The Possible Role of Nucleation of Phase Changes as the Dominant Rate

Controlling Processes in Anthropogenically Induced Climate Change

By D. Grant Ph.D. New Deer-Turriff U.K.

There is a need for a new model of anthropogenic influence on climate change in order to design
more effective strategies for offsetting a possible major future planetary ecological disaster.

The formation of any new phase such as liquid or solid from gas or crystals of calcium carbonate in the
ocean, or in organisms like marine algae or humans, is subject to the effects of nucleation. Calcium
carbonate is a major store of carbon and the formation of this solid phase can influence oceanic
carbonate, bicarbonate and carbon dioxide (which equilibrates with the atmospheric carbon dioxide).
Human influences seem to potentially control the activities of the seed particles which occur in the
ocean. A similar seeding process also influences the composition of the atmosphere and hence its heat
trapping and heat reflecting capacity. This includes dominant actions of those seed particles which are
believed to be critically involved in the formation of water vapor clusters and ice particles in clouds
and the subsequent precipitation. Since climate can be argued to be a function of such nucleation
processes and these have recently been indicated to be anthropogenically controlled over most of the
Earth (1), it follows that this process could be the prime mechanism by which humans are currently
empowered to cause climate change.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is likely to be a secondary factor subsequent to the
global warming and altered weather patterns produced by human conurbations. The global warming
can be argued to be controlled more by oceanic chemistry rather than the rate of combustion of fossil
fuel.
It should be noted that while it was previously commonly acknowledged that water vapor is by far the
most potentially active greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, hitherto it has been argued that equilibrium
thermodynamics, and not kinetics, should dominate the formation of liquid water from supersaturated
air. This scenario, if true, must disallow water vapor from being a dominant force in anthropogenic
influence on climate change. This, however, ignores the ability of nucleating particles to actually
determine the precipitation rates and that the chemical nature of such particles is now thought to be
largely controlled by anthropogenic influences. A possible influence of human substance emissions
which seems not to have been researched is the poisoning of the seeding of cloud formation. This
process might be influenced similarly to how humans can influence the precipitation of calcium
carbonate from the ocean. It is well known that the latter seeding can to be greatly inhibited by man-
made inhibitors such as those which are employed for this purpose in oil industry bore-holes, as well as
by the presence in natural water of substances which resist biodegradation which have found wide use
as laundry detergents and herbicides. This possible scenario, it should be noted, has been fairly well
verified by numerous in vitro laboratory experiments.

The establishment of the probable current dominant role of humans in determining the seed particle
chemistry in both the ocean and the atmosphere seems to be a complex function of the global human
population density and the associated growth of cities (and the industrial scale agriculture which is part
of the globally extended city system) which creates the production of large volumes of waste matter
into water systems as well as the emission into the atmosphere of a range of gases as well as of solid
particle pollutants. The putative correlation between urban wet islands and urban heat islands (which
are much larger than the old style maps which show where the centers of cities are located) and climate
change could ultimately be dependent on the effect of human activities on the seeding processes which
(it is now suggested) determine climate. The production of thousands of types of chemical substances
in the environment in amounts which had not been possible before humans is part of the complex
equation. Examples of these are the chorinated aromatic substances which can e.g. be emitted in
sufficiently large amounts by malfunctioning incinerators to putatively contaminate food chains and
thereby e.g. to impact on animal embryo development. These chlorinated organic substances are
sufficiently environmentally stable to persist in the atmosphere where they might conceivably attach
strongly to the natural seed particles in a similar manner to how they are known to bind strongly to
humic substances in the soil. It should be noted that this sort of pollution has now become a global and
not a local phenomenon.

Both oceanic and atmospheric phase change situations are especially influenced by the alteration of the
rate of formation and transport of decomposed natural and man-made organic matter following
anthropogenic influences. The decomposed organic matter of soil and natural water which has been
termed humic and fulvic acid can, e.g. become removed from soils by the need to feed large
populations following deforestation and the use of industrial scale agriculture. The erosion of soils can
also be influenced by more intense rainfall.
The decomposed organic matter which contributes to the nucleation of water vapor systems in the
atmosphere seems potentially to be influenced both by soil degradation and consequent formation of
soil derived dust particles as well as by the ‘soot’ which is produced by the combustion of fossil fuels.

(1)
A. Clarke and V. Kapustin
Hemispheric aerosol vertical profiles: anthropogenic impacts on optical depth and cloud nuclei
Science 2010 329 1488-92; cf., U. Pöschl et al., ibid., 2010 329 1513 and U. Baltensparger ibid., 2010
329 1474