Introduction - Models are not All Wet: Models, Water and Temperature (2)
Introduction - Models are not All Wet: Models, Water and Temperature (2)
I am starting a series of blogs on models, water, and temperature.
A couple of entries ago, I wrote a somewhat muddled blog, Difference Between Night and Day. My major goal in that blog was to look at how water, especially water vapor, enters into the climate and climate change problem. I used some regional differences in climate, say Florida's and Arizona's, with the hope of suggesting that we have some intuition of how water vapor modifies regional climate. For example, due to the absence of water vapor, Arizona's extremes of daily temperature are larger than in a much wetter Florida.
This simple intuitive notion, however, quickly falls into complexity. It is the typical complexity of climate science, where the members of a set of simple physical processes combine in many different ways to produce a difficult-to-untangle knot of observations. I will come back to this later, but first, here are some of the other ideas I had in mind in that first blog.
At the end of that blog I referred to the paper by Kukla and Karl, 1993, Nighttime Warming and the Greenhouse Effect (from Rood’s Class Website). This paper investigates the observed decrease in the range between nighttime lows and daytime highs. At the writing of that paper in 1993, the models of 20 years ago did not simulate this observation especially well. How does one respond to fact that models don’t represent a particular observation? A common way to respond, sometimes put forward by commenters on this blog, is that the models fail to represent the observations; hence, the model is wrong, and to base any conclusions, actions or behavior on model results is grievous failure of reason.
I, of course, reject this conclusion. When I get the result that the model does not represent an observation especially well, then I take this as a piece of information that motivates further investigation. The scientific investigations of my career have been based on the process that we develop a model from a set of physical laws that are expressed as mathematical expressions. The physical laws and the construction of the original model are based in their most fundamental way on observations. If the model has been developed properly, then it offers an approximation of that observed behavior. If this is the case, then we have an experimental tool that can be used for further investigation. That investigation is motivated both by the shortcomings in the model’s ability to represent observations we already have and by new observations that come along. In this approach models evolve as a tool that help us explore and manage the complexity of the climate system. They also help guide our thinking about the future based on the projections that come from the models. Models are, therefore, devices to help us think; they do not provide the answer.
Another idea that I introduced in the Difference Between Night and Day was that large changes in the amount of water at the surface, for example, the Dust Bowl and irrigation in the Corn Belt, might have significant regional impacts on climate. The place I am going with this, ultimately, is the Midwest Warming Hole (2 MB if you click), and that requires thinking about water. The Midwest Warming Hole is an observed feature in the center of the United States that is not warming up as fast as the regions around it or as fast as the models predict. This is not a newly discovered feature, but it is a feature that I think takes on new interest as we think about this hot summer, the last hot summer, and how to use the observations today to think about the climate in the future and how to adapt to a warming climate. The Midwest Warming Hole, and the ability or inability to represent it in models, is also a great example to help people think about how to describe model uncertainty.
The last big theme that I want to follow from the original blog is the improvement of ways to discuss and understand the role of water – solid, liquid and vapor – in climate and climate change. I did a series Just Temperature ( one, two, three) which was motivated by the stunningly warm spring in 2012 in the continental United States and my thinking of extreme events as climate change case studies. The Just Temperature series used the fact that the warming of the Earth has become large enough that it is possible using temperature observations alone to make a compelling case the Earth is warming. But once we make it beyond that fact, we have to think about water to understand the complexity of both the spatial and temporal structure of the observed trends.
So here are three big themes that I want to organize around:
1) Doing science with models
2) Communicating the role of water in climate and climate change
3) Thinking about changes in land use and its impacts on water
These will be interspersed, of course, with some tangents to interesting subjects here and there. But those who know this blog know that eventually I get there.
r
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Here's how easy it is to bring some meat with the bun. First two paragraphs copied and pasted...
"Research published Sunday in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change claims that warning sea levels in the Baltic Sea are strongly linked to recent blooms of the Vibrios bacteria group, which have corresponded with an uptick in humans reporting foodborne illnesses in northern Europe.
