Imperial College London

Environmental Physics

Ari Alonso Bizzi

Alonso Bizzi, Ari

16/05/2022
Typical values :

Hydrostatic relation :

1. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE GLOBAL CLIMATE SYSTEM

Climate = long-term average of day-to-day weather

Components:

TOTAL SOLAR IRRADIANCE (TSI)

Isotropic à in all directions equally

Irradiance = P/A reaching TOA (top of Earth’s atmosphere)

TSI:

 Sometimes called ‘solar constant’ but can vary:

o Long-term: Milankovitch cycles
 o Shorter-term:
 Solar cycles à every 11 years the mag field flips
 More sunspots = brighter (as other things to counteract the sunspots)

BLACKBODY APPROXIMATION
 So can use Stefan-Boltmann law on Sun:

 Isotropic: emits equally over all solid angles

RADIATIVE EQM
Rate of radiation being absorbed = rate of radiation emitted

 Though the radiation can have different properties (wavelength, etc)

2
Power in = πR❑E ( 1−α p ) TSI

 Have to subtract the radiation reflected instead of absorbed

o Planetary albedo αp à ratio: reflected/incident at TOA
o

2 4
Power out = 4 π R E σ T E

Equal the 2 and rearrange: TE ~ 255K

2. GREENHOUSE EFFECT

 Emissivity = ratio or irradiance emitted by material compared to a black-body at the same temp
Iλ Iλ
ϵ λ= =
I BB σ T 4
o Grey body: emissivity <1 but doesn’t vary with lambda
 Absorptivity = ratio of incident irradiance absorbed by material compare to blackbody
o If in thermodynamic eqm (troposphere and lower stratosphere):
 a λ =ϵ λ
 Transmissivity = how much radiation will pass through a material
t λ =1−a λ
−τ
t λ =e

OPTICAL DEPTH (Τ)

 Ka àabsorption coefficient
 Pa à Density of absorber

GREENHOUSE EFFECT

= amount of longwave radiation emitted by the surface which is trapped with Earth’s atm

 Natural but can be enhanced by increasing gg concs (and thus absorbtivity)

 Atm more transparent to shortwave (SW - solar) than longwave (LW – terrestrial) rad
 Earth’s surface as a bb:

 OLR = outgoing LW radiation at the TOA (top of atmosphere)

o This is the radiation that escapes the atmosphere
 Amount of radiation that is trapped (G) = total rad emitted from surface – radiation that escapes

SIMPLE MODEL
3 regions:

 Surface, TOA and between

Assumptions:

 Fully transparent atmosphere to solar rad

 Bb emission from surface (at TS)
o Good assumption particularly for ocean
 Atmosphere is a single-layer grey-body
o Emissivity ϵa, Temp Ta
 o Emits up and down
o emission and thus G not wavelength dep. à not true but assume
 radiative eqm at surface and at TOA

Energy conservation:

Flux in = flux out

TOA: Incident solar rad = LW absorbed nd then emitted up by atm + LW transmitted from surface

 1-αp à remove radiation that is reflected at the atmosphere

 rad transmitted from surface: (1- ea) because some of it is absorbed by the atm

Within atmosphere: LW absorbed by atm from surface = LW emitted by atm (up and down)

At surface:

 Incoming:
o solar incident to surface (same as at TOA as assuming atm transparent to SW)
o LW emitted downwards by atmosphere
 Outgoing:
o LW emitted by surface

Solve: simultaneously!

WHAT IF ATM NOT TRANSPARENT?

If it absorbed the same amount of SW as LW, G = 0

3. RADIATIVE FORCING AND FEEDBACK

DEFINITIONS

Climate forcing: Δ Q ext à external process, perturbs system away from radiative eqm at TOA

Leads to response à Δ T s

Feedback: Δ Q ∫ ¿¿ à internal, reponds to forcing and has additional impact (response)

NET DOWNWARD IRRADIANCE

 IN = net downward SW irradiance (at TOA) – outgoing LW rad (OLR)
 Net downward SW at TOA = SW transmitted – SW reflected at TOA
 +ve downwards

Case 1: radiative eqm:

 Net downward = OLR à IN =0

Case 2: external forcing

 Δ I N = Δ Qext
 Less OLR

However this will have a response and feedbacks

Case 3: feedback

Δ I N = Δ Qext + Δ Q∫ ¿¿

1. External forcing
2. Response Δ T s
3. Internal feedbacks Δ Q ∫ ¿= γ ΔT s → γ ¿ = climate feedback parameter (strength of radiative feedback)

CLIMATE FEEDBACK PARAMETER

- Feedback can be negative or positive

A à radiative feedback only due to Δ T s à only affects LW rad

- Lecture 2:
- Let effective emissivity
' ϵa ' 4
- ϵ =1− → OLR=ϵ σ T s
2
- As the changes are only due to the change in the OLR

blackbody feedback param (as we have modelled the

Earth’s surface as a bb)
- Warmer surface à emits more rad

Bà additional feedback due to changes in specific variables

- For relevant impact, climate var (x) must impact radiation balance and be dependent of Ts
SPECTRAL GREENHOUSE EFFECT

- G can acc vary with λ

- Diff gases will contribute to the overall effect depending on what λ they respond to
- E.g. CO2 might not be in vast concentrations but its absorption corresponds to the region with peak
emission from Earth’s surface
- Also, H2O has strong IR absorbance.

