Thanks for bringing this up. Deforestation needs much more attention. The Makarieva publication caught my eye but not long enough to dig into the details as well as you have. This should be seen by climate scientists as a 4-alarm fire. Where is the Fire Department?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The tone is just right. You nailed it, once again. My question is this: are we as a community of writers on this topic doing what we can to make sure that the big media writers are hearing this? If not, that seems to be our absolutely critical mission. I'll start by confessing that there is a satisfaction associated with being the one who knows the secret story, and it is also easier to write about how no one at the Times is writing about this than it is to organize a campaign to bring it to their attention. And that for me its exhausting to think of banging on closed doors. I know that some of our living climate community (very likely you) have tried. I think its past time that we try even harder. I will start by calling together a meeting/workshop to discuss.
Hey Rob (and Didi), I live in southern Washington (probably 5 hours from Bellingham), and spent the last decade as a tv producer and camera op. I edit as well. I'd love to get involved, I'd even be willing to film with my camera sideways so it will look right on people's phones!
Rob, thank you for adding more and more complexity to our climate understanding, or in this case, lack of understanding. As you present this, I get a sense of a planet’s deranged physiology and because the homeostatic functions are so complex, no one can wrap their minds around the whole thing. The atmosphere reminds me of our planet’s epidermis, and the low clouds part of the pigment system that reflects and absorbs light. If we see Earth as a living, breathing system, nothing in its anatomy or functioning is unneeded, and when multisystems break down simultaneously, the sum of the breakdown creates catastrophe of life support. Not for the planet per se, but for us, who, like billions of microorganisms live on its surface.
Thanks, Jeff. Yes, the analogy between the human body and the biosphere is apt. In both cases, a complexity of living things and systems and feedbacks runs the show.
Really glad you continue to raise awareness that a fundamental aspect of the climate system - the biosphere- is not properly assessed.
With respect to the text
“Quantitative modelling shows a marginal radiative effect of land change on global warming”
the existing framing is too simplistic. Land change/land modification also alters the flux of water vapor into the air. This change in water content of the atmosphere significantly alters clouds; which directly and significantly likely alters the Earth’s radiative budget.
Water is the engine of the world... someone said something like that:
Searched..
Leonardo da Vinci famously referred to water as "the vehicle of nature" and "the driving force of all nature".
This phrase highlights his deep appreciation for water's essential role in both natural processes and the life it sustains. He also saw water as a force that could be manipulated and harnessed for human purposes, as evidenced by his designs for mills and other water-powered machinery.
Nair, U.S., R.O. Lawton, R.M. Welch, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2003: Impact of land use on Costa Rican tropical montane cloud forests: 1. Sensitivity of cumulus cloud field characteristics to lowland deforestation. J. Geophys. Res. - Atmospheres, 108, 10.1029/2001JD001135.
Pielke Sr., R.A., R. Mahmood, and C. McAlpine, 2016: Land’s complex role in climate change. Physics Today, 69(11), 40, https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3364
Thank you, Rodger. When I first heard about the troubles facing the cloud forests, I assumed it was a CO2 problem. But as you point out, the impacts of lowland deforestation are more direct, immediate and sizeable. How many other versions of this must be happening around the world?
There are many papers which document the major role of land use/land management in the climate system. Quite a few show effects that are as large/or larger than from the radiative effect of CO2.
Indeed, this was shown convincingly in two international and national assessments:
Kabat, P., Claussen, M., Dirmeyer, P.A., J.H.C. Gash, L. Bravo de Guenni, M. Meybeck, R.A. Pielke Sr., C.J. Vorosmarty, R.W.A. Hutjes, and S. Lutkemeier, Editors, 2004: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system.Springer, Berlin, Global Change - The IGBP Series, 566 pp.
National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp
Unfortunately, the international organization IGBP was cancelled and the funding and focus shifted to the much more narrowly framed IPCC (in this organization the emphasis is on the radiative effect of CO2; at the expense of minimizing other human effects, such as the effect of land conversion on the global water cycle). You have effectively discussed this in one of your Substack posts.