And while the study notes that the Baltic Sea is “the fastest warming marine ecosystem examined so far anywhere on Earth,” scientists also found that other temperate and even cooler regions, like Peru, Chile, Israel, the U.S. Pacific northwest and northwest Spain, have all seen growth in Vibrios infections after warmer weather."
The signals are clear enough, and conditions that seem bad now may be regarded as relatively benign in decades to come
Full Article Here
Unless political leaders world-wide begin to listen to the scientific community, future generations will be condemned to living in a very hostile biosphere.
We can't wait a few years until a truly catastrophic event kills tens of thousands of people, destroys hundreds of $Billions worth of infrastructure and cripples major economies.
I've been thinking about the "what if we don't" future.
Seems to me that a (much smaller) population of humans is likely to live underground most of the time. It's around 55F if you get down a ways and that isn't going to change appreciably.
Food will be grown underground using artificial light.
We'll likely locate close to the poles so that we can at least have a few weeks of tolerable early spring/late fall weather in which we can venture out without air conditioned bloomers.
That strikes me as ironic because those who oppose giving up fossil fuels make the claim that doing so would send us back to living in caves.
And--put money on this--there'll be an insanely large group of ideologues swearing that it's just normal, it's just nature, and that doing anything to address the problem--in fact, even talking about it--is un-American and socialist and communist.
We are so screwed...
Imagine the culture shock when 100 Million Bangladeshi Refugees are forceably relocated to Siberia.
Or closer to home, how many Cajuns in Louisiana will be willing to go back to the Maritime Provinces of Canada where they were driven out of their homes several centuries ago.
Personally, my wife and I fear for the future of the peoples of southern Louisiana. We make several treks there every year to savor the culture and the foods. Just got home yesterday from a brief trip to Cajun Country. Drove along the southern coast of Cameron county.......It won't take many feet of rising seas to completely submerge portions of that county.
Highly unlikely that people will be forcibly relocated.
Force is more likely to come in play as the folks who are already in the better places try to stop others from joining them.
That's how relocation happens now due to economic factors.
It's likely what happened in Darfur - nomadic herdsmen attacking farmers in order to get land for their flocks when the desert got too hot/dry.
Probably the first migrations that we'll see in the US is out of the desert parts of the Southwest and western Texas. And Las Vegas. Water will likely will become so scarce that people will start looking for places where life is less harsh.
We could even look at the Salton Sea area where a population crash has already happened due to lack of water to keep the Sea filled.
I'm expecting more people to move from AZ and New Mexico into Southern and Mid-California. That will push more people into Northern CA and up into the rest of the PNW. That's a trend I expect to see start up within the next 5 - 10 years.
I Want to disagree with you
.....I Want to disagree with you
..........I Want to disagree with you
...............I Want to disagree with you
However, I agree with you
.....And share your pain
Yeah, pretty much...and probably sooner than we now think.
Link
(pick "Full Text PDF" & you can view or d/l)
just watched Dr. Jackson's video "Rise of Slime (2007) -
Youtube.com
I don't believe in violence solves social issues. But there would be a lot of satisfaction in, say, getting a virus to shut down refineries for a few days along with a careful and considerate apology explaining why this was necessary.
That would be Cameron "Parish"
As we dont have "countie's" at'tall in Louisiana.
: )
OOPS! My Bad.
I knew that, however I was typing faster than I was thinking.
The full post from Dr. Jason Box can be found at the following link:
TheMeltFactor
Did you watch that lecture from NOAA (i think) where the woman explained the new normal ... that is, that the jet stream is now looping more, precessing more slowly, and as luck would have it statistically most likely to go north across the midwest? I know at least one of you saw it since one of you posted it! :-)
Put that together with its effects:
Lost apple and cherry crop in March
35% loss of the corn crop
equivalent lost production of wheat, soya, etc.
Put those facts with the fact that the US has a debt burden of 50 trillion dollars.