Top à radiation emitted from Earth

Bottom à G, difference between that and OLR

- Area under each curve is the same (you’ve only increased H20 by 12% instead of 100% like CO2)
- Only need a small amount of water vap to match the impact of 2x Co2
- Enhance except in stratosphere (where temp increases w height)

WATER VAPOUR FEEDBACK

Expanation: Clausius Clapeyron relation

à ideal gas law à Clausius-Clapeyron scaling

Typical values :

More useful (as you’re not always dealing with things at the sat vap pressure es) : relative humidity

à propto absolute amount of water vap in atm (q)

change in T=k * change in q à strong positive

water vap feedback

4. WATER

ICE-ALBEDO EFFECT (+VE FEEDBACK)

= mechanism: enhanced surface warming à reduced snow/ice àreduced surface albedo

  Reduced planetary albedo à greater surface warming

Surface albedo αs = fraction of incident solar rad at surface that is reflected (instead of absorbed)

Values:

Seasonal cycle:

- Total solar irradiance is seasonal (winter à no insulation à polar night à ice can grow) (summer
àsolar insulation àice melts)

Arctic (north), Antarctic (south- seasons flipped)

- Weird: sea-ice increasing with time in Antarctica ?? Active research

LAPSE RATE

= -ve change of T with height

- Troposphere (last 8-12km) à T reduces w height à +ve lapse rate

LAPSE RATE MATHS
Case 1: dry air

 Dry, adiabatic lapse rate Γ d

- Parcel of air ascending (convection)

- Assume ideal gas, adiabatic cooling (fast ascent so no time for outflow of heat), hydrostatic eqm
(balance of vertical forces)
- 1st Law of thermo:

The work done here is on the parcel. We are using specific quantities (/m)
- Adiabatic:

- Hydrostatic:

- Combine:

Case 2: parcel containing water vap

 - Parcel rises à cools adiabatically à P decreases until it reaches es (saturation vapour pressure)
àphase change (condensation) à latent heat released.
dq=−l v dw s
mws
Saturation mixing ration: ws¿ àratio of mass of water of saturation to mass of dry air
md
- Combine to give moist (saturation) adiabatic lapse rate:

More intuitive equation:

à -ve of the gradient is the lapse rate

LAPSE RATE FEEDBACK

- rate of change of Gs with surface temperature must be negative
- opposes the original forcing
- moist air can evaporate and release latent heat = warmer atmosphere = +OLR
- forcing à + Ts à +OLR à - net downward irradiance at the TOA àopposing original forcing

COMBINING WITH WATER VAPOUR FEEDBACK

- Linked: + water vap à +greenhouse trapping AND +lapse rate feedback
- Greenhouse trapping stronger à overall +ve feedback
CLOUDS
- Mostly in troposhphere
- Reflect incident SW rad à responsible for 50% of planetary albedo
- Cloud will also absorb and emit OLR:
4
- If optically thick à consider cloud as black body (ϵ 1¿ → irradiance=σ T H
- More heightà T decreases à less irradiance (OLR)
- Combine this effect with reflectivity of cloud:
- Low cloud: +reflection dominates over OLR absorption àcooling
- High cloud: bigger reduction in OLR àwarming
- Other factors relevant to cloud response: microphysics (size distribution, droplet shape, phase)

OVERALL

5. CARBON CYCLE

- Flow of carbon between each reservoir on Earth

- Fast (10s years)
- Atmosphere
- Biosphere
- Soils
- Upper ocean
- Slow (100,000s years)
- Deep ocean
- Geological sediments
- Anthropogenic (man-induced) changes à small relative to natural fluxes but disrupt balance
CO 2

- Fluctuates relative to glacial and interglacial perios

- Still higher today (415ppm vs 285 in 1750)
- Contributes to anthropogenic radiative forcing:
- Strong absorption band at 15um and long atmospheric lifetime

Emissions (sources)

- Mainly: fossil fuel burning and cement production

- Also: land-use exchange

Uptake (sinks)

- Atmosphere, biosphere, ocean

- Our planet is helping us! Uptake capacity of land and ocean has grown

Combine these à predict growth rate and estimate airborne fraction of CO2

UNITS

PPm àparts per million (like a percentage, but permillionage 😊)

Gigatonne: 1GtC = 3.664GtCO2 (multiply by ration of molecular weights)

TERRESTRIAL CARBON CYCLE

PHOTOSYNTHESIS AND RESPIRATION

Photosynthesis: active radiation

- Leaves (chlorophyll) most sensitive to 400-700nm

- PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) = total radiation integrated over this range

PRODUCTIVITY
Primary productivity: rate at which producers store radiant energy

GPP (Gross Primary Productivity): CO2 reduction due to photosynthesis (synthesising organic matter)
NPP (Net Primary Productivity): GPP – R (rate of respiration)