In a paper, we (a set of AGU fellows) tried to alert the climate community to this failure….but we were ignored. Our paper is
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413.DOI:10.1029/2009EO450008, Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.
Thank you, Roger. And thank you for your work. I was made aware years ago of the two books you mention: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system; and Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Walter Jehne spoke of them. They were too expensive for me to buy, so I never dove in, which is probably true for a lot of people. But I'll look into seeing if Biodiversity for a Livable Climate or the Ecosystem Restoration Alliance could get them.
Hi Rob - The NRC report, fortunately, is available for free as a pdf. The Executive Summary by itself is really all that is necessary and that can be individually downloaded.
On the IGBP report I will provide in next reply several sections of that report.
Pielke, R.A. Sr. and L. Bravo de Guenni, Eds., 2004: How to evaluate vulnerability in changing environmental conditions. Part E In: Vegetation, Water, Humans and the Climate: A New Perspective on an Interactive System. Global Change - The IGBP Series, P. Kabat et al. Eds., Springer, 483-544.
Pielke, R.A. Sr., and L. Bravo de Guenni, 2004: Conclusions. Chapter E.7 In: Vegetation, Water, Humans and the Climate: A New Perspective on an Interactive System. Global Change - The IGBP Series, P. Kabat et al., Eds., Springer, 537-538.
Marland, G., R.A. Pielke, Sr., M. Apps, R. Avissar, R.A. Betts, K.J. Davis, P.C. Frumhoff, S.T. Jackson, L. Joyce, P. Kauppi, J. Katzenberger, K.G. MacDicken, R. Neilson, J.O. Niles, D. dutta S. Niyogi, R.J. Norby, N. Pena, N. Sampson, and Y. Xue, 2003: The climatic impacts of land surface change and carbon management, and the implications for climate-change mitigation policy. Climate Policy, 3, 149-157.
Wow! You are getting better and better at discussing what is happening to our Mother Earth - damn both political and environmental problems are screwing us. I wonder what Herb would say? I think I know, he wasn't one to sit quietly and do nothing.
Herb is a dear friend, and Kathy's husband, who passed away from lung disease, which he developed from working on ships when we was young. He's the gentleman in the boat with me on my facebook page. We were wrangling a giant floating banner, reading "Free the Snake!" The Snake River holding critical salmon habitat, blocked by numerous dams.
Fine global data, studies, examples. At a very modest local level, walking around my inner city neighborhood in the summer, heat is intense passing yards of gravel, fake turf, no trees. It is like walking into another world to pass yards of actual vegetation, trees on the parking strip or tree lawn. I know people think, "we're saving water," to fill yards with rocks, but...
There is an interview (in Spanish) that they made me after an articule Rob wrote about about Santiago de Chile. (Save water and end up with a city at 50º take us no where.)
Bien hecho! No puedo leerlo en español, tenía que leer el inglés, pero es un ejemplo perfecto del problema: we're covering the world in concrete and plastic.
Oh, wow! Excellent post, very clear, and compelling! Dang. It doesn't seem like it should be this difficult to draw attention to the importance of living systems. And the road through the forest is as heartbreaking as it is dumbfounding. Thanks for persisting.
Thanks for this excellent article Rob! I’ll be sharing it far and wide. I’m an artist working with deforestation and water issues but have been at a loss of which scientific papers to reference. Thanks for sharing Makarieva’s publication and giving an overview on this huge media (and scientific) blindspot.
Visiting my favorite temperate rainforests in lutruwita Tasmania, it is so glaringly obvious - forests make clouds - the process is visible. But these old-growth forests are also being clear felled at an alarming rate, despite ongoing protests. It’s government sponsored ecocide.
