to a layman?
I think about how to explain the greenhouse effect to somebody with no physics background. What to explain to a general layperson, basically.
I have ideas how to go on from that CO₂ are some kind of ...
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Does the butterfly effect apply to models intended to be long-term?
We know that complex models, especially for the atmosphere, are likely to be subject to the butterfly effect, meaning that small variations in initial conditions may result in very different states in ...
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$CO_2$ absoprtion bands in atmosphere and impact of increasing concentration levels
I have a question to do with this graphic and the CO2 absorption band highlighted with a red vertical line.
The image shows that nearly 100% of the IR energy in that band is absorbed in the ...
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Shouldn't $CO_2$ forcing depend on the surface temperature?
When I read about radiative forcing due to CO2 it says:
"Radiative forcing is a measure of the influence a factor has in
altering the balance of incoming and outgoing energy in the
Earth-...
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Is there any natural phenomenon that can account for the 100 fold faster $CO_2$ rate increase?
"Based on the best historical data that we have available CO2 is probably increasing at a rate at of least 100 times faster than at any time in the last 800,000 years." Pieter Tans lead scientist of ...
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How much do sea levels rise due to thermal expansion?
I was reading an article by the Smithsonian Institute about the rising sea levels. In it, they mention how warmer water expands more, thus it helps to raise the average sea level. This makes perfect ...
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What processes permit (presumed) emission by, but prohibit absorption of, IR photons by non-greenhouse gas molecules?
It is said that because of bond-structures / possible vibrational states, non-greenhouse-gases / homonuclear diatomics cannot absorb IR.
Presumably there is no question that all gases, being matter, ...
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Climate Change Review paper
Could anybody recommend me some review paper on climate change or tell me some major names in that field? I work in a completely different area but I would like to learn about the current state of our ...
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Controlling global warming by partial conversion of atmospheric heat into work
Thermodynamics does not preclude the possibility of extracting heat from the atmosphere or the ocean water and convert some of it into mechanical work. In principle, is this possible to do it in ...
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How much steam must a planets atmosphere hold for no condensation to occur at bottom?
If a planets atmosphere contains steam how much would be required in order to have a temperature at the bottom, due to the adiabatic temperature gradient, to prevent condensation and thus rain in the ...
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How does climate change affect air density? [closed]
At first I thought... if the overall temperature of a planet goes up, then the gaseous atmosphere will be hotter, so it will have lower density than it used to. So overall density should go down.
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$CO_2$ heating experiment (high school)
A student is trying to run some experiments for a project to explore how the concentration of CO2 affects the temperature of air. For this, she:
Drops different ammounts of dry ice (between 0 and 2....
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