Engineering topics

Hansen, James E.

Publications and source records attributed to Hansen, James E..

At least 19 records

NASA NTRS2013

The Role of Long-Lived Greenhouse Gases as Principal LW Control Knob that Governs the Global Surface Temperature for Past and Future Climate Change

The climate system of the Earth is endowed with a moderately strong greenhouse effect that is characterized by non-condensing greenhouse gases (GHGs) that provide the core radiative forcing. Of these, the most important is atmospheric CO2. There is a strong feedback contribution to the greenhouse effect by water vapor and clouds that is unique in the solar system, exceeding the core radiative forcing due to the non-condensing GHGs by a factor of three. The significance of the non-condensing GHGs is that once they have been injected into the atmosphere, they remain there virtually indefinitely because they do not condense and precipitate from the atmosphere, their chemical removal time ranging from decades to millennia. Water vapor and clouds have only a short lifespan, with their distribution determined by the locally prevailing meteorological conditions, subject to Clausius-Clapeyron constraint. Although solar irradiance is the ultimate energy source that powers the terrestrial greenhouse effect, there has been no discernible long-term trend in solar irradiance since precise monitoring began in the late 1970s. This leaves atmospheric CO2 as the effective control knob driving the current global warming trend. Over geological time scales, volcanoes are the principal source of atmospheric CO2, and the weathering of rocks is the principal sink, with the biosphere participating as both a source and a sink. The problem at hand is that human industrial activity is causing atmospheric CO2, to increase by 2 ppm per year, whereas the interglacial rate has been 0.005 ppm per year. This is a geologically unprecedented rate to turn the CO2 climate control knob. This is causing the global warming that threatens the global environment.

Greenhouse effect↗

NASA NTRS2013

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Historical and Projected Nuclear Power

In the aftermath of the March 2011 accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the future contribution of nuclear power to the global energy supply has become somewhat uncertain. Because nuclear power is an abundant, low-carbon source of base-load power, it could make a large contribution to mitigation of global climate change and air pollution. Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420 000−7.04 million deaths and 80−240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power.

nuclear power plants↗

NASA NTRS2005

Pressures in Tumuli: A Study of Tumuli Formation

Tumuli form via localized inflation in surface lava flows. These domed features have widths of 10-20 m, lengths of 10-150 m, and heights of 1-9 m. The axial fracture exposes a brittle crust overlying a ductilely deformed layer. The total crustal thickness is typically less than lm. Tumuli are observed on both terrestrial and martian lava flow surfaces, and provide insight on the flow formation processes and rates. Past studies have estimated the inflation pressure using a bending model for a circular, thin elastic plate, assuming small deflection (Rossi and Gudmundson, 1996). This formulation results in unrealistic pressures for some tumuli. We thus examine alternative models, including those with different shapes, bending of the ductile crust, large deflection, plastic deformation, and thick plate bending. Using the thickness of the ductile crust in the equations for thin, circular plates reduces most pressures to reasonable values. Alternative plate shapes do not cause a significant reduction in inflation pressure. Although the large deflection equations should be applicable based on the plate thickness to tumuli height ratios, they give even less realistic pressures. Tumuli with unrealistic pressures appear to have exceeded the critical bending moment, and have relatively thick crusts, requiring thick plate bending models.

Hansen, James E.↗

NASA NTRS2002

Comparison of Mean Climate Trends in the Northern Hemisphere Between N.C.E.P. and Two Atmosphere-Ocean Model Forced Runs

Results are presented for two greenhouse gas experiments of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Atmosphere-Ocean Model (AOM). The computed trends of surface pressure, surface temperature, 850, 500 and 200 mb geopotential heights and related temperatures of the model for the time frame 1960-2000 are compared to those obtained from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction observations. A spatial correlation analysis and mean value comparison are performed, showing good agreement. A brief general discussion about the statistics of trend detection is presented. The domain of interest is the Northern Hemisphere (NH) because of the higher reliability of both the model results and the observations. The accuracy that this AOM has in describing the observed regional and NH climate trends makes it reliable in forecasting future climate changes.