= Photosynthetic biomass x growth efficiency x PAR

NPP/GPP à carbon use efficiency (fraction of carbon absorbed allocated to growth)

Phase change à latent heat released during evapotranspiration

PERTUBATIONS TO THE CARBON SINC

- Arrow up: increase in variable

- Agricultural burning à replenish land

Natural:
 - Natural variability in plant growth and wetland coverage
- Natural wildfire à e.g. due to lightning
- Impermanent perturbation à vegetation regrowth

Dominant sources:

- Land use (deforestation and changes in agricultural practise)

- Combat with improved land management and afforestation schemes àneg carbon emissions
- Fossil fuels
- Some of the worst countries for ffs are the best for land use (afforestation)

Deforestation: lost a country the size of Libya since 1990 but the rate is decreasing à regrowth in Europe +
Asia

Fires: regrowth can balance the budget (unless veg permanently destroyed)

CLIMATE-CARBON FEEDBACKS
1. ‘Greening’ (‘Fertilisation effect’) due to CO2 fertilisation: enhanced productivity of plants at higher
atmospheric CO2 concs (non-linear)
(stomata don’t need to open as wide à less water loss) àincreases ability as carbon sink
2. Plant growth limiting factors: water (prevalent in deserts), sunlight availability, temp
- Climate change means:
 T less of an issue in the poles
 More precipitation in some areas but more drought in others
3. Enhanced respiration rate due to +T à reduces ability as carbon sink

OCEANIC CARBON CYCLE

DISSOLUTION AND BUFFERING

- Ocean transforms CO2 into Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC)

Processes (left to right but reversible):

- Increase in DIC over time à increased CO2 uptake

- By-product: H+ à ocean acidification (pH = -log H+)
- Ocean buffers this with the last eq. (CO32-)

CONTROLS
(of solubility)

1. Atmospheric CO2 conc

- Non-linear correlation between rise of CO2 and production of DIC
- Ocean absorbs more but at a reducing rate
- Solubility: (Henry’s Law)
 2. Oceanic temperature
- Rise in temp à reduced CO2 solubility à reduced amount of DIC ocean can hold

OCEAN BIOLOGICAL CARBON PUMP

= how carbon is exported into the deep ocean

DIC àphotosynthesis à becomes organic carbon (marine creatures, plants, phytoplankton) à sink after
deathàdegrade and remineralise à inorganic carbon released back into water

Remineralisation depth = when e-1 of the material remains (the rest hast been remineralised)

- Determines time interval until carbon will come back in contact with the atmosphere
- Shallower à reduced capacity to draw down carbon and act as a carbon sink.

SUMMARY

6. OTHER CLIMATE FORCERS

- Ozone:
 - Produced in the stratosphere  O2 absorbs UV to makes O3 (not heating as 100%
efficiency(?))  decrease in incident UV as reflects more  -ve feedback

A. WELL-MIXED GREENHOUSE GASES (WMGHG)

A WMGHG:

- can influence the greenhouse effect (radially active)

- mixed throughout troposphere (conc doesn’t vary w location/height)

Most important:

1. CO2

2. CH 4  BIGGER IMPACT PER MOLECULE BUT LOWER CONC

- Shorter lifetime: 12 years vs 200 years
- Conc increase by ~10% in last 2 decades

Sources

- Most important natural: wetlands

 CH4 produced from anaerobic emissions
- Paddy rice fields:
 Same kind of anaerobic emissions (underwater)
- Livestock production
 Fermentation and natural waste
- Biomass burning
 E.g. wildfires
- Fossil fuels  burning natural gas
 Sinks:

- Chemical reactions in atmosphere and soil

- Oxidation of methane:
 Atmosphere: with hydroxyl radical  H20+co2
 Soil: bacteria

10% increase over last 2 decades: changes in agriculture, more natural gas used

3. CFC-11 AND CFC-12

- Chlorofluorocarbons (Chlorine, carbon, fluorine)
- Increased concs from 1930s – 80s à used in refrigeration
- Cl àphotdissociation in stratosphere à reduced stratospheric ozone concs
- Montreal Protocol: ban à declined concs

B. AEROSOLS

= small particulates suspended in atmosphere

- Both natural and anthropogenic origin

- Direct interaction through scattering and absorption
- Mainly absorption: black carbon or soot
- Most: mainly scatter SW radiation
- Mainly cooling effect (as SW rad scattered so can’t be converted into LW – heat)
- Can act as cloud condensation nuclei (CNN)
- = sites onto which water can condense
- Indirect effects:
- Twomey effect: More aerosols present à smaller cloud droplets à more scattering
- Smaller droplets take longer to grow into raindrops
- (both cooling)

Types:

- Primary: emitted directly into atmosphere

- Secondary: result of chemical reactions in atmosphere

COMPARING FORCING AGENTS

Global Warming Potential (GWP)

= metric to compare effectiveness of diff agents to CO2

- ax à radiative efficiency of x
- Cx à concentration after initial pulse released at t=0
- TH à time horizon: length of time over which impact is evaluated
 7. CLIMATE TIMESCALES AND SENSITIVITY

Climate sensitivity = eqm global mean surface temp response (Tseq’) to doubling of CO2