The entire Euro area is teetering on the brink financially
The entire middle east was already destabilized by the last jump of commodities prices.
The biggest problem for the oceans right now is acidification, and coral bleaching caused by you-guessed-it. Which (exacerbated by overfishing, wanton pollution, etc.) is already causing a proliferation of jellyfish. Some see the jelly becoming the main predator in the ocean. (The Ocean of Life - Callum Roberts)
Our society is fracturing further as we speak, Congressman Keith Ellison is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood?!?!!??!?!
Oh, I forgot the Mayan calendar and the fact that millions believe that it has significance. In fact, visiting various forums and reading outside the web, i get the distinct impression that MOST (>50%) of the population have lost the ability to tell reality from fantasy or myth. No wonder they don't look at the data.
Add then the fact that the Singularity is Near (kurzweilai.com). With all the craziness that is bringing.
SO
Stop worrying about the far future. I predict that if you are not prepared for a depression from which we will never emerge by the end of THIS year, you will not have time to get prepared.
My son, for reasons of his own will never have children and my daughter knows the score. The only grandson I will ever have smells of wet dog, even when dry.
My hands are shaking and i'm on the verge of tears (again). Tell me i'm wrong! Given that you can't do the impossible, tell my why I care?
Bubbling methane melted a hole in the ice of this otherwise
frozen lake in the Brooks Range, Alaska, in April 2011.
Credit: Katey Walter Anthony
Full NSIDC Article Here
I'm still waiting for Dr. Yurganov to post the images of the June 2012 Methane Concrentrations for the Northern Hemisphere. I'm suspecting that the delayed posting of these images might due to some anomalous readings that they aretrying to understand before releasing the data. I've seen and read portions of draft reports and presentations that Dr. Yurganov is currently working on, which implies that they are beginning to understand the source(s) of the sub-sea methene hydrates that are now being released. I will post links to those reports when the reports are final and submitted.
I'm banking on the singularity in fact. That was part of a bike coop: people need to work emotionally as much as financially. Give people the ability to work in crafts and the gift economy will work, assuming baseline survival is taken care of by robots.
When people get scared, they gravitate to the newest religion. Singularitarianism is the new faith, AI the new savior.
Kurzweil's math is compelling, of course. And in his book he proved to me with that math that the singularity will happen at some point between 2030 and 2045. Too late!! 20 years or more too late, sorry.
If you read Diamandis's book carefully, you did not miss his call (in Chapter 5) to just have faith that all will be well.
This really got my goat also:
“I also think there could be an evolutionary psychology component,” ... “We might be gloomy because gloomy people managed to avoid getting eaten by lions in the Pleistocene.”
Kotler, Steven; Diamandis, Peter H. (2012-02-21). Abundance (Kindle Locations 813-815). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
What a putz.
Speaking of putzes (sp?) Did you catch this in the news?
When people started to notice that we don't have enough praseodymium and neodymium to build enough windmills to save ourselves (and China has plans for the rare earths that are available), out popped James Cameron with his astroid "plan". I only worked in extractive metallurgy for a while, but trust me - his plan is just a nice, fluffy fiction to rest your worried mind against. Why do you think, on Kurzweilai and other locations, Kurzweil featured his plan so prominently? Our buddy Ray has a religion to sell! Did you buy the movie yet? Have you taken classes at SU?
Please don't feel that i'm picking on you greenT. I'll confess to having wanted in the '80s, in the worst way to attend MIU at Ames, Iowa. (look it up LOL)
My apologies to Dr. Rood. After all, he is trying to talk about modeling! LOL
I promise to not post for several days.
I've been thinking about how we might know when we're getting really close to the "critical point" at which we've got almost no opportunity left to save our butts.
First, I believe that our military really does work to protect us. As opposed as I am to war, I recognize that we've a need for these people standing between us and those who would harm us.
I watch how the US military has worked to reduce its dependency on oil and in incorporate renewable energy into its operations I feel that we can trust that the military is not in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry.
