Tropopause overshoot as source of stratospheric greenhouse H2O

[James Bowery]

In a prior post I brought up a potential problem with the Atmospheric Vortex Engine as Carnot engine: 

Tropopause overshoot resulting adding a greenhouse gas (H2O) to the stratosphere.  

In response, Michael Hayes brought up the 2022 underwater eruption that clearly breached the troposphere as evidence against this concern:

On Monday, September 18, 2023 at 3:10:16 PM UTC-5 electro...@gmail.com wrote:

Overshooting moist hot air into the stratosphere will likely transfer much of the heat out into space, and the moisture will crystalize out at submicron size.

The last large volcanic eruption demonstrated the physics, the southern hemisphere did temporarily cool due to the added cloud ice.

Since I've been an advocate of scientific research into CFD modeling to lower the risk of AVE technology investment, this is welcome news -- however, as an advocate of the planet, I'm interested in reasonable critiques of Michael's interpretation of that natural experiment.

Here's a quote from a recent paper:
"Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: annual update of large-scale indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence"
"Secondly, choices have also been made to include the January 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai as an exceptional positive ERF perturbation from the increase in stratospheric water vapour (Millán et al., 2022; Sellito et al., 2022; Jenkins et al., 2023). The methods are all detailed in the Supplement, Sect. S4."

Moreover, the temporary cooling is attributed by some to SOx.  This despite its relatively small amount in this eruption, as the amount of expected cooling was also small.

[Michael Hayes]

Thanks, James. I've added a possible CDR linkage at the end.

Overshooting the tropopause with hot/moist air happens daily via large storm systems and/or just convection of high surface heat, yet the majority of the moisture is kept from going much higher than the tropopause. The tropopause is the temperature minimum that divides the troposphere and stratosphere. 

Can this Carnot cycle tech path be used to drawdown atmospheric moisture?

Dr. Susan Solomon led a 2010 study on stratospheric moisture which showed that the reduction of ~10% of stratospheric moisture likely created a global warming plateau that lasted around a decade. Etched, or wetted, black carbon is likely what brought the stratospheric moisture level down per her paper. No speculation on where the wetted BC came from was offered by the authors. However, China built and brought on line a huge fleet of coal fired power plants in the same time frame:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1182488

Sending wetted BC up with the hot air/moisture, and doing so in the tropics to avoid the polar ice regions, might reduce stratospheric H2O while sending lots of surface/ocean heat into the much hotter thermocline.

Biochar operations typically produce wetted C and can supply the needed wetted BC supply, this is the CDR linkage:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2213343722000586

In my best opinion as a technologist, the mechanics of tropopause level injection of hot air and wetted BC is likely within today's tech abilities. The moisture issue should not be a show stopper.

Best regards 

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[Dan Miller]

Comments from James Hansen et al on Hunga Tonga from his September newsletter:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/FlyingBlind.14September2023.pdf

"The Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption in early 2022 also affects the past two years. Jenkins et al.7 estimate that water vapor injected into the stratosphere caused a small warming forcing (+0.12 W/m2), but Schoeberl et al.8 found that the cooling effect of stratospheric aerosols injected by Hunga Tonga yielded a net cooling effect, with forcing peaking in mid-2022 at about –0.5 W/m2. Averaged over 2022, Hunga Tonga may have been about –0.3 W/m2, but by today it is smaller."

Dan

[Michael Hayes]

Thank you, Dan.

I did misstate the effects of stratospheric H20. The idea being hashed out here involves the tropopause and just above it. The moisture from the eruption may have went as high as the mesosphere.

The O3 hole is opening up early this year, likely due to the eruption. 

https://i0.wp.com/yubanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/image016.gif?ssl=1

Best regards

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/FA932165-C8AA-4DA8-8D50-41606D653A8C%40rodagroup.com.

[James Bowery]

On Fri, Sep 22, 2023 at 8:24 PM Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, James. I've added a possible CDR linkage at the end.

In the original post about marine-based Carnot engine electricity, I gave a linkage to CDR:

Convective fluid flow for CO2 removal whether from ocean water or from atmospheric flows past the source of electrical energy to counter the CO2 entropy.

If the enormous amounts of electricity purported for these engines is realized, this is likely to be the most powerful CO2 removal mechanism -- and not just direct CO2 capture but also the indirect results of ocean cooling.

