Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Whoa Nellie.....

re: Whoa Nellie.....

"Aside from being gibberish, it's all the same sentence. I'll stipulate that you have a point but I'm damned if I could unravel it from what you wrote...."
Just rambling, but I'll shorten the story:

Earth without any water would have a global temperature significantly lower than the current average temperature of about 15 C.
Water is the major greenhouse gas on Earth.
Without greenhouse gases creating the greenhouse affect Earth average temperature would be about 35C lower.
CO2 pound for pound [or in terms of liquid or gas volume] is not a substance which is as effective greenhouse agent as H2O or CH4.
In addition CO2 is a trace substance in the Earth's atmosphere- though there is more CO2 than CH4 in our atmosphere.

In Earth's atmosphere in Parts Per Billion: H2O: 20,000,000 ppb [a rough average]. CO2: 350,000 pbm. CH4: 1750 ppb.

If you were to give unreasonable advantage to CO2 and say it was as effective greenhouse agent as H20 and methane, and you were to assign an portion of the 35 C increase in global temperature due to each of these agents:
Add all ppb together you get 20,351,750 ppb and divide this into 35 C you get 34.395 C due to H2O, .602 C due to CO2 and .003 C due to CH4.
[Remember all you people screaming at me about being unfair to CH4, by saying how much more efficent it is as greenhouse gas. This is just a excercise trying to give CO2 "the benefit of any doubt"].

Moving on let's double the global CO2, then additionally we will times it by 10.

Doubled the number is 20,701,750 ppb total. 33.813 C due to H2O, 1.183 C due to CO2 and .003 C due CH4

Ten times the number is 23,501,750 ppb total. 29.785 C due to H20, 5.212 C due to CO2, and .003 C due to CH4.

So in this model our current CO2 levels are adding less than 2% to the greenhouse affect with H2O adding about 98% with other factors adding less than 1%. Doubling and increases by factor 10, obviously increases it's share by 4% and 20%.

Now let's look at some compable things. A fair size rain storm might rain 5 cm of water over in area of 10,000 sq km, so per 20 square meters there a cubic meter of water. There is million sq meter per km, so per 20 sq kilometer there is a million cubic meter of water totaling 1/2 billion tons of rain over this whole area, whereas a hurriance or a very large storm may dump hundreds of billions of tons of water. The modest size rain storms occur dozens of times a daily globally whereas large storms such a hurricanes are monthly or yearly events, say some number around 100 per year depending how you exactly classify it and depending upon the year.
Or you could measure this by looking at yearly rainfalls and times this by the hundred of millions of sq km this involve- but generally this only the amount rain that falls on land and land is only 30% of surface area of this planet. Anyhow, we have trillions of tons of water which evaporate and turn back into liquid water yearly.

Saying there is 20,000,000 ppb of H20 like I said is a rough average, it's about as accurate a saying the Earth is covered by 3000' deep ocean [if you averaged the Earth elevation there would be 3000' deep ocean worldwide].
The water content in the air varies, and should be not mistaken with the appearance clouds in the sky- clouds are like temporary lakes. And they are only a small percentage of total water content in the atmosphere [clouds are not even generally included when one is measuring the water content of the atmosphere]. Warm air with high humidity has large water content & cold dry air has low water content. Warm dry air will eat the moisture out clouds & cold damp air will cause warm wet air to form clouds and dump their water [rain].

I have finished finished with this, but getting bored and rather delete all above, I will post it. I may get back to this thread, later.

Log in or register to post.

The whole thread (40 posts)