Then I add in the fact that the military has clearly stated that global climate change is real and that it provides a clear threat for our nation's future.
I'm counting on the military to be one of the alarm systems.
I'd like some other alarm systems as well. Redundancy is a good thing when we're talking about critical systems.
Individual scientists doesn't work. Some will always over estimate and some will underestimate. It might help if there were something like the atomic war doomsday clock. A warning system based on the input of all climate scientists.
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OK, I'll respond to a bit of the above doomerism.
We can build EVs and wind turbines without rare earth minerals. We already are.
Additionally, Japan recently announced the discovery of vast rare earth mineral deposits just offshore. New sources which can be tapped.
By BETH GARDINER
Published: July 21, 2012
Full NYT Sunday Review
Having spent all of my adult life working either in the military or closely with military in the defense industry, I'm very familiar with the hierarchical mindset of most conservatives. Rather than berating them for their lack of compassion we need to stimulate then into presenting solutions to a pressing problem. The MIC (Military Industrial Complex) is very adept at identifying threats, performing risk analyses and implementing solutions by utilizing the latest technological tools and processes.
Just last night I was thinking that the current industries most capable of implementing solutions to the Emerging Climate Crisis are the Fossil Fuel Industry and the Defense/Aerospace Industry. The Fossil fuel Industry is uniquely poised to implement carbon sequestration programs. The Defense & Aerospace Industries have the industrial capacity and engineering technologies to rapidly develop geo-engineering solutions that are land-based, sea-based or space-based.
While I'm not yet a fan or proponent of geo-engineering, I believe that we need to have robust plans, for multiple solutions, on the drawing table ASAP.
Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12.
The images above were just posted on Neven's blog today. Quiet impressive to have that much additional melting to occur in just 4 days!!
Full Article on Neven's blog
We don't have viable carbon sequestering technology.
I think it highly unlikely that the fossil fuel industry will save us. Most likely those corporations will continue to make as much profit as they can from fossil fuels.
We may see (and are seeing) some movement of the oil companies to reposition some of their capital into renewable energy, but I wouldn't expect them to be leaders, only late adapters.
I think it more likely that already existing renewable tech manufacturers will grow and replace fossil fuel companies, just as cars replaced buggy makers and gas stations replaced livery stables.
Geo-engineering. Let's spend adequate money to research ideas. A geo-engineering "solution" might save our rear ends, but perhaps at a large cost.
Think about lung cancer. You can treat it with radiation and chemo, but the side effects are nasty. Better to just stop smoking and not catch it.
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The solution is so easy. And will cost only small money, if you do all the math.
Just go ahead and use natural gas to close down coal plants quickly. (Those NG turbines will get paid off soon and then can be deep backup.)
Make the subsidies for wind and solar longer term, none of this jerking the industry around every 2-3 years making long term planning difficult.
Design the subsidies to be self-adjusting as are the federal subsidies for residential solar. Set at 30% of installed price the actual dollar amount of the subsidy drops along with the cost of solar.
Admit the health cost of burning coal and the cost of global warming (storms, flood, and droughts). Spend more money on cutting CO2 in order to avoid even higher recovery costs later. Just do some smart investing.
Do these simple things and what happens? We avoid the worst of global climate change. Our health costs drop. We create lots and lots of good jobs for the next 20, 30, 40 years. We all end up with cheaper electricity and get to drive for far less than what we now spend.
I blame this on global warming.
I don't mind being criticized on as long as the poster is not trolling, which I don't think you are.
I don't think the singularity is a new religion. I think the basic concept is fairly well accepted.
I haven't actually read anything of Kurtzweil. I don't even think the original concept was his. I'd have to check but I thought it was someone else who actually coined the term. I did apply to SU but not for classes exactly. They did a global impact competition and I submitted an entry. (The winner was a, IMHO, rediculous thing that was typical of style not substance, hence it was Italy's selection. Hmmpph!)