I have been commenting for a while now on deforestation, nutrient flows from agricultural runoff, fire and volcanic activity and the propensity for cloud nucleation, all of which ties in well. The Panama region which has the triple effect of reduction in shipping aerosols, drought and reduced nutrient runoff which would certainly lead to a large reduction in higher temperature ice nucleation. I have been trying to tie this into the main currents circulating Australia in relation to the flow on droughts with the current across the bottom of the continent and the flow on heavy rain events down the east coast which lead to a one in 500y flood event last week.
DMS and bacterial algae partnerships would probably hold the keys and add to this the artificial fertilizer runoff and bacterial fungal responses to wet vs dry conditions and land clearing and we could probably predict these events with much more accuracy. I guess what we are seeing is the effect of -15 to -20 degree Celsius difference in ice nucleation in clouds as some bacteria and fungal nucleating particles will form ice at as little as -2 degrees while many others start toward -20
The following is an extract from
Ice nucleation by particles immersed in supercooled cloud droplets
"Despite their rarity, ice nucleation particles (IN) have a substantial impact on the properties of mixed phase clouds. In part this is because IN are rare in comparison to particles capable of serving as CCN,(cloud condensation nuclei) but it is also related to the fact that a liquid cloud below 0 °C is thermodynamically unstable. In many systems, including clouds, a transition to a more thermodynamically stable state can happen promptly despite the system having previously persisted in a metastable state for a long period of time. Ice nucleation in a small fraction of cloud droplets can trigger a transformation in the whole cloud and substantially modify its properties.
We used to have a science show called catalyst on our national broadcaster ABC which would have loved to explore this phenomena in more detail , as I believe salt and DMS help produce low cloud cover over ocean as bacteria and fungi do the same over forests. I am currently looking into bacterial algae partnerships in the ocean to see if these can help explain the intense rain events associated with ocean fertilization in all its forms.
Giving nature its own currency is the only way it can really protect itself and I believe in the form of a digital currency where currency is created in exchange for biodiversity and biophysical services, this could create capital to modernize agriculture in many countries to retard its decline. Thanks again
What always gets me in this scenario is that carbon in the atmosphere does not produce heat it just radiates heat that it is exposed to just the same as bare earth, Most human-emitted carbon stays within the lower atmosphere, where it influences climate and air quality and air density is highest at ground level so one would think the two would have a level of compatibility in our equations. Another interesting anomaly little talked about is that although high clouds can trap heat most of the heat transfer from cumulonimbus clouds happens from a vapor to a liquid above the lower cumulous cloud mass and the massive surface area associated with these transfers allows excessive heat to be radiated out to space.
Yes, this is something seems overlooked to me, that CO2 is heavier than air and settles near the ground where we are degrading surfaces and creating radiant heat. But then vegetation comes along, absorbs that heat to evaporate water (respire) from under its leaves, which rises to clouds and is released again higher in the atmosphere where there is less CO2. It's brilliant, but seems largely unrecognized. My understanding is that the physical equations describing this process have the heat returning to Earth, with a net zero effect. But beyond that, no one has explained the mechanism.
I would assume it depends on the issue if cirrus clouds overlay these cumulonimbus spires, but in many cases the spires are a reflection of heat and humidity not associated with higher clouds (although they sometimes create their own due to wind shear. looking at cumulonimbus spire pictures from above I am not sure how much of this is an effect of higher temperature ice nucleating particles. but I think they may create this turbulence at a higher frequency. If you can create a ladder of ice nucleation due to higher to lower nucleation points you should be able to cause the biotic pump effect at higher and higher altitudes but if we destroy the lower rungs of the ladder can clouds climb the ladder? I would love to see if anyone has done a study in relation to vegetation types or more importantly nucleation types and cloud effects . As you say the studies in the past show a warm influx creating an upwelling but could height be a property of nucleation? and how does this feed into heat radiation? many questions Thanks for your dedication.
Thanks for your interesting reply. Anastassia Makarieva has written about how the parameters covering convection are too simplistic, but I am not physicist enough to fully follow her. But this seems to me a really important matter. The question is quite simple. First of all, we know that plants cool the microclimate. And we can assume that enough cooling of enough microclimates, which in the case of a forest can be quite large, will result in a regional cooling. But does it translate it into a global cooling?
