Posted on 03/13/2006 8:12:50 AM PST by PatrickHenry
A new theory to explain global warming was revealed at a meeting at the University of Leicester (UK) and is being considered for publication in the journal "Science First Hand". The controversial theory has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. According to Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the apparent rise in average global temperature recorded by scientists over the last hundred years or so could be due to atmospheric changes that are not connected to human emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of natural gas and oil.
Shaidurov explained how changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth's surface.
Shaidurov has used a detailed analysis of the mean temperature change by year for the last 140 years and explains that there was a slight decrease in temperature until the early twentieth century. This flies in the face of current global warming theories that blame a rise in temperature on rising carbon dioxide emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. Shaidurov, however, suggests that the rise, which began between 1906 and 1909, could have had a very different cause, which he believes was the massive Tunguska Event, which rocked a remote part of Siberia, northwest of Lake Baikal on the 30th June 1908.
The Tunguska Event, sometimes known as the Tungus Meteorite is thought to have resulted from an asteroid or comet entering the earth's atmosphere and exploding. The event released as much energy as fifteen one-megaton atomic bombs. As well as blasting an enormous amount of dust into the atmosphere, felling 60 million trees over an area of more than 2000 square kilometres. Shaidurov suggests that this explosion would have caused "considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure." Such meteoric disruption was the trigger for the subsequent rise in global temperatures.
Global warming is thought to be caused by the "greenhouse effect". Energy from the sun reaches the earth's surface and warms it, without the greenhouse effect most of this energy is then lost as the heat radiates back into space. However, the presence of so-called greenhouse gases at high altitude absorb much of this energy and then radiate a proportion back towards the earth's surface. Causing temperatures to rise.
Many natural gases and some of those released by conventional power stations, vehicle and aircraft exhausts act as greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, natural gas, or methane, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are all potent greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide and methane are found naturally in the atmosphere, but it is the gradual rise in levels of these gases since the industrial revolution, and in particular the beginning of the twentieth century, that scientists have blamed for the gradual rise in recorded global temperature. Attempts to reverse global warming, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have centred on controlling and even reducing CO2 emissions.
However, the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant changes to the temperature of the earth's surface, which far outweighs the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global average temperature of Earth's surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.
The role of water vapour in controlling our planet's temperature was hinted at almost 150 years ago by Irish scientist John Tyndall. Tyndall, who also provided an explanation as to why the sky is blue, explained the problem: "The strongest radiant heat absorber, is the most important gas controlling Earth's temperature. Without water vapour, he wrote, the Earth's surface would be 'held fast in the iron grip of frost'." Thin clouds at high altitude allow sunlight to reach the earth's surface, but reflect back radiated heat, acting as an insulating greenhouse layer.
Water vapour levels are even less within our control than CO levels. According to Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University writing in 'The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change', "Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, however. The most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour, he says, "Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation."
As such, Shaidurov has concluded that only an enormous natural phenomenon, such as an asteroid or comet impact or airburst, could seriously disturb atmospheric water levels, destroying persistent so-called 'silver', or noctilucent, clouds composed of ice crystals in the high altitude mesosphere (50 to 85km). The Tunguska Event was just such an event, and coincides with the period of time during which global temperatures appear to have been rising the most steadily - the twentieth century. There are many hypothetical mechanisms of how this mesosphere catastrophe might have occurred, and future research is needed to provide a definitive answer.
Source: University of Leicester
Or it could be their greatest empowerment: an excuswe to tax and control water.
That's just one more area of research that has been essentially smothered due to it's ability to demolish any "old earth" hypothesis. If it is real, then by the end of 100,000 years or so there would be five times as much water on earth as there is now.
The author mentions these tests. In fact he credits them with temporarily stopping the planetary temperature rise. The figures showing this are in his paper They were not at as high an altitude, most were surface or subsurface detonations and most were not nearly so large individually. (the largest was bigger however, the Soviets did a one time demonstration of 50 MT, which was detonated at 4 km altitude)
But not so high as the Tunguska event, which is estimated at 10 km for the center of the explosion. Although it's the effect on the water vapor in the troposphere and mesosphere that the author argues is different between the volcanoes and nuclear tests on the one hand, and the Tunguska event.
