Ice Cores: Part II, CO2 rises AFTER warming. Water Vapor is not ignored.

This posting is part II, the second piece of the LOST ice core CO2 XOMBYTE by Les Porter.

Some of the "comments" for THAT LOST XOMBYTE still are located Here:
http://www.xomba.com ice_cores_air_temp_rises_before_co2_rises_explain_that_h2o_ignored_as_greenhouse_gas_contributing_to_rising_temperature_why

Part 1

http://www.xomba.com/ice_core_record_shows_co2_rise_happens_after_warming_air_part_i

So this be a Warning! to YOU! Your work can sit out there for more than a year and be Lost. Granted, NSA probably has a copy spinning on an underground drive in Virginia, but won't send it to me.

I am posting this extraction from my original Voluminous post, because last year (probably with acquisition of their "new programmer"(?-speculation) Xomba LOST MY ORIGINAL Posting!!! Really.

This LOST "IceCoreCo2" posting was the answer to Publius' two strawman questions:

1. The 800-year lag between warming, and CO2 rise
2. The "fact" that climate science "ignores" the effects of water Vapor as the primary Global Warming culprit.

See part 1 for a little on "The Lag."
Continue here for more about where the CO2 hides, and the "fact" that Water Vapor is "not ignored."

================part 2 =====================

Your Experimental Soda Pop OCEAN!
Water Vapor non-forcing
When a Cloud floats in Air(revised 9-06-07)
One billion year graphic with ice
4 Billion yrs at 30,000 yrs/sec: A creative effort. (revised 9-08-07)
Views of the continents during last 650 million years.

Your Experimental Soda Pop Ocean!

A simple experiment you can do at home to illustrate some of what happened as Oceans warmed.

You can do this at home. It is an illustration. This may be able to convince you that the 38,000 billion tons of CO2 EPA & DOE say are in the cold deep ocean are there in the cold deep ocean. (Find someone who doesn't mind drinking "flat" pop. Or be prepared to throw the warm soda pop away. For Science. )

1. Get a flimsy cheap plastic sandwich bag and a couple of good rubber bands.
2. Grab a cold Soda Pop Can or Plastic Bottle from your chloro-flouro-carbon cooled 'fridge!
3. Carefully open the Soda Pop. Place it on a flat surface. (table.)
4. So as not to tear it, place the baggie on the top end of the can or bottle of Soda Pop.
5. Remove as much air as you can (flatten) the baggie.
6. Place the baggie around the container top, and rubber-band the top and the baggie to seal.
7. Conduct the experiment, by placing it aside until the contents reach room temperature. (hours) . Then come back and observe the sealed baggie. Has it filled? Or partially filled?

The idea is to see how much CO2 you can get out of the soda water in your drink.

After several hours of your scientific "experimenting" passes and the liquid in the can or plastic container of soda is room temperature and "flat" tasting, observe that the sealed plastic baggie has expanded and a little trapped CO2 is in the baggie. Seems a shame to just let it out and add more to the air. You can now consume the drink without belching (much), or ask your friend to and he won't belch (much) because of this drink.

Interestingly, the deep ocean water, some 90% of the Earth's ocean by volume, has a salinity of about 3.5% so it freezes at a lower temperature than "fresh" water, and a temperature of 3oCelsius, 37.4 F -- about as cold as your kitchen fridge. Cold water holds much more CO2 than warm water. Just like your soda-can-ocean, when the ocean water warms, it releases very large quantities of it's CO2. The longer your cold drink is cool the longer the carbonic acid bites your tongue. This is true with the deep cold salty ocean water that is highly carbonated as well. Warm it and expect CO2 to be released.

When the manufacurer carbonates the drink, the CO2 he adds is added under a pressure anywhere from 2 to 10 times ambient air pressure. Some drinks are noted for their excess carbonation, and their composition of taste ingredients exploits the sharp acidic CO2 taste of the manufactured drink. How does the ocean become slightly carbonated? It is a natural absorption, but hang around, and we'll touch on that.
Meanwhile, back at the Planetary Ocean . . .

Image :Wikipedia -- "Thermohaline circulation. Dark blue, deep current. Pinkish red, surface current."

One of the CO2storage plans is the pouring of the CO2 into the deep ocean below 3000 meters. (Just about 10,000 feet)

IF the 800 year lag (As we observed in all those Ice Age Terminations or Interglacial Beginnings) is an everyday fact leading to the release of CO2, (from the ocean since there were no tailpipes 240,000 years ago) THEN it means we have a really big climate warming event beginning in 450 to 750 years or so, from now. Make sense? Yes, actually. And that is more scary to realize! This blatant polluting of the air with the excess of CO2 now, precludes any hope of reducing the amount the ocean will release into the air 800 years from now! if we do not reduce the warming that is on its way. It will be very clear in the year 2457 when the real extra release starts to occur -- that we should have acted in the 1990's When we could have. Where is the CO2 coming from now?

So why aren't we doing it now?

You know the answer, don't you? For the (short term) profit of a few?

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We certainly know the atmosphere is capable of holding much more CO2. But even 100 million years ago, it looks like the life on Earth along with natural weathering processes of Earth had pretty well buried much of the atmospheric CO2 and life was doing fine chewing the CO2 in the air down even more. During a part of the Age of the Dinosaurs, 100 -- 84 Mya the CO2 atmospheric concentration was from 2.3% to1.3% (2300--1300 ppm) as recent work has shown (Karen Bice, et. al.) with SST (Sea Surface Temperatures) of 91-to- 107o F. (33-42oC.)

Read the paper here:
http://www.whoi.edu/science/GG/people/kbice/Bice_etal_2006.pdf

Do we assume that the present heating from CO2 from the tailpipe or other fossil carbon burning, (like for power plants) that took us from 1850's --1900's CO2 287 ppmv values to the present 383 ppmv we have, 2007, [2009 value is 387ppmv] caused all the CO2 release from the deeper ocean we are going to see? Or are we going to see more released in the next 300 to 800 years ahead, and more? I greatly fear what a degree or two does.

Of course we are going to see more as the top part of the ocean warms, and as the deeper ocean warms, the deeper colder water will release CO2. How Much?

HOW DOES CO2 GET INTO THE OCEAN?

Just how does CO2 get into the ocean?

