Questions tagged [climate-change]
Questions about changes of the climate system, including questions about global warming.
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What 18O indicators are there besides foraminifera?
It is now standard practice to use foraminifera to represent paleo 18O signatures from a marine system. However, there are some problems if you want to show 18O variations in the last 100 years using ...
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Which type of plant absorbs the most net carbon dioxide per year per square km?
The answer to How many trees would I have to plant to solve Global Warming? demonstrates how unviable it would be to simply plant trees to counter climate change (we'd need to plant ~60 millions km$^2$...
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How much cooler would the Earth’s surface be if there was no contribution from radiogenic heating?
According to Earth's internal heat budget (Wikipedia) “About 50% of the Earth's internal heat originates from radioactive decay”.
However, this makes up only a small portion of the Earth’s heat budget ...
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Estimated surface average temperature rise when forest is replaced by solar panels
In some places in the world it can be observed that spots which used to be forest (or with the potential to become a forest) were changed to fields of solar panels.
I've been close to solar panels on ...
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How much does overpopulation affect the carbon dioxide concentration in the air in terms of just breathing?
I'm not talking about other artificial human activities like fossil fuels or cars or cattle farming. I meant just in terms of breathing, how much did the CO2 level of the earth increase because of the ...
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Water on our planet, where did it come from? [closed]
Water on our planet, where did it come from?
A water molecule is created when two atoms of hydrogen combine with one atom of oxygen. W
The volume of all water (on our planet) is about 332.5 million ...
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What is technically wrong with Wijngaarden & Happer's paper claiming to show that CO2's contribution to surface warming is saturated?
The paper, Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most
Abundant Greenhouse Gases1, has been reportedly rejected from several major journals. By analysing absorption spectra of greenhouse ...
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Effective Radiative Forcing of Aviation Soot: Time Period Considered
I am trying to understand how athmospheric scientists are quantifying effective radiative forcing of different aviation-related warming/cooling effects as a function of total emissions over time.
For ...
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Why is the creation of water from the combustion of hydrocarbons not listed as a cause for rising sea levels?
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa8390
According to this paper, water is created by burning hydrocarbon fuels. It seems like a major thing to exclude from "reasons the sea ...
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Since the upwelling of calcium carbonate reduces surface pCO2, why is its dissolution in the CCD below the lysocline of concern?
Why is so much of the literature I run across regarding global warming concerned with precipitating $\ce{CaCO3}$ to the ocean floor?
In areas of relatively lower pH, such as the eastern equatorial ...
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Have there been any studies on how vehicles directly contribute to a rising global temperature?
I've tried searching for this myself, but Google is saturated with the Greenhouse Gases angle of Rising Global Temperatures.
What I'm interested in is the following:
Greenhouse gases aside, to what ...
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What is the role of stratospheric water vapor emissions in climate change?
Water vapor is the most significant greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere. However, tropospheric water vapor has a short atmospheric half-life. Therefore, anthropogenic surface-level water vapor ...
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Why are REGOs are so bad?
Firstly, a REGO is a Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin. We have these in the UK, and they are probably quite self-explanatory: a windfarm (for example) generates a certain amount of kWh which are ...
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Estimate warming caused by the current sea ice anomaly in Antarctica
I’ve read about the Ice Albedo Feedback effect on global warming. Antarctica has had a large sea ice anomaly from late 2021 until now. What is the average change in energy flux over the period 21 June ...
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Climate change impact on the geography
Wildfires seem to be more frequent in the southern Europe, meantime as the Arctic melts, there are speculations that the Gulf Stream might collapse, would lower the temperature 10-15 degrees in Europe....
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Why does OISST trend for this year appear to be increasingly diverging from the mean since early March?
With recent news about hottest global daily temps on record, I came across climatereanalyzer.org from the University of Maine.
I ended up looking at their data for daily sea surface temperature and ...
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How does anthropogenic heating affect global warming?
Anthropogenic-sourced greenhouse gases are commonly cited as the main source for human-caused climate change. However, something that I never see discussed is the actual heat produced by human ...
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Can a collapse of the AMOC lead to suboxic conditions?
For a couple of years The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation AMOC has been under observation. There have been examples in the past, when sudden state changes of it lead to short term and ...
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Change in thermohaline circulation due to climate change
The melting of the North Polar ice masses removes a driving factor from the thermohaline circulation, known as the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic. I wonder how much the thermohaline circulation has ...
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How is this global temperature chart compiled?
In this BBC News article, there is a chart labelled "Hottest day on record globally - Daily average air temperature, 1940-2023". It shows temperatures that are higher in summer and lower in ...
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Global warming - why doesn´t mankind collect heat (thermal energy) and turn it into electricity or send it to space?
Why doesnt mankind "collect" thermal energy (there has to be some way: thermal couplings, detour over chemical energy, whatever) and after it has been concentrated at one point, turn it to electrical ...
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Why do cow burps and farts harm the planet?
It is often said that meat is among the most damaging foods from a climate change perspective. However, I don't quite understand why that is true, in the long run.
Disclaimer: I am a vegan for animal ...
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Temperature Data Software
I'm looking to create a map of the U.S. that depicts mean winter and summer temperatures. Is there a software suitable for this?
I found CSVs of data here: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/normals-daily/...
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How is the "hottest day ever on Earth" determined?
The news is reporting a global climate event:
The hottest day ever on Earth since records began happened on July 3, 2023.
Earth's hottest day ever recorded was on July 3, 2023
Turns out, the record ...
