Global Warming Equals Stronger Hurricanes
Meteorologists Find That Increased Ocean Temperatures Cause Increasingly Intense Hurricanes
February 1, 2008 — Climate change experts studying hurricanes documented a 35-year warming trend in ocean surface temperature and linked it to larger hurricanes. The increase has been 1 degree Fahrenheit, resulting in four percent more atmospheric water vapor and six to eight percent more rainfall. Though global warming does not guarantee that each year will see record-strength hurricanes, the long-term ocean warming should raise the baseline of hurricane activity.
According to new research, hurricanes in the North Atlantic are stronger and larger than ever before. Scientists now say they know what's to blame. Winds topping over 75 miles per hour … rain slamming down … waves crashing into the coast!
Some climate scientists believe hurricanes in the North Atlantic loom more dangerous than ever. But now they say … they think know why.
"Since about 1970, there has been a warming of the global oceans including the areas where the hurricanes form due to increases in carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," Kevin Trenberth, NCAR Scientist in Boulder, Colo., told Ivanhoe.Trenberth builds his case asking the tough questions. "Do they get more intense? Do they get bigger? Do they last longer? Are there more of them?" Trenberth asks.
Over the past 35 years, the Atlantic's sea surface temperature has increased one degree Fahrenheit. The result … a four-percent increase of atmospheric water vapor and a six to eight-percent increase in rainfall.
Conditions that contribute to larger, more forceful, hurricanes. The cause -- Trenberth says predominantly global warming. "What we think is likely to happen, they will get more intense, they will likely get a little bigger, but maybe there may not be quite as many," Trenberth said. Other scientists aren't so convinced and believe the warming is a natural occurrence, but either way -- a forecast for the future that impacts us all.
How does a hurricane form? A hurricane is a type of tropical cyclone, a low-pressure system that usually forms in the tropics and has winds that circulate counterclockwise near the earth's surface.
Storms are considered hurricanes when their wind speeds surpass 74 MPH. Every hurricane arises from the combination of warm water and moist warm air. Tropical thunderstorms drift out over warm ocean waters and encounter winds coming in from near the equator.
Warm, moist air from the ocean surface rises rapidly, encounters cooler air, and condenses into water vapor to form storm clouds, releasing heat in the process. This heat causes the condensation process to continue, so that more and more warm moist air is drawn into the developing storm, creating a wind pattern that spirals around the relatively calm center, or eye, of the storm, much like water swirling down a drain. The winds keep circling and accelerating to form a classic cyclone pattern.
The American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union contributed to the information contained in the video portion of this report.
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Global Carbon Emissions Speed Up, Beyond IPCC Projections
ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2008) — The new Global Carbon Budget has been launched simultaneously by Global Carbon Project co-chair Michael Raupach in France at the Paris Observatory, and in the USA at Capitol Hill, Washington by GCP Executive Director Pep Canadell, September 25.
The Global Carbon Project posted the most recent figures for the worlds' carbon budget, a key to understanding the balance of carbon added to the atmosphere, the underpinning of human induced climate change. Despite the increasing international sense of urgency, the growth rate of emissions continued to speed up, bringing the atmospheric CO2 concentration to 383 parts per million (ppm) in 2007.
Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have been growing about four times faster since 2000 than during the previous decade, despite efforts to curb emissions in a number of Kyoto Protocol signatory countries. Emissions from the combustion of fossil fuel and land use change reached 10 billion tones of carbon in 2007. Natural CO2 sinks are growing but slower than the atmospheric CO2 growth, which has been increasing at 2 ppm since 2000 or 33% faster than the previous 20 years.
Dr. Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project said "This new update of the carbon budget shows the acceleration of both CO2 emissions and atmospheric accumulation are unprecedented and most astonishing during a decade of intense international developments to address climate change."
Emissions growth for 2000-2007 was above even the most fossil fuel intensive scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (SRES-IPCC). While the developing nations of China and India continue to increase emissions, China has improved the carbon intensity of their economy since 2005, based on data from the National Energy Administration in China.
Decreasing forest cover, almost exclusively from deforestation in tropical countries, was responsible for an estimated 1.5 billion tons of emissions to the atmosphere above what was gained through new plantings. Although the oceans carbon uptake was expected to rise with the higher atmospheric concentration of CO2, in 2007 it was reduced by a net 10 million tons.