Many ways. Living things in the top few millimeters, many too small to be seen by the naked eye, are one significant route. There is ongoing chemical "dialogue" a large part of it biorganic, between the ocean and atmosphere that influences regional and global climate in many ways.

The breadth and depth of this biorganic conversation points toward the ideas of Jame Lovelock and Gaia as a conceptual tool to see life successfully exploiting the relationships between the physical energy and material climate components.

Sea spray and water vapor form surface level clouds that ultimately slightly cool water temperatures at the surface. Desert dust with iron oxide, and other dust, and the ambient gaseous carbon dioxide settle into the ocean and act as "fertilizer" to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton. This is a process known as the "biological pump." Over the vastness of geological time, more than 90 percent of the world's carbon has settled into the deep ocean. (It is reported that 70 million billion tons of Carbon are in the rocks. That is: 70,000,000,000,000,000 tons carbon.)

In the Antarctic, cold water with nutrients upwells and growth is stimulated, and CO2 is ingested. So we are seeing the reverse when we see growth of CO2 ppmv locally in the Antarctic.

Work is being done on the air/ocean biological interface, to learn and extract from the historical sediment and other records what was going on simultaneously; but I mention it here only to show that even with the warming, the CO2 being 'released' was not being biologically ingested in sufficient quantities to diminish substantially the rising CO2 ppmv amount in the air. So where did it come from? The only place it realistically could have come from is the ocean. From the colder, deeper water. The question for our future is simply will the current ocean warming release 650 to 750 billion tons more of the stored CO2 with which future generations will have to deal. A potential legacy of greed, from just a few.

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Water Vapor is "non-forcing" at present.

Climate forcing means a condition that prevails or overpowers the energy balance between earth and space -- to change that balance by either warming or cooling the planet and the climate. The conditions can be natural, such as the orbital cycles, or anthropogenic perturbations, such as anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs). Currently GHGs are the cause of the largest positive (warming) forcing.

If the CO2 emissions were not being entered in excess of what is a balance framed by plants, the air would not be warming, but rather would be possibly cooling. Even though water is presently considered a non-forcing component of global warming it will not always be so. When water vapor becomes climate temperature forcing, the end of life is near. Currently, [as this is revised, 2009] the GHG’s are increasing Earth’s atmospheric warmth and with it, raising the humidity. The humidity, the water vapor, increasing in the atmosphere is a resultant of the atmospheric warming from the anthropogenic GHG’s, mainly from electricity generation, transportation, and cement manufacture.

Known to all of us as the "universal solvent," water is more than just an interesting molecule; it is the molecule on which most Earth life depends.

#2.Q.----Then explain to us why water vapor, the number one greenhouse gas (over 95%), is left out of the equation when discussing greenhouse gases.

Fact: Water and water vapor IS life on Earth. Water "Vapor" is the way water is transported around the planet. Want life? Then you want water. Living exceptions to the water usage by life rule are rare, or deeply buried and microscopic.

It has to be asked in the "why" category implying there is a “choice” about how water is treated in the climate system 'equations.' This is the artificial straw man tactic. Why is water vapor not treated on a par with the other gases? Well, it is not on a par with the other gases.

I will try to provide you, the reader, with perspective enough to think the question through and gather from what I point out here -- that water vapor is not THE problem in global warming. Something else is THE Problem. Increasing water in the air is one of the "results" of the warming. Before the human dominance era, and also since -- water in vapor form is one of the primary movers of heat from the sun about the planet. When it is cool there is not as much vapor and not as much transport capability.

Water comes and goes in the air. Its maximum, maximum lifetime in air is possibly two whole weeks! Some of the CO2 from coal-powered Electricity, on the other hand can be expected to reside in the air for several thousand years.

" Seeing" Water Vapor.

You and I can't see the Water "Vapor"; not directly. You and I can only see in the "visible" portion of the spectrum, but we can "see" liquid water or "see" solid water. Still, water vapor is visible with specialized instrumentation.

NOAA has constructed and launched 'proxy eyes' to see what water vapor is doing in frequencies of the spectrum we can't see. Satellites launched into Earth orbit for weather prediction are sensitive to the infrared frequencies wator vapor radiates. (I would not call it frequencies where water vapor "shines". But they are.) By the way, just visit NOAA at www.noaa.gov and explore! Look at the satellites, see the differences between water as vapor, water as clouds, and water as ice or snow. (Yes, many of you know about rain and snow.)

Image: NOAA, GOES, colorized infrared example, Water Vapor, can you see it now?

Why isn't Water Vapor discussed as one of the "offending" greenhouse gases? It has the largest potential and largest actual day to day effect on climate . . .

Actually, the GHG Water Vapor is discussed directly or indirectly "more" than anything else, in or about the air. So the discussion idea is another strawman. We all watch the weather.

Those NOAA satellite pictures show where and what is going on with water vapor, water liquid, (rain) water solid (snow and ice), mostly by knowing what amount of water vapor is associated with the temperature derived from the satellite sensor image. Our weather prediction has become remarkably accurate in recent years and understanding the role of the transport of water in the air has made exponential advancements in understanding.

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/mearth.html

Below are numbers from the site above, and it should be noted that I do not exactly agree with all the numbers presented, but I agree enough so as not to quibble.

The total water supply of the world is 332.5 million cubic miles (mi3)(a cubic mile is a cube measuring one mile on each side), or 1,387 million cubic kilometers (km3). A cubic mile of water equals 7.481 trillion gallons of water. A cubic kilometer of water contains exactly a trillion liters. . . .and weighs a trillion kilograms or a billion metric tons.

About 3,100 mi3 (12,900 km3) of water, mostly in the form of water vapor, is in the atmosphere at any one time. If it all fell as precipitation at once, the Earth would be covered with only about 1 inch of water. (Les Porter: "These are round off's but that is the water vapor on average that floats in the air and warms and cools the Earth.)

The 48 contiguous United States receives a total volume of about 4 mi3)(17.7 km3) of precipitation each day.

Each day, 280 mi3 (1,170 km3) of water evaporates or transpirates into the atmosphere over the whole planet Earth.

If all of the world's water was poured on the United States, it would cover the land to a depth of 90 miles (145 kilometers).