But I haven't really paid attention to the writings of futurologists in depth. I don't know his math or whatever else he is working on. This is just my take on it: there are several singularities:
- economic: when, due to automation, only X% of the world's available human labor is needed to produce all our goods. (25) It is a singularity because the social order neforced by capitalism breaks down, similarly the equilibrium models can't work in a post-labor world.
- biological: when death by disease and old age is no longer a factor. (??)
- bioengineering: when we can augment our bodies with whatever functions we require. (??)
- mental: when computers become smaprter than us. (20)
The numbers in () are my estimates of when this will happen. Mental is before economic because it just is.
I work a bit in this field and I don't think 2020 for a computer smarter than us is too optimistic, it is why I am going back to school. I figure Von Neuman machines and robots are our only hope really.
Although a bike coop is second best, : )
You know, a computer would never make that typo.
(Sorry, I don't usually point out that sort of thing, but the context was too delicious to pass up.)
LiveScience.com
That's a record for the largest area of surface melt on Greenland in more than 30 years of satellite observations, according to NASA and university scientists.
The images, snapped by three satellites, showed that about 40 percent of the ice sheet had thawed at or near the surface on July 8; just days later, on July 12, images showed a dramatic increase in melting with thawing across 97 percent of the ice sheet surface.
Sorry - just realized this has been posted already - but at least it's a different source
Rare Earth recycling
Venturebeat.com
U.S. Rare-Earth Mine Rises Again.
Wired.com
Around 6.8 million tonnes of the valuable minerals, used in electric cars, iPods and lasers, are sitting under the seabed near a far eastern Japanese island, Tokyo University professor Yasuhiro Kato told AFP on Friday.
He said mud samples taken from an area near Minamitorishima island, some 2000 kilometres southeast of Tokyo, indicated deposits amounted to around 220 times the average annual amount used by industry in Japan.
The seabed contained a substantial amount of dysprosium - a rare earth mineral used in the engines for hybrid cars, he said.
"Specifically on dysprosium, I estimate at least 400 years worth of Japan's current consumption is in the deposits," said the professor, who examined mud samples taken from the seabed around 5600 metres.
"We can start drilling in the mud, using oil extraction technology, within three years at the earliest and start producing rare earth minerals within five years," he said.
Link
12th place already since 1979.
Psssssst. A little secret for you vanwx. The Theromohaline Cycle is being impeded now due to GHGs. What is going to happen to the Thermohaline Cycle when the Norhtern Arctic Ice melts out during the summer? Surely it is not going to be a positive effect.......... They keep the Thermohaline Cycle as it was was prior to the industrial revolution based on what temperature we regulate Gulfstream SSTs anywhere between 70 and 90 degrees F.. Let the computers verify what I am telling you...
Neapolitan,
These unscrew us............
ScienceDaily (July 24, 2012) %u2014 For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its two-mile-thick center, experienced some degree of melting at its surface, according to measurements from three independent satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists.On average in the summer, about half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet naturally melts. At high elevations, most of that melt water quickly refreezes in place. Near the coast, some of the melt water is retained by the ice sheet and the rest is lost to the ocean. But this year the extent of ice melting at or near the surface jumped dramatically. According to satellite data, an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July.
Researchers have not yet determined whether this extensive melt event will affect the overall volume of ice loss this summer and contribute to sea level rise.
"The Greenland ice sheet is a vast area with a varied history of change. This event, combined with other natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann Glacier, are part of a complex story," said Tom Wagner, NASA's cryosphere program manager in Washington. "Satellite observations are helping us understand how events like these may relate to one another as well as to the broader climate system."
Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was analyzing radar data from the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Oceansat-2 satellite last week when he noticed that most of Greenland appeared to have undergone surface melting on July 12. Nghiem said, "This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: was this real or was it due to a data error?"
Nghiem consulted with Dorothy Hall at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Hall studies the surface temperature of Greenland using the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. She confirmed that MODIS showed unusually high temperatures and that melt was extensive over the ice sheet surface.
