Questions tagged [climate-science]
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Explain it to me like I'm a physics grad: Greenhouse Effect
What is the mechanism by which increasing $\rm CO_2$ (or other greenhouse gases) ends up increasing the temperature at (near) the surface of the Earth?
Mostly what I'm looking for is a big-picture ...
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Why don't solar panels contribute to global warming?
I've been wondering this for a while but I have not yet encountered an explanation.
This is from my understanding of physics, which is by no means expert, so sorry for my crude explanation:
Energy ...
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Does the sea level increase if an iceberg melts?
It was claimed that if an iceberg melts in the ocean, the sea level won't change as the ice displaces as much water as there will be melted water. The other claim was that the sea level should rise ...
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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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How is it possible that it can get hotter in the car than it is outside?
The Law of Thermodynamics says that two bodies will eventually have equal temperatures. How is it possible that when you leave your car in the sun, it gets hotter in the car than it is outside? Why ...
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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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Why is climate change triggering faster rotation?
On July the 29th 2022, the Earth finished its rotation about 1.5 milliseconds earlier than the entire 24 hours. Scientists link this to climate change, saying that a possible reason could be due to ...
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Does the moon affect the Earth's climate?
So, this morning I was talking to a friend about astronomical observations, and he told me that lately there has only been good weather when there was a full moon in the sky, which was a shame.
I ...
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To what extent do (man made) generators of heat from internal sources in earth's system cause climate change?
So I'm very far from a climate scientist but I've always wondered, why don't things like electric heaters, lightbulbs, etc, contribute to climate change, or even things like the accelerated decay of ...
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Why did nuclear testing not result in nuclear winter?
According to Wikipedia over 2000 nuclear tests have been performed since the Manhattan Project. If nuclear war would bring about a nuclear winter, why didn't testing do? Were they too much spread out ...
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Is nuclear power desireable in the long term, given the fact that it's an unnatural heat input to our planet? [closed]
I've been reflecting on whether we want nuclear at all in the long term (compared to renewables like wind, solar, and hydro). There's a certain amount of heat (energy) entering our planet and leaving ...
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How do greenhouse gases trap heat?
I am looking for a molecular-level understanding of the greenhouse effect.
What is it about the carbon-dioxide molecule (and methane, and water, etc) that is different from other gasses (particularly,...
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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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Why is radiative forcing from $\rm CO_2$ logarithimic and not a decreasing exponential?
I have a question about climate science, but this is relatively straight forward and (I hope) easy.
I've been reading that the radiative forcing caused by $\rm CO_2$ in the atmosphere (or any gas) is ...
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Do gases reflect some IR radiation?
The usual definition given for a greenhouse gas is that it absorbs infrared radiation. Of course, then the gas emits its own thermal radiation, and it does so without preference for direction (...
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Methods to stabilize and maintain extremely low humidity in a lab environment
My atomic physics lab is in a building that experiences huge swings in humidity levels during the year due to the monsoon season
Our building provides temperature, but not humidity control. Using ...
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Why don't clouds fall? [duplicate]
Well I do know that they sometimes fall as rain, but my question is why don't the droplets fall as soon as they condense from steam to cloud.
Clouds are white by the process of Mie scattering so the ...
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Why do clouds fly? [duplicate]
I know it's probably the most stupid question there is, but why do they fly are the clouds lighter than air? What's keeping those tiny ice structures floating miles about the ground? I've been looking ...
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How do subgrid-scale parametrisations in climate models work?
Global Circulation Models typically have grids of 100-300km on a side. There are obviously lots of atmospheric processes that happen at smaller scales than this. Convection, cloud formation, the ...
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Why is methane considered an important greenhouse gas?
Methane’s absorption bands are centered at 3.2 and 7.2 microns -- far off the peak of the Planck spectrum for a 290 K blackbody near 16 microns. Moreover, its absorption bands overlap with the water ...
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Why is the summer, in the temperate latitudes, in average, hotter that the spring?
It is common knowledge that the transition from the Spring to the Summer season occurs in the Summer Solstice when the "Sun reaches its highest excursion relative to the celestial equator on the ...
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What is the reason of the semidiurnal pressure oscillation in the atmosphere?
It appears that in many (most) places on earth, a pressure oscillation of a 100-200 Pa takes place twice a day : that is, with maxima around 12AM and 12PM and minima around 6AM and 6PM.
I've found ...
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Damhsa Theory: Can gravitational waves really affect the long term climatic evolution of Earth?
As a glaciologist I'm often involved in topics related to the long-term climatic evolution of Earth, and to the factors that can trigger or end ice ages.
Recently, I came across the paper "Applying ...
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Would dropping large blocks of ice into the ocean mitigate global warming?
This amusing Futurama sketch 'solves' global warming by dropping increasingly larger blocks of ice into the ocean. Presumably the blocks of ice are harvested from a different planet.
Would this ...
