Friday, March 3, 2017

Growing trees in the deserts

https://www.adn.com/arctic/2017/02/27/scientists-just-measured-a-rapid-growth-in-acidity-in-the-arctic-ocean/
refers to acidification of the Arctic Ocean as well as global warming and ice. It seems to me that a way to take massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is to grow trees in deserts. First, more rain would have to occur in deserts. One problem with global warming is that the land heats up faster than the oceans. Imagine hotter air flowing from land to cooler ocean. The hot air cools down where air meets water and the relative humidity of this cooling air rises and the air can become saturated immediately above the ocean where evaporation could have taken place. Because no net evaporation can occur into saturated air there is a problem with the land and sea breeze mechanism - no moisture is being picked up by the air. An answer would be to provide hot moist surfaces over the ocean so that the air from land is warmed rather than cooled when flowing over the sea, Warm air can hold more moisture, so evaporation will occur. Now when the air flows back onto land (sea breeze, etc) it will have more moisture than before and rain can result. Clouds absorb thermal infrared and so I presume sea spray will also. So if one puts black objects (that heat up in the sun) in the sea spray, the spray will absorb the thermal infrared radiation from the hot objects and will evaporate. Sea spray will also evaporate by having contact with hot these objects. Black netting hung in the spray should do the trick, because this netting will get hot and radiate thermal infrared. Sunlight itself has almost no thermal infrared in, but does radiate infrared of a higher frequency. My Planck's formula integration tells me that about 0.51% (less than 1%) of solar radiation is thermal infrared (5 to 20 microns in wavelength) radiation. On the other hand a blackbody (something like black netting approximates this) having a temperature of 40 deg C has about 74.2% of its radiated energy in the 5 to 20 micron range. This black netting in the ocean method could be used with deserts that are near cold seas, but have a lot of sunshine. Resulting rain could then get trees growing in deserts to absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Desert soil is often very fertile. Black cement rocks in the sea to create spray from waves and absorb solar energy to heat spray could also be used along with black netting. Another way to make the seawater hotter is to have shallow pools of seawater (preferably with dark bottoms) because shallow pools get hotter in sunny weather.
It seems that the following could occur: 
1) From morning until about midday the air over the sea will become humid because of shallow pools and spray heated on dark objects.
2) At about midday the sea breeze will start (air will blow onto land from the sea). This will bring moist air to the land.
3) At night the air will blow from land to sea, but the air will become more moist than usual over the sea because of the spray.
4) The process of steps 1, 2 and 3 will repeat itself - at about midday moist air will start moving onto the land, etc.
Spray could also be generated by a spray pump using wave motion to drive it.
To get air to rise over the land when it blows from sea to land, use solar air heaters on roofs of the city and elsewhere. Solar air heaters can heat massive volumes of air. The solar air heaters will shade roofs and keep them cool, but will heat air and get it to rise. Another way of getting air to rise over an area is to make that area dark with biochar. The dark land will heat up more relative to lighter coloured land and heat air. When clouds form they will have a cooling effect on the Earth.

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