The cause of the climate problems in the past 30 years are the official climatologists, who block the access of common sense and correct climate science (like Makarieva, Millan Millan and https://dpreda.net/earth/) to environmentalists and decision makers.
Deforestations from prehistory to the present are the largest cause of climate change. High school physics that the official climatologists chose to ignore. This is an ethical problem, not a theoretical or engineering problem.
Re-greening of the continents and especially of the lower latitudes are the solution to climate change by restoring the water cycle.
Wonderful work. I always send your articles around. You and Didi have revolutionised my understanding. And of course it seems so obvious when you see it. We humans have been so poor at holistic understandings - in our inner worlds as well as outer, which I guess aren't really separate spaces at all. Much gratitude to you.
Deforestation is an answer to feed the population in a cheap way or get wood also cheap. It is fear of not having enough.
If we could change desertification to forests maybe we can conserve the actual forest.
About the question of Didi, models are not answering the questions bc they don’t include the biosphere. That is also fear.
When you study a system you have to include all the elements that compose/belong to that system. If you don’t do it the study is incomplete and the result not valid.
Thanks for bringing this up. Deforestation needs much more attention. The Makarieva publication caught my eye but not long enough to dig into the details as well as you have. This should be seen by climate scientists as a 4-alarm fire. Where is the Fire Department?
Thanks, Bradley. Good question.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The tone is just right. You nailed it, once again. My question is this: are we as a community of writers on this topic doing what we can to make sure that the big media writers are hearing this? If not, that seems to be our absolutely critical mission. I'll start by confessing that there is a satisfaction associated with being the one who knows the secret story, and it is also easier to write about how no one at the Times is writing about this than it is to organize a campaign to bring it to their attention. And that for me its exhausting to think of banging on closed doors. I know that some of our living climate community (very likely you) have tried. I think its past time that we try even harder. I will start by calling together a meeting/workshop to discuss.
You are spot on, Didi. I think the moment is right and your idea of calling a meeting/workshop to discuss next targets is excellent. Count me in.
Hey Rob (and Didi), I live in southern Washington (probably 5 hours from Bellingham), and spent the last decade as a tv producer and camera op. I edit as well. I'd love to get involved, I'd even be willing to film with my camera sideways so it will look right on people's phones!
Rob, thank you for adding more and more complexity to our climate understanding, or in this case, lack of understanding. As you present this, I get a sense of a planet’s deranged physiology and because the homeostatic functions are so complex, no one can wrap their minds around the whole thing. The atmosphere reminds me of our planet’s epidermis, and the low clouds part of the pigment system that reflects and absorbs light. If we see Earth as a living, breathing system, nothing in its anatomy or functioning is unneeded, and when multisystems break down simultaneously, the sum of the breakdown creates catastrophe of life support. Not for the planet per se, but for us, who, like billions of microorganisms live on its surface.
Thanks, Jeff. Yes, the analogy between the human body and the biosphere is apt. In both cases, a complexity of living things and systems and feedbacks runs the show.
I grasped a thought of someone. Maybe Alpha Lo.
Small cycles, feed bigger cycles. So we can start restoring small cycles locally to feed bigger cycles regionaly, that will help the cycles planetary.
Or in the word of Dr Millan Millan.
"water begets water, Soil is the womb, tress are the midwife"
Really glad you continue to raise awareness that a fundamental aspect of the climate system - the biosphere- is not properly assessed.
With respect to the text
“Quantitative modelling shows a marginal radiative effect of land change on global warming”
the existing framing is too simplistic. Land change/land modification also alters the flux of water vapor into the air. This change in water content of the atmosphere significantly alters clouds; which directly and significantly likely alters the Earth’s radiative budget.
Thank you, Roger. This is a question I want to write more about.
Water is the engine of the world... someone said something like that:
Searched..
Leonardo da Vinci famously referred to water as "the vehicle of nature" and "the driving force of all nature".
