New Research

[knocker]

I've mentioned this before but water is a very strange and complicated substance.

Supercool

Utah chemists: Water doesn't have to freeze until minus 55 Fahrenheit

SALT LAKE CITY -- We drink water, bathe in it and we are made mostly of water, yet the common substance poses major mysteries. Now, University of Utah chemists may have solved one enigma by showing how cold water can get before it absolutely must freeze: 55 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

That's 87 degrees Fahrenheit colder than what most people consider the freezing point of water, namely, 32 F.

Supercooled liquid water must become ice at minus 55 F not just because of the extreme cold, but because the molecular structure of water changes physically to form tetrahedron shapes, with each water molecule loosely bonded to four others, according to the new study by chemists Valeria Molinero and Emily Moore.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/uou-s111811.php

[Alan Robinson]

I've mentioned this before but water is a very strange and complicated substance.

Supercool

Utah chemists: Water doesn't have to freeze until minus 55 Fahrenheit

SALT LAKE CITY -- We drink water, bathe in it and we are made mostly of water, yet the common substance poses major mysteries. Now, University of Utah chemists may have solved one enigma by showing how cold water can get before it absolutely must freeze: 55 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

That's 87 degrees Fahrenheit colder than what most people consider the freezing point of water, namely, 32 F.

Supercooled liquid water must become ice at minus 55 F not just because of the extreme cold, but because the molecular structure of water changes physically to form tetrahedron shapes, with each water molecule loosely bonded to four others, according to the new study by chemists Valeria Molinero and Emily Moore.

http://www.eurekaler...uou-s111811.php

It is good to see science making more mundane progress than all this metaphysical cosmology and speed of light ideas WS.

Supercooled water properties do not surprise me. Steel, which pretty much all iron, has some funny properties of which people are generally unaware. One is that when heated to above approximately 600 degrees C it is no longer magnetic. The transition is rather sudden. There is also a sudden transition of steel's properties at temperatures just below 0 degrees C, though this can be modified by alloying and heat treatment; but the material suddenly becomes brittle rather than ductile. Steel cooled to -25 degrees C breaks like glass when struck with a hammer. It was this property that had catastrophic consequences for s/s Titanic. The iceberg impact must have caused much cracking of the ship's hull rather than just bending the plates.

[knocker]

It is good to see science making more mundane progress than all this metaphysical cosmology and speed of light ideas WS.

Supercooled water properties do not surprise me. Steel, which pretty much all iron, has some funny properties of which people are generally unaware. One is that when heated to above approximately 600 degrees C it is no longer magnetic. The transition is rather sudden. There is also a sudden transition of steel's properties at temperatures just below 0 degrees C, though this can be modified by alloying and heat treatment; but the material suddenly becomes brittle rather than ductile. Steel cooled to -25 degrees C breaks like glass when struck with a hammer. It was this property that had catastrophic consequences for s/s Titanic. The iceberg impact must have caused much cracking of the ship's hull rather than just bending the plates.

Excuse my ignorance on this with what is no doubt a stupid question but how do they get around this problem with icebreakers? In the attached the small ship on the left is Russian with an icebreaker bow.

Edited November 24, 2011 by weather ship

[Alan Robinson]

Excuse my ignorance on this with what is no doubt a stupid question but how do they get around this problem with icebreakers? In the attached the small ship on the left is Russian with an icebreaker bow.

You might want to google Izod testing or Charpy Vee testing for a full description of notch toughness.

Essentially the cold exterior structure of icebreakers is made of steel that has been specially produced.

The molecular structure of steel is crystaline, and the smaller the crystals, the more the macro material resists the propagation of cracks. The size of the crystals depends on how long the material is held above a critical temperature, which in steel's case is above 550 degrees C. If the material is held at these high temperatures for any duration, the crystals begin to grow and merge, resulting in a weaker material.

The point is that in order to roll steel into the shapes we need, it has to be above this critical temperature; and for normal applications that is fine, and the material is quite suitable. However, for cold temperature applications, these rolled steel products must be re-heated after forming to above the critical temperature and allowed to cool in still air. This is called normalizing, and it produces a fine-grained structure that only becomes brittle at significantly lower temperatures than ordinary structural steel. Naturally, normalized steel is somewhat more expensive than standard structural steels.

You might recall some years ago that there was a serious oil leak from the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. I had my suspicions that perhaps to save cash, the pipeline was in sections made of standard structural steel, and it is not in the realms of fantasy that some maintenance fitter had given the huge pipe a smack with a hammer, causing a crack, and consequently a big bit to fall out allowing oil to gush away. This is only a supposition you understand.

