A New Kind of Global Warming!

Last I heard the core is cooling, at a very gradual rate...." the temperature difference between the solid core and the mantle above, must be at least 1500 degrees to explain why the Earth has a magnetic field."

This artist's view depicts the different layers of the Earth and their representative temperatures: crust, upper and lower mantle (brown to red), liquid outer core (orange) and solid inner core (yellow). The pressure at the border between the liquid and the solid core (highlighted) is 3.3 million atmospheres, with a temperature now confirmed as 6000 degrees Celsius. (Credit: ESRF)

Ok how about it is having ups and downs?

Variable as in alternating slowly getting colder but not linear and why not getting warmer?

Input of other heatsources required!

Kind of like when you leave the fridge door open!

And, by your claim, what source of energy is input to increase core temperature?

Not really my claim but in WIKI its says:

• Heat may be generated by tidal force on the Earth as it rotates; since rock cannot flow as readily as water it compresses and distorts, generating heat.

Thats basically what I thought could be. Now the idea would be its not a continuous movement but like Earthquakes a build up of friction and release of energy in intervals.

^{_{I will take my medicine later.}}

Remember that all energy is conserved.

So, for the core temperature to go up, some form of external energy must be pumped into the core (either kinetic, potential, or some form radiation).

Given the Earth's age is about 4.5 billion years old, we are not at a point in the planetary evolution where significant changes are taking place. All that action took place when our solar system was very young. We are more middle aged and should be experiencing a slow cooling cycle.

I could buy into the idea that the cooling is not necessarily perfectly linear. That is, it is a bit more dynamic, but I suspect any fluctuations are probably very tiny as the Earth is a mighty big heat sink, which averages out any small fluctuations.

Mass-energy is conserved. Lyn had it right when he said radioactive decay is still heating the Earth's core.

Tidal effects from the Moon generate some heat too, though most of that heating occurs in the mantle as the mantle and crust flex. The core being molten, it probably deforms a bit too, and that would also create some heat.

Thanks.

Being thick, I had never contemplated that deformation the Mother Ship would add heat to the mix.

Now that I have been forced to come to grips with it, it seems obvious, but the total magnitude of the heat generated must be huge.

Maybe some one can run some numbers for us?

Never mind! What am I saying? Numbers don't mean diddly to me.

Let's see, heat generated by deformation of the earth?

From:

Radioactive decay accounts for half of Earth's heat - physicsworld.com

As a result of this model, scientists believe that about 20 TW is generated by radioactive decay - 8 TW from the uranium-238 decay chain; 8 TW from the thorium-232 decay chain and the final 4 TW from potassium-40.

Just look at the moon, Io about Jupiter. Tidal forces are responsible for the liquid core and volcanic action of Io.

It's also possible that the rate of radioactive decay is subject to solar and other types of radiation hitting the Earth, which certainly does vary.....If this is so, then you may be correct that the internal temp varies....or in fact it may serve as a temperature regulator, the more radiation hitting the Earth the slower the radioactive decay and the less heat produced, causing the Global warmth to be regulated....

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html

Something akin to radioactive vapor pressure.

No way that even X-rays are going to make it that deep into the Earth's mantle, let alone core.

Nice find! Pretty much shows us that we are still at the beginning of understanding what is coming from the sun and our surroundings.

Thanks for that!

I wish I could locate the paper but another proposed nuclear heating possibility is fission occurring in the core. The paper proposed that is not a constant, uniform heating effect like nuclear decay. (It also did not think that it was a large contributer to the total heating.) The paper did propose that this might be a trigger like effect for magma convection cycles due to a sudden large collection of light materials where heavy ones were previously.

The half life of U238 is about 4.5 billion years so I guess based on that one element we are a long way out before I worry. You and Lyn are correct, the earth loses heat but is replaced with the thermal nuclear energy generated inside the earth. Since the temperature of the earth's core is in stasis, the earth is not heating or cooling, the radioactive generated heat must balance our loses. Wake me in another 4 billion years or so.

The oceans and the land are huge heat sinks. The rate of subduction can vary with time. Thus there may be a small variance in temperature that can be found on the surface or mantle to reflect the variances. However, more important to surface temperatures would be the volcanic activity and rifts that release CO2 and CH4 to the atmosphere. Worry more if Yellowstone erupts and it won't be global warming that will bother us.

Tidal forces do produce a small degree of heating, but it occurs almost entirely within the crust and upper mantle, not within the core. Also, it's tiny compared to the heating produced by radioactive decay of uranium and thorium.

Heating from radioactive decay also occurs mostly in the crust and upper mantle, rather than the core. There is very little uranium and thorium below the mantle, as I understand it, because uranium and thorium have chemical affinities for silicate rocks, which are lighter and segregated early in the earth's history from the denser materials in the core.

The rates of heating from tidal forces and radioactive decay are quite steady and easy to calculate. Heating from tidal forces can be inferred from the rate at which the earth's rotation is slowing, and the corresponding rate at which the moon is moving away from the earth. Heating from radioactive decay can be calculated from the known energies of decay, the half-lives of the elements involved, and their measured crustal abundances. I don't know the values, offhand, but I know they're small. At least 3, and I think more like 4 decimal orders of magnitude below the rate of insolation from the sun and thermal radiation back into space.

