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Thursday, November 1, 2018

In Pursuit of Plume Theory - 3

Fig. 1
I. Background

In the previous two posts of this series (In Pursuit of Plume Theory, 2) I scratched the surface of the hypothesis about a type of glacial plume that is independent of melt water that flows out of the grounding line area of a glacier.

That type of melt water, as you know, is known as basal melt water.

Today I am going deeper into the hypothesis, using the graphic at Fig. 1 in order to depict the basic concept that a non-basal melt water plume spontaneously develops along the subsurface face or front of a tidewater glacier, even though no basal melt water stream may exist at that glacier.

Consider a glacier with a face or front that has one thousand meters under water, and is ten kilometers wide.

When only a one meter plume develops, the arithmetic for that plume looks like this: 1 m (average plume size between the ice and ambient seawater) x 1,000 m (portion of glacier under water) x 10,000 m (10 km wide glacier) = 10,000,000 m3 (ten million cubic meters).

Fig. 2 Current Events
Yes, a tiny one meter plume has ten million cubic meters of melt water flowing in it at any given time.

That water is continually replenished when it floats toward the ocean surface (or along the bottom of the ice shelf if an ice shelf exists).

That hypothetical plume is replenished because the buoyancy created by the difference in density (between the fresher melt water of the plume and the salty ambient ocean saltwater) "pushes" the melt water plume upward  out of the way.

Then, the ambient ocean saltwater makes contact with the glacial ice once again (since the plume water has floated upward), and the heat transfer & melt cycle repeats itself.

This dynamic takes place automatically because heat spontaneously flows from a warmer mass (ocean saltwater) into a cooler mass (glacial ice) pursuant to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

II. The Test Zones

I have generated Appendices A, B, C, D, E, and F (locations shown @ Fig. 2 above) which have graphs that show the changes in buoyancy (ambient saltwater density minus plume melt water density) at various depths in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

The data and graphs indicate that the buoyancy factor has increased over time.

The only way buoyancy can show up in the analysis is that the in situ conditions have become conducive to melting the ice.

Increases in buoyancy indicate that melting conditions are becoming more intense.

This indicates IMO that the warming seawater in contact with Antarctic tidewater glaciers has, at some point in time, spontaneously started generating plumes that did not exist prior to the warming.

III. Example Source Code

The following C++ source code calculates buoyancy by comparing the density of the melt water to the density of the ambient saltwater.

This code is an excerpt from the model I am working on:

    /** loop through annual data */
    for (unsigned yrPos = 0; yrPos < maxMainYears; yrPos++)
    {
        /** skip empty years */
        if (wodZone[yrPos].year != 0)
        {
            /** loop through depth data */
            for (unsigned dpos = 0; dpos < maxWoddepths; dpos++)
            {
                /** extract Conservative Temperature & Absolute Salinity */
                double CT = wodZone[yrPos].CT[dpos];
                double SA = wodZone[yrPos].SA[dpos];

                /** use only valid data */
                if (CT != invalidWODvalue &&
                        SA != invalidWODvalue &&
                        testCT_SA(CT,SA,dpos))
                {
                    /** extract pressure, w_Ih, & t_Ih */
                    double P = wodZone[yrPos].P[dpos];
                    double w_Ih = wodZone[yrPos].w_Ih[dpos];
                    double t_Ih = wodZone[yrPos].t_Ih[dpos];
                    /** init plume values (to be calculated) */
                    double sa_final = 0;
                    double ct_final = 0;
                    double w_ih_final = 0;

                    /** calculate plume values with TEOS-10 library function */
                    gsw_melting_ice_into_seawater(SA,CT,P,w_Ih,t_Ih,
                                                  &sa_final,&ct_final,
                                                  &w_ih_final);

                    /** store calculated plume values */
                    wodZone[yrPos].sa_final[dpos] = sa_final;
                    wodZone[yrPos].ct_final[dpos] = ct_final;

                    /*************************************
                      when w_ih_final is 0 the ice melted
                      ------------------------------------
                      "Note that when w_Ih_final = 0, the
                      final seawater [plume] is not at the
                      freezing temperature." - TEOS lib
                    **************************************/
                    wodZone[yrPos].w_ih_final[dpos] = w_ih_final;