Regarding the Titanic, the builders were not culpable, just ignorant, because these characteristics of steel were poorly understood at the time. Nonetheless, it wasn't a good advert for British shipbuilding that Titanic was built of doubtful materials, and for that reason the circumstance is never discussed.

I might add that cracking was also a very serious problem during WW2 with American built ships, which were fully welded, as opposed to our old fashioned rivet structure. Cracks propagated right through the welded structure, while with rivets, the crack does not pass over a plate edge of course.

Even recently, cracking was the cause of a sinking in the English Channel; everyone remembers the MSC Napoli, which in my view was very shoddily designed and built.

Here is a cracked US Liberty ship....

Edited November 24, 2011 by Alan Robinson

[knocker]

Thanks for that Alan. Very interesting. I'm not sure why but this discussion reminds me of the controversy that raged after the MV Derbyshire was lost during Typhoon Orchid. Not originally of course as there was a lengthy delay before any enquiry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Derbyshire

[Alan Robinson]

The Derbyshire affair was very difficult to properly investigate, though I thought the explanation of 9 ventilator closures being missing a most misleading circumstance to focus upon, and highly improbable. Whatever, the certifying bodies found it proper to increase certain aspects of foreship structural strength in vessels of that kind.

As I recall it however, the families of the lost seamen became incensed when it was discovered that other vessels of the same kind from the same builder had structural defects just forward of the engine room. These were not design defects, but due to shoddy workmanship. In particular it was said that girders under the weather deck had been cut too short to make a sound joint, and that spacing pads had been inserted to allow welding without an excessive gap. It was claimed this mistake had been repeated on other vessels. Something tells me cracks had appeared due to hull shear forces, and that several vessels were sent for repair. This was most unfortunate for not only the builder (who no longer exists), but also the Classification Society whose task it was to verify the vessel was built as designed using good shipbuilding practices.

[VillagePlank]

Assessing impacts of future anthropogenic carbon emissions is currently impeded by uncertainties in our knowledge of equilibrium climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide doubling. Previous studies suggest 3 K as best estimate, 2 to 4.5 K as the 66% probability range, and nonzero probabilities for much higher values, the latter implying a small but significant chance of high-impact climate changes that would be difficult to avoid. Here, combining extensive sea and land surface temperature reconstructions from the Last Glacial Maximum with climate model simulations, we estimate a lower median (2.3 K) and reduced uncertainty (1.7 to 2.6 K 66% probability). Assuming paleoclimatic constraints apply to the future as predicted by our model, these results imply lower probability of imminent extreme climatic change than previously thought.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/11/22/science.1203513

[knocker]

New insight into climate change in the Pacific

New research providing critical information about how climate change is affecting Australia’s Pacific island neighbours and East Timor has been released today by the Australian Government’s Pacific Climate Change Science Program (PCCSP).

The landmark, peer-reviewed publication, Climate Change in the Pacific: Scientific Assessment and New Research, presents the most comprehensive scientific analysis to date of climate change in the Pacific region.

Co-editor of the report, the Bureau of Meteorology’s Dr Scott Power, said the findings would be presented at an event during the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference being held from next week in Durban, South Africa.

“The research provides clear evidence of how the climate has changed across this region. For example, the past decade has been the warmest on record and ocean acidity levels are continuing to increase in response to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations,†Dr Power said.

http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/New-insight-into-climate-change-in-the-Pacific.aspx

[knocker]

Paleoclimate Record Points Toward Potential Rapid Climate Changes

New research into the Earth's paleoclimate history by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James E. Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.

By looking at how the Earth's climate responded to past natural changes, Hansen sought insight into a fundamental question raised by ongoing human-caused climate change: "What is the dangerous level of global warming?" Some international leaders have suggested a goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times in order to avert catastrophic change. But Hansen said at a press briefing at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Tues, Dec. 6, that warming of 2 degrees Celsius would lead to drastic changes, such as significant ice sheet loss in Greenland and Antarctica.

Based on Hansen's temperature analysis work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the Earth's average global surface temperature has already risen .8 degrees Celsius since 1880, and is now warming at a rate of more than .1 degree Celsius every decade. This warming is largely driven by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide, emitted by the burning of fossil fuels at power plants, in cars and in industry. At the current rate of fossil fuel burning, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have doubled from pre-industrial times by the middle of this century. A doubling of carbon dioxide would cause an eventual warming of several degrees, Hansen said.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/rapid-change-feature.html

[Gray-Wolf]

I do not see that paper being met with universal support/agreement yet it may well show the truth for the future. if watching the Arctic ice decline has shown me anything it is things happen in fits and starts and these appear to be way ahead of what our 'conservative' predictions lie. Be prepared for 'futureshocks' I'd say!

