Does subduction of plates make them stretch and form the oceans? Ocean plates subduct beneath continental plates. Does this make the oceanic plates stretch and become thinner so that the elevation of the sea flow is lower? Is this why oceans form where they do - when water collects in these low areas?

Ocean plates subduct beneath continental plates. Does this make the oceanic plates stretch and become thinner so that the elevation of the sea flow is lower?

When a continental plate collides with an oceanic plate, or when two oceanic platers collide, the result is subduction of an oceanic plate. This subduction makes oceanic crust recycle rather than build up over time. When two continental plates collide, the result is the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau. Continental crust isn't recycled to anywhere near the extent that oceanic crust is. Excluding the rather rare ophiolites, the oldest continental crust is about 20 times older than is the oldest oceanic crust.

This quick recycling of oceanic crust versus the slow build up of continental crust is the primary reason that oceanic crust currently is considerably thinner than is continental crust. The very first continents would have had have had fairly thin crusts. Continental crust has become thicker and thicker through the ages, while oceanic crust has not and cannot thanks to subduction.

No.

The oceanic crust is basically the same material as the upper mantle, but its cooled under lower pressure into a solid. Continental crust is much less dense felsic material that tends to stay on top of oceanic crust. There isn't enough continental crust to cover the planet so the rest gets filled in with cooled mantle products (oceanic crust). As the plate moves, it creates a divergent boundary (e.g. the mid-Atlantic ridge) through which mantle material is forced out and cools into basalt. The oceanic crust is not stretched thin.  Instead it is originally thin when it forms at the divergent boundary because it is only cooled crust of a more ductile semi-molten solid.

Oceanic crust is made of three layers: a layer of sediment on top and two layers of mantle sourced rock.  The layers of mantle sourced rock differ structurally because they cooled at different rates.  So, there is fast cooled basalt on top of ultramafic slow cooled material. This bottom most layer also gets thicker as the plate gets older since more material cools, causing that portion of the plate to sink further down.

As for why there is the extreme difference in height, think of oceanic crust as the crust on cooled soup while continental crust is more like styrofoam sitting on top.  The styrofoam sticks up higher because it is much lighter and thicker, and rock under high pressure and heat behaves enough like a liquid for buoyancy to matter.  Oceans form over the lower oceanic crust because water runs downhill.


Volcanoes and Lightning Just wondering about this question has been popped into my head many times and as what I have seen in some volcanic activities that when a volcano erupts there's a lightning, & i don't know if there's really a storm but I do think volcanoes do attracted to lightning or it produces it's own?

Do volcanoes attracts to lightning?

Volcanic lightning was documented by one of the earliest American volcanologists, Frank A. Perret in the 1940s. However, there was not much, if any, study of the phenomena until recently. According to this article, the electric charge develops close to the ground where the plume gas thrust region at a few hundred meters above the crater rim, where the overpressure of the turbulent volcanic jets determines the electrification of particles generating a complex charge structure in the growing plume."

The abstract of another journal article indicates that additional lightning can be generated in the stratosphere, "Observations and volcanic plume modeling further suggest that electrical activity was enhanced both by ice formation in the ash clouds >10 km above sea level and development of a low-level charge layer from ground-hugging currents."

Erupting volcanoes release ash. When ash particles collide, it can build a static charge. When that charge is released, there is lightning.


Which crops are especially sensitive to atmospheric ozone? In this National Park Service article, the effects of ozone on trees is discussed:

Ozone enters plants through leaf openings called stomata and oxidizes plant tissue, causing changes in biochemical and physiological processes. Both visible foliar injury (e.g., stipple and chlorosis) and growth effects (e.g., premature leaf loss, reduced photosynthesis, and reduced leaf, root, and total dry weights) can occur in sensitive plant species. Many other factors can magnify the extent of ozone injury such as soil moisture, presence of other air pollutants, insects or diseases, and other environmental stresses.

I assume that ozone can adversely affect many types of plants, including agricultural crops.  Which crops are especially sensitive to atmospheric ozone?

I could find a relatively recent review by Mills et al. (2007) that lists sensitivity to ozone for several crops. Among the most sensitive were (table 1)

Watermelons (albeit with very few data points used)
Pulses
Cotton
Wheat

While the most resistant crops were

Barley
Fruits (Plums and Strawberries)
Broccoli

The measure for ozone used in this review is AOT40, which accounts for accumulated ozone levels over 40ppbV within the time from 8AM to 8PM.

All crops will not produce correctly if the soil is too lose and wet, fungus and rot will take place on the fruit and the root without a 8 hour dry cycle time. The only crops that will survive in the environment you are concerned about are root vegetables

Taproot (some types may incorporate substantial hypocotyl tissue)

Arracacia xanthorrhiza (arracacha)
Abelmoschus moschatus (bush carrot)
Beta vulgaris (beet and mangelwurzel)
Brassica spp. (rutabaga and turnip)
Bunium persicum (black cumin)
Burdock (Arctium, family Asteraceae)
Carrot (Daucus carota subsp. sativus)
Celeriac - (Apium graveolens rapaceum)
Daikon - the large East Asian white radish (Raphanus sativus var. longipinnatus)
Dandelion - (Taraxacum) spp.
Lepidium meyenii (maca)
Microseris scapigera (yam daisy)
Pachyrhizus spp. (jicama and ahipa)
Parsnip (Pastinaca sativa)
Petroselinum spp. (parsley root)
Radish - (Raphanus sativus)
Scorzonera hispanica (black salsify)
Sium sisarum (skirret)
Tragopogon spp. (salsify)
Vigna lanceolata (bush potato)
Tuberous root
Amorphophallus galbra (Yellow lily yam)
Conopodium majus (pignut or earthnut)
Dioscorea polystachya (nagaimo, Chinese yam, Korean yam, mountain yam)
Hornstedtia scottiana (Native ginger)
Ipomoea batatas (sweet potato)
Ipomoea costata (desert yam)
Manihot esculenta (cassava or yuca or manioc)
Mirabilis extensa (mauka or chago)
Psoralea esculenta (breadroot, tipsin, or prairie turnip)
Smallanthus sonchifolius (yacón)

Rhizome

Curcuma longa (turmeric)
Panax ginseng (ginseng)
Arthropodium spp. (rengarenga, vanilla lily, and others)
Canna spp. (canna)
Cordyline fruticosa (ti)
Maranta arundinacea (arrowroot)
Nelumbo nucifera (lotus root)
Typha spp. (cattail or bulrush)
Zingiber officinale (ginger, galangal)

Tuber

Apios americana (hog potato or groundnut)
Cyperus esculentus (tigernut or chufa)
Dioscorea spp. (yams, ube)
Helianthus tuberosus (Jerusalem artichoke or sunchoke)
Hemerocallis spp. (daylily)
Lathyrus tuberosus (earthnut pea)
Oxalis tuberosa (oca or New Zealand yam)
Plectranthus edulis and P. esculentus (kembili, dazo, and others)
Solanum tuberosum (potato)
Stachys affinis (Chinese artichoke or crosne)
Tropaeolum tuberosum (mashua or añu)
Ullucus tuberosus (ulluco)


Can aerostats be used for fine-grained control of the weather Most of the discussed geoengineering ideas aim to change the average temperature of the earth instead of trying to control local weather.

Aerostats can be used to change the local temperature in several ways:

if covered with reflective material they can create shadow;
if covered with dark material they can significantly increase the temperature above the cloud potentially dispersing the cloud;
if combined into a structure similar to a solar updraft tower, they can transport dust and humidity to the height where they would not be transported by natural winds and by that either condensate the water or create new clouds.

With a large enough number of devices like this it should be possible to guide humid air to deserts, or to prevent hurricanes by removing convective available potential energy on their path.

Is there any research about the possibility of controlling the weather with devices like these, or is there some obvious flaw that would make this completely impossible? (Lack of helium is not a good argument, as these aerostats are not meant to lift any additional weight, and are meant to be as large as possible, so could use air heated by the sun).

If this is possible, what percentage of earth surface would we need to cover with these devices to counteract CO2 effects? From a rough assessment of incoming radiation vs radiation trapped by human released CO2 it seems to be much smaller than 1%.

No, the idea is quite impractical. Lack of helium is no obstacle because unmanned balloons, whether tethered or remote controlled could be filled with hydrogen, but to affect the climate you would need millions of them, which is too expensive and impractical. Geo-engineering projects are generally the stuff of science fiction and not practical in the real world. One way climate could be modified on a local scale is to refill places like the dried up Aral Sea with water from the ocean. Apart from other beneficial effects, this would probably produce enough evaporation to affect local rainfall. Rainfall is also locally affected by the presence or absence of trees, so if you want to increase rainfall in arid areas, one way to achieve it is large scale tree planting. That might be difficult in semi-desert environments, but nevertheless it has been done. Sometimes tree roots can reach down to a water table, which is how enormous cypress trees are in some places  able to grow in the sand seas of the Sahara Desert.


Are there any effects on the atmosphere comparable with ebb and flood of the oceans? Due to the attraction of our moon (and Sun) our oceans undergo an up and down movement every day. So the water rises or falls by a couple of meters. But does this type of effect also occur with our atmosphere?

Yes, they are called atmospheric tides. They can be caused by the gravitational effect of the moon on the atmosphere (lunar tides) and also differential solar heating (thermal tides). I believe you are asking about the former which is much weaker than the latter.

You can find more about it here: https://www.springer.com/us/book/9789027726308
and https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/201973/are-there-tides-in-the-atmosphere

The moon has the same effect on every part of our lovely(I think). The effect is much more clear to see on the ocean because water is less subtle than air-we see the water and see right through the air. The moon also has the same effect on the land and we don't even notice.