Of the freshwater on Earth, much more is stored in the ground than is available in lakes and rivers. More than 2,000,000 mi3) (8,400,000 km3)of freshwater is stored in the Earth, most within one-half mile of the surface. Contrast that with the 60,000 mi3)(250,000 km3) of water stored as freshwater in lakes, inland seas, and rivers.

But, if you really want to find freshwater, the most is stored in the 7,000,000 mi3 (29,200,000 km3) of ice found in glaciers and in the ice caps, mainly in the polar regions and in Greenland. (Les Porter: Mostly Antarctica)

Of the world's total water supply of about 332.5 million mi3 of water, over 96 percent is saline. And, of the total freshwater, over 68 percent is locked up in ice and glaciers. Another 30 percent of freshwater is in the ground. Thus, flowing surface-water sources (such as rivers) only constitute about 300 mi3 (1,250 km3) (about 1/10,000 th of one percent of total water), yet rivers are the source of most of the water people use. (Many other animals go down to the river to drink, as well.)

Where water vapor is scant, it is dry, and it is cold.

Even if you can't see it, there is Water Vapor in the air. Just about every where! Of course, some places don't have very much. Places like the South Pole, or Vostok where it is high and cold are the very driest places on Earth. Oh yes, some people think it is the Atacama desert, and I know that is dry! I don't know if it is the driest place, but I do not think so.

It doesn't matter, but the Dry Valleys in Antarctica supposedly have had no moisture in 4 million years. The 'dryness' doesn't matter in this argument, nor to this argument structured as it is. We have some very hot dry and very cold dry places on the Earth.

When measuring (for the possible siting of an infrared telesope or near infrared telescope) the dryness of the atmosphere, its transparency at particular frequencies boils down to the miniscule fractional millimeter quantities of obscuring water vapor hidden in the dry air, and cool doesn't hurt at all for the telescope.

What the measurments reveal is that the South Polar Cap of Earth is one of the Earth's driest places. So why all the ice? Well, what water is there pretty much freezes out and falls as snow.

No kidding, but even the snow flakes are dry; almost like a withered skeleton of the really robust snowflakes we see in wetter warmer climes. The high altitude polar ice cap is where the concept of freeze-dried is practiced naturally on a vast dessication scale. When the winter-over and summer crews try to fill the snow/ice melter for camp water, there is a new meaning to the term "dry ice". (No. They do not say "That is sure dry water." But dry snow has meaning there.

Earth's South Polar Plateau temperatures range from -115o F to +6o F.; the mean temperature is -56o F. Winter wind-chills can descend to -148o F. Vostok has Earth's lowest recorded surface temperature of -129o F. Near the pole, and for an area the size of the continental US, winds average 12 mph. On the coast of Antarctica, 198 mph "katabatic winds" occur. (katabatic means downhill wind from a slope.)

An average humidity of 0.03% in the extreme cold make the South Pole region the world's driest desert.

(When you hear your local humidity is 20% to 70%, can you appreciate the average humidity in Antarctica? The insides of your nostrils will feel "dry" and cold.)

One area of ice in Wilkes land is 15,670 feet (4,776 meters ) thick. (170 feet short of 3 miles. It takes a while to build ice that thick. The thickest ice is about 200 miles inland from the coast of Wilkes Land. In another part of Wilkes Land but buried at only 1.5 miles beneath the ice, is thought to be an undiscovered 250-300km asteroid or comet impact crater. All evidence for such an impsct comes from gravity measurements and radar reflections through the ice to the bedrock. The age is postulated to be about 250 million years, and this is another potential source for the Permian extinction. The "Big One."

(No one knows what caused the extinction of about 95% of the speciesat that time. But, if the carbon dioxide buildup from human activities continues -- whatever intelligence wanders by or evolves after we are gone may talley the score of AGW right up there with the Big One.)

At the South Pole solar insolation becomes zero as our Sun dips below the horizon on March 22 in a more than 30 hour sunset, and isn't seen again until September 22. No water forcing there.

As stated before, only instruments we make can see water vapor, our eyes are incapable of seeing the frequencies radiated by water vapor. But we can see clouds, and below is "Katrina" as a giant whirling moisture laden inorganic entity before landfall near New Orleans in 2005.

Image Credit: NASA/SVS

NASA text:"Warm ocean waters fuel hurricanes, and there was plenty of warm water for Katrina to build up strength once she crossed over Florida and moved into the Gulf of Mexico. This image depicts a 3-day average of actual sea surface temperatures (SSTs) for the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, from August 25-27, 2005. Every area in yellow, orange or red represents 82 degrees Fahrenheit or above. A hurricane needs SSTs at 82 degrees or warmer to strengthen. The data came from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. The GOES satellite provided the cloud data for this image."--NASA

Notice how warm the water surface is in this image. That is a result of insolation, it is what provides the energy for the evaporation of water. Wet air is lighter than dry heavy air.

! This animation is worth watching! IT ends with Katrina landfall, US.

! http://www.nasa.gov/mpg/126449main_katrina_fred_animation.mpg

Katrina contained a lot of water in drops and vapor. What does a raindrop look like streaking through the air? (Falling, ignore transverse wind.)

See this page: Alistair B Fraser, Pennsylvalia State University

http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadRain.html

Image, see: http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/raindropshape.html

"Small raindrops (radius < 1 millimeter (mm)) are spherical; larger ones assume a shape more like that of a hamburger bun. When they get larger than a radius of about 4.5 mm they rapidly become distorted into a shape rather like a parachute with a tube of water around the base --- and then they break up into smaller drops."

Okay, by now you might get the idea that water and water vapor are in flux. Over most of the planet it is constant flux. There are great amounts of water vapofr in the air of the tropics, and generally much much less at high latitudes. When the air and climate are cooler, the absolute number of water molecules in the air is reduced. 100% humidity at -10 F is quite different than 100% humidity at 88 F.

Water is a REMARKABLE molecule.

Because of its remarkable properties water helps define what we think might be the universal abode of life around other stars, that is a place with water. Most scientist think that to self- assemble, the atoms and molecules of life need a medium that supports chemical communication between the molecules which are life. At the temperature our planet has enjoyed for the billions of years water has been present it's unique properties suggest it may be the basis of life elsewhere in the universe.