Different forcing scenarions

A2 à continue

Orange à concs stay at 2000AC level

Thermal inertia: even if gg emissions held constant, Earth can continue warming

Adjustment timescale: how long would it take to re-reach radiative eqm after CO2 held constant

Think: what governs the response in this case

Before: fixed CO2 emissions

- Control

After: perturbed case à 2xCO2

- Earth responds to a step change à forcing (constant with time)

Anomalies

Work done

- Minimal: mostly tidal/gravitational forces

- So combine above equations for anomalies

Surface temp anomaly: how long it will take for the difference between cases to become constant

- Ts’(t) àTseq’

Heat-flow

From external climate forcing and internal bb feedback:

As z<<R

where

Put together:

Assume

- only bb feedback
 - biospheric response in ocean and land
- temp constant through atmosphere à no true but useful in scale analysis (rate of change constant in
both)
- atm v efficient at maintaining a uniform perturbed temp Ts’
U’=CVT’ where Cv=C0+CL

'
d U (t )
- à rate of change of internal energy (power) in atmosphere, oceans, land,
dt
cryosphere
- Δ Q ext (power/area) àexternal, anthropogenic radiative forcing at TOA by doubling CO2
'
- −γ BB T s ( t )= Δ Q∫ ¿(t )¿ (power/A) àblackbody feedback, response to forcing
- When LHS =0 à eqm:

Anomaly in U à U’

Bigger heat cap in ocean à always buffering (controls longer timescale response)

- Controls longer timescale response (due to thermal inertia as stores more energy)
- On longer timescales, negligible contribution from land and atm compared to ocean and cryo

- RHS…
1. U’ upper ocean
2. U’ deep ocean
3. Effect of melting a mass of ice mc’(t)
Combine

Ignore the cryospheric term:

8. CLIMATE TIMESCALES – 2 OCEAN LAYER MODEL

- System is trying to regain balance between outgoing and incoming radiation

- 2 layer model:

- Upper and deep ocean are coupled à introduce ‘overturning’ circulation strength (for mass exchange)

à the two layers are coupled by advection currents

- Plug back into 1:

- Mass = V x density
 Divide through by A0

- A à negative feedback (bb)

- Bà negative feedback (circulates heat)
- Define:

CASE 1: WEAK COUPLING (OCEANIC CIRCULATION)

 Remove B term

First order linear DE à solve: integrating factor

- IC: Ts’(t=0)=0

Δ Qext
As tàinf, T’sà (equilibrium temp)
γ BB

CASE 2 : STRONG COUPLING (CIRCULATION)

 Very similar perturbations

Sub back into equation:

Which gives:

 Very long time needed to adjust

MORE IN DEPTH

Simplified model: only bb feedback

 ' Δ Q ext Δ Qext Δ Q ext
T seq= = =
γ BB −Σ x γ x Σ γ γ BB (1−f )
γ BB (1− x x )
γ BB

Net feedback param (f) Ratio of all other feedbacks over black body:

Stability:

- F<0 à Δ Q ext damped àreduced adjustment time and eqm change in Ts (smaller Tseq)
- F=0 àonly bb feedback present
- 0<f<1 à Δ Q ext amplified (positive feedbacks dominate in extra terms, but not enough to
counteract bb feedback) à increased ta and Tseq’
- F=1 à runway greenhouse effect à can’t reach eqm
 Will never emit enough LW energy to counteract the effect of the original forcing
(and +ve feedbacs)
 Venus!
 No damping
 9. OBSERVING OUR CLIMATE

Focus on Temp.

- Very small and highly variable

Need:

Accuracy – how close a measurement is to an agree reference standard

Precision – how repeatable a measurement is
Natural variability – fluctuations not due to anthropogenic forcing
Good coverage of globe - avoid bias
a. Account for inhomogeneous sampling: uncertainties, statistical analysis

Records must be accurate and precise to detect signals above the climate’s natural variability.

TOOLS
As tech improves, objectiveness improves.

1958 – international Geophysical Year àbig increase in techniques

Biggest improvement: operational satellite system (1978 onwards)

NETWORK TEMPERATURE STATIONS

- Record temp

- Some stations pop in and out of existence à account for this?

LAND SURFACE TEMP

URBAN HEAT ISLAND
= Warming of urbanised area relative to (rural) surroundings

UHI (Urban Heat Island Index) = max temp diff between urban city and rural area over time (usually 1
month/year, 6 moths)

- Varies with time of day

- At night: both surface temps and near-surface air have UHIs
- Day: only surf temp

Surface energy balance: between net incoming rad at surface (SW and LW) and transfer of energy (to
atmosphere (sensible or latent heating) or into ground (ground heat transfer))

Factors for UHIs:

- Reduction in αs
 - Replacing vegetation with asphalt/tarmac (lower albedo than vegetation)
- Some of the reflected radiation bounces off buildings and gets redirected to the ground
- Enhanced anthropogenic heat sources (transport, industry)
- Reduced evapotranspiration àreduced surface cooling (from latent heat release)
- Reduced wind speed à reduced urban sensible heat transfer
- Buildings absorb more heat during the day, releasing it at night

Increasing urbanisation (increasing cities) à ground-based temp stations first in rural areas now in cities à
anomalous warning in records (local, not regional impact àcan’t use to explain climate change)

SEA SURFACE TEMPS

(or night marine air temp)

Improvement in sampling frequency à until 1950 samples taken every 4deg, then in 2 deg grid boxes.

