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Environmental Physics
16/05/2022
Typical values :
Hydrostatic relation :
Components:
TSI:
BLACKBODY APPROXIMATION
So can use Stefan-Boltmann law on Sun:
RADIATIVE EQM
Rate of radiation being absorbed = rate of radiation emitted
2
Power in = πR❑E ( 1−α p ) TSI
2 4
Power out = 4 π R E σ T E
2. GREENHOUSE EFFECT
Emissivity = ratio or irradiance emitted by material compared to a black-body at the same temp
Iλ Iλ
ϵ λ= =
I BB σ T 4
o Grey body: emissivity <1 but doesn’t vary with lambda
Absorptivity = ratio of incident irradiance absorbed by material compare to blackbody
o If in thermodynamic eqm (troposphere and lower stratosphere):
a λ =ϵ λ
Transmissivity = how much radiation will pass through a material
t λ =1−a λ
−τ
t λ =e
Ka àabsorption coefficient
Pa à Density of absorber
GREENHOUSE EFFECT
= amount of longwave radiation emitted by the surface which is trapped with Earth’s atm
SIMPLE MODEL
3 regions:
Assumptions:
Energy conservation:
TOA: Incident solar rad = LW absorbed nd then emitted up by atm + LW transmitted from surface
Within atmosphere: LW absorbed by atm from surface = LW emitted by atm (up and down)
At surface:
Incoming:
o solar incident to surface (same as at TOA as assuming atm transparent to SW)
o LW emitted downwards by atmosphere
Outgoing:
o LW emitted by surface
Solve: simultaneously!
Climate forcing: Δ Q ext à external process, perturbs system away from radiative eqm at TOA
Leads to response à Δ T s
Δ I N = Δ Qext
Less OLR
Case 3: feedback
Δ I N = Δ Qext + Δ Q∫ ¿¿
1. External forcing
2. Response Δ T s
3. Internal feedbacks Δ Q ∫ ¿= γ ΔT s → γ ¿ = climate feedback parameter (strength of radiative feedback)
- Lecture 2:
- Let effective emissivity
' ϵa ' 4
- ϵ =1− → OLR=ϵ σ T s
2
- As the changes are only due to the change in the OLR
- For relevant impact, climate var (x) must impact radiation balance and be dependent of Ts
SPECTRAL GREENHOUSE EFFECT
- Area under each curve is the same (you’ve only increased H20 by 12% instead of 100% like CO2)
- Only need a small amount of water vap to match the impact of 2x Co2
- Enhance except in stratosphere (where temp increases w height)
Typical values :
More useful (as you’re not always dealing with things at the sat vap pressure es) : relative humidity
4. WATER
Surface albedo αs = fraction of incident solar rad at surface that is reflected (instead of absorbed)
Values:
Seasonal cycle:
- Total solar irradiance is seasonal (winter à no insulation à polar night à ice can grow) (summer
àsolar insulation àice melts)
LAPSE RATE
- Assume ideal gas, adiabatic cooling (fast ascent so no time for outflow of heat), hydrostatic eqm
(balance of vertical forces)
- 1st Law of thermo:
The work done here is on the parcel. We are using specific quantities (/m)
- Adiabatic:
- Hydrostatic:
- Combine:
OVERALL
5. CARBON CYCLE
Emissions (sources)
Uptake (sinks)
Combine these à predict growth rate and estimate airborne fraction of CO2
UNITS
PRODUCTIVITY
Primary productivity: rate at which producers store radiant energy
GPP (Gross Primary Productivity): CO2 reduction due to photosynthesis (synthesising organic matter)
NPP (Net Primary Productivity): GPP – R (rate of respiration)
Natural:
- Natural variability in plant growth and wetland coverage
- Natural wildfire à e.g. due to lightning
- Impermanent perturbation à vegetation regrowth
Dominant sources:
Deforestation: lost a country the size of Libya since 1990 but the rate is decreasing à regrowth in Europe +
Asia
Fires: regrowth can balance the budget (unless veg permanently destroyed)
CLIMATE-CARBON FEEDBACKS
1. ‘Greening’ (‘Fertilisation effect’) due to CO2 fertilisation: enhanced productivity of plants at higher
atmospheric CO2 concs (non-linear)
(stomata don’t need to open as wide à less water loss) àincreases ability as carbon sink
2. Plant growth limiting factors: water (prevalent in deserts), sunlight availability, temp
- Climate change means:
T less of an issue in the poles
More precipitation in some areas but more drought in others
3. Enhanced respiration rate due to +T à reduces ability as carbon sink
CONTROLS
(of solubility)
DIC àphotosynthesis à becomes organic carbon (marine creatures, plants, phytoplankton) à sink after
deathàdegrade and remineralise à inorganic carbon released back into water
Remineralisation depth = when e-1 of the material remains (the rest hast been remineralised)
- Determines time interval until carbon will come back in contact with the atmosphere
- Shallower à reduced capacity to draw down carbon and act as a carbon sink.