Lucarini, Valerio↗

NASA NTRS2002

Chemistry-Climate Interactions in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies General Circulation Model: New Insights into Modeling the Pre-Industrial Atmosphere - 2

We investigate the chemical (hydroxyl and ozone) and dynamical response to changing from present day to pre-industrial conditions in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies General Circulation Model (GISS GMC). We identify three main improvements not included by many other works. Firstly, our model includes interactive cloud calculations. Secondly we reduce sulfate aerosol which impacts NOx partitioning hence Ox distributions. Thirdly we reduce sea surface temperatures and increase ocean ice coverage which impact water vapor and ground albedo respectively. Changing the ocean data (hence water vapor and ozone) produces a potentially important feedback between the Hadley circulation and convective cloud cover. Our present day run (run 1, control run) global mean OH value was 9.8 x 10(exp 5) molecules/cc. For our best estimate of pre-industrial conditions run (run 2) which featured modified chemical emissions, sulfate aerosol and sea surface temperatures/ocean ice, this value changed to 10.2 x 10(exp 5) molecules/cc. Reducing only the chemical emissions to pre-industrial levels in run 1 (run 3) resulted in this value increasing to 10.6 x 10(exp 5) molecules/cc. Reducing the sulfate in run 3 to pre-industrial levels (run 4) resulted in a small increase in global mean OH (10.7 x 10(exp 5) molecules/cc). Changing the ocean data in run 4 to pre-industrial levels (run 5) led to a reduction in this value to 10.3 x 10(exp 5) molecules/cc. Mean tropospheric ozone burdens were 262, 181, 180, 180, and 182 Tg for runs 1-5 respectively.

Grenfell, J. Lee↗

NASA NTRS2002

Outflow-Induced Dynamical and Radiative Instability in Stellar Envelopes with an Application to Luminous Blue Variables and Wolf-Rayet Stars

Theoretical models of the remnants of massive stars in a very hot, post-red-supergiant phase display no obvious instability if standard assumptions are made. However, the brightest observed classical luminous blue variables (LBVs) may well belong to such a phase. A simple time-dependent theory of moving stellar envelopes is developed in order to treat deep hydrodynamical disturbances caused by surface mass loss and to test the moving envelopes for dynamical instability. In the case of steady-state outflow, the theory reduces to the equivalent of the Castor, Abbott, and Klein formulation for optically thick winds at distances well above the sonic point. The time-dependent version indicates that the brightest and hottest LBVs are both dynamically and radiatively unstable, as a result of the substantial lowering of the generalized Eddington luminosity limit by the mass-loss acceleration. It is suggested that dynamical instability, by triggering secular cycles of mass loss, is primarily what differentiates LBVs from the purely radiatively unstable Wolf-Rayet stars. Furthermore, when accurate main-sequence mass-loss rates are used to calculate the evolutionary tracks, the predicted surface hydrogen and nitrogen abundances of the blue remnants agree much better with observations of the brightest LBVs than before.

Stothers, Richard B.↗

NASA NTRS2002

The Frequency Detuning Correction and the Asymmetry of Line Shapes: The Far Wings of H2O-H2O

A far-wing line shape theory which satisfies the detailed balance principle is applied to the H2O-H2O system. Within this formalism, two line shapes are introduced, corresponding to band-averages over the positive and negative resonance lines, respectively. Using the coordinate representation, the two line shapes can be obtained by evaluating 11-dimensional integrations whose integrands are a product of two factors. One depends on the interaction between the two molecules and is easy to evaluate. The other contains the density matrix of the system and is expressed as a product of two 3-dimensional distributions associated with the density matrices of the absorber and the perturber molecule, respectively. If most of the populated states are included in the averaging process, to obtain these distributions requires extensive computer CPU time, but only have to be computed once for a given temperature. The 11-dimensional integrations are evaluated using the Monte Carlo method, and in order to reduce the variance, the integration variables are chosen such that the sensitivity of the integrands on them is clearly distinguished.