- Impact of war à ships did not want to release location

- Thermometers in water next to water (warmed up)
- Buckets à no much depth
- Argon float project àput a bunch of buoys into atmosphere

OBSERVATIONAL (SURFACE LEVEL) DATASET SUMMARY

Issues

- Limited coverage (ships and buoys)

- Changes in methodology over time
- UHI urban sprawl sdding heat anomalies

Consistencies

- Patterns and magnitudes (where in the globe are the hotter regions, where are the colder regions)
- Global mean
- Robust warming of Earth
- Larger over

RADIOSONDE NETWORK (UPPER LEVEL TEMPERATURE RECORD)

- Atmospheric temp and humidity measurements

- Diff regions use diff sensor types à globally homogeneous record of the effect of these differences

Issues:

- Changing material of sensor à diff correction as absorbs diff amount of solar rad
 Absorption and diurnal heating
 Depends on angle of sun
- Sensor time constant àdiff response time (flows up throught the atmosphere)

 Still responding to a certain temp

- Length of string in radiosonde:
  Balloon heats up àshorter string means balloon heat has a bigger impact on the
measuring device
 Especially higher up à less atmosphere to absorb heating

OBSERVED SURFACE TEMP CHANGE

- 1K from the 20th Cen

- Land surface increase more rapidly than sea surface temp àgreater timescales for oceans
- Different methods in different places à bias

10. SATELLITE OBSERVATIONS

- Higher spatial res and coverage than surface and in-situ observations
- More globally complete SST record
- 1970s onwards

GETTING TEMP INFO

Passive sensors don’t send a pulse, active ones do.

- Work through photon exchange à so sensor type and wavelength sampled have a BIG impact

Measurements:

- Satelites measure in a particular direction/ solid angle à radiance (directional à irradiance/solid

angle)
 - Want Temp à LW rad
- Use passive sensor : radiometer or interferometer

- Solid top line à surface temp

- Wiggly line à actual measurements à the lower the wiggly line (bigger difference from surface
temp), higher up into troposphere emission is coming from
- CO2 band à emission from huigher up (troposphere)
- At a centre à peak à gone through the troposphere into the stratosphere (temp no longer decreases
in height like the troposphere, temp increases with height).
- Similarly with ozone

INTERACTION OF LW RAD AND ATMOSPHERE

1. Scattering à assume negligible in clear sky (scattering mainly from molecules) à Rayleigh scattering
1
à scales as 4 à SMOL
λ

Tbt quantum:
2. Absorption à beer lamber law

3. Emission
- Assume local thermodynamic eqm à lots of colissions between molecules à redistribute
energy between them à can use :
Put absorption and emission together :

Remember optical depth :

à 1st order ODE : solve with integrating factor

- Add BCs à from surface to space z=0 to z=zspace (height of space)

- At z=0, τ=0. At z=zspace, τ=τ (as this is the definition of the optical depth)
- As definite integration, remember limits on both sides!

i.e. Schwarzchild’s equation of radiative transfer

(simply combined emission and absorption to calculate how much radiance is seen at the satellite)

2nd term: radiance from surface L(0), multiplied by transmittivity t=e−τ

Change from optical depth to transmittivity:

Transmittivity defined as

So
Plug into eq:

Limits:

Bottom: τ λ =0 → t λ ( z , z ❑space ) =e
− ( τ λ −0 )
-
' '
=e−τ =t λ
Top: τ λ =τ λ → t λ ( z , z ❑space ) =e
' ' − ( τ λ −τ λ )
- =1

WEIGHT FUNCTIONS
- Change the integration limits again à z

Weighting function: derivative of transmittance to space wrt z à where in atmosphere the radiance measured
came from à relates also to the instrument

Close to surface, a lot of the absorber à very low transmissivity à t increases until there’s virtually no
absorber left and the transmissivity asymptotes to 1

Can then calc K:

A perfect instrument only samples 1 wavelength à K as a delta function

Radiance picked out by weight function v close to surface temp (top Planck curve – red dotted line) à most of
the radiance from close to the surface

Narrower filter à better vertical resolution

Real instrument à wider weight function à greater range of transmittances to space

Build a vertical profile à measure diff range of wavelengths

- Gradually recording diff parts of spectrum

+ spectral res (sampling in wav) = +vertical info (narrower weight func)

ISSUES
- calibration
- length of mission (lifetime 3-5 years, new apparatus = differences introduced)
- time gaps in record
- delayed launch
- apparatus failure
- new tech à change of instrument
- drifting in orbit (inconsistency)
- diff approaches to transform/invert the data to retrieve the variable of interest

11. MODELLING CLIMATE

A. MODELS

From simplest:

0D ENERGY BALANCE MODEL (EBM)

Total incoming SW rad = Total outgoing LW rad à ie. Radiative eqm

Lecture 1

1 LAYER EMB
 Introduce an atmosphere: 1 layer grey body

Lecture 2
- Can test impact of varying atmospheric absorptivity
- Greenhouse effect

1D-EBM WITH LATITUDE

- Allows latitude variation
 could add time dependence to make more complete.