Ore Reserve Definition I've seen many papers on mineral deposits say something along the line of "a 100,000 tonne deposit of Zn, 1% grade." Does this mean there is 1% of 100,000 tonnes which is 1000 tonnes pure zinc, or does it mean there is a total zinc deposit of 100,000 which is 1% of the total giving 10,000,000 tonnes including the waste material?

Ore reserves represent the economic portion of a mineral deposit. They are reported as tonnes and grade above a minimum value (cut-off grade).

Irrespective of whether the ore reserve will be mined by surface or underground methods the deposit is blocked out and the mass of each block and the mass of the valuable commodity (zinc, copper, gold, etc.) is calculated for each block. From this the grade of each block is also determined. The reserve is determined by summing the masses of all the blocks and determining the overall grade of the total.

In your example, a deposit of 100,000 tonnes grading 1% zinc means there is 100,000 tonnes of rock that can be mining and treated by a processing plant (mill). The amount of zinc metal contained within that 100,000 tonnes of rock is 1000 tonnes.

Similarly, a gold deposit that contains 2 Mt @ 8 g/t, contains 2 million tonnes of rock grading 8 grams per tonne, or 8 parts per million. The amount of gold contained in that 2 million tonnes is 16,000,000 g (16,000 kg or 16 t).

It means there is an estimated 100,000 tonnes of recoverable zinc in the lifetime of the mine, and the ore it produces is 1% zinc. As zinc ores usually contain other metals such as lead, it is not necessarily the case that this ore is 99% waste material.


Is the Earth's hot inner core necessary for life? The inner core of the Earth has an enormous temperature of around 4300 degrees Celsius.  Is this large inner core temperature an important factor contributing to the ideal temperature that is necessary to maintain life as we know it on the Earth's outer-crust and atmosphere, or is the temperature of the core quite irrelevant to the temperature on the Earth's crust?

Whether the high temperatures of the core is strictly necessary to maintain a habitable temperature at the surface I'm not sure, as the global temperatures are largely controlled by insolation and the greenhouse effect. The black-body radiation temperature of the Earth is about -18 °C, and even a more realistic estimate of the surface temperature without an atmosphere is around 1 °C [1]. That being said, it depends on what you define as life, if the Earth had no atmosphere the temperature would have been lower, but organisms would have adapted to that if they existed in the first place.

As Neo and winwaed also mentioned, the molten iron in the core does protect organisms against harmful radiation from the sun, by providing the Earth with a shielding magnetic field.

Also, the hot core and mantle most likely did influence the origin of life to begin with, as near hydrothermal vents in the ocean floor conditions might have been or are suitable for spontaneous reactions that lead to the formation of self-reproducing molecules [2]. Note this is not in the Darwinian sense Neo talks about (Darwin's book is called On the Origin of Species, not On the Origin of Life), but in the microbiological and geological sense.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation#Temperature_of_Earth
[2] Martin, W., J. Baross, D. Kelley, M.J. Russell (2008) Hydrothermal vents and the origin of life. Nature

The theory of a Gravity Induced Lapse Rate proposed by Loschmidt (1876) suggests that all planetary bodies will have a temperature gradient in their atmosphere AND in the solid structure of the planet all the way to the core. If this theory is correct then the hot inner core of planets with an atmosphere is a common feature of all such bodies. It is (we think) obviously the case that life does not form on all such bodies but only on a select few. The features of the hot core, cooler surface & gaseous atmosphere would not then be the deciding factor as to whether we have a lifeless planet or not.
If we assume, like the question, that life requires a certain temperature range then the main deciding factor will be the surface temperature as we expect life to be moving, swimming or flying about pretty close to the surface (generally). The 2 main deciding factors would be distance from the star and composition of the atmosphere, next factor is probably rotational speed on axis.


What percent of the Earth's core is uranium? What percent of the Earth's core is uranium?  And how much of the heat at the core is from radioactive decay rather than other forces?

Good question! Geochemists and geophysicists agree to disagree, sometimes quite strongly. There are also disagreements within each group as well as between the two groups.
It's not just uranium. There are four isotopes whose half-lives are long enough that they can be primordial and whose half-lives are not so long that they don't produce much heat. These four isotopes are

Uranium 235, with a half-life of 0.703 billion years,
Potassium 40, with a half-life of 1.277 billion years,
Uranium 238, with a half-life of 4.468 billion years, and
Thorium 232, with a half-life of 14.056 billion years.

The consensus view amongst geochemists is that there is very little, if any, of any of these isotopes in the Earth's core. Potassium, thorium, and uranium are chemically active. They readily oxidize. In fact, they readily combine chemically with lots other elements -- but not iron. They are strongly lithophilic elements. Moreover, all three are "incompatible" elements. In a partial melt, they have a strong affinity to stay in the molten state. This means that relative to solar system abundances, all three of these elements should be strongly enhanced in the Earth's crust, slightly depleted in the Earth's mantle, and strongly depleted in the Earth's core.
Geophysicists look at the amount of heat needed to drive the Earth's magnetic field, and at the recent results from neutrino observations. From their perspective, the amount of residual heat from the Earth's formation is not near enough to drive the geomagneto. The growth of the Earth's inner core creates some heat, but not near enough to sustain the geodynamo. Geophysicists want a good amount of heat flux across the core mantle boundary to sustain the geodynamo, and to them the only viable source is radioactivity. Recent geoneutrino experiments appear to rule out uranium or thorium in the Earth's core, but not potassium 40. The neutrinos generated from the decay of potassium 40 are not detectable using current technology.

These are very interesting and important points being made here.

  I don't know whether the recently published (March 2016) article entitled The deep Earth may not be cooling down by D. Andrault et al. is heretical, but it certainly does address several of the core issues."  is a nice pun.

The referenced article is clever; removes the need for heating by radioactive elements in the core, but also brings to mind other gravitationally driven heating processes: Io, Europa, Titan, etc, and possible influence on Pluto-Charon evolution. The youth of some features on Pluto was a surprise, I understand.

Have you a comment on these related processes?

I assumed tidal heating in the Earth-Moon system must also be consistent with the known Earth-Moon recession and length of day changes. The effects on processes such as glaciation, etc. through the Milankovitch orbital mechanisms would also seem to be involved since the geoid of the Earth presumably would be affected by processes in the core as well as ice accumulation, and orbital calculations fall apart after a few million years due to uncertainty in the initial values.

These are truly fertile areas of investigation.


Are the oceans rising or the continents going down? How can we know? The century old sustained rising of oceans, at a rate of 2-4 mm/y, remains a unexplained phenomenon; there is no correlation with temperature variations, so it is not due to the thermal variation of the volume of the oceans or to a decrease of Antarctic ice (which in fact is increasing).

A possibility, given that this raise of the oceans is not absolute but relative to coast, is that it is not the oceans’ absolute level that is raising but the continents that are sinking. A possible cause is global oscillations of the mantle surface level, and tectonic plates move up and down besides drifting.  Another cause is the solidification of the mantle under continental plates due to the decrease of Earth internal temperature. What do you think? Are the oceans rising or the continents going down (in average)? Only satellite measurements can solve the riddle?

To the best of our knowledge, sea-level is rising because the volume of water is increasing.

There is substantial local variation in sea-level change; it's falling in some parts of Canada. But of the dozens of controls on local and global sea-level, the net effect is currently an average global rise of about 3 mm/y. It's not really 'a riddle'. The phenomenon is well documented and there isn't too much mystery about the various causes. One could certainly debate their relative contributions.

Satellites already contribute much of the data that reveals the sea-level rise (and the relative stasis of the continents), and that substantiates some of the causes. For example, the TOPEX and Jason-2 satellites, constrained by gauges on earth, are important sources of data.

Two prominent causes of sea-level rise are thermal expansion and ice loss (for example in Greenland), but there are lots of others. Tectonic plates do definitely move up and down — it's an important phenomenon in geology and geomorphology, and it does affect sea-level in all sorts of ways (see that link).

I am considering a problem that was not raised yet properly, although some has studied how can Earth size and shape change with the many phenomena that occur inside Earth. We tend to believe that continental plates are able of rising up but not the contrary, but not because of scientific reasons, and so we must be suspicious of ourselves. I think that the problem can only be solved by measuring, not by theoretical considerations. I see four possible types of measurements: surface gravity, Earth rotation, Moon-Earth distance and satellites altimetry in free orbiting. All very difficult and influenced by other phenomena. I think that VLBI measurements of Earth rotation present the clearest evidence because the already four decades of increasing rotation speed is difficult to explain without considering a decrease of Earth's equator size. Anyhow, I think we should start considering this possibility, which is not being done by now.


ppmV versus μmol/mol for atmospheric CO2 - how to convert? For a uniform mixture of ideal gases, I think that the concentration of a gas reported in parts per million by volume (ppmV) and micro-moles per mole (μmol/mol) would be the same.

When I see atmospheric CO2 discussed, I have seen both units used, depending on the source. See for example, the comments under this answer.

Since multi-atomic gases like N2, O2, H2O and CO2 are not ideal gases (even monatomic gases are not absolutely ideal) I would guess that for realistic atmospheric samples at different altitudes and times, the CO2 concentrations expressed in ppmV and μmol/mol would not be numerically identical. Further, due to the variations in concentrations of the other constituents they wouldn't even be strictly proportional.

Is there a handy, approximate conversion constant, or function, that is more accurate than unity? Is there a  nearly-exact one?

