[Petrochemicals (OP)]

Global warming is an undeniable fact. But where is the extra energy being held? It cannot be in infra red reflections, being light without being absorbed they do not register. It cannot be the air as air has a very low heat capacity and does a fantastic job in cooling at night. The land likewise has a similarly good cooling emissivity.

Sorry for the category, I meant to put it in environmental.

[alancalverd]

Land, sea and air. Mostly stored as a small temperature rise in water (about 5 times the specific heat capacity of rock)  and change of state from ice to liquid.

[Bored chemist]

It cannot be the air as air has a very low heat capacity

The heat capacity of air is about the same as sand or about twice that of steel.
https://gchem.cm.utexas.edu/data/section2.php?target=heat-capacities.php

This is the sort of thing that PC calls " repetitive antagonism"
Some of us would call it "being right".

[evan_au]

The heat capacity of air is about the same as sand or about twice that of steel.

I understand that the normal measure of Heat Capacity is Joules/Kelvin, for 1 mole of the material.

There aren't many moles in a cubic meter of air, but there are quite a few moles in a cubic meter of water, sand, steel or rock.

What air has is that it convects heat quite quickly, while it has to be conducted through sand or rock (in contrast, steel is quite a good conductor of heat, but very few continents are covered in a thick layer of steel).
- Water also convects heat, and some of that atmospheric heat is being buried in deep ocean water. When that already-warm deep ocean water eventually rises to the surface at the equator, we will see a significant increase in sea surface temperatures, with flow-on effects to incidence of hurricanes and coral bleaching.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation

A significant fraction of human carbon dioxide emissions are also absorbed into sea-water, reducing greenhouse heating of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, dissolved CO₂ increases acidity, and is a challenge for creatures with a calcium-based skeleton (eg shellfish and corals).

[Bored chemist]

I understand that the normal measure of Heat Capacity is Joules/Kelvin, for 1 mole of the material.

OK, that's one of the usual ones.
But it's not as if I had to create the page I linked to where they use ;J/g °C  : I found one easily enough.

But if that's the "normal" unit, why are you implicitly using J/K/ m3 ?

There aren't many moles in a cubic meter of air, but there are quite a few moles in a cubic meter of water, sand, steel or rock.

[evan_au]

why are you implicitly using J/K/ m3 (for heat capacity)?

Because the question was implicitly asking:

Where (in the world) is the energy from global warming stored?

The world has a certain volume:
- There is a layer of air, with an average height of around 100km (most of it below 10km)
- There is a layer of water, with an average depth of around 3km
- There is a layer of rock, with a depth around 6,000km

I agree using Heat Capacity (measured for 1 gram) is a better unit:
- The column of air is equivalent in mass to a column of water of 10 meters, so the sea has far greater ability to absorb the heat of global warming than the atmosphere, because it has more grams (this is a bigger difference than the difference in their heat capacity).
- In theory, rocks have an even greater ability to absorb the heat of global warming than the sea, but because it is a solid, and the thermal conductivity is so low, it won't do much on a human timescale. Plus, most of it is hotter than the atmosphere.

My conclusion: Most of the heat energy falling on the Earth is re-radiated out to space.
- Most of the net heat increase due to global warming ends up in the sea.

[alancalverd]

Molar heat capacity is indeed J/K for 1 mole, just as specific heat capacity is J/K.kg, but the heat capacity of a body is just J/K.

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

This disagreement over specific heat has suggested to me that the energy could possibly be stored in the expansion of the gasses and the increacing depth of the atmosphere

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volumetric_heat_capacity

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_specific_heat_capacities

Air dry sea level - 0.001297
Water 25c - 4.1796

 But it does not have a figure for mountains or fields.

[Kryptid]

I find this to be a strange question because heat capacity isn't a number that somehow limits how much thermal energy a substance can hold. What it tells you is the relationship between the thermal energy content of a substance and the subsequent temperature rise that material experiences. You can put the same amount of heat in a substance whether it has a high heat capacity or a low heat capacity. The difference is that the temperature of a substance with a low heat capacity goes up more than one with a high heat capacity.

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

I find this to be a strange question because heat capacity isn't a number that somehow limits how much thermal energy a substance can hold. What it tells you is the relationship between the thermal energy content of a substance and the subsequent temperature rise that material experiences. You can put the same amount of heat in a substance whether it has a high heat capacity or a low heat capacity. The difference is that the temperature of a substance with a low heat capacity goes up more than one with a high heat capacity.

Given that all materials will warm at a similar rate due to the law of cooling, the heat capacity to temperature rise seems quite obvious.

[Kryptid]

Given that all materials will warm at a similar rate due to the law of cooling

I don't think that's true. Surely you've gotten into a hot car before and noticed that the metal parts can feel much hotter than the other components? An object colored black will tend to heat up in sunlight faster than one colored white.