                    /*****************************************
                      ct_final and sa_final are plume values
                      when the w_ih_final value equals zero
                    ******************************************/
                    if (w_ih_final == 0.0)
                    {
                        /** isolate the density values (buoyancy) */
                        double plume_density = gsw_rho(sa_final, ct_final, P);
                        double ambient_density = gsw_rho(SA, CT, P);
                        double diff_density = ambient_density - plume_density;

                        /** store the bouyancy factor */
                        if (diff_density > 0.0)
                        {
                            wodZone[yrPos].buoyancy[dpos] = diff_density;
                        }
                    }
                }
            } /** for dpos */
        } /** if year != 0 */
    } /** for yrPos */

This code computes the buoyancy factor data displayed in the graphs in Appendices A, B, C, D, E, and F.

IV. Conclusion

The TEOS-10 library functions indicate that, in any of those Appendices A-F detailing areas of Antarctica, the glacial ice (which the ambient tidewater comes in contact with) spontaneously melts at various speeds at various latitudes and longitudes (if they are deep enough, i.e. underwater enough).

I think this may be a source of tidewater glacier disintegration that has not been noticed.

I am going to continue with the WOD in situ measurements to investigate this possibility in full.

UPDATE: The beat goes on.  I have made adjustments to the graphs in Appendices A-F.  The pelagic depth levels were not appropriate for the tidewater plume concept. The overly deep depth application caused "noise" and imbalance, even though the pelagic depths model works for other purposes.

The buoyancy and enthalpy graphs are calculated on a 0 - 2500m basis. The purpose of these two calculations and graphs is to depict the potential for plumes on tidewater glaciers. They are not actual applications to any specific tidewater glacier. The same goes for the CT and SA of both the Ocean and Plume calculations and graphs.

This is like saying "plants can grow when the conditions are environmentally favorable to their growth." In other words it is a generalization that enhances the possibilities that the hypothesis is viable.

The previous post in this series is here.

Plume Theory: Appendix A, West Indian Ocean

This is an appendix to: In Pursuit of Plume Theory - 3

Antarctica Areas A-F

In these graphs, the Buoyancy Factor relates to the difference between the density of the plume and the density of the ambient ocean water. The Specific Enthalpy applies only to the ambient ocean water. The Conservative Temperature (CT) and Absolute Salinity (SA) are  computed values of both the ocean water and the plume itself at three depth layers.

Buoyancy & Specific Enthalpy

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)



Go to Appendix B

Plume Theory: Appendix B, East Indian Ocean

This is an appendix to:  In Pursuit of Plume Theory - 3

Antarctica Areas A-F

In these graphs, the Buoyancy Factor relates to the difference between the density of the plume and the density of the ambient ocean water. The Specific Enthalpy applies only to the ambient ocean water. The Conservative Temperature (CT) and Absolute Salinity (SA) are  computed values of both the ocean water and the plume itself at three depth layers.

Buoyancy & Specific Enthalpy

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)


Go to Appendix A, Go to Appendix C

Plume Theory: Appendix C, Ross Sea

This is an appendix to: In Pursuit of Plume Theory - 3

Antarctica Areas A-F

In these graphs, the Buoyancy Factor relates to the difference between the density of the plume and the density of the ambient ocean water. The Specific Enthalpy applies only to the ambient ocean water. The Conservative Temperature (CT) and Absolute Salinity (SA) are  computed values of both the ocean water and the plume itself at three depth layers.

Buoyancy & Specific Enthalpy

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)


Go to Appendix B, Go to Appendix D

Plume Theory: Appendix D, Amundsen Sea

This is an appendix to: In Pursuit of Plume Theory - 3

Antarctica Areas A-F

In these graphs, the Buoyancy Factor relates to the difference between the density of the plume and the density of the ambient ocean water. The Specific Enthalpy applies only to the ambient ocean water. The Conservative Temperature (CT) and Absolute Salinity (SA) are  computed values of both the ocean water and the plume itself at three depth layers.


Buoyancy & Specific Enthalpy

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)


Go to Appendix C, Go to Appendix E

Plume Theory: Appendix E, Bellingshausen Sea

This is an appendix to: In Pursuit of Plume Theory - 3

Antarctica Areas A-F

In these graphs, the Buoyancy Factor relates to the difference between the density of the plume and the density of the ambient ocean water. The Specific Enthalpy applies only to the ambient ocean water. The Conservative Temperature (CT) and Absolute Salinity (SA) are  computed values of both the ocean water and the plume itself at three depth layers.