I think there must be an average equilibrium in spite minor changes taking place all the time. Earth gains energy from sun and also loses it. Earth also loses its mass by escape gases. If mass is going down then temperature may also be going up at slow rate. I think some good model taking care of lots of parameters is required to come to some meaningful idea if earth is actually having loss of energy mass and mass or not and it has then how much and what impact it is going to have on its environment.

"Heat flows constantly from its sources within the Earth to the surface. Total heat loss from the Earth is estimated at 44.2 TW (4.42 × 10¹³ watts).^[12] Mean heat flow is 65 mW/m² over continental crust and 101 mW/m² over oceanic crust.^[12] This is 0.087 watt/square meter on average (0.3 percent of solar power absorbed by the Earth^[13] ), but is much more concentrated in areas where thermal energy is transported toward the crust by convection such as along mid-ocean ridges and mantle plumes.^[14] The Earth's crust effectively acts as a thick insulating blanket which must be pierced by fluid conduits (of magma, water or other) in order to release the heat underneath. More of the heat in the Earth is lost through plate tectonics, by mantle upwelling associated with mid-ocean ridges. The final major mode of heat loss is by conduction through the lithosphere, the majority of which occurs in the oceans due to the crust there being much thinner and younger than under the continents.^[12][15]

The heat of the Earth is replenished by radioactive decay at a rate of 30 TW.^[16] The global geothermal flow rates are more than twice the rate of human energy consumption from all primary sources."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient

Thanks! I think thats the sort of reply I was after. _{^{(Me thinks I could have googled this myself.)}} From the numbers it seems any variance in the internal heat production would not have much of an impact on the avarage surface temperature, right?

When I said that there is variance I was thinking of other heat sources than radiactive decay. Probably have to read up on this more, but I was wondering if friction and movement of solid core embedded by liquid might have an impact.

OK help me here:

"The global geothermal flow rates are more than twice the rate of human energy consumption from all primary sources."

What does this actually mean? Where is this geothermal flow going? Into the atmosphere? If we stop this would it be colder on the planet? Is the avarage mean -20 m ground temperature something we should watch out for to measure global warming?

Whats the Energy impact of the sun compared to geothermal flow?

_{Am I up to something?}

Ideasmith - "Where is it going?"

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law

Although Earth is not a Black Body Radiator - the thermal flux of outflow would still be an exponential function of temperature. (Did I say that right?)

Perhaps attempting to contribute single sources of input to Geo-thermodynamic process greatly over simplifies what is happening.

IF decay is a significant input to thermal process then why doesn't Mars still have an atmosphere? Yes, there is correlation.

Decay heat - perhaps - but it would not be a linear process through the decay chain.

Residual Heat -some of that too - especially when considering the thermal energy stored in phase energies.

A variable Thermal Flux Rate influenced by the induction related to variable magnetic field strength - not unlikely.

Have we really been collecting data long enough to claim a good understanding of the processes; and do our predictive algorithms introduce errors; not unlike those discovered in consideration of the Pioneer Anomaly?

Its fun stuff to think about - but let's not jump to conclusions based on limited data, faulty algorithmic analysis, and limited variables.

Hmmm. So if all buildings, roads and parking lots were underlaid with a thermal barrier...?

Let's make that thermal barrier out of piezo-electric material and generate some electricity while we're at it?

As the radioactivity continues to decay exponentially, it will "pump" less and less energy into the Earth. So if the core weren't already cooling, sometime it would start to do so, until the Earth's surface is at equilibrium with insolation.

If the heat production would stop the equilibrium would be between atmosphere and Earth, given that atmosphere receives energy from outside and does not drop down to cosmic temperature (please refer to climate discussion for further details) heeh just kidding

BTW, with the rates given this will be ca. in 0.2 Tera Years!

I'm surprised they gave the temperature in Celsius. I would have expected, for a measurement like this, that the temp would be given in Kelvin. 6000 C = ~ 6270 Kelvin.

This is hotter than the surface of the Sun which is about 5800 Kelvin.

Yes, but the interior core temp is much hotter at ~15.7 million Kelvin....

Was the source for that information from Al Gore?

Marshall Space Flight Center@ NASA....Solar Physics...

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/interior.shtml

.....and the temperature is higher again above the surface reaching 1 Million K in the upper chromosphere up to 20 million K in the corona.

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The low surface temperature seems more of an anomaly with temps in the Millions of K above and below.

The heat transfer mechanism is even uncertain due to this too cool in the middle non-cooperative region.

Guys, we all know the earth is female. It is a simple hormone imbalance!

Reality is, no one has proved anything substantial at all. Global cooling has been dropped from all conversations lately and I saw recently, even scientists are puyzzled by the slow in 'global warming'.