According to the US Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center :
Though in their data table they use the term "ppmv", they explain:

The CO2 mixing ratios are reported as micromoles per mole (µmol/mol = ppmv) of dry air in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) X85 mole fraction scale, traceable to primary standards at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)

This is further explained in The WMO Mole Fraction Scales for CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and uncertainty of the atmospheric measurements:

Abbreviations can be ppm, ppb, etc., whereas widely used abbreviations such as ppmv (the v is for volume) are wrong and should be abandoned. When reviewing papers, or when we are co-authors, we should convince first authors to abandon the ppmv notation. Volume has nothing to do with mole fraction.

Supposing you know the mole fraction, if you literally wanted to calculate the parts per million by volume, first you need to define what that would mean.  Are you interested in the ratio of the volume of CO2 separately isolated relative to the whole volume? Or are you interested in the volume of CO2 separately isolated, relative to the sum of all the gases separately isolated? For either of these methods, you would need to choose a temperature and pressure, such as the actual temperature and pressure of a sample, or standard temperature and pressure.
Then you need an equation of state at least for the CO2, that is more real than the ideal gas law, such as van der Waals.

From deal gas law, amount (mol) of gas is directly proportional to volume or pressure. Hence ratio micromol per mol is same as ppmv at atmospheric temperatures and pressures.


Why is the average 1 Bar temperature on planets with a thick atmosphere proportional to the distance of the sun? The temperature of a planetary body in space varies with the fourth-root of the power incident upon it, this is derived from the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.
This is understandable when applied to a black body in space. However, when applied to certain pressure levels (like 1 bar) at planets with a thick atmosphere the outcome is the same
Meaning that the temperature of Venus at 1atm (Tv) should be the fourth-root of 1.91 times the temperature on Earth at 1atm (Te). Venus receives 1.91 times the solar insolation of Earth.
Venus Tv=∜1.91 x Te
Tv = 1.176 x 288
Tv = 339 Kelvin
For Titan, the temperature of a planetary body in space varies with the fourth-root of the power incident upon it, meaning that the temperature of Titan at 1atm (Tt) should be the fourth-root of 0.01089 times the temperature on Earth at 1atm (Te). Titan receives 0.01089 times the solar insolation of Earth.
Titan Tt=∜0.01089 x Te
Tt = 0.323 x 288
Tt = 93 Kelvin

Planet
Measured Temp 1atm
Relative Solar Insolation
4th Root
Calculated Temp

Earth
~288 Kelvin
1.00
1.000
288 Kelvin

Venus
~340 Kelvin
1.91
1.176
339 Kelvin

Titan
~90 Kelvin
0.01089
0.316
93 Kelvin

I will throw out 2 hypothesises to answer the why of the question. Not saying it is true, just saying that it may be valid hypothesises. And both hypothesises don't discount the internal properties of greenhouse gasses.

Somehow positive and negative feedback forces level each other out in the 1 bar thick atmosphere sytems on all 3 planets

There is another overruling equilibrium mechanism, as proposed by Dr. Ronan Connolly & Dr. Michael Connolly, who studied all the weather balloon data.

https://youtu.be/XfRBr7PEawY?t=2506


Is it normal for a cyclonic storm to form at the latitude of New York, USA? I am following climate activist Greta Thunberg's sail to N America from Europe on https://tracker.borisherrmannracing.com/. The model shows a cyclonic storm forming south of Nova Scotia, east of New York on August 26, 2019. The same thing can be seen on https://earth.nullschool.net/. I wasn't aware that this type of storm formed so far north and am wondering why this storm is forming and if this is a rare occurrence that may be related to climate change.

Edit to add: Here is the model of air temperature. It appears to me that the storm forms at the interface between cool air from the north and warm air from the south and that the core is warm, but perhaps someone with more expertise can weigh in.

A cyclone is nothing more than a low-pressure system. It can surely form in the North Atlantic; in fact, most low-pressure systems that reach Europe form in the North Atlantic.
You are probably thinking about a tropical cyclone, which indeed cannot form that far north. Among others, a tropical cyclone needs high sea temperatures (>27 C), which are usually not present at such high latitudes.

About the present cyclone south of Nova Scotia: I think it is a cold core cyclone, as 500 hPa temperature are lower than in surroundings (which is e.g. not the case for tropical storm Dorian, which is currently east from the Lesser Antilles). Therefore, it's not a tropical cyclone but an ordinary extra-tropical cyclone, which can perfectly form at those latitudes.

No, it's not normal. Hurricanes and typhoons require sun-warmed seas like the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico to form, because that's where they get their energy from. When meteorologists talk of cyclones and anticyclones, they are talking about high pressure or low pressure weather systems, not hurricanes and typhoons. Storms can form that far north, but probably not hurricanes, typhoons or cyclones, which are just different names for the same thing. When referring to the mega-storms which devastate tropical and subtropical islands, the terms hurricane (Atlantic) or typhoon (Pacific) are usually used. I don't think the weather system featured in your diagram was a hurricane.


Why are there no snakes in New Zealand when ecosystem needs them I was trying to understand why there are no snakes in New Zealand and at same time I see snakes are important for ecosystems.

So my question is how New Zealand's ecosystem is surviving without snakes?

Snakes are important in some ecosystems because they keep down vermin, but the natives of these places pay a high price for this service. Why does new Zealand not have any? Maybe like Ireland there was a water barrier preventing snakes from reaching the islands. Australia is swarming with snakes, most of them very poisonous, but maybe it wasn't when New Zealand broke free many millions of years ago.

Another possibility is that there were once a few snakes in New Zealand, but predators like the Giant Moa and its relatives, and snake-eating birds of prey, might have hunted them to extinction. As for Ireland, snakes were killed off or driven out by the Ice Age, and when the ice receded the snakes from Europe were too slow to get there before the Irish Sea was formed. Only three species manged to reach England before it was cut off by the Channel. Snakes are not important for British ecosystems, but not many people would like to see them become extinct here. Only one, the adder, is poisonous, and kills about one person every fifty years. Just as British ecosystems could survive quite happily without snakes, so can New Zealand. To introduce even harmless ones there could risk a similar eco-disaster to the one in Australia caused by the introduction of the cane toad.


Which equations describe complete (or near complete) behaviour of magma moving through rocks? Yes this is a bit broader question but I want to know which processes play their role in movement of magma. If one wants to model magma movement through rocks, which processes should one not miss at all and which equations discuss these processes?. As a starter I can that we can use Navier Stokes equations for velocity fields, continuity equation for pressure distribution and etc.

From McKenzie's original 1984 paper and from Spiegelman & McKenzie (1987) paper the equations that govern the conservation of momentum and mass of a low-viscosity fluid melt (magma) in a deformable matrix (rocks) are:

${\partial\over\partial t} (\rho_f\phi) + \nabla \cdot (\rho_f\phi{\bf v})=\Gamma$

${\partial\over\partial t} [\rho_s(1-\phi)] + \nabla \cdot [\rho_s(1-\phi){\bf V]}=-\Gamma$

${\bf v}-{\bf V}=-{k_\phi\over\rho \mu}\nabla \mathscr{P} $

$\nabla \mathscr{P}=\eta\nabla^2{\bf V}+(\zeta+{\eta\over3})\nabla(\nabla\cdot{\bf V})+(1-\phi)\Delta\rho g\hat k $

$k_\phi \sim \alpha^2{\phi^n\over c} $

where $\rho_f$ is the density of the magma, $\phi$ is the porosity or the volume fraction occupied by the magma, ${\bf v}$ is the magma velocity, $\Gamma$ is the "melting function", which gives the rate of mass transfer from matrix to magma, $\rho_s$ is the density of the solid matrix, ${\bf V}$ is the matrix velocity, $k_\phi$, is the permeability, $\mathscr{P}$ is the piezometric pressure (the pressure in excess of hydrostatic pressure, $\mathscr{P}=P-\rho_fgz$), $\Delta\rho=\rho_s-\rho_f$ and $\hat k$ is the unit vector in the $z$ direction with $z$ increasing downwards. The permeability, $k_\phi$, can be expressed as a non-linear function of the grain size $\alpha$, porosity, and a dimensionless coefficient, $c$.

The equations you are looking for are called the "McKenzie equations". You should look at the papers of Marc Spiegelman at Columbia University for more information.


What's the difference between snow cover and fractional snow cover? What's the difference between snow cover and fractional snow cover? Are they kind of synonyms? What would be a definition of fractional snow cover?

thanks a lot!

Fractional Snow Cover (FSC) is a property of snow cover.  The fractional snow cover property is used in a variety of contexts, most common of which is meteorological models.  Snow cover algorithms applied to visible imagery remote sensing data are used to derive fractional snow cover for each pixel.  This information is typically re-gridded and time-averaged for use by external users.

This GOES site explains:

  Most satellite-based snow cover products provide a "binary" map, whereby each pixel is classified as either "snow" or "not snow". In contrast, the FSC algorithm is an optimized spectral mixture analysis that uses the broad spectrum from ABI to determine the fractional cover of snow, vegetation, and soils.

More information about snow cover products from GOES and MODIS can be seen here:

http://www.goes-r.gov/products/baseline-snow-cover.html

https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/dataprod/mod10.php

I would say that snow cover is the total area of snow while fractional snow cover is the fraction of an area (e.g. a pixel in a remote sensing product) covered with snow. I suspect people get a bit sloppy and say snow cover when they mean fractional snow cover if they think it is clear what they mean from context.


Why do the Siberian methane craters have smooth vertical walls? I expect most of you have heard of this by now.

All the news is about whether or not they were formed by the release of methane, but it is also mysterious to me why this crater has jagged edges but smooth vertical walls. It almost looks like it has been drilled.

I'm not a geologist but I would expect it to be rough all the way down. Can someone explain why it isn't?