Water is unique in that it is the only natural substance that is found in all three states -- liquid, solid (ice), and gas (steam) -- at the temperatures normally found on Earth. Earth's water is constantly interacting, changing, and in motion.

Water freezes at 32o Fahrenheit (F) and boils at 212o F (at sea level, but 186.4° at 14,000 feet). In fact, water's freezing and boiling points are the baseline with which temperature is measured: 0o on the Celsius scale is water's freezing point, and 100o Celsius is water's boiling point.

Water is unusual in that the solid form, ice, is less dense than the liquid form, which is why ice floats. Most things reduce in volume rather than expand when they solidify.

Water has a very high specific heat index. This means that water can absorb a lot of heat before it begins to get hot. This is why water is valuable to industries and in your car's radiator as a coolant. The high specific heat index of water also helps regulate the rate at which air changes temperature, which is why the temperature change between seasons is gradual rather than sudden, especially near the oceans.
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Water has a very high surface tension. In other words, water is sticky and elastic, and tends to clump together in drops rather than spread out in a thin film. Surface tension is responsible for capillary action, which allows water (and its dissolved substances) to move through the roots of plants and through the tiny blood vessels in our bodies.

When a cloud floats in air.

How much does a cloud weigh?

How much does a cloud weigh?

Image: NOAA

You see them in the air, just floating there!

A cloud contains some "water vapor," which you can't see in the visible part of the spectrum -- and the cloud you see contains some liquid water, which you can see.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/fgz/science/cloud.php?wfo=fgz

I copied in the parts that Flagstaff NOAA got correct and left out the stuff they got wrong. I sent them an e-mail to correct it, AND BY THE WAY, they did fix it; correct it; and I got a nice little letter, er, e-mail. But here is a good one:

For the weight of a cloud let's use your basic "everyday" cloud— a cumulus cloud -- with a volume of about 1 cubic kilometer (km) located 2 km above the ground.
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The ideal gas law states that:
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DENSITY = P / TR (pressure(P) divided by temperature(T) multiplied by a constant(R))
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From the average values found in our atmosphere, we can use a temperature at about 2 km altitude of 275.15K (+2.15C roughly 36 F cool, huh? as cool as the deep ocean! nearly.) and a pressure at 2 km of 79.495KPa (795 mb). For dry air, the constant(R for Johannes Rydberg) equals 287 J/K*kg.
[Note: don't worry so much about the units given, just follow the general idea of the discussion.]

Density for air for these conditions is = 79.495 / 275.15 x 287 (times 1000 to get the units correct)

This gives us a density of 1.006673 kg/m3 for dry air. So we will call it 1.007.

For pure water vapor H2, we would use a constant(R) of 461 J/K*kg

Density of water vapor for the noted conditions = 79.495 / 275.15 x 461 (times 1000 to correct the units) = 0.626713963 or rounded to 0.627 kg/m3.

Which gives us a density for pure water vapor of 0.627 kg/m3.
Because the cloud is made up of a small amount of water vapor and a large amount of air, we would need to calculate the partial pressure of the water vapor, which in this case comes out to around 7 mb, or 0.9% of the total pressure (795 mb).
100.0% - 0.9% = 99.1%

So, [99.1 X ( 1.007 (dry air density) + 0.9 X 0.627 (moist air density)]/100 is approximately the density of the cloud itself. Calculating this gives a density in the cloud of 1.003 kg/m3, compared to 1.007 kg/m3 in the dry air surrounding the cloud. This shows that a cloud is less dense than the air around it, which is why it floats!

Now that density is taken care of, we only need to calculate the volume of the cloud. To make the example as easy as possible, we are assuming a 1 km by 1 km by 1 km cloud which gives us a volume of 1 (km3), a cube 1000 meters on a side..
Finally, we can now calculate the mass of the cloud.

Remember, the mass is density times the volume. So, we multiply 1 km3 by the density which is 1.003 kg/m3 and then multiply that by a factor of 1000 to get the units to be in kilograms(kg).

If you get out your calculators and do the math, you will see that our "cube" cloud weighs 1,003,000,000 kg (1,003,000 metric tons) or approximately 2,211,200,000 lbs. That's almost 2.2 Billion pounds!

If this cloud totally turned into rain and poured into a pool, the pool would be 15.874 meters (52.1 feet) tall, wide and deep; the cloud in liquid water state would be a swimming pool, 52.1 feet tall, wide and deep. (cube root of 4000 cubic meters = 1 cube 15.874 meters on a side.) Big deep pool of water. (If you saw this before I corrected it, it is correct now.)
However, remember that air also has mass. By doing the same calculation, but this time using the density of dry air, we come out with a mass of 1,007,000,000 kg or approximately 2,220,000,000 lbs. So, dry air indeed weighs more than moist air, which is why clouds can exist where they do, seeming to 'float' across the skies.

1,007,000,000 kg
1,003,000,000 kg subtract
___4,000,000 kg

or (4,000 metric tons lighter than equivalent volume of dry air! The stuff holding the cloud up like a diffuse balloon is hot water vapor and it weighs 4000 tons.)

Of course, you have always wanted to walk amongst the clouds, but it would take a large transparent nearly weightless balloon with a trillion cubic meter volume to enclose the lighter water vapor and offer a dangling purchase. At least an imaginary one. Or you would have to become as vaporous as a ghost, somewhat less dense.

In conclusion, a "typical" fair weather cumulus cloud, those that seem to graze about 2000 meters up, "weighs" over 2 billion pounds, or about 8.8 million pounds less than dry air of equal volume.
The main point to grasp from this discussion is not that clouds weigh so much, since in reality, they cannot be weighed, but rather, that moist air is less dense than dry air.

- -

Evaporation is the process by which water changes from a liquid to a gas (vapor.) Evaporation is the primary pathway that water traverses from the liquid state back into the water cycle as atmospheric water vapor.

Studies have shown that the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers provide nearly 90 percent of the moisture in the atmosphere via evaporation, with the remaining 10 percent being contributed by plant transpiration- - water that plants borrow and return..

A very small amount of water vapor enters the atmosphere through sublimation, the process by which water changes from a solid (ice or snow) to a gas, bypassing the liquid phase. When the dry air hits the snow, it changes the snow directly into water vapor, bypassing the liquid phase. Sublimation is a common way for snow to disappear quickly in arid climates.