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Difference between downwasting and dynamic glacier response to climate change
The acceleration
of glacier shrinkage after 1985 indicates a transition toward rapid down- wasting rather than a
dynamic glacier response to a changed climate
I am unable to distinguish between ...
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How is climate change today different than the climate change that ended the ice age(s)?
Someone I know posted a question about climate change that I do not know how to answer. While I do believe (for lack of better word) in climate change, I do not know how to answer this persons ...
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Why is global warming bad? [closed]
I had a discussion about this with my coworker. It appears that global warming (even up to +6K) has advantages:
increased plant growth: increase in photosynthesis efficiency
more water evaporation ...
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Forest fuel biochar burial
Record fires are blazing in the west coast, huge even compared to California's notorious summers.
Dead plants and debris are crucial to get a fire started. This debris could be collected, carbonized, ...
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The hottest part of the day
I have lived nearly my entire life in the same home. It appears to me, the hottest part of the day is getting a bit latter in the day. I tired doing a google search, but I did not see any links that ...
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What arguments does Svante Arrhenius make in 1896 to prove the correlation between "carbonic acid" and ground temperature increase?
I tried reading Arrhenius' paper (https://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf), but having no background in natural sciences, it was too inaccessible to me. What is the high-level ...
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Curve number adjustment based on antecedent rainfall
Is there any equation I can use to determine curve number as a function of the antecedent precipitation? I am aware of three sets of curve numbers for dry, wet and normal conditions. I was looking at ...
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Why does the emission of aircrafts at higher altitudes have a greater effect on the climate?
I am trying to understand the footprint of a flight.
First Wikipedia says (without quoting a source):
The level and effects of CO2 emissions are currently believed to be broadly the same ...
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How much does earth's core temperature affect earth's global surface temperature
Has anyone managed to read the (latest) full IPCC-report and do you know whether they have taken into account the Earth's core temperature in their models. Besides the IPCC-report, do we know how much ...
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What determines and confirms sensitivity of glaciers to climate change/ climate forcing?
Consider two groups of glaciers, say Group A and Group B. For simplicity, let's consider the group to fall in one size class (say 1-5 sq km), both located in the same kind of climate. We DO NOT know ...
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Planetary surface temperature from first principles
How can you calculate planetary surface temperatures from first principles? The obvious application is for Earth, with a surface temperature of $288$K. I want a calculation with no fudge factors (i.e.,...
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IPCC AR6 References
Does the IPCC publish its references (i.e. the references used in the report, not citations for the reports or chapters themselves) beyond what is in the PDFs of the reports themselves?
I'm looking ...
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Why would glaciers change its size? How to differenciate change in glacier size as a response to climate and its natural dynamics?
Glaciers flow as they deform under its own weight. But they also advance or retreat accordingly to the various climate factors.
How would I differentiate a glacier that is in motion flowing down the ...
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Is the sea level rise unusual?
I'm discussing climate change with a friend who is a climate change denier, basically the argument is that looking at this graph, is not clear that something unusual is going on, so the sea level rise ...
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Is it safe for me to move to the coast?
I live in Brazil, around 200 km from the nearest coast.
I'm looking to move to Rio de Janeiro (a coastal city) to study at the Federal University of Rio, which is basically on an island (Ilha do ...
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Could we sequester CO$_2$ by dumping forests in deep oceans?
We know that trees are the most efficient "tool" we have to get CO$_2$ out of the air, but the problem is that most of their fixated CO$_2$ will naturally reenter the carbon cycle through ...
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What was the impact of nuclear tests on climate change and ozone layer depletion?
Since 1945 2476 nuclear bombs were exploded on this planet during tests with a total yield of 545 megatons. The peak of testing took place in the late 50's and early 60's with 116 bombs exploded in ...
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High albedo vs low albedo
Albedo is a measure of the amount of light reflected back by an object that is incident on it.
So, high albedo means that a greater portion of light falling on something is reflected back. This also ...
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The Medieval Climatic Anomaly
Trying to understand this question, posted to me by a lecturer at University:
"The Medieval Climatic Anomaly was distinctive in terms of the
prevailing climates and forcing mechanisms operating ...
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What happens when the North and South poles flip?
How long does it take the magnetic field to move once the poles start to flip?
What environmentally would change? Does the core of the Earth flip?
The magnetic poles are moving now. When will it start ...
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Why is dependence of radiation forcing on CO2 concentration logarithmic?
As a newbie on climate science and meteorology I'm trying to understand the almost logarithmic behavior of CO2 concentration on radiation forcing
$$F(c) = A \cdot \ln \frac{c}{c_0}$$
and why there is ...
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IPCC 6 - What's the background of possible marine species loss?
The Figure "Projected risks and impacts of climate change on natural and human systems at different global warming levels" has this to say on species loss (only part of the image):
I can't ...
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How does water vapor cool the troposphere?
I have read about the Fixed Anvil Temperature (FAT) hypothesis and wonder why radiative cooling decreases with decreasing water vapor mixing ratio.
Doesn't this stand in contrast with the fact, that ...
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Time for water vapor to generate more greenhouse effect than latent heat?
I have an argument with a climate change denier.
He says the rise of water vapor in the atmosphere causes a "much larger" cooling effect by taking vaporisation heat from the ground than the ...
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Why is bush encroachement a bad thing?
From what I've read about bush encroachment, it is most often made to sound as a bad thing, potentially as a symptom of land degradation. This sounds counterintuitive to me because bush encroachment ...
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If ocean water was pumped into a desert would it help cool the planet?
Water pumped into a desert would evaporate and increase formation of clouds which would in turn increase the albedo of the Earth. Would this help to cool the planet more efficiently than trying to ...
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