Molarity and Molar Solutions

✓Molarity: The number of moles of solute per liter of solution.

✓Sea water contains, 1.06 % of Na+ (percentage weight/volume,

Weight of Na per 100 mL of solution).

✓Number of grams present in 1000 L is 10.6 g

✓Number of moles are – 10.6 g/23.0 g/mole = 0.46 moles

✓Thus molarity of Na+ in seawater = 0.46 M

✓Very dil. Solutions, the convenient way to inform the concentration is

millimolar ([10-3]/L, micromolar ([10-6]/L) and nanomolar ([10-9]/L)
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Parts per Million (ppm)
✓The unit ppm is a convenient way to describe very dilute solutions.
It is frequently used for stating concentrations of pollutants in water.

✓1 ppm Lead = This means there is 1 part Lead in every 1 million parts
water.

✓Description of solutions is good in volume, and the

Density of water = 1

✓To convert to moles, divide 1 mg by Lead’s gram atomic weight.

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Parts per Billion (ppb)
✓Samples containing minute traces of contaminants

✓1 ppb = 1 g/L

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Global warming
✓ Earth's atmosphere is slightly warmer
than what it should be due to direct
solar heating because of a mild case of
greenhouse effect…

✓ The ground is heated by visible and

(some) infrared light from the Sun.

✓ The heated surface emits infrared light.

✓ The small amount of greenhouse gases

(H2O, CO2) traps (absorb and re-emit)
the infrared radiation, increasing the
temperature of the atmosphere…

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Greenhouse Gases
✓ The primary components of Earth's atmosphere, N2 and O2 do not have
absorption in the IR wavelength range, therefore, do not have a significant
role in setting the surface temperature of the planet…

✓ Greenhouse gas are efficient in absorbing IR light … The most important

greenhouse gases are:
o H2O – Water vapor.
o CO2 – Carbon dioxide
o CH4 – methane

✓ The most abundant greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere is water vapor.

✓ Most of the greenhouse heating of Earth's atmosphere is due to Water vapor

absorption of IR radiation emitted by Earth, and then transferring the energy
to the surrounding air molecule
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The Atmosphere of Earth
✓The atmosphere of Earth contains primarily N2 (77%) and O2 (21%).
✓What happened to all the CO2 ?
✓Where did all the O2 come from?

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CO2
✓CO2 is a colourless gas…
✓condenses into solid form (dry ice) at -78°C in atmospheric pressure.
✓condenses into liquid at -57°C at pressure above 5.1 atmospheric
pressure.
✓Atmospheric CO2 is derived from (The sources …)
o Volcanic outgassing
o burning of organic matter
o Respiration of living organisms
o…

✓CO2 can be stored in (The Sinks …)

o Highly soluble in water: forms H2CO3
o Dissolved CO2 in water can interact with silicate minerals to form carbonated
minerals…
o…

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Carbon Dioxide Cycle
✓The mechanism by which Earth self-regulates its temperature is called
the carbon dioxide cycle.

✓Starting with the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere:

o Volcanoes outgas CO2 into the atmosphere.
o Atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans.
o At the same time, rainfall erodes rocks on Earth's continents and rivers
carry the eroded minerals to the oceans.
o In the oceans, the eroded minerals combine with dissolved carbon dioxide
and fall to the ocean floor, making carbonate rocks such as limestone.
o Over millions of years, the conveyor belt of plate tectonics carries the
carbonate rocks to subduction zones, and subduction carries them down
into the mantle.
o As they are pushed deeper into the mantle, some of the subducted
carbonate rock melts and releases its carbon dioxide, which then outgasses
back into the atmosphere through volcanoes.
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The CO2 Cycle
✓The CO2 cycle acts as a thermostat that regulates the temperature of
the Earth…

✓If Earth warms up a bit, then

o carbonate minerals form in the oceans at
a higher rate.
o The rate at which the oceans dissolve
CO2 gas increases, pulling CO2 out of
the atmosphere.
o The reduced atmospheric CO2
concentration leads to a weakened
greenhouse effect that counteracts the
initial warming and cools the planet
back down.

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The CO2 Cycle
✓If Earth cools a bit,
o carbonate minerals form more slowly
in the oceans.
o The rate at which the oceans dissolve
CO2 gas decreases, allowing the CO2
released by volcanism to build back up
in the atmosphere.
o The increased CO2 concentration
strengthens the greenhouse effect and
warms the planet back up

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Feedback Loop
✓Positive Feedback
o Mechanisms that make things worse…
o e.g., Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere leads to the release of more CO2

✓Negative Feedback
o Mechanisms that are self-correcting…
o e.g., Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere leads to higher rate of CO2 removal, such
as our CO2 cycle.

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Plate Tectonics
✓Plate tectonics plays an important role in the CO2 cycle in that it helps
to carry the carbonate rocks into the mantle, which are then released
again by volcanic activities.
o Earth's lithosphere is broken into pieces (the plates).
o These plates float on top of the mantle, interacting with each other to produce
the geological features we see and feel today.

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Where Did O2 Come From?
✓Life and Photosynthesis.
o Photosynthesis converts CO2 to O2 , and incorporates carbon into amino acids,
proteins, and other components of living organisms.
o O2 will be depleted from the atmosphere very rapidly without a source.
o O2 is a very reactive chemical that likes to be combined with other elements
through oxidation. For example, CO2 , H2O, FeO (rust). That's how we make
fire!
o O2 Absorbs UV, which also transform some of the O2 into O3, which absorbs
even more UV

✓⇒ O2 not only supports life, it also protect life!

✓UV light can break the water molecules to release oxygen, but the
contribution is small….

