Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

The UK Met Office has put out a very good pamphlet on Climate Change. It is aimed for the general public and is very well done. 

Check it out here:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressof fice/myths/bigpicture.pdf

Later,

Dan

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. Many different scientific organizations will have activities this year. I began myself by showing on air the incredible picture below.

This is what is left of a giant Supernova observed by Tycho Brahe in early November of 1572.

Actually the whole world observed it! Supernovas in our own Milky Way Glaxy are very rare. The kind of event that would make every astronomer on the planet collectively wet their pants! At Christmas time in 1572, the bright supernova “rivaled Venus in brightness”. It gradually faded away over the year or so. 

Supernovas are GIANT EXPLOSIONS! That is really an understatement. A supernova can shine brighter than several entire galaxies for a few weeks! In the last 1000 years, there have been 6 known supernovas in our Galaxy. Less than one per century. They are very important to Astronomers because they can use their brightness as a cosmic mileage marker. Alex Filipenko the UCB Astronomer says they put out more energy than all the visible galaxies in the Universe for a short time. Yea, that big.

We are overdue!

Imagine, a new bright star in the night that everyone on Earth notices. Let’s hope it is not within 500 light years. Closer, and it could destroy life on Earth. Fortunately, there do not seem to be any impending supernovas that close. Beetlejuice, the orange start in upper Orion, is likely to go supernova. It’s 1000 light years away, but it might go tomorrow or in 10,000 years. No one knows!

I have mentioned before here, the FABULOUS series of lectures by Alex Filippenko, the renowned Astronomer at the U. of California at Berkeley. If you want to know more about these giant explosions. That is the place to go!

The international Year of Astronomy has several web sites. Click on the banners below to get started!

When you boil it down to extreme simplicity, there is only one thing that controls how hot or cold the earth is. The amount of radiation we receive from the sun. Oh, but if it were that simple!

If you run the numbers using the Stefan Boltzmann’s ( E= Sigma * T exp 4 ) equation, you will come up with an Earth temp. of WAY below freezing! In reality Venus is at that “just right” distance from the sun. We on Earth, are too far from the sun.

Really!

Our atmosphere of water vapor, with a little carbon dioxide thrown in, saves us from an eternal deep freeze. (Until the Sun becomes a red giant in a Billion years then it’s toast.

(Literally.)

Yes, our lovely, but very thin atmosphere keeps our average temp right around 15C.

Climate scientists spend a LOT of time trying to figure out just how things like soot, and cloud cover, and greenhouse gases feedback into our climate system. Some things are known very accurately. Like the effects of CO2 and Methane. Others are known fairly well. A few are known very poorly.

To forecast the amount of temperature rise caused by increased greenhouse gases, things like the reflectivity of the Earth has to be taken into account. Melting ice that once reflected 80% of the energy back to space is replaced by dark Arctic ocean that absorbs almost all of that energy.

So how do we know that the climate models showing a much warmer planet by 2100 are correct.

Well we don’t.

We CAN check them however, by running them backwards. Start in 1880 and run the model up to 2000. We already know the answer! Lets see if the model does.

It does. 

Still, one of the more interesting graphics I have seen recently, shows just where the uncertainties are. The graph below shows how much the different human elements affecting our temperature. It also shows how accurately we know their magnitudes.  Spend a minute to look at it. (Based on the IPCC 4th assessment report)

This journal is not written for the “dumb as I want to be” crowd whose eyes glaze over when they see any graph more complicated than the USA Today TV guide. So I know you will really look at it.

Ok, so there you have it. What is understood well and what is not understood well. Aerosols and their effect on clouds are still a problem. CO2 is not. Lets say that the cooling affect is much more than currently thought. At the extreme of the currents constraints. Total net human activities, still give us warming. Only the magnitude varies. 

Our current estimate is that we are adding an EXTRA amount of heat equal to a 1.6 watt light bulb over every square meter of earth’s surface. Day in, and day out. It will eventually start to really change things.

More than likely the numbers will be pretty close to the current estimates. A few surprises perhaps. In 10 years, the error bars on that graph will be a lot smaller. Thats what the top climate scientists do. They try to “better constrain” the estimates.

It is fascinating just how they come up with ingenious ways to do it. It is what makes Science so fun. Maybe some young person reading this will in a few years be responsible for doing just that.

I’m not smart enough to reduce the uncertainties. I have just enough smarts to explain it to you. I am happy with that. I love doing it!

The reason the public has a poor understanding of this issue is partially the fault of the news media, and partially the fault of scientists. Since I work in both fields, I guess I ‘m due double criticism. Well, perhaps I have done my part to clear things up some! 

Later,

Dan

I wanted to attend the American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago this weekend.

I’m a member, and it promised to be really good. Alas, a heavy year of traveling ahead, meant that there was not a budget for it. Some interesting, and disturbing news delivered there today.

Dr. Chris Field of Stanford made a significant announcement.  The rate of CO2 rise, in the last 8 years, is running well ahead of the IPCC predictions.

Some background here.

For Climate Scientists to predict what kind of warming the planet will endure by the end of this century, certain things must be known. Most obviously, is how much Carbon Dioxide will there be in the atmosphere. Not just at the end of the century, but all through the century. More CO2 means warmer temps. The IPCC folks have produced several scenarios. The “ business as usual scenario”, assumes we don’t really get a handle on our CO2 emissions for another 30 years or more. This is the most dire prediction.

What Dr. Chris Field announced, is that this business as usual scenario is not accurate. The Carbon Dioxide is rising faster than it was thought likely. To be exact, for most of the 1990′s, CO2 rose about 0.9% per year. Since 2000, it is rising at 3.5% per year from 2000-2007. 

That’s bad. Real bad. 

The next IPCC assessment will have to take this into account. The climate models will be run with higher CO2 levels. Guess what that means.

Yup, even more bad news.

Sea level rise is also running ahead of the IPCC predictions. French researcher Anny Cazenave reported that the RATE of sea level rise is, itself increasing. From the 1960′s to 1993, it rose about 1.7 mm per year. Since 1993, it is rising at around 3.35mm per year. Scientists tend to make very conservative predictions and the IPCC folks are no different. 

Using the previous Business as usual scenario, the IPCC models showed a range for Sea Level rise from 26-59 cm, by 2100. (See IPCC graphic below)

It is important to remember that there are many things that influence our climate. Ocean/Atmosphere currents, slight changes in solar radiation reaching the Earth, and natural volcanic activity are the main ones.

The Elephant in the room is the greenhouse gases emitted by we Humans. 

I will post a a fascinating graphic in my next entry that shows just where the uncertainties lie in Climate. It shows how big, or small they are in each case. I’ve had this for awhile, but I wanted to do it right! 

Those of you who take the time to read my journal posts deserve no less!

Later,

Dan

Science Magazine, and the BBC provided some info in this post. I looked some data up on Real Climate as well.

The Hubble telescope is back, up and running, To celebrate, NASA released a cool picture.

The galaxies here are 400 million light years away. They look like the number .10 no??

So what happened is thought to be this. The galaxy on the left passed through the blue ringed galaxy on the right. This caused the ring to develop and knocked the center of the blue galaxy off to the left. The core of the destroyed blue galaxy is the bright red decimal point.

Now why didn’t I think of that!

The other news today is that today is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. Founder of modern biology, whose discovery of our origins has revolutionized the world. The BBC has transmitted  several excellent programs on Darwin in the past few weeks. One of the best, is from Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time on BBC Radio 4.

Great exhibit on Darwin at the British Museum of Natural Science on London. I had a chance to visit last October. The photo is mine. Darwin, not the galaxies. That was from Hubble

Later,

Dan