Ma, Q.↗

NASA NTRS2002

Solar Forcing of Regional Climate Change During the Maunder Minimum

We examine the climate response to solar irradiance changes between the late 17th century Maunder Minimum and the late 18th century. Global average temperature changes are small (about 0.3 to 0.4 C) in both a climate model and empirical reconstructions. However, regional temperature changes are quite large. In the model, these occur primarily through a forced shift toward the low index state of the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation. This leads to colder temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere continents, especially in winter (1 to 2 C), in agreement with historical records and proxy data for surface temperatures.

Shindell, Drew T.↗

NASA NTRS2002

Trends of Measured Climate Forcing Agents

The growth rate of climate forcing by measured greenhouse gases peaked near 1980 at almost 5 W/sq m per century. This growth rate has since declined to approximately equal to 3 W/sq m per century, largely because of cooperative international actions. We argue that trends can be reduced to the level needed for the moderate "alternative" climate scenario (approximately equal to 2 W/M2 per century for the next 50 years) by means of concerted actions that have other benefits, but the forcing reductions are not automatic "co-benefits" of actions that slow CO2 emissions. Current trends of climate forcings by aerosols remain very uncertain. Nevertheless, practical constraints on changes in emission levels suggest that global warming at a rate + 0.15 +/- 0.05 C per decade will occur over the next several decades.

Hansen, James E.↗

NASA NTRS2002

Climate Change and Expected Impacts on the Global Water Cycle

How the elements of the global hydrologic cycle may respond to climate change is reviewed, first from a discussion of the physical sensitivity of these elements to changes in temperature, and then from a comparison of observations of hydrologic changes over the past 100 million years. Observations of current changes in the hydrologic cycle are then compared with projected future changes given the prospect of global warming. It is shown that some of the projections come close to matching the estimated hydrologic changes that occurred long ago when the earth was very warm.

Rind, David↗

NASA NTRS2001

Modeling Feedbacks Between Water and Vegetation in the Climate System

Not only is water essential for life on earth, but life itself affects the global hydrologic cycle and consequently the climate of the planet. Whether the global feedbacks between life and the hydrologic cycle tend to stabilize the climate system about some equilibrium level is difficult to assess. We use a global climate model to examine how the presence of vegetation can affect the hydrologic cycle in a particular region. A control for the present climate is compared with a model experiment in which the Sahara Desert is replaced by vegetation in the form of trees and shrubs common to the Sahel region. A second model experiment is designed to identify the separate roles of two different effects of vegetation, namely the modified albedo and the presence of roots that can extract moisture from deeper soil layers. The results show that the presence of vegetation leads to increases in precipitation and soil moisture in western Sahara. In eastern Sahara, the changes are less clear. The increase in soil moisture is greater when the desert albedo is replaced by the vegetation albedo than when both the vegetation albedo and roots are added. The effect of roots is to withdraw water from deeper layers during the dry season. One implication of this study is that the insertion of vegetation into the Sahara modifies the hydrologic cycle so that the vegetation is more likely to persist than initially.

Miller, James R.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Did the Eruption of the Mt. Pinatubo Volcano Affect Cirrus Properties?