- Energy gradient (excess SW at equator, deficit at poles) drives circulation à energy

redistributed so that OLR has less of a gradient from equator to poles

- Start with radiative eqm

- Perturb from eqm
- Linearise OLR (taylor approx.)

- Split the globe into latitude bands i

- Planetary albedo also varies as the bands might contain different amounts of ice, land, etc.
 - Make approximation better à consider heat flow between bands

COUPLED GENERAL CIRCULATION MODELS (CGCMS)

- Coupled non-linear ODEs
 Govern fluid motion: radiative transfer, fluid dynamics etc
 Conserve total momentum, mass and energy of Earth
- Break up model into grid cells à discretisation à approximations
 Forward/backwards step approximations
 Resolution finer sloser to Earth’s centre
- Interaction between components

EARTH SYSTEM MODELS (ESMS)

- Form of CGCMs modelling carbon movement through climate system

- Can represent carbon-climate feedbacks

PARAMETERISATION
= to relate small-scale to large-scale processes

Large scale processes à good job; parameterization à more work needed (though improving with computing
power)

SUB-GRID SCALE EXAMPLES: CLOUDS

Important part of system:

- Radiative forcing/feedback
- Evaporation/condensation
- Precipitation

Formation:

- when water vapour content above saturation

- water vapour mixing ratio = saturation mixing ratio (constant)
- Any surpluse à liquid water content

Without grid With grid

The areas where the total water content are above System takes mean of squiggles in box and
the saturation level à form clouds concludes the grid-box is on average below the
saturation level à no clouds
- Conclusion: taking grid boxes pixelates and over-simplifies

Diagnostic scheme:

- one outcome for a thermodynamic state

 - uses values it has at a given point in time (no previous values taken into account) à increases
probability of having a cloud once a certain level is reached

Prognostic: system with memory à can store different outcomes for the same state

- update the parameters based on advection etc.

ISSUES

- cloud parameterisation schemes

- other parameterisation schemes
- errors in T and mixing ratio (q)
- scale so big à hard to take everything into account

Therefore massive uncertainty!

COMPUTATION
- don’t run everything at same time-steps à different timesteps depending on what is reasonably going
to give you a good prediction for that variable whilst limiting computing time
- ~20mins for dynamics, ~1hr for radiation
- Storage issues: 1-2 million ‘basic’ variables for Ocean and Atmosphere
- Scope for ML…

ADVANCES
- Adaptive grid models à change resolution of model depending on how precise you need
- Digital twin Earth
- Assimilate observations with current models
- How can you translate this to how it would benefit certain sectore

B. MODEL EVALUATION

How comparisng models works:

- Past, current, future climate experiments

- Multiple runs à identify variability
- Results submitted to central data portal à people can then analyse them
  Control run à natural variability
- Based on observational evidence
o Can’t evaluate models of the future!
o Better to use recent evidence
- Uncertainties
- Compare models:
- Take identical inputs
- à prescribed anthropogenic (GHG and aerosol concs) and natural climate drivers (TSI
historical, monthly averaged TSI time series; volcanic erruptions à release aerosols à
volcanic eruption record of past years)

Mean model performance over last 2 decades

Late 1980s à early 200s

1. Surface temp
- Similarities between model and observations:
 High pattern correlation between model and observations
- Issues:
 Cold bias in Arctic, especially in winter (so more due to LW as limited SW in winter)
 Too high T at high elevations
 Possibly due to inadequacies in observational record? à harder to make
surface temp measurements at high altitudes
 Low, marine clouds
 Either missing a cloud or modelled as too thin
2. Clouds and radiation
- CRE (cloud radiative effect) = radiative impact of a cloud relative to clear-sky conditions.

- If +ve à cloud heating

- SW CRE dominates net CRE (SW+LW) à-ve àoverall cooling effect of clouds.
- LW à heating (clouds trapping heat)
- Similarities:
 Zonal pattern
- Differences:
 Especially in SW
3. Precipitation
- The most iffy!
- Similarities:
 Large scale observed features present
- Differences:
 Inconsistent magnitude of features
 Systematic biases
 Due to parameterisation à hard to capture important processes, and don’t really
understand some of the physical relations à use empirical ones instead.
 Hard to take homogeneous measurements of precipitation à larger uncertainty
 On the right à difference between model (left) and observations

OVERALL

Improving over time: from CMIP3 to 6

ATTRIBUTING WARMING

- Use models to see the relative impact of each forcer on warming (keep others constant)
- Models only accurate if anthropogenic forcing considered (we’re responsible, lads)
- Also at regional scales
- Land has warmed faster than ocean
- Natural variability higher at small scales
- IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) AR5 investigated:
- Ocean heat content (OHC) = energy integrated through depth of ocean
 Better metric as ocean (stores energy) is less affected by short-term variability than
surface temp
- Global warming hiatus? Excess heat (from land deficit) stored in ocean
 12. CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY AND IMPLICATIONS

UN PARIS AGREEMENT 2015 (COP21)

Goals:

- Limit global mean surface temp rise to <2K by end of 2100

- Net-zero anthropogenic GHG emissions by the latter half of 21st Century
- Global stockage à assess if countries are meeting emissions: monitor how countries are progressing
with their intended nationally determined contribution (INDC)
- First put in place in 2023

Complement the UN’s 17 SDGs.