[knocker]

I quite agree with you GW but which is why I sometimes resort to Clive Hamiton's book Requium for a Species: why we resist the truth about climate change.

[full_frontal_occlusion]

Thanks for that, Mike. If that report verifies, then it seems to me to be very important - and the conclusion is that human influence is simply noise! I guess we have to wait and see for rebuttals. Technically, I'm a little unsure why they used Fourier analysis, when wavelets tend to do better in incomplete series such as HadCrut.

Just picked up on this thread.

Fourier vs Wavelet?

Perhaps the wavelet analysis produced results which were inconsistent with the conclusions the authors wished to present?

i.e. wavelet analysis is likely to produce results potentially obscured by the Fourier analysis which woue make the task of explaining the results much harder.

After all, Fourier is based on sine/cosine functions which correspond nicely with orbital periods. Wavelets have an infinite number of basis functions which could render the results difficult to justify without further analysis and justification through statistical significance. All in making the case for 'selective' data manipulation much easier to uphold.

Cynicism in it's truest form.

ffO.

Edited December 11, 2011 by full_frontal_occlusion

[VillagePlank]

Well, yes, ffO, quite.

Fourier analysis assumes that the series is complete and finite; wavelets don't - so using Fourier analysis for anything apart from a cursory study seems to be in error. I am no expert in these things, but, in my view, the paper should be discarded - and how did it get past peer review?

(it hadn't occured to me that a cynical use of FFT would be to increase the likelyhood of correlation to orbital patterns - but now you've said it, it stands out like a sore thumb!)

Edited December 16, 2011 by Boar Wrinklestorm

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011JD016598.shtml

So so the moon has an impact on our weather?

[loafer]

http://www.agu.org/p...1JD016598.shtml

So so the moon has an impact on our weather?

In other news, the Pope has been outed as a Catholic and Luxembourg has been determined to be a small country by the European Court of Human Rights.

Next thing they'll work out that the big ball of flame and fluffy clouds have something to do with it...

[knocker]

Data-driven tools cast geographical patterns of rainfall extremes in new light

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Dec. 19, 2011 — Using statistical analysis methods to examine rainfall extremes in India, a team of researchers has made a discovery that resolves an ongoing debate in published findings and offers new insights.

The study, initiated by Auroop Ganguly and colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, reports no evidence for uniformly increasing trends in rainfall extremes averaged over the entire Indian region. It does, however, find a steady and significant increase in the spatial variability of rainfall extremes over the region.

http://www.ornl.gov/info/press_releases/get_press_release.cfm?ReleaseNumber=mr20111219-00

[songster]

In other news, the Pope has been outed as a Catholic

Amusingly enough, there is only a 33% chance that the pope is Catholic. Moreover, the Vatican City contains two Popes per square kilometer.

[Methuselah]

http://www.agu.org/p...1JD016598.shtml

So so the moon has an impact on our weather?

Well, that impact must be vanishingly small for it have evaded detection so successfully up to now?

[loafer]

[star Wars Voice] I find your faith in the models disturbing... [/star Wars Voice]

[knocker]

Researchers discover a way to significantly reduce the production costs of fuel cells

This ALD method for manufacturing fuel cells requires 60 per cent less of the costly catalyst than current methods.

-This is a significant discovery, because researchers have not been able to achieve savings of this magnitude before with materials that are commercially available, says Docent Tanja Kallio of Aalto University.

Fuel cells could replace polluting combustion engines that are presently in use. However, in a fuel cell, chemical processes must be sped up by using a catalyst. The high price of catalysts is one of the biggest hurdles to the wide adoption of fuel cells at the moment.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/au-rda122011.php

[knocker]

NOAA Research Covered the Globe in 2011

NOAA scientists plumbed the deep ocean, probed the heights of the stratosphere, and surveyed some of the fiercest storm systems on Earth in meeting 2011’s scientific challenges. Their discoveries are paying off in longer storm warning lead times, better understanding of our climate, and new knowledge about environmental disasters.

http://researchmatte...topstories.aspx

Edited December 22, 2011 by weather ship

[knocker]

Another example of the delicate chemistry of the oceans being influenced by man made human activity.

Sea cucumbers: Dissolving coral reefs?