Electricity at approximately 1 cent per kWhr can pay not only for direct CO2 removal but also provide an economic basis for reconfiguring agriculture toward aquaculture, thereby resulting in another 5Gt CO2 /year removal by rewilding natural fisheries:

Schmitz, O.J., Sylvén, M., Atwood, T.B. et al. Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 324–333 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01631-6

[James Bowery]

It would be really helpful to have a set of differential equations for just a column of air that takes as an input the partial pressure of various gasses at various altitudes and temperature at various altitudes, which describes the power spectrum at various altitudes.  While I'm perfectly aware this dynamical system would not be representative of the global system, it could overcome some basic misunderstandings about forcing dynamics of global warming that afflict even PhD physicists:

[Michael Hayes]

James, et al.,

Thank you for such interesting and challenging questions. I can't directly answer your questions at this time, yet there is a possible natural anolog to injection of hot air/BC at the tropopause level.

A large forest fire can create a spherical vortex with a heavy BC load in the middle stratosphere. Because of the solar heat collected by the BC, the spherical vortex is maintained for extended periods of time, days to months after the forest fire. 

https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/21/7113/2021/

The stratospheric H20 that the wetted BC collects and takes out of the stratosphere may offset the immediate longwave heating of the stratosphere by the BC. However, While in the vortex, the BC likely only heats up the air volume in the vortex.

As a final note, matching the volume of the hot air/BC that a forest fire can generate is likely well beyond anything we can do with one structure, yet we may be able to generate hotter air with a higher BC content, and heavier BC particals, than what typically makes it past the tropopause. If so, the resulting stratospheric spherical vortex might gain higher altitudes thus increasing longwave radiation into space.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CAN%3DDHyafOCV6pfMg3V80arr%2B%3DP8%2BP9WSNWWgWWBRMqq5NwLaRg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Clive Elsworth]

Michael et al

 

You might appreciate this section from the attached short (unpublished) paper from Franz Oeste and myself on our Climate Catalyst proposal:

 

Removal of black carbon aerosol

A largely unrecognised problem is that of black soot particles inducing convection that carries them up into the stratosphere, driven by sun heating. Soot particles actively collect and store halogenated gases from the air and deliver them to the stratosphere. Soot particles therefore have a disproportionately damaging effect on the stratospheric ozone layer. Since the stratosphere migrates generally poleward, some of these black carbon particles contribute to Arctic haze, and eventually sediment in snow, discolouring it and thereby increasing its melting rate.

 

Climate catalyst lightens soot particles and changes their water-repelling (hydrophobic) nature to water-attracting (hygroscopic). This both reduces their convection effect, and makes them wash out in rain more easily, preventing them from ascending to the stratosphere and polar regions.

 

Climate catalyst also removes methane from the troposphere in a photocatalytic cycle, leaving less methane to migrate to the stratosphere where it oxidises and releases water.

 

Just so there’s something relevant to this email group: Climate Catalyst with an iron content diffusely fertilises phytoplankton when it sediments in the sea, at least temporarily raising surface pH a little over a wide area (assuming it’s an HNLC ocean area), and reducing CO2 outgassing or absorbing CO2 over that area.

 

Clive

 

From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Michael Hayes
Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2023 8:47 PM
To: James Bowery <jabo...@gmail.com>
Cc: Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] Tropopause overshoot as source of stratospheric greenhouse H2O

 

James, et al.,

 

Thank you for such interesting and challenging questions. I can't directly answer your questions at this time, yet there is a possible natural anolog to injection of hot air/BC at the tropopause level.

 

A large forest fire can create a spherical vortex with a heavy BC load in the middle stratosphere. Because of the solar heat collected by the BC, the spherical vortex is maintained for extended periods of time, days to months after the forest fire. 

 

https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/21/7113/2021/

 

The stratospheric H20 that the wetted BC collects and takes out of the stratosphere may offset the immediate longwave heating of the stratosphere by the BC. However, While in the vortex, the BC likely only heats up the air volume in the vortex.

 

As a final note, matching the volume of the hot air/BC that a forest fire can generate is likely well beyond anything we can do with one structure, yet we may be able to generate hotter air with a higher BC content, and heavier BC particals, than what typically makes it past the tropopause. If so, the resulting stratospheric spherical vortex might gain higher altitudes thus increasing longwave radiation into space.

 

On Sat, Sep 23, 2023, 3:18 PM James Bowery <jabo...@gmail.com> wrote:

It would be really helpful to have a set of differential equations for just a column of air that takes as an input the partial pressure of various gasses at various altitudes and temperature at various altitudes, which describes the power spectrum at various altitudes.  While I'm perfectly aware this dynamical system would not be representative of the global system, it could overcome some basic misunderstandings about forcing dynamics of global warming that afflict even PhD physicists:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CABjtO1eYWs%3D245cSnk2s4xPKY%3DPWgX%2BQaWVXBKnAc3N39163VQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Michael Hayes]

Clive, et al.,

I once thought that OIF was the most simplistic technical way to feed fish one could imagine, yet your method likely takes top spot for technically simplistic biotic CDR. 