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Is there a difference in the infrared absorption spectrum of a greenhouse gas when pure and when mixed with non-greenhouse gases?
According to the standard IPCC greenhouse climate change hypothesis a doubling of the preindustrial CO2 concentration of 285 ppm in the atmosphere - the current value is 405 ppm - would lead to an ...
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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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Greenhouse gases
A post (below) on the Bishop Hill blog relating to climate change asserts that no warming effect can be attributed to $\mathrm{CO_2}$. I don't know whether the author is really a physicist but it ...
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Blocking of infrared radiation from the sun by $\rm CO_2$ [duplicate]
Why is the infrared heat from the sun not prevented from entering the earth's atmosphere by $\rm CO_2$ to the same extent that it is prevented from leaving the Earth's atmosphere?
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Example of Poincare recurrence theorem?
Is it possible to explain Milankovitch cycles (or some other arbitrary planetary configuration that recurs to some approximation) in terms of the Poincare recurrence theorem?
More generally, is ...
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Why is Venus cloud covered but not in an ice age?
I understand that Venus is closer to the Sun, but shouldn't Venus's cloud cover effect it in the same way as Earth's cloud cover would cause an ice age?
Venus with no clouds.
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Book recommendations on climate science
I've had my eye on properly understanding climate, climate change and the wide array of phenomena related. But, as a physics grad student, I'd fancy more exact, math-based bibliography, that treats ...
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Sulfur dioxide may have warmed Mars, but is being considered for geoengineering on Earth. How is this possible?
So I was reading a title called Terraforming: The Creation of Habitable Worlds and came across mention of the idea that sulfur dioxide was a greenhouse gas on Mars. This can't be a mistake because I ...
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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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How is the mechanism of greenhouse gases interacting with IR radiation?
How does atmospheric CO2 and other Greenhousgases (GHG) affect the incoming (from sun) and outgoing (from earth) radiation. I understand that at certain wavenumbers (or areas of wavenumbers) in the ...
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How much solar irradiance do clouds block from reaching the Earth's surface?
Consider a fixed point in the Milankovich cycle and the solar cycle, a fixed Earth-Sun distance, and a fixed horizontal location on Earth, and assume that the Sun is at the zenith for that location. ...
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Effect of changing $\rm CO_2$-levels on cooling the desert at night
It is known (e.g. as mentioned in this popular article) that the reason why deserts cool down at night so much (to temperature below zero degrees celsius) is that there is much less humidity in the ...
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How can I make a simple climate simulator? [closed]
Given an Earth-like planet with arbitrary terrain, how can I create a simple climate simulator that can output parameters such as humidity and temperature, so that I can assign biomes to areas of land?...
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Is the atmospheric pressure the cause of a planet's surface temperature or is it the temperature the cause of a planet's atmospheric pressure?
I heard a climatologist on a talk show saying that one of the widely known arguments used by climate scientists to exemplify what a runaway greenhouse effect could cause to Earth's temperature and ...
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Summer Winter cause
As far as I understand, there are two main reasons for having lower temperatures in winter :
shorter days, so the sun has less time to heat the earth
smaller angle of incidence, so the energy from ...
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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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*Why* does global warming lead to more extreme weather events? [closed]
I read several times about global warming leading to more exteme weather events, i.e. flooding, droughts and even winter storms occuring at higher rates and with more intensity.
So, higher temperature ...
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Why is the rainy season in the winter for some (mediterranean?) climates and in the summer for other (tropical?) climates?
Generally speaking, the rainy season is in the summer in tropical climates, and in the winter in mediterranean climates. (I admit that is a gross oversimplification) What is the cause for this ...
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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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On the Melting of the Arctic Ice [closed]
I have read that:
Polar ice caps are melting as global warming causes climate change. We lose Arctic sea ice at a rate of almost 13% per decade, and over the past 30 years, the oldest and thickest ice ...
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Increase thermal efficiency of combustion engine by using heat of coolant/exhaust?
I can't be the only one who's ever thought of this, but obviously it hasn't caught on:
In terms of energy density, fossil fuels are the best thing around short of enriched uranium (and, flammability ...
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Is it possible that nuclear fission contributes to climate change?
This is probably a really stupid question, please forgive me.
Is it possible that the use of nuclear fission on earth contributes to the increased energy in the Earth's system as according with the ...
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Does aerosol particulate matter attenuate UVA more as compared to UVB?
I am trying to understand if winter aerosol particulate matter has a greater impact on UVB radiation as compared to UVA radiation. Would the attenuation be mainly due to scattering?
I am asking this ...
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Effect of wind power on the global climate by decreasing kinetic energy of air
Assume the hypothetical situation that all global energy is produced by wind power and instead of fossil fuel power etc.
Since every wind turbine decreases the kinetic energy of the air a bit, I am ...
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What is a 'moist greenhouse effect'?
What is a moist greenhouse effect? I've heard that this is where all the water on a planet is quickly driven into space. However, I cannot find much information on this- is it a relatively new (or ...
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