Washington, D.C. — Coral reefs are extremely diverse ecosystems that support enormous biodiversity. But they are at risk. Carbon dioxide emissions are acidifying the ocean, threatening reefs and other marine organisms. New research led by Carnegie's Kenneth Schneider analyzed the role of sea cucumbers in portions of the Great Barrier Reef and determined that their dietary process of dissolving calcium carbonate (CaCO3) from the surrounding reef accounts for about half of at the total nighttime dissolution for the reef. The work is published December 23 by the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Reefs are formed through the biological deposition of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Many of the marine organisms living on and around a reef contribute to either its destruction or construction. Therefore it is crucial that the amount of calcium carbonate remain in balance. When this delicate balance is disrupted, the reef ceases to grow and its foundations can be weakened.

In order to fully understand a reef's ability to deposit carbonate and grow, it is necessary to understand the roles that the various elements of sea life play in this process. This is especially important because increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is predicted to decrease the amount of carbonate available due to acidification.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/ci-scd122211.php

[knocker]

Over 65 million years North American mammal evolution has tracked with climate change

Rise and fall of groups of fauna driven by temperature

To the extent that the study helps clarify scientists' understanding of evolution amid climate changes, it does not do so to the extent that they can make specific predictions about the future, Janis said. But it seems all the clearer that climate change has repeatedly had meaningful effect over millions of years.

"Such perturbations, related to anthropogenic climatic change, are currently challenging the fauna of the world today, emphasizing the importance of the fossil record for our understanding of how past events affected the history of faunal diversification and extinction, and hence how future climactic changes may continue to influence life on earth," the authors wrote in the paper.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/bu-o6m122211.php

[knocker]

Climate change blamed for dead trees in Africa

Berkeley — Trees are dying in the Sahel, a region in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, and human-caused climate change is to blame, according to a new study led by a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Rainfall in the Sahel has dropped 20-30 percent in the 20th century, the world's most severe long-term drought since measurements from rainfall gauges began in the mid-1800s," said study lead author Patrick Gonzalez, who conducted the study while he was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for Forestry. "Previous research already established climate change as the primary cause of the drought, which has overwhelmed the resilience of the trees."

The study, which is scheduled for publication Friday, Dec. 16, in the Journal of Arid Environments, was based upon climate change records, aerial photos dating back to 1954, recent satellite images and old-fashioned footwork that included counting and measuring over 1,500 trees in the field. The researchers focused on six countries in the Sahel, from Senegal in West Africa to Chad in Central Africa, at sites where the average temperature warmed up by 0.8 degrees Celsius and rainfall fell as much as 48 percent.

They found that one in six trees died between 1954 and 2002. In addition, one in five tree species disappeared locally, and indigenous fruit and timber trees that require more moisture took the biggest hit. Hotter, drier conditions dominated population and soil factors in explaining tree mortality, the authors found. Their results indicate that climate change is shifting vegetation zones south toward moister areas.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/uoc--ccb121211.php

[Guest]

Climate change blamed for dead trees in Africa

Berkeley — Trees are dying in the Sahel, a region in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, and human-caused climate change is to blame, according to a new study led by a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Rainfall in the Sahel has dropped 20-30 percent in the 20th century, the world's most severe long-term drought since measurements from rainfall gauges began in the mid-1800s," said study lead author Patrick Gonzalez, who conducted the study while he was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for Forestry. "Previous research already established climate change as the primary cause of the drought, which has overwhelmed the resilience of the trees."

The study, which is scheduled for publication Friday, Dec. 16, in the Journal of Arid Environments, was based upon climate change records, aerial photos dating back to 1954, recent satellite images and old-fashioned footwork that included counting and measuring over 1,500 trees in the field. The researchers focused on six countries in the Sahel, from Senegal in West Africa to Chad in Central Africa, at sites where the average temperature warmed up by 0.8 degrees Celsius and rainfall fell as much as 48 percent.

They found that one in six trees died between 1954 and 2002. In addition, one in five tree species disappeared locally, and indigenous fruit and timber trees that require more moisture took the biggest hit. Hotter, drier conditions dominated population and soil factors in explaining tree mortality, the authors found. Their results indicate that climate change is shifting vegetation zones south toward moister areas.

http://www.eurekaler...--ccb121211.php

But hasn't the drying out of North Africa been going on for the past 3 to 4000 years and probably more than that - I believe I heard that at the time of the ancient Egyptians that there were fairly extensive grasslands in their area of the Sahara and wasn't the Med coast fairly extensively forested, prior to the Romans going there and cultivating wheat.