Natural land and ocean CO2 sinks, which have removed 54% (or 4.8 billion tons per year) of all CO2 emitted from human activities during the period 2000-2007, are now becoming less efficient. While the size of these sinks continues to grow in response to greater concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, they are losing efficiency as feedbacks between the carbon cycle and climate increase.
The Global Carbon Budget is the result of an international collaboration through the Global Carbon Project.
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Global Warming Fix? Carbon Dioxide Captured Directly From Air With Simple Machine
ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2008) — University of Calgary climate change scientist David Keith and his team are working to efficiently capture the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide directly from the air, using near-commercial technology.
In research conducted at the U of C, Keith and a team of researchers showed it is possible to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) – the main greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming – using a relatively simple machine that can capture the trace amount of CO2 present in the air at any place on the planet.
"At first thought, capturing CO2 from the air where it's at a concentration of 0.04 per cent seems absurd, when we are just starting to do cost-effective capture at power plants where CO2 produced is at a concentration of more than 10 per cent," says Keith, Canada Research Chair in Energy and Environment.
"But the thermodynamics suggests that air capture might only be a bit harder than capturing CO2 from power plants. We are trying to turn that theory into engineering reality."
The research is significant because air capture technology is the only way to capture CO2 emissions from transportation sources such as vehicles and airplanes. These so-called diffuse sources represent more than half of the greenhouse gases emitted on Earth.
"The climate problem is too big to solve easily with the tools we have," notes Keith, director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy's (ISEEE) Energy and Environmental Systems Group and a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering.
"While it's important to get started doing things we know how to do, like wind power nuclear power and 'regular' carbon capture and storage, it's also vital to start thinking about radical new ideas and approaches to solving this problem."
Energy-efficient and cost-effective air capture could play a valuable role in complementing other approaches for reducing emissions from the transportation sector, such as biofuels or electric vehicles, says David Layzell, ISEEE's Executive Director.
"David Keith and his team have developed a number of innovative ways to achieve the efficient capture of atmospheric carbon. That is a major step in advancing air capture as a solution to a very pressing problem," Layzell says.
"David Keith's vision and originality are key factors in our ranking this year as the top engineering school in Canada for sustainability initiatives, both in terms of research and curriculum," says Elizabeth Cannon, Dean of the Schulich School of Engineering. "Leaders like this are not commonplace, and we are proud to get behind this kind of leadership at the SchulichSchool."
Air capture is different than the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology which is a key part of the Alberta and federal governments' strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CCS involves installing equipment at, for example, a coal-fired power plant to capture carbon dioxide produced during burning of the coal, and then pipelining this CO2 for permanent storage underground in a geological reservoir.
Air capture, on the other hand, uses technology that can capture – no matter where the capture system is located – the CO2 that is present in ambient air everywhere.
"A company could, in principle, contract with an oilsands plant near Fort McMurray to remove CO2 from the air and could build its air capture plant wherever it's cheapest – China, for example – and the same amount of CO2 would be removed," Keith says.
Keith and his team showed they could capture CO2 directly from the air with less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity per tonne of carbon dioxide. Their custom-built tower was able to capture the equivalent of about 20 tonnes per year of CO2 on a single square metre of scrubbing material – the average amount of emissions that one person produces each year in the North American-wide economy.
"This means that if you used electricity from a coal-fired power plant, for every unit of electricity you used to operate the capture machine, you'd be capturing 10 times as much CO2 as the power plant emitted making that much electricity," Keith says.
The U of C team has devised a new way to apply a chemical process derived from the pulp and paper industry cut the energy cost of air capture in half, and has filed two provisional patents on their end-to-end air capture system.
The technology is still in its early stage, Keith stresses. "It now looks like we could capture CO2 from the air with an energy demand comparable to that needed for CO2 capture from conventional power plants, although costs will certainly be higher and there are many pitfalls along the path to commercialization."
Nevertheless, the relatively simple, reliable and scalable technology that Keith and his team developed opens the door to building a commercial-scale plant.Richard Branson, head of Virgin Group, has offered a $25-million prize for anyone who can devise a system to remove the equivalent of one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide or more every year from the atmosphere for at least a decade.
Technical details of the air capture technology are available at:
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