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The Role of the Magnetic Field of Earth
✓ Another important characteristics of the Earth is its magnetic fields, which
shield us from the bombardment of the high-energy charged particles, mostly
from the Sun.
o Without magnetic field, the high energy particles of solar wind can strip much of the
Earth's atmosphere by breaking the bonds between the atoms in the air molecules
o N2 → N + N
o O2 → O + O
o H2 O → H + H + O
✓ The lighter gases then higher probability of acquiring velocity higher than
escape velocity and escape from Earth!

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Runaway Greenhouse Effect
✓If we were to move the Earth closer to the Sun, like where Venus is
now, then we would suffer runaway greenhouse effect, lose all the
water and will become hot like Venus.

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Global Warming
✓There is a gradual increase in the average temperature of the Earth's
atmosphere in the last 100 years…It has risen about 1°C since 1900…
o Are human activities causing global warming?
o What other (non-human) factors can cause global warming?
o How does global warming affect our life?

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The Long-Term Stability of Earth's Climate − 400,000 years

✓The atmospheric concentration of CO2 measured from Antarctic ice

core data implies that Earth's climate has been pretty stable over the
past 400,000 years

✓It also shows a rapid increase of about 30% in the past few centuries…
– 270 ppm (parts per million) to 370 ppm

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Changes in Carbon Dioxide and Temperature in the last 400,000
years

✓Fluctuations in temperature (blue) and in the atmospheric

concentration of carbon dioxide (red) over the past 400,000 years as
inferred from Antarctic ice-core records .

✓The vertical red bar is the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide

levels over the past two centuries and before 2006.
A. V. Fedorov et al. Science 312, 14s85 (2006) 17. 18. 18
Reproduced from EPA Climate Change Website.
How do we measure atmospheric CO2 concentration in the past?

✓Precise measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentration is available

only in the last few decades…

✓Information about atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperatures

in the past can be inferred by several different methods, such as
o Tree-ring
o Deep ocean sediment
o Ice core records – Coral
o…

✓Paleoclimatology is the study of climate prior to the widespread

availability of records of temperature, precipitation and other
instrumental data.

Link to NOAA Paleoclimatology Website 19

Antarctic Ice Core
✓Located high in mountains and in polar ice caps, ice has accumulated
from snowfall over many millenia.
✓Scientists drill through the deep ice to collect ice cores. These cores
contains dust, air bubbles, or isotopes of oxygen, that can be used to
interpret the past climate of that area.

Link to NOAA Paleoclimatology Website 20

 CO2 over 500 million years
✓ This figures shows estimates of the changes in carbon dioxide concentrations
during the Phanerozoic .
✓ Three estimates are based on geochemical modeling: GEOCARB III (Berner
and Kothavala 2001), COPSE (Bergmann et al. 2004) and Rothman (2001).
✓ These are compared to the carbon dioxide measurement database of Royer et
al. (2004) and a 30 Myr filtered average of those data. Error envelopes are
shown when they were available.
✓ The right hand scale shows the ratio
of these measurements to the
estimated average for the last several
million years (the Quaternary).
✓ Customary labels for the periods of
geologic time appear at the bottom.

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CO2 over 500 million years
✓Direct determination of past carbon dioxide levels relies primarily on
the interpretation of carbon isotopic ratios in fossilized soils
(paleosols) or the shells of phytoplankton and through interpretation
of stomatal density in fossil plants.
✓Each of these is subject to substantial systematic uncertainty.
✓Estimates of carbon dioxide changes through geochemical modeling
instead rely on quantifying the geological sources and sinks for carbon
dioxide over long time scales particularly: volcanic inputs, erosion and
carbonate deposition.
✓As such, these models are largely independent of direct measurements
of carbon dioxide.
✓Both measurements and models show considerable uncertainty and
variation; however, all points to carbon dioxide levels in the past that
have been significantly higher than they are at present.
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Which gas is keeping the Earth warm?
✓The major natural greenhouse gases are
o water vapor, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect
on Earth ( not including clouds );
o carbon dioxide, which causes 9-26%;
o methane, which causes 4-9%, and
o ozone, which causes 3-7%.

✓Note that it is not really possible to assert that a certain gas causes a
certain percentage of the greenhouse effect , because the influences of
the various gases are not additive.
(The higher ends of the ranges quoted are for the gas alone; the lower
ends, for the gas counting overlaps.)

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 What's the big deal if human CO2 causes 1 °C temperature
increase?
✓ An increase in atmospheric temperature
(human or natural origin) will lead to the
increase in the water vapor content of the
troposphere.

✓ Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas, the

increase in H2O vapor in turn causes
enhanced greenhouse effect, raising the
temperature more.

✓ Higher atmospheric temperature will cause

more evaporation of water

✓ Which leads to even higher temperature…

✓ ⇒ Runaway Green House Effect!

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How about Clouds and Ice?
✓Water vapor (water in gaseous phase) is one of the most potent
and abundant greenhouse gas…but

✓Clouds (water in liquid form) reflect sunlight, decreasing the solar

energy input into Earth's atmosphere during the day, but they trap IR
radiation from the Earth during the night. It's net effect is not well
know so far…
o Albedo of clouds range from close to 0 to 70%.
o Testing climate impact of clouds after Sept. 11, 2001…

✓Ice has a very high albedo , ~ 80 to 90%.

o Thus, reduction of the polar ice cap can cause more heating…

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Contrails and Climate
✓Contrails are artificial clouds made by the exhaust of the aircraft
engines, or the wingtip vortices
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrail). Contrails produced by the
heavy air traffic over the US may have noticeable influences on the
weather…
o Commercial air traffic were suspended for three days after the Sept. 11, 2001
attack. This provided a rare chance for the climate scientist to test their theory…
o Measurements show that without contrails the local difference of day and night-
time temperatures was about 1 degree Celsius higher than immediately before
the attack…

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