Permafrost is defined as

  a ground, or medium, (including rocks, soils and organic matter) with a mean annual temperature less than 0 °C for at least 2 consecutive years.

The smooth appearance of the walls can be explained by understanding how permafrost works. Permafrost is characterized by an active layer, which is a layer normally at the surface which freeze yearly during winter and thaw during summer - this layer at Yamal can be 1-2 m deep depending on the local ground characteristics (snow depth, albedo, slope, air temperature, thermal conductivity, runoff etc).  The ground in the area is ice-rich.

Then let's assume this crater was caused by a methane bubble escaping/exploding and walls could be rough immediately following the event. By deduction, there should not be an active layer found on the walls following the explosion, as it is the first time this ground (walls) were exposed to air. During the middle of the summer, above 0°C air enters the hole due to convection. The ground is ice-rich (can be porous or invisible ice but still ice-rich) and active-layer start to form on the wall.

Due to the near vertical orientation of the walls, saturated soil (or active layer in formation) cannot stand because as soon as it thaw to a depth exceeding its equilibrium limit, it fall at the bottom of the crater due to gravitational forces, exposing a new frozen surface (and the cycle continue until equilibrium can take a few years). Thawing sediments in ice-rich soils can reach saturation quickly, further adding to the weight and accelerating the time of the fall. Rugged and unequal surface are typically the first elements to thaw and fall.

I took this picture about an hundred km from the featured crater.

This display a very ice-rich section of the Yamal Peninsula littoral in the course of erosion. This coastal section has been eroding for decades at least. At the top the active layer is light brown, and look dry (1 m deep). Just under this top-layer, the ice is poly-genetic: ice wedge ice-rich soil and massive ice can be seen as well. The active layer cannot stand on the side for the reasons I exposed in the previous paragraph (gravity).

Side-note, the jagged edges were not initiated by anything related to a pingo. It takes decades, up to many centuries for a pingo to develop until its natural collapse. When it happen, a depression can form at its center - which could lead to a lake, but these are not overnight processes. Also, contours of the pingo mound would not appear as jagged edges if this was a pingo - the remains would appear pretty old and vegetated, alike the surrounding countryside.

Wackiest answer:

It has all the hallmarks of a plasma discharge. Burn marks around the rim next to the saw tooth serrations resemble EDM machining scars.

There are some excellent videos on youtube about electric geology if you are interested in more detailed info.

Video about electric geology, explains arc blasted earth features

Speculation on the cause could go wild. Some natural phenomena might account for such an event, but likely would have been easily noticed by locals, even at a great distance.

There has been much chatter lately about hypersonic reentry vehicles as weapons.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2015/August/Pages/HypersonicWeaponsRaceGathersSpeed.aspx

http://rbth.com/defence/2016/09/27/russia-could-get-hypersonic-weapons-by-early-2020s_633689

Such a device creates very different conditions in the atmosphere around it as it forms a plasma from the high speeds involved. It is likely that such weapons are being tested, far from man, but somewhere accessible. A hole that size would only require a test sized vehicle, a scale model maybe. And with such obvious success, you might want to leak pics to notify the enemy of your capability, because the best defense is a good offence.

/kook


Could the extraction of energy by wind turbines be harmful to the environment? Wind turbines work by converting some of the energy from wind to electrical energy. Is it possible to have too many turbines, leading to them removing too much energy from the wind?  I'm not an environmental scientist, but I'm guessing the energy in wind plays some vital role in the environment.

So what would happen if we removed too much of that energy?

The short answer is yes, it's possible. And it can also reduce harm.
Summary of the changes
Here's a brief summary of the changes that happen when electricity is generated from a wind turbine, rather than from a fossil or nuclear plant:

energy is taken out of the wind further upwind than it would otherwise be
there is more turbulence just downwind from the wind turbine
less low-grade heat is put into the environment around the fossil or nuclear plant that has been turned down, or off, because the electricity is supplied from wind now.

Global impacts
As far as we can tell it's unlikely that there would be global effects at any plausible levels of global deployment (let's say, up to terawatts of mean power, but below tens of terawatts). But a single row of turbines can be enough to cause very local effects, and those could be positive or negative.
There is an open discussion in the literature about what the impact of removing terawatts of wind power would be.  But it's a theoretical discussion, and not really meaningful, because it would absolutely depend on where the power was extracted.
What happens to the wind's energy?
Ultimately, pretty much all energy in the wind ends up as low-grade heat. And that's regardless of whether or not it gets there via a wind turbine or not. If not, it will eventually dissipate due to friction, where it becomes ambient low-grade heat. If it is, then it will get converted into electricity, then some energy service (e.g. lighting), and then ambient low-grade heat.
So deploying lots of wind turbines just moves where that energy gets taken out of the wind, but not how much.
An unshrouded turbine can extract at most 16/27ths (59.3%) of the wind's kinetic energy - that's the Betz limit. In practice, it's more like 20-50%. Here's the power curve for an E82-Enercon 3MW turbine, from the Enercon brochure:

The lighter curve, plotted against the vertical axis on the right, shows the proportion of the wind's kinetic energy that is converted to electricity. At around 9 m/s wind speeds, that proportion maxes out at about 50%. A further small (~2) percentage goes to internal conversion losses within the turbine.
What are the energy changes, and where?
The full picture is more complicated. Whether switching from fossil/nuclear to wind would change patterns of energy service demand, and energy efficiency, is an open question, so there are plenty of ripple effects. But, putting those aside to simplify things, just switching from fossil/nuclear to wind wouldn't create new sinks for the low-grade heat: lighting would carry on getting used at the same time and place as it does at the moment. What would happen is that energy would be extracted from the wind in new places: at turbines, rather than further downwind where the energy would be dissipated by friction. The other thing that would change is that there would no longer be additional sources of low-grade heat at all those fossil and nuclear power stations. Now, they're pretty intense sources of heat: nuclear or coal plants typically push out 150% - 200% as much energy as local heat, as they do electricity. So that's a significant input of heat into a local weather system, which would no longer be there when they're turned off because the electricity is being supplied from wind instead.
A quick romp through the literature
Smith, Barthelmie & Prior used In situ observations of the influence of a large onshore wind farm on near-surface temperature, turbulence intensity and wind speed profiles. They found that in the daytime, there was no observable change in temperatures once they were more than 2km downwind from turbines. However, there was an increase in night-time temperatures at 2.5m above ground (hence the use by farmers of wind turbines for frost prevention)
On top of what I've written above, we've also got a bunch of modelling in the literature. Now, this is largely an argument between different assumptions: pick the answer you want, and tune your assumptions accordingly. However, these papers are written by people with different underlying positions, so you'll find a range of possible outcomes, and you can decide for yourself which assumptions are more or less likely.
Mark Z Jacobson wrote the book on the Fundamentals of Atmospheric Modelling, and tends to build up from the micro level. A recent paper of his shows potential benefits of reducing the energy in hurricanes that reach the shore, and we know that the first-order impacts of that would be positive.
Roy & Traiteur looked at Impacts of wind farms on surface air temperatures and found significant very local effects, and options for mitigation.
Wang & Prinn looked at potential long-term global impacts of multi-terawatt-scale installations and found that massive onshore wind turbines might cause some warming over land (though less than the coal & gas plants they would replace), and massive offshore wind turbines might cause some global cooling. The modelling was done by assuming the turbine interactions would behave like a generic increase in surface roughness; the other key assumption is that the loss of detail from meso-scale modelling did not significantly impact the results.
Kirk-Davidoff and Keith, like Wang and Prinn, used coarse meso-scale modelling by adding anomalies to surface roughness coefficients. With continental-scale windfarms, they found very little change in global temperatures, but local changes could be up to 2 Kelvin.
Rooijmans' Masters' thesis (Universiteit Utrecht, 2004) looked at the impact of a huge (9 000 km2) offshore wind farm on patterns of rainfall, using a mesoscale circulation model, and found that the distribution of precipitation could change, with more rain at sea, and less onshore. That modelled windfarm would be about four times the size of the largest envisaged offshore wind farm.
Consequences and conclusions
Distributions of heat affect weather and climate. So, deploying lots of wind turbines can change local patterns of evaporation and rainfall. They can also change patterns of frost: the turbines increase the turbulence in the flow, close to the ground, reducing frosts: there are farms that deploy turbines in order to harness that frost-prevention: you can even (HT scruss) buy wind machines dedicated to producing that turbulence in no-wind conditions (these wind machines, ironically, are typically powered by fossil fuels).
So that's the ultimate change: energy would be extracted from the wind further upstream than it was previously; and there's less heat put into the system from the cooling systems at fossil and nuclear power stations. These are all local weather effects, and could be beneficial, harmful, or neutral.

One thing that is being ignored in this discussion is the loss of the energy in one of nature's primary cooling systems. BY lowering the energy in wind we also lower the ability of wind to cool the world


In which state of matter exactly are the clouds? The state of the clouds and it can only be one of the three states, solid, liquid, or gas. Which one are clouds?

Clouds consist of suspended (floating) liquid water droplets ("liquid clouds"), frozen (solid) ice particles ("ice clouds"), or a mixture of both ("mixed phase clouds").  In-between those droplets or ice particles (meteorologists use the phrase hydrometeor to encompass both) is air which will contain water vapour, but what you are seeing is the liquid and solid parts.  Some people believe that when they're seeing clouds, they're seeing water vapour.  They are wrong.  Don't feel bad about sharing this belief, I've known an atmospheric (!!) scientist at a national research institute have the same misconception.  Whether the humid air between the droplets or particles is part of the cloud is a matter of definition, but ice particles may contain air bubbles so I think it would be unreasonable to say there is no water vapour in a cloud.