Why evaporation happens:

Heat (energy) is necessary for evaporation to occur. Energy is used to break the bonds that hold water molecules together, which is why water easily evaporates at the boiling point (212oF, 100o C) but evaporates much more slowly at the freezing point. Net evaporation occurs when the rate of evaporation exceeds the rate of condensation. A state of saturation exists when these two process rates are equal, at which point the relative humidity of the air is 100 percent.

Credit: http://avc.comm.nsdlib.org/images/sgpmmcrcalC1_annotated.png

Image: NOAA's Portable Cloud Observatory

Condensation, the opposite of evaporation, occurs when saturated air is cooled below the dew point (the temperature to which air must be cooled at a constant pressure for it to become fully saturated with water), such as on the outside of a glass of ice water. The process of evaporation removes heat from the environment, which is why water evaporating from your skin cools you.

Evaporation from the oceans is the primary mechanism supporting the surface-to-atmosphere portion of the water cycle. The Earth's large surface area of the oceans (over 70 percent of the Earth's surface) provides the opportunity for large-scale evaporation to occur. On a global scale, the amount of water evaporating is in an equalibrium with the amount of water delivered to the Earth. Geographical transport does occur, however. Some places lose water to the air in copious amounts, and some places get more rain or snow than other places.

Evaporation is more prevalent over the oceans than precipitation. Over the land, precipitation routinely exceeds evaporation. Most of the water that evaporates from the oceans falls back into the oceans as precipitation. Only about 10 percent of the water evaporated from the oceans is transported over land and falls as precipitation.

Once evaporated, a water molecule might spend perhaps a maximum of 10 to 14 days in the air. Energy is exchanged with the surrounding gases in the event that great gobs of polar water molecules agglomerate to become a raindrop. (the word "polar" here is used to mean magnetic pole, where the Oxygen molecules arange themselves near condensation temperatures to make molecular strings, like a jointed chain.) The vapor to liquid energy thus released to the surrounding gases increases the molecular kinetic energy of the other constituents, the surroundings, and depending on overall ambient energy, can be borderline to causing liquid to evaporate again -- absorbing energy in the process. On a large scale this balance holds a lot of energy.

The process of evaporation is so great that without precipitation runoff, and ground-water discharge from aquifers, Earth's oceans would eventually become nearly empty.

[Les Porter: Notes: Above you read 280 mi3 of water are evaporated daily. 365.25 days x 280mi3 = 102,270mi3 per year. 326,000,000/102,270 = 3,187.64 years to evaporate the oceans. To me, that is quite a scary thing. Below, you will see that when Venus formed, the Sun was only 70% as bright as now and the amount of insolation from the Sun was 1833.7 W/m2(4.567Gya) -- MORE -- than the 1818.9 W/m2 the naturally warming Sun delivers to Earth in 3.2Gy, which will clearly remove the pesky water molecule from any desert hell hole planet like Earth. (Obviously, Venus never, never, never, had oceans. Not even with the dim Sun startup at 60% Lsol.)

Depending on the amount of CO2 we dump in the atmosphere, we could accelerate the removal of our planets oceans to space. The high CO2 histories of Earth were with a cooler dimmer sun, though probably in the 90%Lsol+ range for the last billion years, it still might be wise to NOT rattle this cage.

[I may yet end up computing (back of the envelope) what high levels of Carbon pollutants could do to advance the runaway water forcing greenhouse scheduled for a bit more than a billion years from now.]
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Less evaporation takes place during periods of calm winds than during windy times. When the air is calm, evaporated water tends to stay close to the water body, when winds are present, the moist air close to the water body is moved away and replaced by drier air which favors additional evaporation.
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Energy in evaporation.
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It was mentioned earlier that heat is removed from the environment during evaporation, leading to a net cooling. In climates where the humidity is low and the temperatures are hot, an evaporator cooler, such as a "swamp cooler" can lower the air temperature by 20 degrees F., while it increases humidity. Evaporative coolers work best in the dry areas of the United States and can work somewhat in the area's with moderate humidities. In the humid eastern U.S., closed internal system air conditioners must be used.

The evaporation of water, that is from liquid to gas, requires 7.5 times as much energy as melting to liquid from ice.

Evaporative coolers are really quite simple devices. Swamp coolers pull in the dry, hot outdoor air and pass it through an evaporative pad that is kept wet with a supply of water. As a fan draws the air through the evaporative pad, the water in the pad evaporates, resulting in cooler air which is pumped through the house. Much less energy is used when compared to a closed cycle heat pump type of air conditioner.

Radiation balance and heat flux.

How do greenhouse gases influence Earth's surface temperature?

Earth's average surface temperature is 33°C warmer than it would be if it had no atmosphere. A planet the size of Earth at Earth's distance from the sun, and in thermodynamic equilibrium with solar radiation, would have an average surface temperature of -18°C. Earth's present average surface is 15°C, which is 33°C warmer. This increase in temperature is due mostly to greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere. (What else affets the temperature -- the latitude of continental landmasses also determines energy balances of the ocean atmosphere land combinations.)

Image: UNEP, GRID Arendal, http://maps.grida.no/

ABOVE: The greenhouse effect is from the introduction to Climate Change written by the United Nations Environmental Program's UNEP Global Resources Information Database (GRID) office in Arendal Norway.

How the greenhouse effect works.