This phrase highlights his deep appreciation for water's essential role in both natural processes and the life it sustains. He also saw water as a force that could be manipulated and harnessed for human purposes, as evidenced by his designs for mills and other water-powered machinery.
Here is one example of our studies on this issue
Nair, U.S., R.O. Lawton, R.M. Welch, and R.A. Pielke Sr., 2003: Impact of land use on Costa Rican tropical montane cloud forests: 1. Sensitivity of cumulus cloud field characteristics to lowland deforestation. J. Geophys. Res. - Atmospheres, 108, 10.1029/2001JD001135.
And a summary paper at
Pielke Sr., R.A., R. Mahmood, and C. McAlpine, 2016: Land’s complex role in climate change. Physics Today, 69(11), 40, https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3364
Thank you, Rodger. When I first heard about the troubles facing the cloud forests, I assumed it was a CO2 problem. But as you point out, the impacts of lowland deforestation are more direct, immediate and sizeable. How many other versions of this must be happening around the world?
Hi Rob
There are many papers which document the major role of land use/land management in the climate system. Quite a few show effects that are as large/or larger than from the radiative effect of CO2.
Indeed, this was shown convincingly in two international and national assessments:
Kabat, P., Claussen, M., Dirmeyer, P.A., J.H.C. Gash, L. Bravo de Guenni, M. Meybeck, R.A. Pielke Sr., C.J. Vorosmarty, R.W.A. Hutjes, and S. Lutkemeier, Editors, 2004: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system.Springer, Berlin, Global Change - The IGBP Series, 566 pp.
National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp
Unfortunately, the international organization IGBP was cancelled and the funding and focus shifted to the much more narrowly framed IPCC (in this organization the emphasis is on the radiative effect of CO2; at the expense of minimizing other human effects, such as the effect of land conversion on the global water cycle). You have effectively discussed this in one of your Substack posts.
In a paper, we (a set of AGU fellows) tried to alert the climate community to this failure….but we were ignored. Our paper is
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413.DOI:10.1029/2009EO450008, Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/12/r-354.pdf
Your Substack is a much needed venue to correct this serious omission by the climate community.
Best Regards
Roger
Thank you, Roger. And thank you for your work. I was made aware years ago of the two books you mention: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system; and Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Walter Jehne spoke of them. They were too expensive for me to buy, so I never dove in, which is probably true for a lot of people. But I'll look into seeing if Biodiversity for a Livable Climate or the Ecosystem Restoration Alliance could get them.
Hi Rob - The NRC report, fortunately, is available for free as a pdf. The Executive Summary by itself is really all that is necessary and that can be individually downloaded.
On the IGBP report I will provide in next reply several sections of that report.
Pielke, R.A. Sr. and L. Bravo de Guenni, Eds., 2004: How to evaluate vulnerability in changing environmental conditions. Part E In: Vegetation, Water, Humans and the Climate: A New Perspective on an Interactive System. Global Change - The IGBP Series, P. Kabat et al. Eds., Springer, 483-544.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/cb-33.pdf
Pielke, R.A. Sr., and L. Bravo de Guenni, 2004: Conclusions. Chapter E.7 In: Vegetation, Water, Humans and the Climate: A New Perspective on an Interactive System. Global Change - The IGBP Series, P. Kabat et al., Eds., Springer, 537-538.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/cb-42.pdf
The other sections can be downloaded from
https://cires.colorado.edu/research-groups/roger-pielke-sr-group#book-chapters
Thank you, Rodger!
One more:
Marland, G., R.A. Pielke, Sr., M. Apps, R. Avissar, R.A. Betts, K.J. Davis, P.C. Frumhoff, S.T. Jackson, L. Joyce, P. Kauppi, J. Katzenberger, K.G. MacDicken, R. Neilson, J.O. Niles, D. dutta S. Niyogi, R.J. Norby, N. Pena, N. Sampson, and Y. Xue, 2003: The climatic impacts of land surface change and carbon management, and the implications for climate-change mitigation policy. Climate Policy, 3, 149-157.