One way to tell this by yourself is experiencing fog.  Fog is nothing else than a cloud that is connected to the ground.  If you walk through fog (preferably dense fog) and look carefully, you will notice it consists of many tiny water droplets (or ice particles, but then it should be very cold, as small cloud particles will not freeze immediately at -5°C or -10°C).

Tall clouds such as Cumulonimbus usually consist of liquid droplets near the bottom, ice particles in the anvil or incus (the top part that may spread out horizontally), and mixed in-between.  Mixed phase clouds are pretty difficult to model or even measure accurately, as the exact proportion between liquid and solid depends on many (unknown) factors.

See also Ice and Mixed Phase Clouds at the Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Manchester (UK).

You are mistaken in thinking clouds can only be in one of three states. Cumulus and cumulo-nimbus are mostly made of fine water droplets, but also contain water vapour. Cumulo-nimbus (thundercloud) can also contain ice and ice crystals in its upper layers, and produce hail. Cirrostratus is composed of fine ice crystals at high altitude, as is cirrus.


With so many positive feedbacks accelerating global warming, how did the earth ever re-enter ice ages after it came out of one? We hear a lot about positive feedbacks when it comes to global warming. For example: ice reflects solar radiation, so as the ice melts more solar radiation is absorbed which accelerates warming; rising temperatures create more deserts; release of stored methane; water-vapour feedback; etc.

With so many positive feedbacks it would seem that once the earth has flipped out of an ice age it would take an absolutely tremendous amount of change to get us back into one. Yet the explanations given for the onset and offset of ice ages (subtle orbital variations, continental movements) do not seem that great.

So how can these subtle changes ever be enough to flip us back into an ice age?

Do we have long time span climate-models to validate our theories?

It is not only Milankovic cycles, these are often overrated.

Starting in the Cretaceous, thoughout the Paleo- and Neogene the world went from a greenhouse to an ice age that culminated in the Pleistocene. Much is attributed to the arrangement of continents (large landmass to the southpole), change in ocean currents,
and slow accumulation of ice shields and rising albedo. This is a positive feedback actually, whose reversal (observations from Greenland and recently even Antactica) have led to corrections in climate models, making the projected ocean level rise and arrival of tipping points that will develop their own dynamic even worse. This is very concerning !

But back to the question with two examples, that can be researched:

First, when Antarctica and Australia separated ~35My ago, a circumpolar current developed that cut off the continent from global circulation so that the iceshields could be maintained and more accumulated.

Second, when the isthmus between the Americas closed ~3My ago, ocean currents changed, the gulf stream developed that transports heat and moisture to Europe and north eastern America. The gulf stream can switch states (See: north atlantic deep water (NADW) forming), changing temperature and precipitation patterns, contributing to ice shield build up and retreat in the north.

These are just a few highlights to answer how the earth entered the current ice age, there would be much more to write. Other "ice houses" in earth's history (e.g. Permian glaciation) may have had other causes.

Hope that helped a bit :-)

Edit: but a related, mesmerizing question is: if a hypothetical global ice age really existed, how did the earth find out of that ? The high albedo from a global snow/ice cover would prevent that. Somebody painted it black :-) ?

Apparently, the forcing of the Milankovitch cycli are enough to cross the tipping point for climate change. Measurements of Vostok ice core data and Milankovitch orbital parameters.


Connection between microbes and serpentinite? Serpentinite belongs to the serpentine group. This group of minerals are metamorphic minerals caused a special process called serpentinization.

Serpentinization created serpentinite on the Earth's deep sea floor. Serpentinite is paramagnetic which creates a magnetic field for the mineral.

While researching this unusual mineral scientists found microbes within its structure. After study scientists suggest that these microbes are the origins of life.

What is the connection  between the microbes and serpentinite?

The most common explanation for microbial activity in serpentinites is the exploitation of abiogentic hydrogen and methane formed during the serpentinisation process.

Quoting the abstract of a recent authoritative review:

  The process of serpentinization creates strongly reducing conditions and produces fluids that are highly enriched in molecular hydrogen and methane. Some microorganisms are able to exploit these compounds to gain metabolic energy and to generate biomass, leading to the development of biological communities based on chemical energy rather than photosynthesis. The abundance of chemical energy and favorable conditions for organic synthesis make serpentinites a strong candidate for the site of the origin of life on Earth, as well as a prime target in the search for life elsewhere in our Solar System.

From Serpentinites, Hydrogen, and Life (may be paywalled).

You might also find this review interesting: Serpentinization, Carbon, and Deep Life (should be free to access).

These two papers present the current thinking in this subject.

Serpentinites is paramagnetic,And certain microbes known to be paramagnetic also, these microbes are atracted to magnetic field lines.These microbes thrive in evironments where little to no oxygen is present.

Olivine morphs into Serpentinite due to serpentization process, These minerals are classified as Metamorphic minerales serpentine means "To Change" in Greek.

Olivine is documented to be in abundance on the planet Mars as well as Methane which only means the serpentinization process is taking place, the energy needed to support biotic and biological organisms.

China's Jade Rabbit moon mission documented they have discovered
discovered Olivine, Unkown to be present on Earths moon.


What is the source of lava of volcano? From magma below crust? Or from molten crust by rubbing? Ok, it looks like a very simple question but I still have some point want to clarify...

Most images explain volcanos contain some orange stuffs as magma below volcanoes as magma chamber, but the problem is, what is the primary source of the magma? I have 2 assumptions but don't know which is correct:

Magma is directly supplied from magma below crust, in subduction zone the crust rubs and some cracks formed, magma rushes out from mantle and then to the surface of Earth via cracks.
The magma is formed by molten crust cause by rubbing and then heating, then it rushes out via cracks. In other words, the magma is originally a part of crust and it just melt again through rubbing, which is not related to the magma below crust.

Which is correct?

Both are correct to some degree.

Basalts are usually the result of direct mantle melting, below the crust. This is the case in the famous volcanos of Hawaii and this is also the case in the most common type of volcanism on Earth: the mid-ocean ridges (albeit hidden below several kilometres of sea water).

Most other eruptive rocks (rhyolite, andesite, etc) are usually the result of either melting of the crust, or interaction of mantle melts (basalts) with crustal rocks. A very large portion of these rocks erupt above subduction zones (most obvious example being the Ring of Fire). The reason is that wet subducting oceanic lithospheres get heated and lose their water. We usually think of water as something that puts out fires, but in the deep Earth it actually lowers the melting point of rocks. This causes melting in the crust, and eventually erupts as volcanoes.

This is a very simplified overview of the subject, and it's a very active area of scientific research with sometimes opposing opinions. But the basic story is somewhat established: some volcanoes (mostly basalts) are products of mantle melting, while others (mostly other stuff) are products of crustal melting.

Neither, Eruptions of extreme magnitude occur when the magnetic field of a planet is slowly depleting due to the upcoming reverse in polarity. The core of the planet will start to liquefy from the high levels of solar radiation because the magnetic field is weakening and not able to block the radiation daily.

So basically its like overcooking a soup at high temperatures, the soup will eventually overflow and spill out.


When did the last rifting / break-up event occur? When thinking about the formation of the current continents from a super-continent, it's clear that this is a gradual process, but there must be certain areas on earth which were once joined and were the "last" to break apart from Pangea.

Do we know when and where these rifting / break-up events took place?

Rifting is an ongoing process. At the moment, e.g. East Africa is rifting apart from the Nubian plate, we also see rifting of continental plates elsewhere, eg Rio Grande. New continents are being formed, but it doesn't happen on a human time scale. Modellers of future geography have a difficult task to decide what rifts that will stop and what rift that eventually will result in a new continent.

See yellow marked faults and rifts:

Madagascar is sometimes refereed to as the eight continent, not only of biogeographic reasons. It was rifting away from Africa and later India during mesozoic time, starting 160 Ma.

The last rifting that resulted in the present continents I can think about (probably the community can come up with a later event!), would be the North Atlantic breakup, that is still ongoing, but the last part of separation of present continents was the opening of the Fram Strait 16-10 Ma. This separated Greenland from the European plate and had a large impact on the Arctic Ocean conditions.

Some may without basis, dislike this answer, but I believe you will find that the overall pattern of continents coming together, and drifting apart is in direct response to the orbit of the sun around the milky way.  The periodicity matches and there are other tell-tales that add strength to the belief.  I havent heard or found a better explanation for the period of this occurrence.  And one side of the world, seems almost entirely void of continents, adding weight to something one-sided "attracting" the continents.

Gravity is a wave pattern.  There are those that are looking for it's shape.  But one thing for sure, it has an "interference pattern".  Please follow this link, and then set the smoothing radius to 25km, and map type "monthly anomalies, then browse, from 2002 through 2014.  If you have experience with wave tables and interference patterns, you will see that there is an interference pattern, which tells you gravity is both coming and going.  Then especially make note of the pattern greenland has in an 11 year cycle... sample  2002, 2007, 2013.  It is obviously "bouncing" as it's pattern and the incoming pattern are running "lateral" to one another.  This happens due to the reversal of the magnetic field of the sun.  The link to the GRACE mission results are here:

NASA - GRACE Mission Data Analysis Portal Hosted at Colorado U.

AS a proposed "shape of gravity" I would have you consider this picture.  It is gravity in a neutral "temperment".:

Sorry i didn't include GRACE's results link the first time round.


Peak season for Thunderstorms What causes different locations to get their peak season for thunderstorms at different times of the year like some locations get the most thunderstorms in a July some in June and some in August and some get the most thunderstorms in September. What causes the peak season for thunderstorms to be different in different locations?