He also argues that the effect is at permanent, or at least of longer lasting effect than events lower in the atmosphere.
Actually the author indicates the critical altitude is somewhat higher. If anything, the ice crystals injected by the airlines would have a cooling effect, but they also would settle out fairly rapidly.
Worked for me, almost two weeks later.
When a nuclear charge explodes at the Earth’s surface or in the atmosphere, the shock wave vents water vapor from the troposphere to the stratosphere through tropopause.
For some period (approx. 3 years) water vapor in the stratosphere and aerosol, and dust in the troposphere and stratosphere suffice for the defense of the Earth from solar radiation. But then all gradually settled, and global warming continued.
All nuclear explosions above the ground and the sea together gave rise to tendency for decreasing the global temperature of Earth’s surface. The last nuclear test in open atmosphere was on the 16th October 1980.
Interesting.
If the Tunguska event was an exploding meteorite (or even a comet), and the explosion pushed water vapor higher up or even added some of its own to the mix, then according to the paper, the conclusion could be drawn that atmospheric nuclear testing is all that has interrupted a linear trend in temperature increases since 1908.
Further the conclusion could be drawn that the cause of the warming is not human, or even necessarily solar activity (although that may be a factor), but the Tunguska event and the associated displacement of water vapor. Hmmmmm.
I'm much more inclined to think the lessening magnetosphere around the earth is letting more particles through, yielding additional heating, but the spirit of the thread was more toward possible junk science theories than anything.
I can't imagine that the additional particles carry all that much energy.
What's needed is something that changed or changes the feedback loops that keep the temperature stable. And it needs to be either a persistent change, or be renewed.
The coverage of any scientific subject often leaves out the more important details on how the conclusion was reached. However, here's a link to the paper itself. He writes:
But water vapour in the mesosphere is another matter. At a pressure hundreds of times less than at atmospheric pressure at sea level, the freezing point of water vapour shifts to a vastly negative temperature without the intermediate liquid state (see Fig. 3). Therefore there exists a sizable layer spanning the higher part of the stratosphere and lower part of the mesosphere where water is in the gas state. The mesospheric composition is slightly distinct from the stratospheric one at significant, with less density of gases. The gaseous state of water vapor has lower density than the ambient gases (atomic masses of H2O, O2, and N2 equal 18, 32, and 28, respectively). Therefore it has some tendency to move up in rapidly moving flows with some stirring against the background of diffusion. When it migrates, gas climbs to a temperature below freezing point, crystallizes and migrates down. There it evaporates missing the liquid state, and the process repeats. Thus, mesopause with a strongly negative temperature of around -95o prevents water vapor leaving beyond the upper bound of the mesosphere.
He's clearly not talking about just ice crystals, or just condensed liquid water, but rather water vapor as well. He's also talking about considerably higher altitude phenomena than is usually the case when talking about the greenhouse and albedo effects of clouds.
This is where I got the water vapor idea. Thought you might be interested. I was wrong, it's not water vapor but ice crystals that are the dirty little secret.
PING
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/meteors-nuclear-tests-and-global-warming/
Summary: the idea needs a lot more work.
I still think the idea that what we are doing is causing global warming is a bunch of garbage designed to destroy capitalism. The sun causes global warming, period. What were the CO2 emissions coming from that caused the glaciers to recede from Michigan?
Actually, to say that the Sun causes global warming, period, doesn't even characterize the main cause of glacial/interglacial cycles. The main cause of those cycles is Milankovitch forcing, due to variability of the Earth's orbital eccentricity, axial tilt, and axial precesssion. These factors alter the amount of solar insolation the Earth receives (so it's the Earth's fault, not the Sun). Changing solar insolation alters the Earth's radiative balance.
Increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere in the middle of a stable interglacial period (i.e. now) also alters Earth's radiative balance. The predicted effect of this change is an increase in global temperature.
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