SUMMARY
- Ozone:
- Produced in the stratosphere O2 absorbs UV to makes O3 (not heating as 100%
efficiency(?)) decrease in incident UV as reflects more -ve feedback
A WMGHG:
Most important:
1. CO2
Sources
10% increase over last 2 decades: changes in agriculture, more natural gas used
B. AEROSOLS
Types:
- ax à radiative efficiency of x
- Cx à concentration after initial pulse released at t=0
- TH à time horizon: length of time over which impact is evaluated
7. CLIMATE TIMESCALES AND SENSITIVITY
Climate sensitivity = eqm global mean surface temp response (Tseq’) to doubling of CO2
A2 à continue
Thermal inertia: even if gg emissions held constant, Earth can continue warming
Adjustment timescale: how long would it take to re-reach radiative eqm after CO2 held constant
- Control
Work done
Surface temp anomaly: how long it will take for the difference between cases to become constant
- Ts’(t) àTseq’
Heat-flow
As z<<R
where
Put together:
Assume
- only bb feedback
- biospheric response in ocean and land
- temp constant through atmosphere à no true but useful in scale analysis (rate of change constant in
both)
- atm v efficient at maintaining a uniform perturbed temp Ts’
U’=CVT’ where Cv=C0+CL
'
d U (t )
- à rate of change of internal energy (power) in atmosphere, oceans, land,
dt
cryosphere
- Δ Q ext (power/area) àexternal, anthropogenic radiative forcing at TOA by doubling CO2
'
- −γ BB T s ( t )= Δ Q∫ ¿(t )¿ (power/A) àblackbody feedback, response to forcing
- When LHS =0 à eqm:
Anomaly in U à U’
Bigger heat cap in ocean à always buffering (controls longer timescale response)
- Controls longer timescale response (due to thermal inertia as stores more energy)
- On longer timescales, negligible contribution from land and atm compared to ocean and cryo
- RHS…
1. U’ upper ocean
2. U’ deep ocean
3. Effect of melting a mass of ice mc’(t)
Combine
- Upper and deep ocean are coupled à introduce ‘overturning’ circulation strength (for mass exchange)
- Mass = V x density
Divide through by A0
Δ Qext
As tàinf, T’sà (equilibrium temp)
γ BB
MORE IN DEPTH
Net feedback param (f) Ratio of all other feedbacks over black body:
Stability:
- F<0 à Δ Q ext damped àreduced adjustment time and eqm change in Ts (smaller Tseq)
- F=0 àonly bb feedback present
- 0<f<1 à Δ Q ext amplified (positive feedbacks dominate in extra terms, but not enough to
counteract bb feedback) à increased ta and Tseq’
- F=1 à runway greenhouse effect à can’t reach eqm
Will never emit enough LW energy to counteract the effect of the original forcing
(and +ve feedbacs)
Venus!
No damping
9. OBSERVING OUR CLIMATE
Focus on Temp.
Need:
Records must be accurate and precise to detect signals above the climate’s natural variability.
TOOLS
As tech improves, objectiveness improves.