What you are really asking is why the weather varies from place to place, sometimes in places which are only a few miles apart (in the hills of the Dhofar region of S.Oman, you have a transition from monsoon scrub and grassland to arid desert in the space of only 2 or 3 hundred metres!). Weather is such a complex thing it is impossible to enumerate all the factors which cause local variation, except to say that the presence of hills and mountains often has something to do with it.

Matter is made up of sub-atomic particles containing positive and negative charges. They are usually evenly distributed, every positively charged particle  being balanced by a negatively charged particle, which means these charges cancel each other out.  Nearly everything we see around us is therefore electrically neutral. This disguises the enormous power of the electromagnetic force, which is trillions of times more powerful than the gravitational force, so even a very slight imbalance between positive and negative charges, such as occurs in thunderstorms, can produce dramatic results.

These electrical imbalances can be produced by air turbulence such as takes place in rising plumes of hot air called thermals, of which the strongest happen in summer. Particles of dust or moisture in the rising air currents rub against each other and cause separation of charge.  The condensing raincloud becomes negatively charged, while the ground below becomes positively charged. Positive and negative charges hate to be separated, as they have a very strong attraction for each other.

The positive charges on the ground are pulled along by the negatively charged cloud, and tend to build up on church steeples and similar pointed objects that reach into the sky. When the two masses of separated charge become sufficiently strong, and especially if they pass over a tall, pointed object, they cannot resist the urge to recombine and an electrical discharge takes place. Why one place should have more of these events in August and another in September is a complex question which cannot be answered without knowing all the many variables which influence the weather in both of these places.


Is the area burnt in Amazonas quite smaller than the 2018 California wildfires? I've found this data, which I'm not sure it's right. This article claims the area burnt in Amazon this year is 1,330 square miles (344,468 hectareas) Amazon rainforest fires . And this other article claims the 2018 California wildfires burnt 766,439 hectareas 2018 California wildfires . Is this so? Is the area burnt in Amazon rainforest less than half than the area burnt in 2018 California wildfires?

It is very likely true. Most of the fires shown on TV and in maps are not in Amazonia and not in true rainforest. Quite a lot of them are not even in Brazil. The amount of Amazonian rainforest burning is therefore relatively small, and is due to land clearance and illegal logging where the trees have been cut down and what is left allowed to dry out in the sun and then burned. Out-of-control wildfires are possible in California, but not in true rainforest, which is too damp.  A few very small fires may be due to forest-dwelling natives clearing a small patch and setting fire to it for slash and burn, short-term cultivation. They will abandon it in about 5 years time when the soil is exhausted and the rainforest will gradually take over again.


Amount of Distortion at Continental Collisions Something that I've wondered for a while now - When continents collide, how much of the landmass gets distorted by the collision before it settles?

To perhaps give a clearer idea of what I'm talking about, I'll use an example - How much of the Indian Plate is still intact, and how much is now either driven under the Eurasian Plate or contorted into a different shape i.e. the Himalayas?

Any answers would be greatly appreciated

I think of the plates not as icebergs floating around in a sea but as pieces of porridge skin on the surface of gently simmering porridge, moved about by convection forces from below.

The Indian plate became fused with the Australian plate about 43 million years ago, so now there is only one plate, the Indo-Australian plate. Since then, the whole mass has been moving north at about 4 cm per year. A relatively small amount, perhaps a quarter of what was once the Indian plate, has crumpled against the Eurasian plate to form the Himalayas.

I don't know what the total mass of the Indo-Australian plate is, but it must be many trillions of tons. Imagine the momentum of many trillions of tons of rock moving at 3 mm per month, in addition to which there are convection forces from the mantle pushing it along! Bulldozing the Himalayas must have slowed it down a little, so 43 million years ago it was moving even faster.


What is this Lake Michigan rock? Rock found along northern Lake Michigan, (Charlevoix, MI).  Made up of very thin crystalline layers. There are small, round bubble like bumps that protrude from the surface. Doesn't show well in the picture, but the rock has a sugary appearance.

I can't be definite but my three best guesses are Travertine, Agate and maybe Halite, if it fizzes in mild acid it's Travertine, a form of Limestone, if it dissolves in hot water it's Halite, or Rocksalt, otherwise if it's more or less inert it's probably Agate, an amorphous silicate. I find Halite unlikely, the other two are probably pretty equally likely in that location.

Stromatolite structure. The graininess a beat up or weathered limestone of some sort.


How does the influence of clouds on climate vary with height? It is generally assumed that clouds affect climate by reflecting sunlight back to space and therefore decreasing the total warming of the Earth.  However, stratospheric ice clouds are said to have a net warming effect, due to (I think) the insulation properties of clouds and the low reflectivity of ice clouds.

How do various clouds affect climate?  Specifically, what is the relative energy balance effect clouds have as you go up in the atmosphere?  Is it just stratospheric ice clouds that have a net warming effect?  What really are the insulation properties of a cloud and how do they compare to the reflectivity?

There are a few things that come into play when you talk about the radiative forcing of clouds, or their effect on the climate budget. "Cloud" is a pretty wide-sweeping definition. Scientists are still trying to fully understand and quantify these effects. Clouds do not vary only in where they are in the atmosphere but also in their phase (ice versus mixed phase versus water) and their depth--the combination of these two affect the cloud's optical depth. All of these different properties affect the net effect (whether positive, negative, or neutral) of clouds on the climate system.

High clouds are generally ice crystals, yes, because they are in areas of the atmosphere that are far colder than the freezing level. They are also generally geometrically thin. These high clouds have little effect on the shortwave energy and instead mainly reduce the amount of longwave radiation leaving the planet.

Clouds in the middle parts of the atmosphere are usually tall cumulus clouds that are full of liquid and mixed phase precipitation. These will be very bright to shortwave radiation and thus reflect much of that incoming radiation. They also provide some trapping of longwave emission from the surface and radiate less longwave radiation for a given level in the atmosphere than would normally be the case. The anvil regions of these clouds, on the other hand, are full of ice crystals which again don't reflect much shortwave radiation but do reduce the amount of longwave radiation leaving the planet.

Compared with the high atmosphere, completely ice phase clouds near the surface are thicker and their shortwave reflection is therefore a bit stronger than their thinner counterparts in the middle and upper atmosphere; they also trap longwave radiation from the surface. Mixed and liquid phase clouds' effects have similar effects as ice phase but are stronger in both the short- and longwave spectra.

Another thing special about clouds near the surface is because of that proximity they can actually have a strong influence on the surface which can cause a climate feedback. If you have a deck of clouds overlying a bright surface, it can actually warm the surface a bit since it is reflecting less shortwave than the highly reflective underlying surface would otherwise. For example, it has been hypothesized that the Greenland Ice Sheet melting is enhanced when cloud cover is present.

A good resource on this topic is available here. There have been many hypotheses over the years as to how these clouds and their effects will change in a changing climate. You can search for things like the "Iris hypothesis"--and subsequent refutation--as a good example of this still-evolving science. Climate models are still struggling to cope with correctly representing all of the feedbacks associated with clouds, which causes such high uncertainty in cloud effects in the IPCC reports.

One last thing to keep in mind is that these forcings are relative to a column with no cloud in the current climate. But what if our distributions or regimes of clouds greatly shift? If the planet warms so much that ice clouds can never exist, the relative forcing of ice clouds in that climate would then be null. So akeep in mind the point of reference you are using when thinking about the forcing of clouds.

Water is one of the main absorbers of sunlight in the atmosphere. Electromagnetic radiation from the sun is the heat source and water and soil absorb this radiation. Liquid water does not act like a mirror. A mirror will reflect almost all of the sun's light and radiation. Water almost does the opposite. Ice can reflect light and some radiation back. The atmosphere acts like a greenhouse trapping the  the heat.

http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=en&n=1A0305D5-1

http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_vibrational_spectrum.html


How do the known abrupt climate change events fit into the xkcd Earth temperature timeline? The xkcd "Earth Temperature Timeline" depicts the global average temperature during the past 20,000 years, based on the known data. We already have a question about the chart's general accuracy, but I have a more specific question.

The chart says that multi-decade, multi-degree global climate shifts should be easily visible, and the fact that the chart is smooth and shows no such variances until it suddenly jumps in the past hundred years gives the graphic its visceral power.

But then, I found out about a myriad of known abrupt climate change events, such as the Younger Dryas 12,000 years ago, during which the temperature of large parts of the northern hemisphere decreased in temperature by 2 to 6 degrees Celsius over mere decades, then stayed that way for a millennium. Yet no rapid shifts like this are visible in the xkcd chart. This seems to imply that either

the temperature shift in much of the northern hemisphere during the Younger Dryas was exactly counterbalanced by concurrent temperature shifts in the rest of the world so that the global average looks virtually the same; or
the xkcd chart omits important details; or
there are major contradictions in climate data from various sources.

Are one of these options correct, or is something else going on?

The apparent contradiction comes primarily from #1 but #2 also pays a small role here...

Temperature decreases during the Younger Dryas greater than $2^{\circ}$C are believed to have occurred almost exclusively above $30^{\circ}$N in latitude. The bulk of the tropics are thought to have been relatively stable during this time and the southern polar region showed slight warming. Additionally, global temperature averages are generally weighted by area and only one fourth of the earths surface lies between $30^{\circ}$N and the North Pole. All this combines to produce what is thought to be around 0.6$^{\circ}$C of global cooling at the start of the Younger Dryas (Carlson, 2013).

Randall does cite several sources in the top right of his graphic but Shakun et al. (2012) is the only one that presents meaningful temperature data during the Younger Dryas. And in fact, the comic's proxy data (dashed) temperature curve closely matches the temperature curve presented in this article over this period (curve d in the figure below).