How does the greenhouse effect work? Here are some details of how greenhouse gases warm the Earth's surface:
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A. Sunlight reaches Earth, it has an intensity of 1367 W/m2 At the top of the atmosphere, but the average over all the earth is 343 W/m2. This average includes day and night, from the equator to the poles. Most solar energy has a wavelength close to 0.5 :m. [Les Porter: this just means a peak around 5,000 angstroms; yellowish visible light.)
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B. 49% of the incoming sunlight goes straight through the atmosphere and it is absorbed by earth's surface, mostly in the tropical ocean.
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C. 31% of the incoming sunlight is reflected back to space, 22% by clouds, and 9% by the surface.
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D. The remaining 20% is absorbed in the atmosphere.
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E. Sunlight that is absorbed by earth's surface and atmosphere warms the surface and the atmosphere.
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F. The surface cools primarily in two ways:
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---1. All surfaces radiate heat, mostly at wavelengths close to 10 :m wavelength. On average, they radiate 390 W/m2. This is more than the incoming solar heat, and earth would rapidly cool if there were no greenhouse gases.
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~~~~~~~~a.) 90% of the infrared radiation emitted by the surface is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
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~~~~~~~~b.)10% of the infrared radiation emitted by the surface goes directly to space, mostly in polar regions.
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---2. The ocean evaporates, losing latent heat. On average, two meters of water is evaporated from the tropical ocean each year. In addition, small amounts of water evaporate from land and plants on land. On average, 78 W/m2 is lost by evaportion. All latent heat is released in the atmosphere when the evaporated water condenses as water in clouds and rain. This warms the atmosphere.
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G. The atmosphere cools by radiating infrared radiation to space.
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H. 45% of the heat that warms the atmosphere is radiated to space (235W/m2).
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I. 55% of the heat that warms the atmosphere is quickly re-radiated radiated back to the earth (324 W/m2). This warms the earth and the lower atmosphere.
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Image: (ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/pictures)

This plot above shows the transparency of the atmosphere as a function of wavelength (bottom) and the influence of absorption by different atmospheric gases. Between 0.6 :m and 0.3 :m the atmosphere is clear (an atmospheric window) allowing sunlight to reach the surface. There is a less clear window near 10 :m that allows infrared radiation to carry heat from the surface to space. Greenhouse gases partly obstruct the clarity of the window, helping keep the surface warm. Note that water vapor is highly variable, absorbing radiation much more strongly in the tropics and much less in the polar regions.

Image:"NOAO/AURA/NSF"

A high resolution version of the spectrum of our Sun, this image was created from a digital atlas observed with the Fourier Transform Spectrometer at the McMath-Pierce Solar Facility at Kitt Peak National Observatory, near Tucson, Arizona (`Solar Flux Atlas from 296 to 1300 nm' by Robert L. Kurucz, Ingemar Furenlid, James Brault, and Larry Testerman: National Solar Observatory Atlas No. 1, June 1984.). The images shown here were created to mimic an echelle spectrum, with wavelength increasing from left to right along each strip, and from bottom to top. Each of the 50 slices covers 60 angstroms, for a complete spectrum across the visual range from 40009(violet) to 7000(red) angstroms. [Les Porter: this is the Visible Light portion of the Sun's energy output and also the most energetic portion of the Sun's spectrum. Clearly, human eyes were built to exploit this maximum energy portion of the solar spectrum since any other part of the spectrum would have less energy to exploit for eyes to see with.]

Radiative Forcing.

Image: Wikipedia, from IPCC

The Main Greenhouse Gases.

Image: UNEP, GRIDA.NO

Water's Place in the Main Greenhouse Gases.
One cannot address climate or life without considering water in all its complexity.

Recent modeling indicates water vapor contributions are about equal to the sum of the other atmospheric GHGs and are positive feedbacks, outweighing the negative. That means water vapor in concert with the other gases doubles the effective atmospheric warming. Water vapor, in any instance is basically outside of human direct influence, except for the fact we are pumping CO2 into the air, causing a warming which transports more water into the air and actually doubles the heating of earth in conjunction with the other greenhouse gases.

Other than the effects locally of irrigating a field for agricultural products where a very small local change to local weather -- results, the only control we have over water vapor comes from our heating the atmosphere with CO2 and other GHGs.

Ten years ago the strength and direction of water vapor greenhouse effects, were not known as well as they are today -- primarily because of satellite information. Keep that in mind as you read the following NASA characterizations.

http://nasascience.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/ocean-earth-system/ocean-water-cycle
The text from nasascience.nasa.gov link above, copied directly below, here, may help you understand the balance our input of CO2 into the atmosphere is causing as a result. Realize this was written with knowledge of 10 years ago.

FROM NASA Science:"Water is at the heart of both the causes and effects of climate change."

"The ocean plays a key role in this vital cycle of water. The ocean holds 97% of the total water on the planet; 78% of global precipitation occur over the ocean, and it is the source of 86% of global evaporation.

Evaporation from the sea surface keeps the oceans from overheating. If there were no oceans, only land, the earth's greenhouse effect would lead to a surface temperature far too high. (for life) If the earth were in radiative equilibrium, with an atmosphere, the surface temperature would be 67°C.

This does not happen because water evaporates from the surface, mostly from tropical seas, cooling the surface. The hydrological cycle keeps the greenhouse effect from heading to an overly hot planet.

Sunlight warms the surface, mostly the tropical seas. The seas lose heat by evaporation (latent heat flux). Winds carry the vapor away from tropics. When the vapor condenses as rain, mostly in the ITCZ, it releases the latent heat, which warms the air, which drives the atmospheric circulation. Etc. This result of the hydrological cycle is of over riding importance. Without it we would not live on a habitable planet." -----NASA -- end excerpt.

[img500x400]http://nasascience.nasa.gov/images/oceans-images/water_cycle.jpg/image_preview[/img]

`IMAGES: UNEP

Image" NASA

IMAGE: Wikipedia; NOAA, from Boulder, CO, released to Wikipedia.

Water Vapor in the stratosphere:

Water vapor concentrations in the stratosphere are much smaller than those in the troposphere, but changes in stratospheric water vapor may play a significant role in altering the temperature in both layers of the atmosphere. Global climate model results show that due to energy redistribution in the stratosphere, increases in water vapor can lead to cooling in the upper atmosphere, while these same increases can lead to a warming near the surface. The 22-year record of stratospheric water vapor observations collected from Boulder, Colo.— the only one of its kind — has been derived from monthly balloon soundings.(direct observation and measurement) The record shows significant year-to-year variations, but over the longer term, the one percent annual increase in water vapor throughout the entire stratosphere is very significant. Approximately 30 percent of the recently observed water vapor increase may be attributed to increases in atmospheric methane that reacts with the hydroxyl radical (OH) to form carbon dioxide and water. However, the source for the remaining 70 percent of the increase is not well established. [Les Porter: I am looking for commercial aircraft fossil-fuel sources for a proportional part of the 'remaining 70 percent' increase of water vapor in the stratosphere, though I suspect it will account for no more than half of the shortfall at this stage. If you find this information, contact me through Xomba.]

