Use of Fossil Energy Will Increase Atmosphere and Earth Land Temperature ()
1. Introduction
The present report is a follower to report [1], Anthropogenic Heat Flux Will Affect Global Warming. When we use energy for industrial production, for buildings and for transport it will end up in heated air and heated Earth land. Energy budget for Atmosphere and Earth land during the period 1971 to 2018 will be calculated and compared with actual measurements. The report will find out whether use of energy is an important factor in these cases.
2. Energy Supply 1971-2018
According to the International Energy Agency [2] the total accumulated energy supply during 1971-2018 distributed on the different energy user sectors is as follows:
Industrial production: 1,116,201 TWh (30%);
Buildings: 894,066 TWh (24%);
Transport: 1,000,378 TWh (26%);
Various: 774,474 TWh (20%).
The energy supply comes from fossil and renewable sources with the following distribution:
Oil: 31%;
Coal: 27%;
Natural gas: 25%;
Nuclear: 4%;
Renewable: 13%;
87% of the total energy supply comes from fossil sources.
See Table 1. Figures according to [2].
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Table 1. Use of energy 1971-2018 TWh.
3. Energy Use for Industrial Production, Buildings and Various
Heat Islands is a concept used to describe the energy flux situation especially over big cities where the temperature can be several degrees over the land-temperature outside the city. That is of course the result of energy use in the city. The situation is the same for all energy users like industries and buildings. To some extent heat will accumulate by conduction in the land near the place where the energy use take place, but more important is the heat radiation towards the sky and the resulting radiation back to Earth land due to clouds and greenhouse gases. The radiation down surface will spread the energy over a wide land surface.
Several studies of big cities show energy flux in the range of 10 to 50 W/m2, to compare with the calculated increased mean global energy flux of 0.7 W/m2 from 1971 to 2018 according to IPCC AR 6 [3].
Anthropogenic Heat Flux (AHF) of 48 W/m2 was estimated over New York 2005 [4], AHF of 41 W/m2 over Tokyo 2013 [5], AHF of 35 W/m2 over Montreal 2009 [6], AHF of 55 W/m2 over Seoul 2002 [7] to mention some examples.
AHF from cities, from factories, from production plants, from buildings, from every singel energy user means thermal radiation to the sky and due to greenhouse gases and clouds thermal radiation back to Earth land. The radiation back will spread energy over wide Earth land.
Normally all use of energy will end up in heat, but there are exceptions, for instance production of plastic parts, where energy will be accumulated in the products, but sooner or later also plastic parts will release its accumulated energy to heat.
According to IPCC AR5 [8] and IPCC AR6 [3] thermal radiation up land surface is 398 W/m2 and radiation from greenhouse gases and clouds down land surface is 342 W/m2. Then 86% of radiation up surface is returned down Earth land and 14% is accumulated in the trophosphere.
Total accumulated use of fossil energy for Industrial production 1971-2018 is 971,095 TWh and then 835,142 TWh is returned down Earth land and 135,953 TWh is accumulated in the trophosphere.
Total accumulated use of fossil energy for Buildings 1971-2018 is 777,837 TWh and then 668,940 TWh is returned down Earth land and 108,897 TWh is accumulated in the trophosphere.
Total accumulated use of fossil energy for Various 1971-2018 is 673,792 TWh and then 579,461 TWh is returned down Earth land and 94,331 TWh is accumulated in the trophosphere.
4. Energy Use for Transport
Transport on road, which is the dominant mode of transport, use combustion engines of diesel or gasoline type. Diesel engines have an efficency of about 40% and a gasoline engine have an efficency of about 30%. This means that 60% to 70% of used fossil energy for road transport will end up as heated air because engine cooling use air for cooling.
In summary, if 60% - 70% of used fossil energy, 522,197 TWh to 609,230 TWh, will end up as heated air.
5. Combined Effect of Industrial Production, Buildings, Transport and Various
Summary of used energy for Industrial production, Buildings, Various and Transport is 3,785,119 Twh.
Calculated energy that end up as heated air is 861,378 to 948,411 TWh or 23% to 25% of total energy and energy that end up as heated Earth land is 2,344,643 to 2,431,676 TWh or 62% to 64% of total energy.
6. Troposphere Temperature Increase 1971-2018
Temperature will increase when energy is added to the troposphere and the increased temperature will stay for a long time. The situation is described by wikipedia [9] and the reference [10], both in Swedish. Translation follows:
“The troposhere is characterized by decreasing temperature with altitude, about 6˚C/km up to tropopause. Above tropopause there is the stratosphere, characterized by temperature increasing with altitude. Between troposphere and stratosphere there is very small mass exchange, hot air in the troposphere can rise to the tropopause but no further. Mass exchange between troposphere and stratospere is a very slow process.”
Then it is motivated to say that used energy will be accumulated.
In this case the accumulated used energy in the troposphere is 861,378 to 948,411 TWh from 1971 to 2018 and the corresponding temperature increase is 0.8˚C to 0.9˚C.
According to NASA [11] temperature increase during this period of time is 0.9˚C. The accumulated energy 861,378 to 948,411 TWh corresponds to 23% to 25% of total used energy which also was the result in paper [1].
7. Accumulated Energy in Earth Land
Above calculated energy that end up as heated Earth land is 2,344,643 to 2,431,676 Twh. In IPCC AR6 [3] chapter 7-179 is accumulated energy in Earth land 21.8 × 1021 J given for the period 1971 to 2018. This means that used energy corresponds to 39% to 40% of that amount.
8. Conclusions
When we use fossil energy two different things occur; air and land around us will be heated och CO2 will be created. Both heat and CO2 will accumulate in the climate system. As seen in this report global warming is a result of use of fossil energy, not directly of increasing CO2. Increasing Earth land temperature is to about 40% depending on energy use.
The use of fossil energy has a much more essential impact on the climate system, due to the accumulation, and should therefore be considered. To reduce CO2 in a process but keeping the same level of energy use will not solve the problem with increasing global warming.