Interestingly, while Shakun et al. (2012) does show a global temperature decrease close to $0.6^{\circ}$C 12,000 years ago, the change doesn't appear to happen abruptly (at least not on the scale of decades). In the text of the paper the authors state that they built their temperature data set from 80 different proxy measurements taken over a wide range of locations. It turns out that these proxy measurements have a relatively long time resolution (a median value of about 200 years). That means that while the changes may have occurred very quickly this temperature curve is going to fail to capture that variability and appear "smoothed out". This does make the xkcd graphic a little misleading since the large temperature increase at the end is produced from data using a much finer time resolution, but this is a flaw common to all "hockey stick" temperature plots.

"But anthropogenic climate change is real and demonstrable, and doesn't need cartoonists to make pretty graphics that get shared all over the internet to encourage belief in it."

But that is not the point in debate. That is the 97% (or even 100%) view. No-one disputes it. The subject of debate is, broadly, five factors: how much has the Earth warmed since the 1940s? How different is that from natural variability? How much of it is man-made through heat-trapping gases released by human activity (a subtly different matter)? How much warming is likely in the future? How much of a hazard will that future warming be?

None of these things are constrained very well at all. Only if all of them align as the most alarmist "scientists" say is there any reason at all to change our way of living in response to climate fears, and evidence suggests that is not the case. Even the IPCC suggests the effect will be measured as 0.2-2% reduction in world GDP by 2080, at a time when world GDP will be at least 300% of that we have today - so dropping that to "only" 194-199.4% rise from now to then.

Sound evidence suggests that one factor, poor siting of thermometers and temperature sensors, has exaggerated the temperature rise in the USA by up to 100%. The USA has one of the best systems of temperature measurement in the world. In many parts of the world the original data have been manipulated multiple times, almost always reducing old temperatures and increasing more recent ones; in Australia, for example, some analysis has suggested this is responsible for all the recorded warming. In Bolivia (I think it is) there is not a single thermometer in the system used for reporting world temperature.

So even the first part, the temperature rise, is not known to within a factor of 2.

Heck, there are problems even before that: multiple measurements in the 19th century, before regular measurements were made, showed CO2 levels higher than those years later, around today's levels; we are not even certain that the increase in CO2 is actually caused by human activity; the idea of "global temperature" is nonsensical, any knowledge of meteorology (I teach the subject) shows that a single number does not represent anything meaningful, literally it has no physical meaning, no place in the climate system. We are literally ignoring the existence of climate at the start of discussing climate change.


What does 5,000,000 tonnes of CO2 look like? Reading a news article Probe after Gorgon releases millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas, I am confused.  CO2 is a gas, right?  Gases are not very dense, right?  So what does 5MT of the stuff look like?  How big a tank do we need to hold it?

The question is hard to give a definitive answer to, as it depends on the pressure at which the gas is kept in the tank. But to try to give an intuitive sense of how much gas this is, let's work out two things: Firstly, how big the box would be at atmospheric pressure; and secondly, how many standard gas bottles it would take.

At atmospheric pressure

The mass of one mole of CO2 is 44 grams. So 5 MT of CO2 is $\frac{5\times 10^{12}}{44} = 114\times 10^9$ moles of gas.

The ideal gas law tells us that

$PV = nRT$

where $P$ is pressure, $V$ is volume, $n$ is the number of moles of the gas, $R$ is a constant, and $T$ is the temperature in Kelvin. If we assume a pressure of 100,000 Pa (roughly atmospheric pressure) and a temperature of 300 K (roughly room temperature), then

$V = \frac{nRT}{P} = \frac{114 \times 10^9 \times 8.314 \times 300}{10^5} = 2.8\times 10^9$ m3.

That volume works out to a cube with sides of 1.4 km.

In gas bottles

A standard large CO2 bottle of the type that is familiar in the UK looks like the one on the right of this picture:

and according to BOC contains 34 kg of gas, at a pressure of up to 50 bar. So that's 29.4 cylinders per tonne or, to contain 5 million tonnes of CO2, 147 million of these cylinders.

"Look like" is not quite right, since gaseous CO2 is transparent to visible light.  To get a sense of the volume, we can do some simple math, which unless I've made a mistake somewhere gives an area 21 km/13 miles on a side, stretching from sea level to space.

Showing my work:

x = 5 Gt =  5000000000 * 2000 lbs/ton = 10000000000000 lbs

Sea level pressure = 14.7 lbs/in^2, so 680272108843 in^2

144 in^2 per ft^2, so an area of 4724111866 ft^2, or a square 68732 ft on a side

Convert to miles = 13 miles on a side
Convert to km = 20.9 km


Why do greenhouse gases affect ocean temperature so much? As I understand it, greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation from the sun.  Much of that radiation would otherwise continue and be absorbed on the planet surface in the ocean or on land.

If CO2 increases are causing the oceans to warm, does that happen mainly by convection?  It's counter intuitive to me to think about air convection having that much effect on ocean temperatures.  Why wouldn't greenhouse gases' soaking up of infrared instead cool the oceans, that would otherwise be warmed by the radiation?

No, greenhouse gases do not absorb infrared radiation from the sun... the Earth is really the source of infrared.  The amount of infrared energy from the sun that reaches Earth is insignificant.  Visible light from the sun heats the Earth, NOT infrared light.  The visible light passes through the atmosphere and is absorbed by the surface of the Earth.  Then, the Earth re-radiates that energy back into the atmosphere in the form of heat (aka infrared radiation).  The infrared radiates back into space, but if there are infrared absorbers in the atmosphere, the energy is not lost to space.  That has a net warming effect.  In fact the Earth needs greenhouse gases, or we would all be frozen.  It is a delicate balance between GHG concentrations and climate effects on the hydrologic cycle.

It is important to note that ocean water expands in response to temperature increase... so even just a modest increase in ocean temperature can lead to significant sea level changes.  Human civilization is thus directly affected by oceanic temperature increase due to sea-level rise.

As a side note, the absorption of carbon into the ocean is really of more environmental concern than the actual heating of the ocean, in terms of acidic effects on the marine ecosystems.  The ocean absorbs roughly half the carbon emitted into the atmosphere and there are areas already seeing the negative effects of acidification.

Water vapor certainly does absorb solar infrared radiation in the near infrared spectrum and mostly by water vapor - the graph shows this clearly.

GHG's heat the cool skin layer of the ocean - they cannot penetrate any more than a hairsbreadth so they simply promote evaporation and cooling via latent heating of the atmosphere.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png


Are Indonesian 2018 earthquakes related? Indonesia had multiple major earthquakes this year

A series of earthquakes in Lombok between July and August, including a 7.0 mainshock
The 7.5 earthquake + tsunami in Sulawesi, September 2018
A 6.0 earthquake near Java, on 11 October 2018

I'm aware that Indonesia sits in an earthquake zone, but historically I don't think so many big ones occur in such a close time. Also, this spread out in different islands (e.g. the epicentres in Java and Sulawesi are ~1,000 km apart) over several months, so it doesn't look (at least to me) like typical mainshock-aftershock relationship. Were they related in some way? e.g. Do they indicate an increase seismic activity in the region?

I'll try to answer your second question using the earthquake catalog of the USGS. I encourage you to run your own queries, it's pretty fun and easy to use!

Here is a result of a query for 6+ magnitude earthquakes, starting from 2000, centered around the indonesian archipelago. There is a total of 435 events in the region during this period of time. Now you can download the list as a csv file and have a look at it to get some statistics.

If you sort the events by year, you'll see that there are between 11 (in 2017) and 35 (in 2007) events per year, with a mean of 21.75 events per year. It's hard to get a clear tendency from this graph, although it seems that there was a decrease in activity in the 2011-2018 period.

It gets clearer if you look only at 7+ earthquakes. In this period there are 54 events in the region, but you can see that the vast majority happened in the 2000's, culminating in 2010 with 8 events. Then there is the only year without a 7+ event (2011), and five years in a row with only one event per year. From this graph it also seems that there is an increase in the last two years, with already 3 events in 2019, but I would be careful interpreting this: we lack perspective, and 54 is quite a low number to do a statistically robust analysis.

So from this I'd say there might be an increased seismic activity in the region, although it's too soon to tell for sure. Only time will tell, unfortunately.

Edit: The first question is beyond my competence. It is known that earthquakes redistribute the stress in the lithosphere (see the review by Hardebeck & Okada, 2018). But the tectonic setting is really complicated in Indonesia, with lots of small plates and some unique features, like the divergent double subduction in the Molucca sea (Zhang et al., 2017)... So it's hard to tell if an earthquake here could trigger an earthquake there by modifying the regional stress field.

The Indonesian (Malay) archipelago is a huge chain of islands, several thousand miles in length from the northern tip of Sumatra to the south eastern extremity in New Guinea, so the 600 miles you mention between epicentres is nothing very much.

Yes, the earthquakes are related, but there is no particular increase in seismic activity, it's normal for Indonesia. The earthquakes are random. The ones you mention are caused by the convergence of the Indo-Australian plate with the Eurasian plate to the north east. The plate margins loop around north-eastward, fairly close to the southern coast of Sulawesi The margin of the Indo-Australian plate is being subducted beneath the Eurasian plate and oceanic plate margin is being forced down into the mantle, where friction with the Eurasian plate above and the water content of the subducted zone cause partial melting of the rock. Rock is more easily melted where it has a high water content.

Plumes of magma from the melted rock, being lighter than the mantle, rise to the surface where they erupt as volcanoes. Some earthquakes are caused by volcanism, but the major ones are caused by friction between the plates. Movement of a plate is temporarily held up at a particular point and stress builds up until it can be resisted no more. The sudden release of pent up energy is manifested as an earthquake.


