Troposphere carbon dioxide

Nakazawa, T., Murayama, S., Miyashita, K., Aoki, S. and Tanaka, M. (1992). Longitudinally different variations of lower tropospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over the North Pacific Ocean, Tellus, Ser. B, 44,161-172. 

Friedli H., Siegenthaler U., Rauber D., and Oeschger H. (1987) Measurements of concentration, C/ C and ratios of tropospheric carbon dioxide over Switzerland. Tellus 39B, 80-88. 

About 51 percent of solar energy incident at the top of the atmosphere reaches Earth s surface. Energetic solar ultraviolet radiation affects the chemistry of the atmosphere, especially the stratosphere where, through a series of photochemical reactions, it is responsible for the creation of ozone (O,). Ozone in the stratosphere absorbs most of the short-wave solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and some long-wave infrared radiation. Water vapor and carbon dioxide in the troposphere also absorb infrared radiation. 

Given that the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the troposphere is 0.26 Torr and that the temperature is 25°C, calculate the volume of air needed to produce 10.0 g of glucose. 

Recent estimates indicate that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by a third since the beginning of the industrial age, and that it contributes significantly to global warming. Other major contributors include methane, tropospheric ozone, and nitrous oxide. Methane is the principal component of natural gas, but it is also produced by other sources such as rice paddies and farm animals. Tropospheric ozone is generated naturally and by the sunlight-... 

Burns with a blue flame releasing carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide (Windholz et al, 1983). Oxidizes in the troposphere forming carbonyl sulfide. The atmospheric half-lives of carbon disulfide and carbonyl sulfide were estimated to be approximately 2 yr and 12 d, respectively (Khalil and Rasmussen, 1984). 

Photolysis of an aqueous solution containing chloroform (314 pmol) and the catalyst [Pt(cohoid)/Ru(bpy) /MV/EDTA] yielded the following products after 15 h (mol detected) chloride ions (852), methane (265), ethylene (0.05), ethane (0.52), and unreacted chloroform (10.5) (Tan and Wang, 1987). In the troposphere, photolysis of chloroform via OH radicals may yield formyl chloride, carbon monoxide, hydrogen chloride, and phosgene as the principal products (Spence et al., 1976). Phosgene is hydrolyzed readily to hydrogen chloride and carbon dioxide (Morrison and Boyd, 1971). 

Gases, such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, tropospheric ozone, nitrous oxide, methane, and chloroflurocarbons (CFCs), are largely transparent to solar radiation... 

The temperature and density structure of the troposphere, along with the concentrations of major constituents, are well documented and altitude profiles have been measured over a wide range of seasons and latitudes for the minor species water, carbon dioxide, and ozone. A few profiles are available for carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, methane, and molecular hydrogen, while only surface or low-altitude measurements have been made for nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, ammonia, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and nonmethane hydrocarbons. No direct measurements of nitric acid and formaldehyde are available, though indirect information does exist. The concentrations of a number of other important species, such as peroxides and oxy and peroxy radicals, have never been determined. Therefore, while considerable information concerning trace constituent concentrations is available, the picture is far from complete. 

On the basis of ratios of C and C present in carbon dioxide, Weinstock (250) estimated a carbon monoxide lifetime of 0.1 year. This was more than an order of magnitude less than previous estimates of Bates and Witherspoon (12) and Robinson and Robbins (214), which were based on calculations of the anthropogenic source of carbon monoxide. Weinstock (250) suggested that if a sufficient concentration of hydroxyl radical were available, the oxidation of carbon monoxide by hydroxyl radical, first proposed by Bates and Witherspoon (12) for the stratosphere, would provide the rapid loss mechanism for carbon monoxide that appeared necessary. By extension of previous stratospheric models of Hunt (104), Leovy (150), Nicolet (180), and others, Levy (152) demonstrated that a large source of hydroxyl radical, the oxidation of water by metastable atomic oxygen, which was itself produced by the photolysis of ozone, existed in the troposphere and that a chain reaction involving the hydroxyl and hydroperoxyl radicals would rapidly oxidize both carbon monoxide and methane. It was then pointed out that all the loss paths for the formaldehyde produced in the methane oxidation led to the production of carbon monoxide [McConnell, McElroy, and Wofsy (171) and Levy (153)1-Similar chain mechanisms were shown to provide tropospheric... 

While detailed transport calculations of trace constituent distributions in the troposphere are not generally available, a number of simple box models have been fitted to measurements of seasonal fluctuations in carbon dioxide and ozone and tropospheric distributions of fission debris. These box models may not accurately represent the physical processes responsible for tropospheric motions and mixing, but the parameters used in the model do provide reasonable estimates of macroscopic mixing rates in the troposphere. 

Carbon dioxide, the major source of carbon-containing molecules in the troposphere, is not known to... 

In contrast, some climate models postulate a nuclear summer, stating that a worldwide warming would follow a nuclear war because of the many small contributions to the greenhouse effect from carbon dioxide, water vapor, ozone, and various aerosols entering the troposphere and stratosphere. 

Write a short story tracing the path that a carbon atom in a carbon dioxide molecule might follow. Assume that the CO2 molecule is in the troposphere. 

Nitrous oxide (N20), another greenhouse gas, is stable in the troposphere, but oxidizes to ozone-reactive NO in the stratosphere. Molecule for molecule, N20 is currently about 200 times more effective in absorbing long-wave infrared radiation than is carbon dioxide, and its atmospheric concentration... 

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