Some observations suggest that the volcanic aerosols produced by the Mt. Pinatubo eruption may have altered cirrus properties. We look for evidence that such modification of cirrus is extensive enough to be climatically significant by comparing three satellite-based cirrus datasets produced by the ISCCP (International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project) analysis, the 'split-window' analysis, and 3I analysis. Since the former two have not been compared in detail before, we conduct such a comparison here. When applied to AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) data, both the ISCCP and split-window analyses identify about 0.2 - 0.3 cirrus cloud amount in tropical latitudes; however, there are detailed differences of classification for about half of these clouds. The discrepancies are attributed to the simplified assumptions made by both methods. The latter two datasets are derived from infrared radiances, so they are much less sensitive to volcanic aerosols than the ISCCP analysis. After the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, the ISCCP results indicate a dramatic decrease of thin cirrus (cloud top pressure less than 440 mb and visible optical thickness less than 1.3) over ocean, accompanied by a comparable increase of altocumulus and cumulus clouds; over land, there are no significant changes. In contrast, results from the split-window and 3I analyses show little change in thin cirrus amount over either ocean or land that is associated with the volcanic eruption. The ISCCP results can, therefore, be understood as a misclassification of thin cirrus because the additional reflected sunlight by the volcanic aerosol makes the cirrus clouds appear to be optically thicker. Examination of the split-window signature and the infrared emissivities from 3I show no significant change in infrared emissivity (or optical thickness). These results indicate that the Mt. Pinatubo volcanic aerosol did not have a significant systematic effect on tropical cirrus properties, but rather produced only temporary, local effects. Hence, these results indicate that there was no significant climate feedback produced by aerosol-cirrus-radiative interactions.

Luo, Zhengzhao↗

NASA NTRS2001

Northern Hemisphere Winter Climate Response to Greenhouse Gas, Ozone, Solar and Volcanic Forcing

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) climate/middle atmosphere model has been used to study the impacts of increasing greenhouse gases, polar ozone depletion, volcanic eruptions, and solar cycle variability. We focus on the projection of the induced responses onto Northern Hemisphere winter surface climate. Changes in the model's surface climate take place largely through enhancement of existing variability patterns, with greenhouse gases, polar ozone depletion and volcanic eruptions primarily affecting the Arctic Oscillation (AO) pattern. Perturbations descend from the stratosphere to the surface in the model by altering the propagation of planetary waves coming up from the surface, in accord with observational evidence. Models lacking realistic stratospheric dynamics fail to capture these wave flux changes. The results support the conclusion that the stratosphere plays a crucial role in recent AO trends. We show that in our climate model, while ozone depletion has a significant effect, greenhouse gas forcing is the only one capable of causing the large, sustained increase in the AO observed over recent decades. This suggests that the AO trend, and a concurrent strengthening of the stratospheric vortex over the Arctic, are very likely anthropogenic in origin.

Shindell, Drew T.↗

NASA NTRS2001

The Cloudsat Mission and the EOS Constellation: A New Dimension of Space-Based Observation of Clouds and Precipitation

CloudSat is a satellite experiment designed to measure the vertical structure of clouds from space. The expected launch of CloudSat is planned for 2004 and, once launched, CloudSat will orbit in formation as part of a constellation of satellites including NASA's Aqua and Aura satellites, a NASA-CNES lidar satellite (P-C) and a CNES satellite carrying a polarimeter (PARASOL). A unique feature that CloudSat brings to this constellation is the ability to fly a precise orbit enabling the fields of view of the CloudSat radar to be overlapped with the P-C lidar footprint and the other measurements of the EOS constellation. The precision of this overlap creates a unique multi-satellite observing system for studying the atmospheric processes essential to the hydrological cycle. The vertical profile of cloud properties provided by CloudSat fills a critical gap in the investigation of feedback mechanisms linking clouds to climate. Measuring the vertical profile of cloud properties requires a combination of active and passive instruments, and this will be achieved by combining the radar data of CloudSat with active and passive data from other sensors of the constellation. This paper describes the underpinning science, and gives an overview of the mission, and provides some idea of the expected products and anticipated application of these products. Notably, the CloudSat mission is expected to provide new knowledge about global cloudiness, stimulating new areas of research on clouds including data assimilation and cloud parameterization. The mission also provides an important opportunity to demonstrate active sensor technology for future scientific and tactical applications. The CloudSat mission is a partnership between NASA/JPL, the Canadian Space Agency, Colorado State University, the US Air Force, and the US Department of Energy.