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

Given that all materials will warm at a similar rate due to the law of cooling

I don't think that's true. Surely you've gotten into a hot car before and noticed that the metal parts can feel much hotter than the other components? An object colored black will tend to heat up in sunlight faster than one colored white.

I feel you are doing your best to be objectionable. Please do not clutter this thread with posts of a non sensical nature. If global warming was in anyway comparable to a car in sunlight we could just wind down the window or park it in the shade to solve it.

[Kryptid]

I feel you are doing your best to be objectionable.

I'm trying to be technically accurate. Why you think that is "objectionable", I don't know.

Please do not clutter this thread with posts of a non sensical nature.

Please point out what in my post was nonsensical. I'll admit that I was wrong if you can provide a good source that shows that I was.

. If global warming was in anyway comparable to a car in sunlight

It's actually rather similar: in both cases, the electromagnetic radiation from the Sun is being captured at a rate faster than it can be re-emitted into space. That makes both the car and the Earth heat up.

we could just wind down the window or park it in the shade to solve it.

Putting a giant shade between the Sun and the Earth could, indeed, solve global warming. Again, it's the same principle: you reduce the incoming electromagnetic radiation from the Sun when you park a car in the shade and you could theoretically do the same if you put up a shade between the Earth and Sun that blocked some of the incoming radiation.

[alancalverd]

Clouds do that very well.

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

I feel you are doing your best to be objectionable. Please do not clutter this thread with posts of a non sensical nature.

All materials will warm at a similar rate in global warming.

I feel you are doing your best to be objectionable.

I'm trying to be technically accurate. Why you think that is "objectionable", I don't know.

Please do not clutter this thread with posts of a non sensical nature.

Please point out what in my post was nonsensical. I'll admit that I was wrong if you can provide a good source that shows that I was.

. If global warming was in anyway comparable to a car in sunlight

It's actually rather similar: in both cases, the electromagnetic radiation from the Sun is being captured at a rate faster than it can be re-emitted into space. That makes both the car and the Earth heat up.

we could just wind down the window or park it in the shade to solve it.

Putting a giant shade between the Sun and the Earth could, indeed, solve global warming. Again, it's the same principle: you reduce the incoming electromagnetic radiation from the Sun when you park a car in the shade and you could theoretically do the same if you put up a shade between the Earth and Sun that blocked some of the incoming radiation.

Yes well go and park the earth in the shade then or wind down the window. If not stop spamming a thread about heat storage and I'll tell nasa your warming cure fell through.

[Kryptid]

You have a very strange definition of spam. The question posed by this thread was already answered by alancalverd anyway.

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

You have a very strange definition of spam. The question posed by this thread was already answered by alancalverd anyway.

I feel you are doing your best to be objectionable. Please do not clutter this thread with posts of a non sensical nature.

[Kryptid]

Alancalverd's answer wasn't nonsense, it was the truth. If the air, land and water are getting warmer, then they are storing more thermal energy than they were before. Obviously, the energy that causes a material to heat up is stored in the material itself. I don't know how any other answer would make sense.

[Colin2B]

Yes well go and park the earth in the shade then or wind down the window. If not stop spamming a thread about heat storage and I'll tell nasa your warming cure fell through.

NASA already have versions of this on their ideas list.

Please stop responding to reasonable posts with this:

I feel you are doing your best to be objectionable. Please do not clutter this thread with posts of a non sensical nature.

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

Yes well go and park the earth in the shade then or wind down the window. If not stop spamming a thread about heat storage and I'll tell nasa your warming cure fell through.

NASA already have versions of this on their ideas list.

Please stop responding to reasonable posts with this:

I feel you are doing your best to be objectionable. Please do not clutter this thread with posts of a non sensical nature.

Well Colin pop the keys in the ignition and tootle the earth around. If you wish to be so dilute global warming is like  a fridge we only have to remove energy from the earth and well cure it, so I will just hook it up to a refrigerant compressor, or perhaps a giant robotic geisha could shade us with her super umbrella. Basically under such loose constraints it is energy and we need to have less energy. But a 4 year old can tell you that.

All materials will warm at like rate, increacing as the global temperature increace, proportionally to their current temperature, they will reach equilibrium due to emissivity. . That is why heat capacity is important and nothing like a car in the sun.  The thermo dynamics of large omplex systems are different to those of small ones.

What sort of sense does this make?

Alancalverd's answer wasn't nonsense, it was the truth. If the air, land and water are getting warmer, then they are storing more thermal energy than they were before. Obviously, the energy that causes a material to heat up is stored in the material itself. I don't know how any other answer would make sense.