17 Feb 2011, 1:00am
Holocene Climates
by admin

Regarding Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer

Chuck Wiese (2011) Regarding Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer. Weatherwise Inc. Portland, Oregon.

Full text [here]

Selected excerpts:

(Why Al Gore’s Comments to Bill O’Reilly at Fox News Are Wrong)

From a meteorologist’s perspective, nothing is worse than to see atmospheric science trashed by the likes of Al Gore, who is a self proclaimed expert in this area, but has had no formal training from any accredited university and constantly makes incorrect and unprovable assertions about “human caused” climate change.

The latest revelation came on February 2, 2011, when Mr. Gore eagerly answered a questioning of the accuracy of Gore’s past claims about climate from Bill O’Reilly from the Fox News Channel since much of the central and east coast of the US have had a cold and snowy winter. Gore told O’Reilly that the snowstorms of this winter were part of the pattern of changing climate expected by scientists and result from the warming earth air masses with more moisture were running into a patch of cold air. Gore claimed: “ These warmer air masses ( which Gore claims result from human carbon emissions that create atmospheric CO2 ) act like a sponge to moisture and soak it up until they hit a patch of cold air.” Gore then claims that this “extra moisture” contained in the warmer air causes more intense precipitation and thus heavier snowfall, and is all consistent with a warming earth.

These statements by Gore are sheer nonsense. While it is true that warmer air can hold more moisture than cold air, the temperature of the air has nothing to do with how much water vapor will ultimately be evaporated ( or as Gore puts it “soaked up” ) into it. That is determined solely by what is called the vapor pressure gradient that exists between a sample of air that may overlie a surface of water. …

In the example above, I took a hot continental air mass that is typically found in the summer months in the US at a temperature of 100 deg F. If the dew point of this hot air mass was 50 deg F ( which it typically is in summer ) this would be VERY DRY air relative to its temperature of 100 deg F, having a relative humidity of only 19%. This is the kind of airmass that Al Gore claims would “soak up moisture” because it is so warm. So what happens if we moved it out over the Pacific Ocean so it could “soak up” some of Al Gore’s moisture? We see from the vapor pressures involved that this hot airmass is not going to do any such thing. Why? Because the vapor pressure of the ocean is the same as the vapor pressure of Mr. Gore’s hot air mass! Both the ocean and air have the SAME vapor pressure with the temperature of the water and dew point temperature of the air being equal which equals a vapor pressure 10.75 millibars in both from the Clapeyron equation. The vapor pressure gradient is zero in this case. This means that there would be NO NET EVAPORATIVE GAIN OF WATER VAPOR into this HOT air mass at all. As this HOT air moves into the “patch” of colder ocean, it will simply begin to cool to towards its dew point temperature, raising the relative humidity of the air but leaving little or no change in the absolute humidity because the ocean will easily take up the extra heat energy without raising its own temperature, which determines its vapor pressure( which determines actual water vapor content ) which defines that “sponge” Mr. Gore was talking about.

So in what scenario would we find an airmass acting like a “sponge” and “soaking up moisture” as Mr. Gore claims happens with a warm airmass? If you’re laughing about now and guessing the opposite of what Gore claims you would be correct! The best example I could give regarding an airmass “soaking up moisture” would be from one that produces lake effect snowstorms, and that would be a source of COLD continental arctic air. Let’s examine the physics of that in the illustration below:

In this scenario, we start with a COLD airmass, whose temperature at the north shore of lake Michigan is -15 degF, with a dew point temperature of -20 degF. Using the Clapeyron equation again, we find the vapor pressure in such a COLD airmass is very low. The value is only .49 millibars. But when we compute the vapor pressure of Lake Michigan, even with a temperature of 32 degF we find it to be much higher at 5.11 millibars. This creates a whopping vapor pressure gradient INTO the COLD airmass of 4.62 millibars! The effect this will have is unmistakable. As this COLD airmass travels over the warmer lake surface, it will be heated rapidly by the lake surface, but as it heats, the vapor pressure gradient will constantly feed a stream of moisture from the lake into the warming airmass and continually re-saturate it. …

Much has been said by Mr. Gore and other climate alarmists about rising ocean temperatures and sea levels as a result of rising CO2. If there is anything you can conclude about the tropical oceans from these calculations is that if external energy is supplied to the warmer oceans and air, most of it is expended evaporating water rather than raising the temperature. It is very difficult to raise the ocean temperatures in the tropics because of the much higher vapor pressures involved with the higher temperatures. And because the Clapeyron equation makes the vapor pressure rise as a function of an exponential increase in the reciprocal of temperature, it becomes a very powerful brake in mitigating a warming temperature by adding energy from any external source. This also demonstrates well that Mr. Gore is wrong again concerning warmer air “soaking up water vapor like a sponge”. …

CONCLUSIONS

The claims made by Al Gore and other “climate scientists” that state this year’s heavy snowstorms in the USA and across the world were caused by warmer ( and thus the claim of more moist ) air “colliding” with cold air ( and according to the claims are “proof” of human caused, CO2 induced warming) are proven here to be false. …

Mr. Gore and any other scientists are wrong when they claim warm air masses “soak up moisture like a sponge” as we determined that the differential vapor pressure between the air and a body of water are what determines evaporation, and larger differential vapor pressure is NOT generated in the tropical environment as Gore seems to think. It is actually generated with COLD and very dry continental arctic air overrunning a body of warmer water, such as when arctic air spills out over the ocean or when it runs over the Great Lakes and produces lake effect snow. We also found from thermodynamics of heat transfer between air and water that it is much more difficult to evaporate water from the ocean with a body of nearly saturated air in a tropical region without adding a great deal of external energy…

The propaganda is being used to brainwash youth at the K1-12 levels to condition youth to accept it without questioning as the youth grow older and are able to reason and analyze better. A multitude of expansion of federal agencies as well as new ones have also been created that are supposed to deal with a “problem” that has not even been proven to exist! Every one of these agencies should be abolished and academia as well as James Hansen from NASA held accountable and forced to justify the claims and scare tactics that have been used to build them up.

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