The Runaway Greenhouse.

NASA scientists studied the runaway greenhouse signature that occurs over the Pacific warm pool region where sea surface temperatures commonly reach 87 F. The area of interest in the lower left-hand corner of the black box is just northeast of Australia, near Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Image provided by the NOAA-CIRES Climate Diagnostics Center from their web site at:
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http://www.cdc.noaa.gov.
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http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2002/02_60AR.html
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Excerpt from NASA News sheet: TROPICAL ‘RUNAWAY GREENHOUSE’ PROVIDES INSIGHT TO VENUS
`NASA---
"A region in the western tropical Pacific Ocean may help scientists understand how Venus lost all of its water and became a 900-degree inferno. The study of this local phenomenon by NASA scientists also should help researchers understand what conditions on Earth might lead to a similar fate here.
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"The phenomenon, called the ‘runaway greenhouse’ effect, occurs when a planet absorbs more energy from the sun than it can radiate back to space. Under these circumstances, the hotter the surface temperature gets, the faster it warms up. Scientists detect the signature of a runaway greenhouse when planetary heat loss begins to drop as surface temperature rises. Only one area on Earth – the western Pacific's ‘warm pool’ just northeast of Australia – exhibits this signature. Because the warm pool covers only a small fraction of the Earth’s surface, the Earth as a whole never actually ‘runs away.’
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"However, scientists believe Venus did experience a global runaway greenhouse effect about 3 billion to 4 billion years ago.
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"Soon after the planets were formed 4.5 billion years ago, Earth, Venus and Mars probably all had water. [Les Porter: I suspect Venus NEVER had significant amounts of liquid water since the Sun turned on. Of course, comets would splash into Venus, and as they did on Earth, bring some water. On Venus, it would not last long -- and in my opinion, not long enough for an ocean, and not long enough for life to develop, let alone evolve. Just too hot. See http://www.xomba.com/venus_life_never_had_a_chance]
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How did Earth manage to hold onto all of its water, while Venus apparently lost all of its water?" asked Maura Rabbette, Earth and planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. "We have extensive earth science data to help address that question." --NASA
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Read the complete statement: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2002/02_60AR.html

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Also relevant: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20040171753_2004168321.pdf
`NASA--
Ames Research Center Publication Date: June 2002 Document Source: CASI Download Document: Document ID: 20040171753 Price Code: A01 Keywords: GREENHOUSE EFFECT ATMOSPHERIC MODELS SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE AIR WATER INTERACTIONS PLANETARY METEOROLOGY EARTH ATMOSPHERE Accessibility: Unclassified; No Copyright; Unlimited; Publicly available
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ABSTRACT:

"Water vapor is an efficient absorber of outgoing longwave infrared radiation on Earth and is, therefore, a primary greenhouse gas. Since the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere increases with increasing surface temperature, and the increase in water vapor further increases the temperature, there is a positive feedback. The runaway greenhouse effect occurs if this feedback continues unchecked until all the water has left the surface and enters the atmosphere. "

"For Mars and Earth, the runaway greenhouse effect was halted when water vapor became saturated with respect to ice or liquid water, respectively. However, Venus is considered to be an example of a planet where the runaway greenhouse effect did occur, and it has been speculated that if the solar luminosity were to increase above a certain limit, it would also occur on Earth. "

"Satellite data acquired during the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) clear sky conditions shows that as the sea surface temperature (SST) increases, the rate of outgoing infrared radiation at the top of the atmosphere also increases, as expected. Surprisingly, above 300 kelvin (K) the outgoing radiation emitted to space actually decreases with rising SST. Less energy to space implies that more energy is available to heat the surface, leading to a potentially unstable situation. This behavior is a signature of the runaway greenhouse effect on Earth. "

However, the SST never exceeds 303 K, thus the system has a natural cap that stops the runaway. "--NASA

End excerpt
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Hot-tub Ocean, swim and cook!
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Noted below is a report indicating that during the Age of the Dinosaurs, sea surface temperatures did exceed 87o F.

This is less optimistic as relates to the sea surface temperature and methane and carbon dioxide concentrations. Here the ocean clearly exceeds the NASA, Ames limit and the proxy confidence is extremely high.

http://www.whoi.edu/mr/pr.do?id=10346

Excerpt:
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"The team analyzed the shells’ isotopic and trace element chemistry, which changes along with temperature changes in the surface waters where they lived. They determined that ocean temperatures in the region ranged between 91° and 107°F (33° and 42°C) between 84 million and 100 million years ago in an era when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Temperatures range between 75° and 82°F (24° and 28°C) in the same region now. The approximate uncertainty in the paleotemperature estimates is +/-2°C. "

"Using organic matter from the sediments, the group also estimated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during the same time span. They were 1,300 to 2,300 parts per million (ppm), compared with 380 ppm today."

"The findings, if confirmed, create a dilemma for scientists seeking to forecast how Earth’s climate and environment will change in response to the rising amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused by deforestation and the burning of oil, coal, and other fossil fuels. When 1,300 to 2,300 ppm of carbon dioxide is factored into current computer models that simulate global climate, it does not produce such high ocean temperatures."

“The climate models underestimate temperatures and the amount of warming that would accompany an increase in CO2 of more than 1,000 ppm above today’s level.” Bice said..

Read the report here:

http://www.whoi.edu/science/GG/people/kbice/Bice_etal_2006.pdf

Multiple proxy methods of temperature determination were used, including 18O ratios, and Mg/Ca ratios.

From Dr. Bice's website at Woods Hole Oceanographc Institute:

http://www.whoi.edu/science/GG/people/kbice/home.html

Also see her comments to and about those such as Elsevier for profit (pay again for science) research websites. I am in 100% agreement!

http://www.whoi.edu/science/GG/people/kbice/lett_openaccess.pdf

=================== And from which I quote:

“Why is it that anyone can download medical nonsense from the Web for free, but citizens must pay to
see the results of carefully conducted biomedical research that was financed by their taxes?”
- Washington Post, Tuesday, August 5, 2003
-- From Dr. Bice's website.
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Hear! Hear!
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Also for young men and women, boys and girls interested in science! Dr. Karen Bice will gladly engage your curiosity. See here:

http://www.whoi.edu/science/GG/people/kbice/k-12_resources.html
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Water vapor, and a greenhouse gas perspective.