UHI (Urban Heat Island Index) = max temp diff between urban city and rural area over time (usually 1
month/year, 6 moths)
Surface energy balance: between net incoming rad at surface (SW and LW) and transfer of energy (to
atmosphere (sensible or latent heating) or into ground (ground heat transfer))
- Reduction in αs
- Replacing vegetation with asphalt/tarmac (lower albedo than vegetation)
- Some of the reflected radiation bounces off buildings and gets redirected to the ground
- Enhanced anthropogenic heat sources (transport, industry)
- Reduced evapotranspiration àreduced surface cooling (from latent heat release)
- Reduced wind speed à reduced urban sensible heat transfer
- Buildings absorb more heat during the day, releasing it at night
Increasing urbanisation (increasing cities) à ground-based temp stations first in rural areas now in cities à
anomalous warning in records (local, not regional impact àcan’t use to explain climate change)
Improvement in sampling frequency à until 1950 samples taken every 4deg, then in 2 deg grid boxes.
Issues
Consistencies
- Patterns and magnitudes (where in the globe are the hotter regions, where are the colder regions)
- Global mean
- Robust warming of Earth
- Larger over
Issues:
- Changing material of sensor à diff correction as absorbs diff amount of solar rad
Absorption and diurnal heating
Depends on angle of sun
- Sensor time constant àdiff response time (flows up throught the atmosphere)
- Higher spatial res and coverage than surface and in-situ observations
- More globally complete SST record
- 1970s onwards
- Work through photon exchange à so sensor type and wavelength sampled have a BIG impact
Measurements:
Tbt quantum:
2. Absorption à beer lamber law
3. Emission
- Assume local thermodynamic eqm à lots of colissions between molecules à redistribute
energy between them à can use :
Put absorption and emission together :
(simply combined emission and absorption to calculate how much radiance is seen at the satellite)
Transmittivity defined as
So
Plug into eq:
Limits:
Bottom: τ λ =0 → t λ ( z , z ❑space ) =e
− ( τ λ −0 )
-
' '
=e−τ =t λ
Top: τ λ =τ λ → t λ ( z , z ❑space ) =e
' ' − ( τ λ −τ λ )
- =1
WEIGHT FUNCTIONS
- Change the integration limits again à z
Weighting function: derivative of transmittance to space wrt z à where in atmosphere the radiance measured
came from à relates also to the instrument
Close to surface, a lot of the absorber à very low transmissivity à t increases until there’s virtually no
absorber left and the transmissivity asymptotes to 1
Radiance picked out by weight function v close to surface temp (top Planck curve – red dotted line) à most of
the radiance from close to the surface
ISSUES
- calibration
- length of mission (lifetime 3-5 years, new apparatus = differences introduced)
- time gaps in record
- delayed launch
- apparatus failure
- new tech à change of instrument
- drifting in orbit (inconsistency)
- diff approaches to transform/invert the data to retrieve the variable of interest
A. MODELS
From simplest:
Lecture 1
1 LAYER EMB
Introduce an atmosphere: 1 layer grey body
Lecture 2
- Can test impact of varying atmospheric absorptivity
- Greenhouse effect
PARAMETERISATION
= to relate small-scale to large-scale processes
Large scale processes à good job; parameterization à more work needed (though improving with computing
power)
- Radiative forcing/feedback
- Evaporation/condensation
- Precipitation
Formation:
The areas where the total water content are above System takes mean of squiggles in box and
the saturation level à form clouds concludes the grid-box is on average below the
saturation level à no clouds
- Conclusion: taking grid boxes pixelates and over-simplifies
Diagnostic scheme:
Prognostic: system with memory à can store different outcomes for the same state
ISSUES
COMPUTATION
- don’t run everything at same time-steps à different timesteps depending on what is reasonably going
to give you a good prediction for that variable whilst limiting computing time
- ~20mins for dynamics, ~1hr for radiation
- Storage issues: 1-2 million ‘basic’ variables for Ocean and Atmosphere
- Scope for ML…
ADVANCES
- Adaptive grid models à change resolution of model depending on how precise you need
- Digital twin Earth
- Assimilate observations with current models
- How can you translate this to how it would benefit certain sectore
B. MODEL EVALUATION
1. Surface temp
- Similarities between model and observations:
High pattern correlation between model and observations
- Issues:
Cold bias in Arctic, especially in winter (so more due to LW as limited SW in winter)
Too high T at high elevations
Possibly due to inadequacies in observational record? à harder to make
surface temp measurements at high altitudes
Low, marine clouds
Either missing a cloud or modelled as too thin
2. Clouds and radiation
- CRE (cloud radiative effect) = radiative impact of a cloud relative to clear-sky conditions.