Buoyancy & Specific Enthalpy

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)


Go to Appendix D, Go to Appendix F

Plume Theory: Appendix F Weddell Sea,

This is an appendix to: In Pursuit of Plume Theory - 3

Antarctica Areas A-F

In these graphs, the Buoyancy Factor relates to the difference between the density of the plume and the density of the ambient ocean water. The Specific Enthalpy applies only to the ambient ocean water. The Conservative Temperature (CT) and Absolute Salinity (SA) are  computed values of both the ocean water and the plume itself at three depth layers.

Buoyancy & Specific Enthalpy

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)

Conservative Temperature (CT) & Absolute Salinity (SA)


Go to Appendix E, Go to Appendix A

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

In Pursuit of Plume Theory - 2

Fig. 1
I. Foreward Ho

Ah yes, when I say "all that 'plume theory' needs is another plume theory" may not excite many folks.

Plume theory deals with the dynamics that cause basal melt water (water flowing along the bottom of glaciers) to flow upwards from the grounding line (end point of an ice sheet / glacier where it turns into an ice shelf) as a "plume".

Fig. 2
As the plume flows upward it is said to melt the face or front of the glacier and possibly the bottom of the ice shelf or tongue of the glacier (e.g. Jenkins, Slater, O'Leary).

That is not the type of plume I am focusing on and modeling.

The hypothetical plume I am focusing on and modeling is: 1) generated all along the entire glacier face that is underwater, 2) all the way down to the grounding line, and 3) all along the entire width of the glacier face.

II. Big Totten

In Totten's case that would be big:
"Totten, which lies due south of Western Australia, currently reaches the ocean in the form of a floating shelf of ice that’s 90 miles by 22 miles in area.

Fig. 3
But the entire region, or what scientists call a "catchment", that could someday flow into the sea in this area is over 200,000 square miles in size — bigger than California.


Moreover, in some areas that ice is close to 2.5 miles thick, with over a mile of that vertical extent reaching below the surface of the ocean. It’s the very definition of vast."
(Antarctica's Totten Glacier, emphasis added). Concerning one of the deeper areas of Totten, it is said that "a deep trough in front of the western TIS cavity, with a maximum depth of 1097 m and a maximum width of 10 km at a depth of 600 m" (Science Direct, emphasis added).

But none of the plume I am hypothesizing is generated by basal melt, it is all generated by a cyclical melt dynamic composed entirely of melt water generated by the melting of the face of the ice.

Just for that one cavity 1097 m x 10 km = a melt zone that is anywhere from 6,000,000 m2 to  10,970,000 m2.

III. The Melt Engine

Every inch of that area has melt potential because ambient seawater is touching it, which as I will elaborate, creates an upward flowing stream, a plume.

Fig. 4
That melt water plume is sandwiched between the ice and the ambient water that "melted it" pursuant to the Second Law of Thermodynamics which holds that heat flows from a warmer source (seawater) to a cooler source (glacial ice).

The resulting melt water stream is less dense than the water that melted it.

So, the melted water is buoyant enough to begin to float toward the surface in a stream that, from all appearances in the model, has an impact as significant, or more, than a basal melt plume has.

My hypothetical plume is only found in deep and wide tidewater glaciers like Totten Glacier in Antarctica (e.g. "IV. Totten's Prime Plume", In Pursuit of Plume Theory).

IV. Relevant TEOS-10 Functions

The functionality is a simple construct which can be described by a small number of TEOS-10 toolkit functions.

I have described the more elementary ones in previous posts (Proof of Concept - 10).

The technique I chose to generate data used in today's graphs (the buoyancy factor) is not overly complicated.

One of the numerical values that the TEOS-10 library (function "gsw_melting_ice_into_seawater") computes is "w_ih_final."

When "w_ih_final" is zero the ice has become plume water, located between the glacier face and the ambient sea water.

At that place and time one can calculate the density of the plume with the TEOS-10 library function "gsw_rho" using two other values ("sa_final" & "ct_final") calculated by the aforesaid TEOS-10 library function "gsw_melting_ice_into_seawater."