I use my fictional gambler, and Climate Scientist, Dr. John Thatcher, modified from his presentation to Tony Soprano's family and associates at:
http://www.xomba.com/tony_soprano_learns_about_climate_change_and_calls_a_meeting_to_educate_his_people

to "close" this segment.

Dr. John Thatcher:

"By the way, water vapor is a greenhouse gas! It helps keep the Earth warm, and cool. In Climate Science we treat this as a "result" component, not a "forcing component." The reason we do not treat it as a "forcing component" is that water vapor, the individual molecule, does not have any real 'lifetime' in the air. And energy is involved either as acquiring, absorbing energy, or giving energy off as it changes phase -- solid, liquid, vapor -- in the air.

"Water cleanly evaporates into the dry air in quantity. As the air containing water vapor rises into higher atmosphere it cools and condenses and you can see the results in the mountains of vapor piling into visible clouds, or over parts of the ocean building into clouds. Sometimes those cloud drops are re-evaporated into the air, and that requires energy being transfered from the air to the water vapor.

"Many times you can observe the droplets in the high fringes of a cloud just vanishing, turning back into vapor. But it doesn't last very long. While it is a vapor, visible light pretty much passes right through it. Water vapor is there, but you do not see it.

"So when conditions are right, water evaporates, and floats around for a very short time, a few days to two weeks at most, before it rains, or fogs, or snows to Earth. Water vapor collects on tiny dust or salt particles, and aerosols, and thereby cleans the air. Also as the air warms it holds more and more humidity more clouds.

"Do clouds, water clouds, warm or cool the earth? Both! And it is a remarkable and fortuitous equilibrium. As the CO2 and other gaseous components with long atmospheric lives trap the longer wave radiations that would have carried energy to space, the atmosphere warms. It holds more water, more water vapor. Because water is in this ever variable equilibrium condition, we will have a new equilbrium within the range of temperature conditions for which this can occur.

"To point out the obvious, water vapor is "beyond our ability to control;" is not anthropogenic, and variations of concentrations in the air from the historical values are a result of the air warming, not of the water vapor as a singular driving force in making the air warm by itself!

However, having stated that -- we must recognize we do have a modicum of control in an indirect way over water vapor in the air. The more CO2 and other GHGs we dump into the air, the warmer the air gets and the more water vapor it will hold, you know, and the humidity increases, generally. That general increase has finally led us climate scientists to see absolutely that the water vapor component of the air produces atmosphere warming in conjunction with the CO2 and other gases. The direction of forcing is positive and the magnitude is, by itself, equivalent to to that produced by CO2 and the other GHG gases. Meaning, the warming doubles when you include the water vapor.

I am reluctant to compute the actual CO2 percentage of the atmosphere that would put water vapor and the other warming components over the top into a runaway greenhouse condition. Other scientist's have estimated that it could occur with a mere 10% absolute temperature increase -- that is at the top of the atmosphere. That won't happen for more than a billion years when the Sun warms up a bit more. It doesn't look possible with our present temperatures and vast ocean heat sink for us to convert Earth to Venus without the Sun's considerable help.

When it does occur -- making the Earth warmer in a forcing condition-- we would be seeing the Earth losing its oceans to space. That will happen eventually, but not this round. It will require a great many more watts from the sun than will be available until more than a billion years have passed.
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A billion years with ice.

Understand that the age of the Earth is approximately 4.567 billion years.

As long and deep as the ice core records are, they are nothing compared to the age of the Earth, more like the thickness of a few single pages to a twenty-four volume set of encyclopedias.

(Say 500 pages a volume x 24 volumes = 12,000 pages, now 4.567 billion/12,000 =380,583.33 years a page. That means we are nearly 2 pages back from the present with the extant ice record.)

This "educational" group of statements below is from the website of the Illinois State Museum and shows a billion year graphic upon which several major 'ice ages' are noted. The area of the State of Illinois has experienced numerous glaciations over even recent time periods.

To the left and extending 3-and-a-half times the length of this line is where most of the history of Earth occured. The Billion Years of th Graphic represents one billion of Earth's journeys around the Sun. It does not cover even one fourth of the age of the Earth; but it shows the gross features of what little we know of Earth's vast history, and for the ice, generally indicates where we have certain evidentiary knowledge.
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http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/when_ice_ages.html

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When have ice ages occurred?
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I quote from the Illinois exhibit and credit below:

Many glacial advances and retreats have occurred during the last billion years of Earth history. These glaciations are not randomly distributed in time. Instead, they are concentrated into four time intervals. Large, important glaciations occurred during the late Proterozoic (between about 800 and 600 million years ago), during the Pennsylvanian and Permian (between about 350 and 250 million years ago), and the late Neogene to Quaternary (the last 4 million years). Somewhat less extensive glaciations occurred during portions of the Ordovician and Silurian (between about 460 and 430 million years ago).
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Copy made for educational purposes only.
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During each of these intervals, many glacial advances and retreats occurred. For example, over 60 glacial advances and retreats have occurred during the last 2 million years.

If "ice age" is used to refer to long, generally cool, intervals during which glaciers advance and retreat, we are still in one today. Our modern climate represents a very short, warm period between glacial advances.

Copyright 1995, second edition, 2002, Illinois State Museum. All text and images in this exhibit are the property of the State of Illinois. Educational use is encouraged; however, any commercial duplication without prior written consent of the ISM is prohibited.

==================================================

Possibly 2.3 or 2.8 billion years ago there was another major period of glaciation, (that is sometimes in a period of 500 million years, equal to half the length of the graphic above), but it and even earlier glaciations are of little consequence to our current situation other than to recognize it is an amazingly complex (and interesting) process to sort out the vast history of Earth.
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60 glaciations in 2 million years? Okay.
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2,000,000-years /60 = 33,333 years each, so indeed, if there were 60 episodes of advance and retreat, maybe they weren't full advances or full retreats. Right now, the Science of ice cores won't yet push us back 1 million years, or to 1.5 million, where we would really like to go. [There is hope that the lower end of the WAIS Divide Cores may reach back a million years.]
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Part 3

http://www.xomba.com/ice_cores_co2_and_water_vapor_part_iii