Does rain (temporarily) deplete the surrounding atmosphere of carbon dioxide? CO2 in the air dissolves into rain water, making them slightly acidic. Is that enough to deplete the surrounding air out of CO2? If yes, how fast does this occur? Is it only with the first drops of rain or do you need several hours?

How long does it take for the surrounding atmosphere to regain its original CO2 contents, assuming this actually happens?

Here is the mass-calculation. We will consider a column of the atmosphere with a footprint of 1m × 1m. This column weighs about 10,000 kg (per square metre). In these days of climate change we will assume the current average CO2 concentration is 400 ppm, yielding a total mass of CO2 in this column of 4 kg.
The rain doesn't wash out the entire thickness of atmosphere but only (in general) the lowermost troposphere. We will assume, generously, that some 2.5 kg of this 4 kg of CO2 is available to be scavenged by raindrops.
Now consider a cloudburst of raindrops, equivalent to some 100 mm  on the ground. So we have 0.1 cubic metres, or 100 kg, of fallen raindrops within our square metre column of air. The solubility of CO2 in air is strongly temperature dependent, up to 2.5 g per kg at 10 deg C. But at such a low temperature we couldn't achieve 100 mm of rainfall, so we will compromise at about 1.5 g per kg at 25 °C. So, assuming complete CO2 saturation within the raindrops (unlikely) our 100 kg of rain will contain 0.15 kg of CO2 , scavenged from about 2.5 kg of CO2 in the 'rained out' column of air, or about 6% of the low atmospheric CO2 .

Bear in mind that this assumes an enormous rainfall intensity, 100% CO2 saturation of the water and equilibrium chemical dynamics. After the raindrops hit the ground at least half of it will immediately re-evaporate back into the air, leaving, at absolute most, about 3% of the atmospheric CO2 leached out of the atmosphere that will be available to react with the soil, rock or biosphere. Also consider that this is but one of several important processes affecting CO2 transience, such as photosynthesis, respiration, volcanism, industrial pollution, etc. So the CO2 estimates that you read about are average values. Advection and turbulent air mixing should ensure that the CO2 regains approximately normal concentration within an hour or two after rainfall.

There is approximantly  11,250 trees in the world
left over in world after taking the total human CO2
human CO2 footprint to eat up all the CO2 produced by human activity. There are many other CO2 natural
Users of CO2 not mentioned. Nevertheless if we are not 100% sure about the CO2 scare what if we have too little CO2 in the climate then we have a cooling planet
And that would be worse than too warm.
Kim Lilly


To what extent do the levels of UVA, UVB and UVC radiations on the earth surface increase during solar flares? To what extent do the levels of UVA, UVB and UVC radiations on the earth surface increase during solar flares?

During a powerful solar flare the amount of x-ray radiation can increase up to 110% in the boundry layer of the atmosphere/space,very little of this will reach the earths surface but it can be measured from high flying planes.

UVC is stopped by the upper layer of the atmosphere so this will never reach the ground,It might be possible to measure some UVC in antarctica because of the ozone hole but it is very weak so one will need special equipment to measure it.

UVB will change very little during a solar flare and only in the shortest wavelenght of the UVB spectrum will additional radiation be measurable.

UVA radiation will not change at ground level.

During a solar flare only the shorter wavelenghts of the electromagnetic spectrum will be affected,hard x-rays the most and the longer wavelenghts will be less affected.

source https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2005JA011507

source for more detailed information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet

i do not have the source for this picture but i think it is free to use.

Solar flares are very variable in size and position. A small one on the edge of the sun's disc would have no effect on Earth, but I presume you mean a large one. UVC would be stopped by the ozone layer, so no increase there. UVB gets through the atmosphere with difficulty, so there might be a small increase there, but nothing to worry about. The atmosphere is completely transparent to UVA, so there could be a significant increase with a very large flare. You wouldn't know this unless you followed the TV weather announcements of ultra-violet hazard. If it happened to be cold and wet in your part of the world it wouldn't affect you unless you were in the habit of sunbathing in single-figure temperatures, lowering cloud and pouring rain. Not many people do this.

More worrying for most people would be the flare's effect on satellites and communications, or even to the electricity grid in the event of a really large coronal mass ejection. The arrival of huge amounts of charged particles emitted by a flare creates electric currents in the atmosphere which in the most severe cases have been known to shut down electricity grids for many hours.


How many trees would I have to plant to solve Global Warming? According to NASA, causes of the Earth's greenhouse effect include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and CFCs.  Carbon dioxide gets the most press, and NASA's page says:

Carbon dioxide (CO2). A minor but very important component of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide is released through natural processes such as respiration and volcano eruptions and through human activities such as deforestation, land use changes, and burning fossil fuels. Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by a third since the Industrial Revolution began. This is the most important long-lived "forcing" of climate change.

An article by NC State University says that a healthy tree can store 13 pounds of carbon per year.  As I understand it, carbon dioxide is processed by the tree: the carbon is stored, and the oxygen released.
Given that, how many trees would I need to plant to solve the global climate change crisis?  Should I optimize for a specific type of tree, or would pine work as well as oak or black walnut?

In 2010 anthropogenic emissions (not including land use change) were approximately 9167 million metric tonnes.  Your data on trees holding 13 lbs (5.9 kg) of carbon per year equates to 169.6 trees per metric tonne of emissions.

So to take up all of the emissions from 2010 you would need 1,545,000,000,000 trees.  A mature forest has only about 100 trees per acre (400 per hectare), so you would need 15,545,000,000 acres of mature forest.  This equals an area of 24,290,000 mi2 (62,910,000 km2).  This is approximately the land area of Asia, Europe, and Australia combined!
The surface area of land on the planet is about 150,000,000 km2, so in principle we would need to add cover onto 42% of the current land (or we could take soil from deep ocean floors to landfill 1/5th of the oceans!) in order to plant enough trees to solve the problem.

This also assumes that the 13 pounds (5.9 kg) of carbon figure is for mature forests, rather than for growing trees (see comments for further discussion).  If this value is for young developing trees, it would indicate less be attainable in the longrun.  If the 13 pounds is for a developed forest, perhaps a greater amount could be removed in early years as a temporary quicker fix.

There is also the problem that forested land is likely to have a lower albedo than the land surface that it covers, and hence the planet will reflect less sunlight back into space which would lead to some extra warming, so we would also need to compensate for that somehow.  Apparently about 26% of Earth's land is already covered with forests.  I rather doubt over half of the uncovered land surface is suitable for new forests, the continents have large bands either side of the equator that are generally too arid, and the regions close to the poles are too cold.

In short, it isn't going to work, even with the most generous assumptions about forest CO2 exchanges (unless of course I have made an arithmetic error, which is definitely a possibility).

None, except tropical young trees. Overall, trees are carbon neutral. Wood/biomass has to be geologically sequestered to store carbon in the long term. That requires a tree with

a long life span (sequoia, cypress, etc)
and growing in swampy conditions (to hold the remnants in sediment)


Could pumping ocean water into desert areas help reduce sea level rise? I have been reading the discussion about pumping sea water into the desert for purposes of irrigation and changing the dry climate of that area, but what about to just purely offset the rising sea levels? Could pumping ocean water (with solar power) north of Malibu California into the dry areas help with coastline erosion and put water into the desert as a secondary but not primary benefit?
I am a completely non-scientific person who just happens to have an interest in coastal erosion so I welcome all your educated thoughts on this. Ideally it would be done in all the deserts globally to have a coordinated effort. Think of the infrastructure jobs in places like Africa. It would require a “world bank” initiative to create the funds to do this but as a global coordinated effort it may be required as part of planet rehabilitation. Yes I said “create” the funds, ie “print money” which would have a slightly inflationary effect on world economies but would mostly “inflate” depressed economies through wealth redistribution since these economies would likely be the major supply of labor. Like we see in Canada when the people from poor fishing towns went to work on the pipelines and brought cash back home.

This is no an answer per se, just a back-of-the-envelope calculation for fun.

Lifting 1 kg (one litre) of water up a height of 1 meter uses 9.8 (let's say 10) joules of energy.

Let's say you want to lower the sea level by 1 meter. You need to pump 3.6e17 litres (3.6e14 m2 of ocean area = 3.6e14 m3 to pump * 1000 for litre conversion).

Let's say you want to lift this water up a height of at least 10 meters, so it doesn't go right back into the ocean but rather stays behind some kind of dike. We're already at 3.6e18 J of energy. That's 1e15 Wh, or 1000 TWh. That's more than what the 20 largest power stations combined produce in a year.

This also assumes an ideal, 100 % efficient pump (no energy loss)...

Yes, it could reduce sea level rise, but it would be no good for irrigation. Many deserts, like the Aral Sea and Death Valley, are below sea level. This means you would not need to use energy to pump the water, but could use the siphon principle. Some people say that even if you filled all these low-lying deserts with sea water, it would not do much to lower sea level. However, it would have many other beneficial effects, especially in the Aral Sea. It would greatly improve marine transport, create new fisheries, prevent the present salt desert being blown onto agricultural land, and quite likely change the climate so there would be more precipitation.

Another way to reduce sea level, though it would be only by a tiny amount, would be to build more dams. Deprived of the held-back rain water, the sea level would reduce a little if enough rainwater was prevented from reaching the sea. The dams would produce carbon neutral power, create fisheries and be used for irrigation. On the other hand, if the proposed dams on the Nile are anything to go by, they also have the potential to start wars unless they are sited with great care and good international diplomacy and cooperation.