THIS PREVENTS THE ABOVE AND BELOW...
Link
Better batteries - batteries that hold more power will give us EVs/PHEVs with more usable range.
Cheaper batteries will give us more affordable EVs/PHEVs and the ability to make renewable generation affordable 24/365.
So where do we stand? Some progress recently with EV batteries.
GM has announced that the next generation of their Volts will get 10% more range, apparently because they've either improved the batteries or figured out how to get more out of what they were using.
Toshiba has announced that their SCiB lithium-ion batteries (used in the Honda FiT EV) have been reformulated and can now undergo 2,000 100% DoD (depth of discharge) cycles before dropping to 80% capacity.
That means that the batteries can be discharged more in EV use, increasing range. Range is restricted in EVs/PHEVs in order to make batteries last longer.
EV battery price seems to be high only due to economy of scale. Make more per year and prices will drop a lot. There aren't a lot of expensive materials, much labor or much energy used. It's all about spreading costs of capex/R&D further and building better supply chains.
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Grid storage. A123 is selling large systems. Tesla uses A123 lithium ion batteries in its EVs.
Japan just bought a bunch of A123 cells for their power grid. But there are at least two very promising better batteries in the works.
Aquion is going into production with a sodium-ion battery in the next few months. (They were advertising for an accountant yesterday.) They've got a battery that should give grid storage for $0.06/kWh and they think they can get the price down to $0.015/kWh with some further work.
Six cent storage would make renewables work. One and a half cent storage changes the game.
Then MIT has developed a liquid metal battery that might be even cheaper per kWh. They've got a few prototypes working and their technology is scaling up.
This video on the MIT battery is worth a look...
Link
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There's a good chance that solar panels will be down to $0.50/watt in three years. They are at $0.75/W now. Fifty cents per would make installed solar at $1/watt possible and would make solar cheaper than coal or gas. Wind is already at $0.06/kWh and dropping to $0.05/kWh over the next very few years.
If we can generate power for a nickle a kWh, use some of it as generated, and store some for less than a nickle per then we've cracked the electricity nut.
Gulfstream Kinetic energy can charge all those batteries 24/7/365......
If we can store the available energy from solar, wind, tidal or whatever - Hydro.
One massive UPS for the planet. I'm not sure that this idea would solve our most pressing problems in the long term but it does give hope for the short term.
And lately I have not seen a lot of hope.
Batteries!
Terrance McKenna was light years ahead of Kurtzweil.
That's funny.
But computers will make similar typos and mistakes. It isn't the nature of the beast, so to speak, but the nature of the data. When the choice is between sending all the data down to the last little detail and sending a summary of the data, if the summary is chosen, the summarization process leaves out a lot of information which leads to similar errors, although perhaps not typoes. ; )
There's also a lot of work in super capacitors that is nice because of the high efficiency in capturing regenerative braking. One, at least, is electro mechanical and moves the plates to adjust voltage during discharge. To me that seems a commonsense solution but of the many things I am not, one of the largest is an electrical engineer.
If we were at CO2 levels of 30 years ago and we had this technology
There have also been a few articles about polymer batteries and solar cells that don't use any metals are all.
My favorite though was a window that captures near infrared and supposedly was very cheap to produce.
Posted: 07/24/2012 11:45 pm
The continental U.S. has just experienced the hottest 12 month period in recorded history. The West is on fire. The Maldives are going underwater and California can expect a sea level rise of six inches in less than 20 years.
An increasing number of studies are making the connections between human activities, climate change and a rise in extreme weather events. While it is difficult to point to climate change as causing a single weather event without in-depth research, patterns are emerging.
Scientists warn that climate change will bring an increase in heat waves, droughts, floods and worsening storms. Not a rosy forecast for our future, let alone our children's future.
From chocolate to our favorite island getaways, a variety of studies suggest that many of the things and places that we most enjoy may be gone if we stay on this path. Below is a list of some of the things that may be changed or ruined for future generations based on suggested effects of climate change. There is an element of speculation in this list, as predictions are difficult to determine.