- 13 à limit and adapt to temp rises

- 14à increasing CO2 = acidification = coral bleaching = reduced ocean biodiversity
- 15 à GHG à reduced biodiversity in land

MEETING TARGETS

Linking climate impact to socio-economic choices:

Current GHG emissions:

- 75% energy use

- 18% agriculture, forestry and land use
 makes sense to target energy sources/use

Kaya Identity
RHS :

- PàPopulation
- GDP/P àGross domestic product (effective income) per capita à personal wealth
- EI à Energy intensity = energy/price (kWh per $)
- CI à carbon intensity = CO2 emitted/energy (kg of CO2 per kWh)

Strategy: control the last 2 factors

Over last 60 years:

- % increases in F due to increases in GDP/P and P

- More wealth, more consumption & emissions
- Slow reduction in EI
- Improve insulation etc.
- Slower reduction in CI
 - Gas instead of coal (but knock-on effect of production of methane)

Country-dependent:

- Moving from manufacturing society to service-driven economy

ASSESSING CLIMATE IMPACT: TRANSLATING INTO POLICY

What roads can we take forwards?

AR5
Assessment Report 5 à Representative Concentration Pathways:

- Worst scenario: radiative forcing of 8.5 Wm-2 achieved in 2100

- Relative to pre-industrial period
Criticisms:

- Too much emphasis on most pessimistic outcomes (not quite true – Hausfather and Peters 2020)

AR6
IPCC Assessment Report 6 à Shared Socio-economic Pathways à 5 scenarios

1. SSP1: Green Road à sustainable future, transition to green energy

2. SSP2: Middle of the Road à ‘business as usual’ + small transition
3. SSP3: Rocky Road à regional rivalry prioritise over global cooperation (nationalism)
4. SSP4: Divided Road à increasing inequality, conflict
5. SSP5: Highway àfast tech progress and growth through fossil fuel exploitation. Geo-engineering.

- Don’t include mitigation efforts

- Aerosol emissions decline in all scenarios
- None will reach Paris target without mitigation strategies
- Carbon capture and storage
- geoengineering
- If you’re more sustainable à less climate change à less need for mitigation and adaptation
Energy demand:

Land-use:
GHG:

ASSESSING IMPACT SUMMARY

 13. WIND ENERGY

- Renewables needed to meet Paris targets

- Currently 25% of energy à needs to be ~70% by 2040
- Fastest growth out of renewables: wind and solar

- Sustainable Development – what is needed to meet Paris targets

- Where we need to go

WORKINGS OF A WIND TURBINE

Assumptions for maxima:

- Ideal turbine à 0 friction

- Axial, uniform airflow
- Air as an incompressible fluid
 Equate 4 and 5 and take the difference of 2 squares:

Power (W) extracted from undisturbed wind flow (i.e. if turbine wasn’t there):
à performance coefficient:

(7)

Interference factor (ratio of 2 speeds):

Betz limit: Cpmax = 16/27

Max extractable power (turbine with rotor blade diameter D): à sub in V2=1/3V1 for a circular rotor

à V=instantaneous wind speed; V1= upstream wind speed

Reality check: friction, blade roughness, mechanical imperfections

TIP SPEED RATIO (TSR):

 ωr
rotor tip speed/undisturbed windspeed =TSR=
V1

Optimal  when tw=tb

- Tw Time for wind to re-establish itself after being disturbed

- Tb  time between blades passing through a point (time for one blade to replace another)

- Equate:

- plug into TSR equation above:

- Empirically: s≈r/2

à n=blade number

CUT-IN, CUT-OUT SPEED

WIND VARIABILITY

Preferable locations:

- Where wind speed in highest:

- Offshore
- Southern ocean  but v high so could get damaged and how would you transfer the energy?
- Scotland

Instead of mean…

Rayleigh distribution à to approximate observed windspeed dist at a certain location

- How often do you get high, damaging winds

- How often do you miss the cutting point

More accurate  Weibull but Rayleigh is a reasonable approx.

EXTRACTABLE POWER & DISTRIBUTION

Shown before: instantaneous wind speeds

But for a mean  consider distribution

MAX AVERAGE EXTRACTABLE POWER AVERAGE:

Remember Betz limit:

2
16 ρ 3 16 ρ 3 D
P(V )= V S= V π
 therefore: 27 2 27 2 4

Warning!!