This thread explores using what we do know about BC within a theoretical trans-atmospheric thermal transfer tool. Taking the Biochar option for the BC supply connects this thread to CDR. The amount of Biochar/BC that is injected can likely provide reliable CDR MRV values.

Stratospheric BC is limited in size as it has to make it past the tropopause thermal barrier. In which, lots of H2O is grabbing on to surfaces due to low temps. The tropopause filters BC by size as well as H2O by volume/temp.

We know that size does matters with wetted BC. So, I'm proposing injecting only relatively large wetted BC grains that have limited suspension time. A fast fall time makes the accumulation of BC in the higher stratosphere almost moot yet lots of lower/middle H2O can be mopped up by the heavy BC.

Over large forest fires, the lower stratosphere can see a spherical vortex spine up that traps a large amount of filtered wetted BC. What this thread is shorting out is, technically speaking, much what a forest fire spins up.

https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/21/7113/2021/?fbclid=IwAR1L8AGsdZyM60KUVYhKzE894ImO8rt4cvCJEWD86M1t1fXnJi02pkqSylI

Large forest fires can create black carbon rich spherically shaped vortices in the lower to middle stratosphere. Pushed by the wind, that can travel for days or months circling much of the planet. The BC content of each vortex collects solar heat that, in turn, helps keep the vortex spinning.  

I'm trying to find out what thermal impact these BC rich vortex structures do to the energy ballance of the planet, if any.

As pure speculation, it looks like the planet is creating a surface cooling tool as the shadow of the stratospheric vortex structure will likely cool wide areas of the surface for some length of time. The entrapped black carbon creates an optical 'haze' and is a good heat absorbing partical.  

Artificially creating them, and spinning up many such heavy BC vortices, can likely create a 'pearl necklace' chain of cells that could likely change tropical surface temperatures overnight.

Importantly, if an operator wished to simply turn off stratospheric BC spin ups, it would take only around a month for the direct, first order, vortex effects to be exhausted.

[James Bowery]

After some searching I found this python package:

https://py6s.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Unfortunately, there isn't a lot out there in open source that is well maintained.  One package SBDART is in Fortran only and you can see how much people are having trying to get it to run:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_anyone_have_a_working_SBDART_model

VERY strange that such a fundamental model (radiative transfer through a column of air) would be so ill-supported in a way accessible to people interested even if amateurs in other ways.

[Greg Rau]

Belatedly, is there a CDR story in this thread? If not, please don’t post on this list.

Thanks,

Greg

Moderator

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 24, 2023, at 5:27 PM, James Bowery <jabo...@gmail.com> wrote:

After some searching I found this python package:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/fc7e3628-c787-4da0-986d-b07fd1f9686an%40googlegroups.com.

[James Bowery]

On Monday, September 25, 2023 at 3:29:44 PM UTC-5 Greg Rau wrote:

Belatedly, is there a CDR story in this thread?

See: https://groups.google.com/g/CarbonDioxideRemoval/c/28IW2j6X734/m/ouBw2mlnBQAJ

While discussing side effects of any energy technology qua energy technology are not appropriate for CDR qua CDR, there should be an exception made for energy technologies that are useful primarily for CDR but not for other energy markets.

I made a judgement call in starting this thread here at CDR.  There may not be a more appropriate place for this question due to the following constraints:

1) Despite the fact that the Atmospheric Vortex Engine proponents claim it can turn ocean heat into electrical energy at a hundred TW level, and despite the cooling effect this would have on the ocean and troposphere (either of which would place it more appropriately in other fora), it is generally dismissed because A) "tornadoes" are dangerous to populated areas and B) crosswinds tend to disrupt the updraft structure. 

2) Siting them in the EEP doldrums addresses both of these objections, but then those other fora object to their utility since one must come up with energy vectors to transport the electricity to populated areas.

3) CDR technologies are energy-constrained -- they need renewable energy to counteract the entropy of CO2 so as to separate it from the environment.  This is basic thermodynamics.  Attempts to come up with "natural" sources of that energy to feed CDR processes must, at some point, recognize there is _some_ sort of intervention needed.  The energy isn't just going to show up by itself in the right systems to separate the CO2 otherwise we don't need to worry about global warming.  The notion of "natural" then merely boils down to how low can we make the CAPEX/OPEX to so deliver the energy to the CDR technology.