What do you think will be ruined for your kids due to climate change? Tweet us what #climatechangeruins for future generations, and we may include it in our slideshow below!
Reducing CO2: Research Shows Chemical and Economic Feasibility for Capturing Carbon Dioxide Directly from Air
ScienceDaily (July 23, 2012) %u2014 With a series of papers published in chemistry and chemical engineering journals, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have advanced the case for extracting carbon dioxide directly from the air using newly-developed adsorbent materials.
The technique might initially be used to supply carbon dioxide for such industrial applications as fuel production from algae or enhanced oil recovery. But the method could later be used to supplement the capture of CO2 from power plant flue gases as part of efforts to reduce concentrations of the atmospheric warming chemical.
In a detailed economic feasibility study, the researchers projected that a CO2 removal unit the size of an ocean shipping container could extract approximately a thousand tons of the gas per year with operating costs of approximately $100 per ton. The researchers also reported on advances in adsorbent materials for selectively capturing carbon dioxide.
"Even if we removed CO2 from all the flue gas, we'd still only get a portion of the carbon dioxide emitted each year," noted David Sholl, a professor in Georgia Tech's School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. "If we want to make deep cuts in emissions, we'll have to do more -- and air capture is one option for doing that."
The Georgia Tech research into air capture techniques was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Papers describing the economic analysis and new adsorbent materials were published in the journals ChemSusChem, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research, the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters and the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Jones is collaborating with a startup company -- Global Thermostat -- to establish a pilot plant to demonstrate the direct air capture technique. The technology for capturing carbon dioxide from the air would be similar to that required for removing the gas from smokestack emissions, though CO2 concentrations in flue gases are dramatically higher than those in the atmosphere.
Flue gases contain about 15 percent carbon dioxide, while CO2 is found in the atmosphere at less than 400 parts per million. That's a factor of 375, notes Sholl, who said the difference in capture efficiency could be partially made up by eliminating the need to transport CO2 removed from flue gas to sequestration locations.
"Because the atmosphere is generally consistent, you could operate the capture equipment wherever you had a sequestration site," he said. "I don't think air capture will ever produce carbon dioxide as cheaply as capturing it from flue gas. But on the other hand, it doesn't seem to be wildly more expensive, either."
Based on his work with Global Thermostat, Jones believes that the costs of an optimized process will prove to be even lower than the estimates of Sholl's team. "Sholl's paper is important because it shows that direct capture of CO2 from the air can be up to ten times less expensive than had been estimated by others," he said. "Process improvements based on their initial modeling study could bring costs down even further."
In its economic analysis, Sholl's team considered all of the energy that would have to be put into the capture process. The cost estimates did not include the capital cost of establishing the capture facilities because the technology is still too new for reliable projections.
The batch extraction process modeled by the Georgia Tech team involves blowing air through a ceramic honeycomb structure coated with dry amino-modified silica material to capture the CO2, then flowing steam through the structure to release the gas. The technique could produce carbon dioxide that is roughly 90 percent pure.
"The technical challenges are similar to those of flue gas capture: demonstration at scale, demonstration of long-term adsorbent stability and demonstration of process feasibility and stability," Jones said. "Increased funding for air capture work is needed, because most of the funding invested in carbon capture over the past decade has been directed at flue gas capture."
Sholl and Jones have also been contributing to work on flue gas treatment, conducting research into adsorbent materials, including theoretical and experimental research into adsorbent alternatives such as metal-organic framework (MOF) materials.
Among their recent papers on direct capture of CO2 from the air are:
A Journal of the American Chemical Society paper that described the role of zirconium in producing more efficient amine-based adsorbents. "Past work has focused on maximizing the amount of CO2 captured per gram of adsorbent by adding ever-increasing amounts of amines," Jones explained. "We are the first to show that an alternate strategy is to change the oxide support that the amines lay on, and for a fixed amount of amine, each amine works more efficiently."