Stephens, Graeme L.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Yellow Hypergiants as Dynamically Unstable Post-Red-supergiant Stars

According to recent theoretical studies, the majority of single stars more massive than 30 solar mass successfully evolve into red supergiants, but then lose most of their hydrogen envelopes and metamorphose into hot blue remnants. While they are cool, they become dynamically unstable as a result of high radiation pressure and partial ionization of the gases in their outer layers. It is shown here that these unstable red-supergiant models repeatedly shrink and re-expand on a thermal time scale when perturbed by heavy bursts of mass loss. Consequently, they fill up the domain of yellow hypergiants on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and display very fast rates of evolution there, as observed.

Stothers, Richard B.↗

NASA NTRS2001

A Chronology of Annual-Mean Effective Radii of Stratospheric Aerosols from Volcanic Eruptions During the Twentieth Century as Derived From Ground-based Spectral Extinction Measurements

Stratospheric extinction can be derived from ground-based spectral photometric observations of the Sun and other stars (as well as from satellite and aircraft measurements, available since 1979), and is found to increase after large volcanic eruptions. This increased extinction shows a characteristic wavelength dependence that gives information about the chemical composition and the effective (or area weighted mean) radius of the particles responsible for it. Known to be tiny aerosols constituted of sulfuric acid in a water solution, the stratospheric particles at midlatitudes exhibit a remarkable uniformity of their column-averaged effective radii r(sub eff) in the first few months after the eruption. Considering the seven largest eruptions of the twentieth century, r(sub eff) at this phase of peak aerosol abundance is approx. 0.3 micrometers in all cases. A year later, r(sub eff) either has remained about the same size (almost certainly in the case of the Katmai eruption of 1912) or has increased to approx. 0.5 micrometers (definitely so for the Pinatubo eruption of 1991). The reasons for this divergence in aerosol growth are unknown.

Strothers, Richard B.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Instability Regions in the Upper HR Diagram

The following instability regions for blueward evolving supergiants are outlined and compared: (1) Areas in the Hertzsprung-Russell(HR) diagram where stars are dynamically unstable. (2) Areas where the effective acceleration in the upper part of the photospheres is negative, hence directed outward. (3) Areas where the sonic points of the stellar wind (Where wind velocity = sound velocity) are situated inside the photospheres, at a level deeper than tau(sub Ross) = 0.01. We compare the results with the positions of actual stars in the HR diagram and we find evidence that the recent strong contraction of the yellow hypergiant HR8752 was initiated in a period during which (g(sub eff)) is less than 0, whereupon the star became dynamically unstable. The instability and extreme shells around IRC+10420 are suggested to be related to three factors: (g(sub eff)) is less than 0; the sonic point is situated inside the photosphere; and the star is dynamically unstable.

deJager, Cornelis↗

NASA NTRS2001

Determination of Top-of-Atmosphere Longwave Radiative Fluxes: A Comparison Between Two Approaches Using ScaRaB Data

Two conceptually different approaches (broadband-based ERBE and narrowband-based ISCCP approaches), used to derive the TOA longwave radiative fluxes, are compared using the ScaRaB simultaneous narrowband and broadband measurements. This study directly shows that the ERBE MLE-derived cloud covers implicitly contain some information on the cloud optical properties. A spurious view-zenith-angle dependence of the MLE scene identification scheme is confirmed by this study. Except for very thin cirrus clouds, differences between the ERBE and ISCCP approaches are in general < 10 W/sq m for the TOA LW radiative fluxes. For clear pixels, the model calculated (ISCCP approach) TOA LW radiances are systematically smaller than the observations. Though the bias is found to be correlated on the column precipitable water amount, the exact source of this discrepancy remains undetermined and merits further study. Compared with the radiative transfer model used in this study, the ERBE LW ADMs are too weakly limb-darkened for optically thin clouds, but too strongly limb-darkened for optically thick clouds, indicating that more accurate instantaneous TOA LW flux estimations from the ERBE approach would require additional cloud classes based on cloud height and optical thickness.

Chen, Ting↗