The code now in my model is "gsw_rho(sa_final, ct_final, P)" (density of the plume at that depth) and "gsw_rho(SA, CT, P)" (density of the seawater which melted the ice at that depth).

The only thing left to do is subtract the plume density from the seawater density, and that difference gives us a buoyancy factor.

V. Buoyancy Factor Graphs

The graphs today concern the buoyancy factor, which is the difference in density.

The graph at Fig. 1 shows the buoyancy factor at the three shallowest pelagic depths (epi-, meso-, and bathy-) for the Amundsen Sea area.

The other three graphs (Fig. 2, Fig. 3, and Fig. 4) feature the three pelagic depths, one depth for each graph.

The big story is in the Buoyancy F. pane (lower left) in each graph.

Notice that the buoyancy factor grows more over time than any other element.

That is, the increase is more than Specific Enthalpy, more than Conservative Temperature, and more than Absolute Salinity.

This indicates that a strong stream of an upward moving melt water plume at the glacier face may be taking place even in the absence of a basal melt plume.

VI. Conclusion

This may be an important factor as my hypothesis indicates.

There is more work to be done, such as quantifying the melt in terms of mass, graphing the other five areas of Antarctica, and some other issues.

Meanwhile, check out this robust paper (Grounding line retreat of Totten Glacier).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Will The Military Become The Police? - 12


In this series (began 5/10/10) we (regular readers and I) have been contemplating what some consider to be "over-the-top ideas" or "fringe notions" of past, current, and looming misuses of the military (Will The Military Become The Police?, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

Yet, in the previous post I answered the question this series posits ("Will The Military Become The Police?") as follows:
No, they won't.

Why?

They already are, aren't they (What if U.S. stops policing the world?, The United States Must Be the World’s Policeman) ?
(Will The Military Become The Police? - 11). I answered "no" in terms of will the military become (future tense) the world police, because they already have (it is historical, not futuristic).

II. "Say It Ain't So"

Furthermore, in a limited sense it has already happened domestically to the degree that the literal military police, in the recent past, have even been used to give traffic tickets (Will The Military Become The Police? - 2).

But there is the larger domestic realm to consider, in terms of sniffing out "why are police forces all across the country being built up, by the Pentagon, with military hardware?"

That has been well documented in this series (Will The Military Become The Police? - 10).

III. Happy Halloween?

For those who never "sniff the air" such a concept must be simply "halloweenish."

And it is "halloweenish" in the sense that Halloween keeps coming back every year, like tyranny does (On The Origin of Tyranny).

IV. Tyranny of The Despotic Minority

At a time when Americans are being gunned down and bombed, preznit Donnah Dump is sending in the military to police a place where nothing like that is happening.

The decent majority wonders why the leader of the despotic minority is sending the military to police a band of refugees who have fled authoritarian regimes to answer the call written on the Statue of Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
(What is the quote on the statue of liberty?). The language on the statue does not indicate that the reason for bringing the downtrodden here is so the military can treat them like enemies, break up families, and drive innocent children into psychotic despair (2,300 migrant children in Central American ‘caravan’ need protection, UNICEF says).

The reason, IMO, is that preznit Donnah Dump, as leader of the despotic minority, needs despotic votes bigly in order to perpetuate the tyranny of his despotic minority:
"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority."
(How To Identify The Despotic Minority - 4). Those who now give him the votes are the despotic minority in what was once a united country.

V. Conclusion

Concerning those now in the despotic minority who have been voted into power in the DC swamp, only if they are voted out of office by the American Majority will the nation progress as it has under duress in the past.

Make it so.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.



Monday, October 29, 2018

In Pursuit of Plume Theory

Fig. 1 Depth Realms
I. The Search Difficulties

The search for the realities involved in sea level change is still ongoing.

But we still suffer from the mistake of crowning "thermal expansion" as "the major cause" of sea level rise, and also for crowning it as "a major cause" of sea level rise "in the 20th century."

The problem we still have is not limited to fringe scientists, no, competent scientists who were caught up in the mistake have asserted that "thermal expansion was the main driver of global sea level rise for 75 - 100 years after the start of the Industrial Revolution" (Union of Concerned Scientists);  "As water warms, it expands. This expansion has been the major cause of sea-level rise" (Coastal Adapt).