Wow! You are getting better and better at discussing what is happening to our Mother Earth - damn both political and environmental problems are screwing us. I wonder what Herb would say? I think I know, he wasn't one to sit quietly and do nothing.
Who is Herb?
Herb is a dear friend, and Kathy's husband, who passed away from lung disease, which he developed from working on ships when we was young. He's the gentleman in the boat with me on my facebook page. We were wrangling a giant floating banner, reading "Free the Snake!" The Snake River holding critical salmon habitat, blocked by numerous dams.
Epic!
Fine global data, studies, examples. At a very modest local level, walking around my inner city neighborhood in the summer, heat is intense passing yards of gravel, fake turf, no trees. It is like walking into another world to pass yards of actual vegetation, trees on the parking strip or tree lawn. I know people think, "we're saving water," to fill yards with rocks, but...
There is an interview (in Spanish) that they made me after an articule Rob wrote about about Santiago de Chile. (Save water and end up with a city at 50º take us no where.)
https://open.substack.com/pub/theclimateaccordingtolife/p/another-mediterranean-climate-mystery
https://www.esghoy.cl/ahorrar-agua-y-terminar-con-una-ciudad-con-50c-en-verano-no-nos-va-a-llevar-a-ninguna-parte/
Bien hecho! No puedo leerlo en español, tenía que leer el inglés, pero es un ejemplo perfecto del problema: we're covering the world in concrete and plastic.
Oh, wow! Excellent post, very clear, and compelling! Dang. It doesn't seem like it should be this difficult to draw attention to the importance of living systems. And the road through the forest is as heartbreaking as it is dumbfounding. Thanks for persisting.
Thanks, Leah!
It’s headbangingly obvious. We’re just getting ‘a tad’ too intelligent and shut away from the Natural World. 🌍 Look how beautiful it was
Thanks for this excellent article Rob! I’ll be sharing it far and wide. I’m an artist working with deforestation and water issues but have been at a loss of which scientific papers to reference. Thanks for sharing Makarieva’s publication and giving an overview on this huge media (and scientific) blindspot.
Visiting my favorite temperate rainforests in lutruwita Tasmania, it is so glaringly obvious - forests make clouds - the process is visible. But these old-growth forests are also being clear felled at an alarming rate, despite ongoing protests. It’s government sponsored ecocide.
Yes. It IS visible. We all have seen it.
I have been commenting for a while now on deforestation, nutrient flows from agricultural runoff, fire and volcanic activity and the propensity for cloud nucleation, all of which ties in well. The Panama region which has the triple effect of reduction in shipping aerosols, drought and reduced nutrient runoff which would certainly lead to a large reduction in higher temperature ice nucleation. I have been trying to tie this into the main currents circulating Australia in relation to the flow on droughts with the current across the bottom of the continent and the flow on heavy rain events down the east coast which lead to a one in 500y flood event last week.
DMS and bacterial algae partnerships would probably hold the keys and add to this the artificial fertilizer runoff and bacterial fungal responses to wet vs dry conditions and land clearing and we could probably predict these events with much more accuracy. I guess what we are seeing is the effect of -15 to -20 degree Celsius difference in ice nucleation in clouds as some bacteria and fungal nucleating particles will form ice at as little as -2 degrees while many others start toward -20
The following is an extract from
Ice nucleation by particles immersed in supercooled cloud droplets
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2012/cs/c2cs35200a
"Despite their rarity, ice nucleation particles (IN) have a substantial impact on the properties of mixed phase clouds. In part this is because IN are rare in comparison to particles capable of serving as CCN,(cloud condensation nuclei) but it is also related to the fact that a liquid cloud below 0 °C is thermodynamically unstable. In many systems, including clouds, a transition to a more thermodynamically stable state can happen promptly despite the system having previously persisted in a metastable state for a long period of time. Ice nucleation in a small fraction of cloud droplets can trigger a transformation in the whole cloud and substantially modify its properties.