However, I shall throw this in for you to consider as this small fact is constantly left out of any calculations, discussion etc. How much cabling and wire has been installed under the sea, in land and in the air. Fool you say! All these power cables give off heat! Ground is drying out where power cables are laid, this is fact. The sea removes heat from cables and the heat produces convection currents, which will warm the surrounding sea. The magnetic fields produced by large cables using AC, changes the sea life, affecting your life. Now consider carefully without excuses, how much did it affect the planet before we all jumped up and decided wind power, marine power was so wonderful. (I know I shall hear all justification here, but I think you may have failed to see the point, the so called global warming only hapens in very populated areas) The world is getting wetter, not hotter. Global cooling is in play, just look around you. And nature does not happen on our demand. Nature does not operate to our computerised lives, we do, and we have forgotten a lot. So if someone could show real proof positive the world has heated up by one degree, then lets all fix it. Selected places may have warmed, densely populated areas, but this global warming??? It is time for real and proper, independant truth about it all.

Read up about the Yellow Stone Park geyser activities. This was All True! (the scientsist laid caim. But lately it has become, 'OOps, sorry, we made a huge mistake guys'. Our 'facts' are actually wrong!!!) Have you gone up the wrong street? It seems so. The north pole is melting!!! Guess what, it happened a few hundered years ago too and has been proved. It is called NATURE. I shall keep an eye on this topic. It is interesting.

Agree on man-made effects, but not the example of cabling. Earth/ rock has a high melting point due to resistance to conduction of heat.

More likely to be the effect of tarred roads, concrete aprons and cement/ clay paving. These all gain radiated heat from the atmosphere and simultaneously inhibit cooling of the crust directly under them.....so a compounded effect.

Together with 20-odd billion farting mammals, this could be the real 'inconvenient truth'. Extrapolating.......at some point a single fart could trigger the collapse of a continental ice-shelf ! A blockbuster if I ever heard one....c'mon Hollywood...

All facts sir. Where ever you have an underground cable installed, the surrounding soil dries far quicker and far easier than the soil further away from the cables. Hence we take thermal resisitivities of soil in both dry and wet conditions and install a specific mixture to allow the cable to stay cool. The cables are usually under roads, pavements and concrete surfaces. It does compund the problem. Most power cables operate around 70-90C. That is lots of heat having to go somewhere. Overhead lines can run as high as 130C and on emergancy loads cables can hit this temeprature too.

They run at the same temperatures in the sea too. And there is thousands of miles of submarine cables, and they are still installing them around Europe, Norway, UK. 132kV, 400kV AC and DC. I have a cable on test now, running at normal operating temp 60C, and it is going into the sea. This heat has to go somewhere and this cable will be a few hundred kM long.

It is an interesting tiopic, with many facts left out!

Very interesting, and informative (thanks).

....install a specific mixture to allow the cable to stay cool...

The only cables I have seen buried are back-filled with the same dirt that was removed in the trenching process. But perhaps these are lower tension lines ....

Oh dear that is not good. 150m Sand bed,... cable ,,,,and another 150mm sand on top. Compact, ...install another 150mm sand and then the original spoil from the excavation. (As a minimum).

The specific mix is CBS; cement bound sand, to a specific ratio and slump. And, Still the above mix for land based cables. All clever stuff it is!

Ok going back to the Wiki article it says (with my words now):

That the energy that is introduced by the heat stream from the underground is twice that what the human energy consumption is. With other words we are doing our work and create heat. Now is all energy converted to heat or is most of this lost to "work"?

Ms. Geo is probably giving us at least 4 times more heat than we with our cables and other heat sources. What you say is an interesting point, but in its dimension it is maybe completely negligible!?

What is the direct impact to the installation of the heat? Isn't it losses that concern us more in sub sea cables? Or is the concern really the heat impact on the ground?

Remember the heat flowing from the Earth to the Surface is mainly introduced at the seabed due to the crust being less thick, yet the temperature at the seabed is incredible low! I bet you have a sort of convection anyway.

Thanks for your input. Seems your work is involved with cabling. Be interesting to see what sort of problems you fighting with.

You guys forgot about the research done by non other than Al Gore, who emphatically pronounced the temperature of the core to be "several million degrees".... There!

I think he was referring to the temperature just below the surface of the Earth.

Yet another example of someone educated far beyond their intelligence.

Oh Lord forbid!! The man who invented the Internet, God and aliens and I think the entire universe. I thought he was/is a figment of an imagination. I sure hope he is. If he is real we are doomed!!!

We are doomed. But not because of Al Gore.

He's not that smart.

Obviously true to be, just for the reason that, planet earth is a thrown away piece from Sun's Nuclear fusion reaction.

The whirling motion of the burning ball, the gaseous evaporation & condensation reaction led to water & salt formation & hardening of outer sheath of earth 'd surface.

Can we believe that solid earth is supported by/ floating on sea fluid ?

The core of earth should be having still active nuclear fusion reaction, the over heat some times piercing out as volcano's over porous soil / sea layers under pressurized bursting out.

Whereas the unreleased pressure & heat of the continuing fusion at earth's core should naturally be raising the core volume heat.

It sounds like the carbon fossil fuel formation is a catalyzed reaction of the core heat of earth.