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Some people say smog in Los Angeles and Mexico
City is caused because C02 can't reach
over the mountains surrounding the city. If this
is true, then how is C02 able to reach
our atmosphere and cause a green effect if it
can't even reach over proportionally small
mountains? Also, what would be a skeptics
argument against global warming?
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Question Date: 2009-12-02 | | Answer 1:
This is a good question, and there are a few
things going on here. First, smog is not
really related to CO2. There are other
pollutants produced by burning fossil fuels,
mainly sulfur dioxide and Ozone that produce the
hazy conditions and respiratory damage associated
with smog. However, it is true that the
especially high levels of smog in places like LA
and Mexico City result from gases produced in the
city being trapped at low altitudes. This occurs
because of a phenomenon called a temperature
inversion. Usually, air decreases in temperature
as it rises, and cooler air is less dense, so it
rises. So polluted air near the ground in a city
is gets warmed (because the ground is warmer than
the air) and it rises. As it rises, it cools off
and tends to keep rising up into the upper
atmosphere. A temperature inversion occurs when
air near the ground is relatively cool, and there
is a layer of warmer air above it. That upper
layer of warm air keeps the cooler air from
rising, and traps all of the pollution in the
cooler, lower layer. So for example in LA, you
tend to have relatively cool air near the ground
because of sea breezes from the nearby ocean. But
you also tend to have warmer air coming over the
mountains from the desert (think of the warm
Sundowners and Santa Ana winds as extreme examples
of this). That layer of warm air traps the cool,
polluted air in the city. Similar things can
happen in deep mountain valleys (like where Mexico
City is) because the valley floor gets very cold
at night and the cold air then gets trapped in the
valley. OK, so CO2 and other
gases can get trapped near the ground in LA. How
does that relate to global warming? Well, for one
thing, that sort of temperature inversion only
occurs in certain geographic locations. So in
most places around the world, there is nothing
stopping CO2 from rising into the
atmosphere and entering global circulation. Only
a small fraction of man-made CO2 is
produces in LA, so that effect is pretty small on
a global scale. Second, it turns out that LA is
not smoggy 365 days a year. Under some weather
patterns the inversion lifts and all of the air
trapped near the ground rises into the upper
atmosphere. So while the inversion might trap
CO2 temporarily, it does not
permanently prevent that CO2 from
entering the upper atmosphere. | | Answer 2:
Carbon dioxide is not really part of smog. Smog
is a result of different pollutants in the air,
most of which come from the burning of fossil
fuels. These chemicals can react with each other,
often by reactions that involve sunlight, to
produce things like ozone,nitrogen oxides, and
various organic (carbon-containing) that are the
major components of smog. It is true that when a
city is surrounded by mountains, the air does not
circulate as much, so smog can build up to higher
levels. High levels of smog are also typically
associated with events called temperature
inversions. Normally, the air is cooler as you go
higher up in the troposphere, the lowest layer of
the atmosphere (it goes from the surface to about
5 to 10 miles above the surface). This is because
the Sun's rays heat up the surface of the Earth,
which in turn heats up the air immediately over
the surface;when air is heated, it expands and
rises (just like a hot-air balloon), and cold air
will fall down to take its place, all of which
results in air circulation and consequently the
removal of pollutants from areas near the surface.
During a temperature inversion, however,air
temperature will stay constant or even increase as
you go higher up, making it harder for air near
the surface to become light enough to be able to
rise very far, so the air will stagnate and smog
can build up. Los Angeles is susceptible to
temperature to inversions because at the surface
there is often cold air that flowed over the
oceans, while global air circulation results in a
warmer layer above this. So the bottom line
is that smog builds up in cities due to temporary
circumstances that cause atmospheric circulation
to be reduced.Eventually, however, the air in the
cities will become mixed with the rest of the
atmosphere. We know that levels of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere are increasing because we can
measure it directly--today the concentration of
carbon dioxide is about 385 parts per
million,while prior to the Industrial Revolution,
when extensive burning of fossil fuels began, the
concentration was something like 280 parts
permillion | | Answer 3:
It is ozone and particulate matter, not carbon
dioxide, that compose smog. The production of smog
does also generate carbon dioxide, but the global
greenhouse effect does not take place in the same
way nor for the same reason as health damage from
local air pollution. Click Here to return to the search form.
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