“CO is lighter than air and CO2 is heavier than air.” True - but...

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tristanc

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24/02/18

08:19

Post #: 31308700
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Originally posted by LuckyMojo ↑

NASA’s diagram thus not only proves CO2 isn’t a well mixed gas but also demonstrates that there is no link between regions of highest CO2 concentration and areas of highest human industrial emissions.

The Southern Hemisphere does not source CO2 from the Northern Hemisphere to balance everything out.

View attachment 982342
Previously, scientists believed that the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) formed the boundary between the polluted air of the Northern Hemisphere and the cleaner air of the Southern Hemisphere. The ITCZ is a cloudy region circling the globe where the trade winds from each hemisphere meet. It is characterised by rapid vertical uplift and heavy rainfall, and acts as a meteorological barrier to pollutant transport between the hemispheres.
But the new research, to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres, found huge differences in air quality on either side of the chemical equator, which was 50 km wide and well to the north of the ITCZ. The study revealed that carbon monoxide, a tracer of combustion, increased from 40 parts per billion to the south, to 160 parts per billion in the north. The difference in pollutant levels was increased by extensive forest fires to the north of the boundary and very clean air south of the chemical equator being pulled north from the Southern Indian Ocean by a land based cyclone in northern Australia.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080923091339.htm

CO is lighter than air and CO2 is heavier than air.

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“CO is lighter than air and CO2 is heavier than air.”

True - but pretty much irrelevant. The real reason for the much sharper gradient in CO concentrations is that CO simply doesn’t last that long in the atmosphere. It reacts with atmospheric oxygen to make CO2, and is gone within a few months.

To address your main point, though: who ever said that “well-mixed” has to mean “perfectly homogeneous”? If you actually look at the numbers on the CO2 concentration maps, you’ll see that the variation amounts to roughly +/-5%. That seems pretty well-mixed to me. And if you look at one of the many animated maps available, you’ll see that much of it does indeed originate from population centres - but there’s this thing called “wind” that continually blows it away.
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