Fortunately, those "the major cause" statements across the literature and Internet now seem to be morphing into "a major cause," but how "fortunate" the minimizing of the myth will turn out to be remains to be seen.

I have written a lot about that mistake (On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38).

One thing I still argue is that the myth was originally fostered by the oil industry (Humble Oil-Qaeda - 2).

II. Bathing With Rubber Ducky

A partner in the mythical scenario of sea level rise is the "bathtub model" of the ocean (The Bathtub Model Doesn't Hold Water, 2, 3, 4, 5).

That grand illusion has taught many a recent young scientist to conceive of the ocean surface, the sea level, as a "bathtub scene" in the sense of the ocean having an equal level everywhere.

One misused mathematical implementation that goes along with the bathtub model concept is the "global mean sea level" (GMSL).

Dr. Jerry Mitrovica has stated that this misuse of GMSL language actually led sea level science-reporting down a useless research path.

The basic essence of the bathtub model problem was to ignore Newton, Woodward, and more recently scientists like Dr. Jerry Mitrovica (NASA Busts The Ghost).

It is little wonder, then, that the research efforts going back a couple of decades were thrown off the main trail.

I mean the trail where the fingerprints were to be found (Build Your Own Sea Level Change Fingerprinting System, 2, 3).

I am talking about the main trail that leads to the plume of "the doomsday glacier" and its big brother the Totten Glacier.

Remember that the foggy idea of thermal expansion as the major factor led to the concept that everything else is a minor factor, including the melting ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.

Myths of this sort can lead to worldwide catastrophes (Greenland & Antarctica Invade The United States, 2, 3, 4).

III. The Major & The Minor Plumes

I am taking the opportunity of this post to feature a scientific paper that took a serious look at another pop hypothesis that has made its way into ocean models (AGU Jackson 2017).

That paper exposes, in a well rounded critique, one of the current hypotheses about tidewater glacier plumes (the buoyant plume theory, BTM; cf. Frontal processes on tidewater glaciers).

My criticism of all plume models and hypotheses, except those that are applied to Thwaites Glacier and Totten Glacier, is that they major in the minors.

None of them feature the civilization threatening glaciers, the two majors, Thwaites and Totten, both of which are located in Antarctica.

IV. Totten's Prime Plume

Totten is a prime, if not the prime, location to research a major league tidewater glacier while using a relevant plume theory.

Its grounding line is found at about 2500m deep, which goes as far as the better part of the Bathypelagic depths:

Epipelagic
0 - 10m
10m - 20m
20m - 30m
30m - 50m
50m - 75m
75m - 100m
100m - 125m
125m - 150m
150m - 200m
----------------------------------
Mesopelagic
200m - 250m
250m - 300m
300m - 400m
400m - 500m
500m - 600m
600m - 700m
700m - 800m
800m - 900m
900m - 1000m
-----------------------------------
Bathypelagic
1000m - 1100m
1100m - 1200m
1200m - 1300m
1300m - 1400m
1400m - 1500m
1500m - 1750m
1750m - 2000m
2000m - 2500m

WOD Ocean depths continue down past the 2500m mark to the Abyssopelagic, then even further down to the Hadopelagic (Fig. 1).

We need not consider those deeper ocean depths while doing plume research, because the import of tidewater glacier grounding line depths are well represented by Totten and Thwaites (Hot, Warm, & Cold Thermal Facts: Tidewater-Glaciers - 7).

Another interesting plume research paper indicates that depth and temperature are main factors in tidewater glacier subsurface melting (Willis 2018, OMG Research).

In that paper, both glaciers studied were much more shallow than Totten, but both were melting.

The grounding line of the deeper one was at about 600 m, the shallower one was at about 350 m.

The deeper one melts much faster than the shallower one.

V. Conclusion

I think that the glaciers, like Totten and Thwaites, which are an existential threat to civilization as we know it should be the subjects of intense plume research (Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization, 2, 3, 4, 5).

So, I am planning on developing a plume model that uses TEOS-10 as the computation library.

While doing the model I will not forget enthalpy (Hot, Warm, & Cold Thermal Facts: Tidewater-Glaciers - 7).

The next post in this series is here.