3 6 3
Different!! V = V
π

Plug in:

HEIGHT
- Higher V with height (increases with elevation in the troposphere)
- à taller turbines with larger blades in time
- Assume increase in logarithmic
- Roughness length z0 à highest height above surface t at which V can be taken as 0
- higher for rougher surfaces (i.e. that have taller obstacles)
 cities, pine forests
- Low for deserts (sand) and oceans
- Less obstacles on ocean à higher mean windspeeds

ISSUES

- Wake effects for large scale deployment  impact of turbines on eachother

- Turbine sep must be >> wake effect
 ~5-10 x rotor diameter
 - limit to density of wind farm
- Intermittency  so need means to store the power
- Power storage/distribution
- Carbon cost of contruction/disposal
- If offshore  boats to get there
- Replacement:
 85% recyclable
 Blades not recyclable: fibreglass
 20 year lifetime but decreasing with new designs
- Typical efficiency ~40-45%

14. SOLAR ENERGY

SCATTERING AND ABSORPTION OF SOLAR RAD (SW)

In early lectures, we assumed no absorption or scattering of solar radiation (just some reflection at the TOA)

i.e. ISW, TOA = ISW, surface where

Now, account for absorption and scattering: around 30%

For SW:

Scattering  Rayleigh
Absorption  O2 and O3 for shorter SW, H2O longer SW

MASS EXTINCTION COEFFICIENT

- Includes absorption and scattering

- New optical depth:

 Direct solar radiation reaching surface (i.e. just travels through atmosphere, not diffused by clouds)

Notice  the path length z affects the optical depth  so a beam that travels further through the
atmosphere (i.e. at an angle) will be scattered and absorbed more.
 We need to consider what happens when the ray reaches Earth at an angle…

AIR MASS (AM)

= ratio of actual path length to that at the zenith (when the sun is directly above)

Trig:

Where τλ is calculated at the zenith.

If

- AM=0  at TOA
- AM=1  sun overhead

SOLAR CELLS

Silicon solar panels Multi-junction solar cells

Radiation used Direct and diffuse Only direct
(use concentrating optics  must track Sun)
JENNY NELSON LECTURE

- Solar resource >> demaind

- For net 0,
- By 2050:


15. GEOENGINEERING

- Large-scale intervention to mitigate clim change

CDR (CARBON DIOXIDE REMOVAL)

- Afforestation  sequest CO2 w photosynth
- Bio-char  charcoal has longer lifetime
- Bio-eng with CCS  burning biomass fuels from sustainable forests (CO2 recaptured  then
capturing more C negative
- Co2 direct air capture
 And pump down underground (rocks) or inject into deep ocean
- Enhanced weathering trapping CO2 into rocks (happens naturally but you speed it up)
 E.g. spread silicon rocks in agriculture fields
- Ocean fertilisation  enhance ocean sink by adding chemicals e.g. ion  stimulate biological
pump (create more algae)
 Controversial: perturbing system away from natural state  side effects, e.g. on
biodiversity?
 Or add alkalis

Consider: how big are the sinks? What are the side-effects? Do we understand the system well
enough?

Some of these can be achieved naturally: Nature Based Solutions (forest restorations and
mangroves)

SRD (SOLAR RAD MANAGEMENT)

- Adjust incident radiation
- Increase planetary albedo
- Low cloud albedo enhancement
 Spray sea-salt from ship (make clouds more reflective)
- High cloud thinning
- Space reflectors
- Stratospheric aerosols
 Continuous aerosol pump
 Spray from balloon
- Surface albedo enhancement
 Change land use: vegetation (shinier crops)
 Painting cities  make buildings more reflective
 Microbubbles  make ocean surface more reflective
CONSIDERATIONS (EATS)
- Effectiveness: big enough impact on carbon emissions/radiative forcing
- Affordability
- Timeliness: will it happen in the needed timescale? Is the tech ready?
- Safety: negative side-effects?

Other considerations:

- Legal implications,
- Governance does it require big agreements
- public perception
- Reversibility

CDR: BIOENG WITH CARB CAPT STORAGE

Bio-energy= renewable en from recently living organisms (biomass)

CCS = filtering out CO2 produced from industrial processes, and storing it.

UK example: DRAX  powered by flue gas containing CO2, dissolved by solvent (recirculated back)

Issues:

- Cost
- Leakage
- Mitigation time-scales: Carbon payback time  how long des it take forest to regrow?
- Opportunity cost from not growing the forest  fertiliser from growing the forest quickly, missing out
on forest sequestration, landuse (biodiversity, food security)
- Transport from moving biomass pellets to factory
- Acidification of rocks it’s pumped into

SRM: MARINE CLOUD BRIGHTENING

- More aerosol  smaller droplets  more scattering

- Can see brightening over ship tracks (only for clean, non-polluted backgrounds)

- Ships spraying:

PROS:

- Easy to inject low-level clouds

- Easy to terminated exp, reverse
- Another on slide
- Sea-salt  quite natural, birds unharmed, also abundant
- Low clouds  visibility only affected for low-flying planes
CONS:
- Fuelling the ships: cost, CO2
- Carry-time of aerosols (short so need to keep pumping)
- Affect dynamics of the atmosphere: local cause  unforeseen remote effect (possible climate
feedbacks)
- How much reduction? Is it worth it?
100. EXAM ADVICE

- NO ESSAY

- beginning of course  increasing ghg’s effect

- feedback effect of all gases