Don't forget that the main place where carbon dioxide dissolves in water is the same place that sulphur oxides, soot and other stuff gets caught in liquid water and that's the atmosphere, namely clouds.
The tiny particles of dirt and anthropogenic particles act as nucleation sites so that when air reaches the dew point, clouds form. When the particles are simply small particles, they interfere with the passage of light causing the sky to look blue instead of black. The shorter wavelength blue light is diffused by the particles making the sky blue. As the sun sets, we get red shining on the clouds [blue, green yellow, orange being stripped out] giving beautiful sunsets. That's nice, but a more important effect is that umpty petatrillion tiny drops of water in clouds have huge surface area compared with flat ocean surfaces. Dirty great thunderclouds and hurricanes are wide, high and circulating a LOT of air and water. They are like vast vacuum cleaners, sucking up air, particles, carbon dioxide and water vapour. The CO2 and particles end up in the water which is then dumped in deluges onto the ground and into the oceans.
The water which falls on land heads for the ocean [if it doesn't get evaporated again or used by plants etc]. When it flows over limestone, the CO2 as carbonic acid rescues some of the carbon buried there and carries it to the ocean where it gets a new lease on life in molluscs, bones etc before being buried in oceanic crust sediment by the kilometre.
In rivers, algae grabs some of the CO2 and it forms the food chain providing fresh-water fish to eat. In the oceans its the basis of the food chain too.
The Gulf Stream acts like a large conveyor belt carrying dissolved CO2 to the north, where it sinks due to being dense and more salty due to evaporation, carrying said dissolved CO2 to the bottom of the ocean conveyor system and off on a 1500 year circulatory journey. .
Water is most dense at about 4 degrees Celsius, so the warmer water sinks, especially with a heavier salt load leaving the 0 degrees Celsius water floating around on top, ready to freeze.
That's a good thing for fish, seals etc because they can hide under the ice from polar bears - except that if a polar bear finds a breathing hole for a seal, it's in trouble. images.aad.gov.au
Anyway, all I was going to write was that clouds absorb most of the CO2 and rain takes it to the oceans. Or dumps it in the ice at the poles.
Mqurice |
