Mathematics and Climate Studies


BaalChatzaf

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The following from the American Mathematical Society has some insights on what kind of math in involved in climate studies.

http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-climate

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An interesting read about variable albedo effects. I didn't see any mention of a variable sun source of energy which is the only input of it except that which comes from inside the planet.

--Brant

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5 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

An interesting read about variable albedo effects. I didn't see any mention of a variable sun source of energy which is the only input of it except that which comes from inside the planet.

--Brant

The amount of energy put out by the sun does vary.  It runs in something approximating an 11 cycle.  There is also a long term trend.  The sun is getting hotter (about 10 percent every billion years).  That is because the hydrogen is being fused in to helium and the helium is also fused.  Helium fusion runs hotter (at a higher temperature)  than hydrogen fusion.  Eventually the hydrogen in the sun will be used up and the Sun will be much hotter (at a higher temperature) than it is today.  When that happens  the oceans on Earth will evaporate,   the atmosphere will be heated up and more of it will escape into space and not come back. When that happens it is the beginning of the end for life on Earth. Once the water is gone, so is life on this planet.

The amount of radiation -received- by the earth also varies. There are variations in orbit, precession and inclination of the the axis of rotation to the plane of the ecliptic.  A correlation has been established between the increase in glaciation and one of the orbital cycles,  the Milankovich Cycle.  

Please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Temperature variation is in part do to purely natural processes (not related to human activity).  One of the current problems in climatology is separating the natural variations in climate (particularly temperature)  and man caused variations in climate.  

I am with the Luke Warmers  who have concluded that some of the temperature increase (but not all) is due to human activity, particularly human activity that has affected the albedo of the planet, but most of the variation is due to natural causes, in particular the ocean cycles  of with El Ninyo and and La Ninya  are two effects. 

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Well, there are cycles within cycles. Right now the sun is putting out less energy as reflected in less sunspot activity. We might be cooling for the next several decades.

This planet is going to be very uncomfortable for complicated life long before a billion years have passed because the re-assemblage of the super-continent will turn most of the land mass into desert. Sort of like Australia today, the continent's edges will be habitable.

--Brant

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1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Well, there are cycles within cycles. Right now the sun is putting out less energy as reflected in less sunspot activity. We might be cooling for the next several decades.

This planet is going to be very uncomfortable for complicated life long before a billion years have passed because the re-assemblage of the super-continent will turn most of the land mass into desert. Sort of like Australia today, the continent's edges will be habitable.

--Brant

Yes.  The sun may be entering a period of lesser energy emission  similar to the Maunder Minimum.  

As to the desert fate that awaits the world,  the solution is to move close to the coast lines,  purify water and pump it inland.  To some extent  technology can deal with desertification.  There is nothing we can do with how the continents move.  That is determined by convection of molten material and the movements of tectonic plates.  That is Nature at work and there is little or nothing mankind can do to alter it.  As you can see,  climate will be determined mostly by nature and not by human activity.  The main thing mankind does to affect the climate is to change the earth's albedo.  Cutting down forests and  putting large areas of land under cultivation can modify the planet's albedo.

There has been an idea bruited about recently about loading up the atmosphere with reflective particulates  increasing the reflectivity of Earth.  This would have the effect of cooling the planet down since more light from the sun would be bounced back and not reach the ground.  However we do not have any good models or theories to predict what the effects would be in detail and how fast their would occur.  Making the earth shinier  could trigger an ice-age. I get a bit nervous when the mavens start talking about doing things without  well understood probable results.  Nature has been reasonably kind to us so-far,  let us not do something we won't be able to undo. 

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Ba’al wrote: There has been an idea bruited about recently about loading up the atmosphere with reflective particulates increasing the reflectivity of Earth. end quote 

I assume the reflective particulates would be small and perhaps even small enough for people to breath into their lungs, and for jets to pull them into their engines. Look outside Honey! It snowed in June. No, Dear. It is reflective particles on the grass.

I would hold off on that project or putting certain gases into the atmosphere.

An interesting engineering project could be to build reflective panels some distance from the earth to shield us from sunlight for cooling, and perhaps turn the sunlight into useable energy to be microwaved to a Deep Space Nine type factory and residence, where it could be utilized to power the station and have the rest sent to earth via microwaves or some other form of transmission. If you have seen solar panel “farms” you know this idea is viable. Magnetic "space paint" blown onto thin panels that are miles across? 

And as far as the continents coming together to form larger, dryer land masses, I thing nuclear bomb created canals could easily bring the seas inland to moderate the climate.

Peter  

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8 hours ago, Peter said:

Ba’al wrote: There has been an idea bruited about recently about loading up the atmosphere with reflective particulates increasing the reflectivity of Earth. end quote 

I assume the reflective particulates would be small and perhaps even small enough for people to breath into their lungs, and for jets to pull them into their engines. Look outside Honey! It snowed in June. No, Dear. It is reflective particles on the grass.