A paper published in ChemSusChem describing the role played by primary, secondary and tertiary amines in capturing carbon dioxide from ultra-dilute gases like air. "We showed conclusively that primary amines are responsible for CO2 capture from the air, that secondary amines work to some degree, and that tertiary amines don't absorb from air in any appreciable amount," Jones said.
Jones believes air capture should be among the options developed to address global warming produced by increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
"Initial demonstrations of the air capture process will probably be targeted for applications that can use the carbon dioxide for commercial purposes," Jones said. "As the technology matures, we envision implementing CO2 capture from the air as a climate stabilization strategy, in parallel with CO2 capture from flue gas and enhanced utilization of alternative energies."
The study, published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, hints at the potential for GPS to detect many consequences of climate change, including ice loss, the uplift of bedrock, changes in air pressure -- and perhaps even sea level rise.
The team, led by earth scientists at Ohio State University, pinpointed a period in 2010 when high temperatures caused the natural ice flow out to sea to suddenly accelerate, and 100 billion tons of ice melted away from the continent in only 6 months.
They were able to make the measurement because Earth compresses or expands like a spring depending on the weight above it, letting them use the Greenland bedrock like a giant bathroom scale to weigh the ice atop it. As ice accumulates, the bedrock sinks, and as the ice melts away, the bedrock rises.
Measurements revealed that Greenland sank by about 6 mm (about one quarter of an inch) over the winter of 2010, and the researchers determined that half of the sinking (3 mm, or one eighth of an inch) was actually due to high air pressure above the ice, and the other half was due to ice accumulation.
Further, they determined that the bedrock lifted 11 mm (less than half an inch) over the course the summer. Air pressure appeared to affect the bedrock less during this time, so that the bounce-back appears to be mostly due to ice loss.
This method has been used to study ice loss before, in Antarctica as well as Greenland. But previously, GPS could only detect changes over a period of several years, said project leader Michael Bevis, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Geodynamics and professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State.
While shortening the detection time to six months is a substantial advance, Bevis thinks his team will soon do even better.
"Within the next year or so, we should be able to process the GPS data within a month of its being collected," he said, "and then we can monitor abrupt changes in ice mass only a month or two after they occur."
Sorry...I just couldn't resist.
Anyway...in this case, I guess "Unprecedented" means "since 1889".
Well it is unprecedented in that the one historical observation of a similar phenomena didn't happen in a period of stunning global warmth and further predicted increases.
Well, even from the article I got the impression that neither the 1889 nor the 2012 event were "unprecedented" in the true sense of the word. If anything, I'd say that the 1889 was more noteworthy, assuming temperatures in the area were lower then. I think it does sort of fly in the face of the idea that seasonal variability has increased due to a rise in temperatures, since the event occurred at about the expected time interval. If it occurs more often in the future it may be indicative of increased melting but right now, I'd say that it's a non-story really.
As to some speculation I've seen that this will contribute noticeable to the overall melt for the season, I'd seriously doubt it. I'd think that most of the ice that melted in the interior simply refroze a few days later.
WUWT gives some context for the melting event in the link that follows. I'd have to say, at least in my opinion, that WUWT also gives a more honest headline in this case as well.
Greenland Ice Melt every 150 years is 'right on time'
Edited: "Unprecedented" not "unprecented" plus some other grammar corrections
Seriously, you're quoting/referncing WUWT? There's no law barring him from occasionally being honest but I'm not going to follow your link - to much history of lying and falsifying on that site.
Howevr, while I won't follow the link,sure, he could actually be being honest this time, I don't know. However that doesn't take away from the 'coincedence' that this occurance is right in the middle of all the other symptoms of runaway global warmign starting up.
One monster doesn't a halloween make, but add in the wolfman, a few vampires, Frankinstein, Dick cheney, a few witches, etc and you've got some splainin to do if it isn't halloween.
I agree that must have been a wierd couple of days back in 1889. This one is symptomatic of global warming.
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