OVERALL
ATTRIBUTING WARMING
- Use models to see the relative impact of each forcer on warming (keep others constant)
- Models only accurate if anthropogenic forcing considered (we’re responsible, lads)
- Also at regional scales
- Land has warmed faster than ocean
- Natural variability higher at small scales
- IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) AR5 investigated:
- Ocean heat content (OHC) = energy integrated through depth of ocean
Better metric as ocean (stores energy) is less affected by short-term variability than
surface temp
- Global warming hiatus? Excess heat (from land deficit) stored in ocean
12. CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY AND IMPLICATIONS
Goals:
MEETING TARGETS
Kaya Identity
RHS :
- PàPopulation
- GDP/P àGross domestic product (effective income) per capita à personal wealth
- EI à Energy intensity = energy/price (kWh per $)
- CI à carbon intensity = CO2 emitted/energy (kg of CO2 per kWh)
Country-dependent:
AR5
Assessment Report 5 à Representative Concentration Pathways:
- Too much emphasis on most pessimistic outcomes (not quite true – Hausfather and Peters 2020)
AR6
IPCC Assessment Report 6 à Shared Socio-economic Pathways à 5 scenarios
Land-use:
GHG:
Power (W) extracted from undisturbed wind flow (i.e. if turbine wasn’t there):
à performance coefficient:
(7)
Max extractable power (turbine with rotor blade diameter D): à sub in V2=1/3V1 for a circular rotor
- Tb time between blades passing through a point (time for one blade to replace another)
- Equate:
- Empirically: s≈r/2
à n=blade number
Preferable locations:
Instead of mean…
2
16 ρ 3 16 ρ 3 D
P(V )= V S= V π
therefore: 27 2 27 2 4
Warning!!
3 6 3
Different!! V = V
π
Plug in:
HEIGHT
- Higher V with height (increases with elevation in the troposphere)
- à taller turbines with larger blades in time
- Assume increase in logarithmic
- Roughness length z0 à highest height above surface t at which V can be taken as 0
- higher for rougher surfaces (i.e. that have taller obstacles)
cities, pine forests
- Low for deserts (sand) and oceans
- Less obstacles on ocean à higher mean windspeeds
ISSUES
In early lectures, we assumed no absorption or scattering of solar radiation (just some reflection at the TOA)
For SW:
Scattering Rayleigh
Absorption O2 and O3 for shorter SW, H2O longer SW
Notice the path length z affects the optical depth so a beam that travels further through the
atmosphere (i.e. at an angle) will be scattered and absorbed more.
We need to consider what happens when the ray reaches Earth at an angle…
Trig:
If
- AM=0 at TOA
- AM=1 sun overhead
SOLAR CELLS
15. GEOENGINEERING
Consider: how big are the sinks? What are the side-effects? Do we understand the system well
enough?
Some of these can be achieved naturally: Nature Based Solutions (forest restorations and
mangroves)
Other considerations:
- Legal implications,
- Governance does it require big agreements
- public perception
- Reversibility
CCS = filtering out CO2 produced from industrial processes, and storing it.
UK example: DRAX powered by flue gas containing CO2, dissolved by solvent (recirculated back)
Issues:
- Cost
- Leakage
- Mitigation time-scales: Carbon payback time how long des it take forest to regrow?
- Opportunity cost from not growing the forest fertiliser from growing the forest quickly, missing out
on forest sequestration, landuse (biodiversity, food security)
- Transport from moving biomass pellets to factory
- Acidification of rocks it’s pumped into
- Ships spraying:
PROS:
- NO ESSAY