We used to have a science show called catalyst on our national broadcaster ABC which would have loved to explore this phenomena in more detail , as I believe salt and DMS help produce low cloud cover over ocean as bacteria and fungi do the same over forests. I am currently looking into bacterial algae partnerships in the ocean to see if these can help explain the intense rain events associated with ocean fertilization in all its forms.
Giving nature its own currency is the only way it can really protect itself and I believe in the form of a digital currency where currency is created in exchange for biodiversity and biophysical services, this could create capital to modernize agriculture in many countries to retard its decline. Thanks again
Thanks, Theodore!
What always gets me in this scenario is that carbon in the atmosphere does not produce heat it just radiates heat that it is exposed to just the same as bare earth, Most human-emitted carbon stays within the lower atmosphere, where it influences climate and air quality and air density is highest at ground level so one would think the two would have a level of compatibility in our equations. Another interesting anomaly little talked about is that although high clouds can trap heat most of the heat transfer from cumulonimbus clouds happens from a vapor to a liquid above the lower cumulous cloud mass and the massive surface area associated with these transfers allows excessive heat to be radiated out to space.
Yes, this is something seems overlooked to me, that CO2 is heavier than air and settles near the ground where we are degrading surfaces and creating radiant heat. But then vegetation comes along, absorbs that heat to evaporate water (respire) from under its leaves, which rises to clouds and is released again higher in the atmosphere where there is less CO2. It's brilliant, but seems largely unrecognized. My understanding is that the physical equations describing this process have the heat returning to Earth, with a net zero effect. But beyond that, no one has explained the mechanism.
I would assume it depends on the issue if cirrus clouds overlay these cumulonimbus spires, but in many cases the spires are a reflection of heat and humidity not associated with higher clouds (although they sometimes create their own due to wind shear. looking at cumulonimbus spire pictures from above I am not sure how much of this is an effect of higher temperature ice nucleating particles. but I think they may create this turbulence at a higher frequency. If you can create a ladder of ice nucleation due to higher to lower nucleation points you should be able to cause the biotic pump effect at higher and higher altitudes but if we destroy the lower rungs of the ladder can clouds climb the ladder? I would love to see if anyone has done a study in relation to vegetation types or more importantly nucleation types and cloud effects . As you say the studies in the past show a warm influx creating an upwelling but could height be a property of nucleation? and how does this feed into heat radiation? many questions Thanks for your dedication.
Thanks for your interesting reply. Anastassia Makarieva has written about how the parameters covering convection are too simplistic, but I am not physicist enough to fully follow her. But this seems to me a really important matter. The question is quite simple. First of all, we know that plants cool the microclimate. And we can assume that enough cooling of enough microclimates, which in the case of a forest can be quite large, will result in a regional cooling. But does it translate it into a global cooling?
Well written, thanks!
The cause of the climate problems in the past 30 years are the official climatologists, who block the access of common sense and correct climate science (like Makarieva, Millan Millan and https://dpreda.net/earth/) to environmentalists and decision makers.
Deforestations from prehistory to the present are the largest cause of climate change. High school physics that the official climatologists chose to ignore. This is an ethical problem, not a theoretical or engineering problem.
Re-greening of the continents and especially of the lower latitudes are the solution to climate change by restoring the water cycle.
Thanks, Dorin. I look forward to reading your link.
Wonderful work. I always send your articles around. You and Didi have revolutionised my understanding. And of course it seems so obvious when you see it. We humans have been so poor at holistic understandings - in our inner worlds as well as outer, which I guess aren't really separate spaces at all. Much gratitude to you.
Thanks, Erin.
Deforestation is an answer to feed the population in a cheap way or get wood also cheap. It is fear of not having enough.
If we could change desertification to forests maybe we can conserve the actual forest.
About the question of Didi, models are not answering the questions bc they don’t include the biosphere. That is also fear.
When you study a system you have to include all the elements that compose/belong to that system. If you don’t do it the study is incomplete and the result not valid.