I would hold off on that project or putting certain gases into the atmosphere.

An interesting engineering project could be to build reflective panels some distance from the earth to shield us from sunlight for cooling, and perhaps turn the sunlight into useable energy to be microwaved to a Deep Space Nine type factory and residence, where it could be utilized to power the station and have the rest sent to earth via microwaves or some other form of transmission. If you have seen solar panel “farms” you know this idea is viable. Magnetic "space paint" blown onto thin panels that are miles across? 

And as far as the continents coming together to form larger, dryer land masses, I thing nuclear bomb created canals could easily bring the seas inland to moderate the climate.

Peter  

Let's see now.  Such a system of reflectors or partial reflectors would have to be in orbit sufficiently far  so that atmospheric drag wont slow them down and cause them to fall back to the ground.   That would be  a distance of something like 10,000 miles (or greater) from the center of the Earth.  Now compute the surface area of a sphere with radius 10,000 miles.   That would come out to 4 x pi x (10,000 mi)^2  or  approximately 13 x 100,000,000 square miles.  We can't afford it and it would interfere with the GPS  system.  That would be for an unbroken screen.  For a traveling screen that would always stand between the sun and the earth  it would have be wide enough (how wide depends on the radius of the orbit)  to cover the solid angle from 67 degrees north to 67 degrees south (the polar latitudes need not be blocked).   Basically  we can't afford to build such a system.  We have the technology,  but it would be far too expensive. 

Once more, it would to be sufficiently far out  to not interfere with the GPS  which consists of geo-stationary satellites  at an orbit of 22,000 miles. 

The undertaking is not only more than we can afford,  it would not be feasible to build and maintain it.

I have a neatsy keen idea; get rid of the coal burning  power generating stations and plant lots and lots of trees.! 

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On ‎5‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 9:26 AM, Brant Gaede said:

There has been general reforestation apropos return of agricultural land to other uses, at least in this country.

--Brant

There was a recent article in our local paper about a group of people in a suburban community who pooled their money, which was $2,000 each, to buy a farm of several hundred acres so that it would not be developed in a way that blocked their view, added to congestion, or polluted. After buying it, they voted to see if it should become a ‘conservation area’ owned by the government and they voted, ‘NO.’ The downside to that decision is that there will be yearly taxes.

Peter

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2 minutes ago, Peter said:

There was a recent article in our local paper about a group of people in a suburban community who pooled their money, which was $2,000 each, to buy a farm of several hundred acres so that it would not be developed in a way that blocked their view, added to congestion, or polluted. After buying it, they voted to see if it should become a ‘conservation area’ owned by the government and they voted, ‘NO.’ The downside to that decision is that there will be yearly taxes.

Peter

And potential seizure  by eminent domain....

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On ‎5‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 7:53 AM, BaalChatzaf said:

Let's see now.  Such a system of reflectors or partial reflectors would have to be in orbit sufficiently far  so that atmospheric drag wont slow them down and cause them to fall back to the ground.   That would be  a distance of something like 10,000 miles (or greater) from the center of the Earth.  Now compute the surface area of a sphere with radius 10,000 miles.   That would come out to 4 x pi x (10,000 mi)^2  or  approximately 13 x 100,000,000 square miles.  We can't afford it and it would interfere with the GPS  system.  That would be for an unbroken screen.  For a traveling screen that would always stand between the sun and the earth  it would have be wide enough (how wide depends on the radius of the orbit)  to cover the solid angle from 67 degrees north to 67 degrees south (the polar latitudes need not be blocked).   Basically  we can't afford to build such a system.  We have the technology,  but it would be far too expensive. 

Once more, it would to be sufficiently far out  to not interfere with the GPS  which consists of geo-stationary satellites  at an orbit of 22,000 miles. 

The undertaking is not only more than we can afford,  it would not be feasible to build and maintain it.

I have a neatsy keen idea; get rid of the coal burning  power generating stations and plant lots and lots of trees.! 

With today’s technology it could not be built but with tomorrow’s it could? With semi-autonomous machines in a hundred years would the size of the ‘shade’ need to be that large? If it was built smaller and further out and leashed to the movement and gravity of the earth as it circled the sun, wouldn’t the shadow of it be larger?

Peter    

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1 hour ago, Peter said:

With today’s technology it could not be built but with tomorrow’s it could? With semi-autonomous machines in a hundred years would the size of the ‘shade’ need to be that large? If it was built smaller and further out and leashed to the movement and gravity of the earth as it circled the sun, wouldn’t the shadow of it be larger?

Peter    

The "shade" would have to be nearly as wide as the Earth.  The sun is so far away that its rays come in almost parallel.

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