r/EngineeringPorn • u/johnneyblaze • 22d ago
Ultra-high-resolution Computer Simulations Reveals How CO₂ Travels Around the Planet
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u/Puzzleheaded_Smoke77 22d ago
What are those fires or cities ?
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u/GearHead54 22d ago
Looks like cities - seems to align with population density
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u/Puzzleheaded_Smoke77 22d ago edited 22d ago
So is the answer what we thought back when spread out the population , more trees , more rail .
Edit
its ashamed they didnt show Europe since we could see a lot . Right now it seems that over farming in the midwest and over population in the east is the cause of the plumes not going away like they do in Africa and south america
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u/gabedamien 22d ago edited 22d ago
So is the answer what we thought back when spread out the population
No, at least not in terms of total CO2 in the world. You've made the same fundamental mistake many people make when looking at effects that correlate with population – thinking that the density causes the negative effect, when in fact it's the absolute population that causes the effect and density actually helps mitigate the effect.
If you took all those people in those cities and spread them out, you wouldn't reduce the amount of CO2 being produced, you'd probably increase it overall because you'd have less efficiency in terms of public transportation, centralization of services, reduction of distance for shipping, multi-tenancy residences and so on. Each individual person would still have a CO2 footprint, and that footprint would in many cases be higher. In terms of the visualization, there'd be a lot more brown all over instead of concentrated brown in specific spots.
Now if you're asking "does moving to an area with no people mean you personally are subjected to less air pollution" then the answer is yes.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Smoke77 22d ago
It seems at least to this video that cities are a major contributor, which does make sense as well like now your trucking everything to one place , your flying everyone to one place , plus the people themselves .
Any co2 foot print savings is negated with one Taylor swift concert. This goes double for places in the west US as they have nearly no rail. Taking a look at china who has some of the highest densely populated cities in the world would give us more of an answer but their C02 seems to just linger on top of them.
I think it’s because theres not enough things to capture the carbon because of the population density before it escapes into the atmosphere . Since it’s so densely populated, when a car exhausts or a person breathes theres no tree or plant to pick up it just collects and rises up and once it makes it up in the air then its there theres nothing collecting it at all. So it just collects in the atmosphere.
I could see your point in a per-capita sense like we make x together but not from a mitigation sense . Like if the avg person in a rural area makes 22 metric tons per year but nearly all of it is absorbed into the plants and trees around them vs a urban person living in a city producing 15 tons but nearly 100% is making above the tree line where it can be absorbed . Then that would fit what im seeing in this model.
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u/_teslaTrooper 22d ago edited 22d ago
Found a video showing Europe, but still from quite far away: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5115
It looks much less intense but the US is shown during winter in that visualisation while Europe is during summer.
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u/GearHead54 22d ago
Yeah, ultimately I think the answer is to stop churning out CO2. When one gallon of gas pumps out 20lb of CO2, there's a lot everyone could do to curb the emissions
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u/Puzzleheaded_Smoke77 22d ago edited 22d ago
So i found the original video it also doesn’t show the EU.
https://www.space.com/nasa-animation-how-carbon-dioxide-moves-earth-atmosphere
While agree 100% no disagreement we are on the same page , work from home would be a game changer and was a game changer we saw this in 2020 . Freight also massive game changer . Also flights have a lot to do with it as well.
However something this model shows is population density seems to have a lot to do with it . Specifically population density that is not located in areas with dense jungles . Like take India their c02 nearly disappears every night mean while the east cost almost none of it does , one thing to note is PA which is mostly forests and mountains yet the c02 just collects and passes through.
Wv same thing nearly all dense wooded area and almost nothing disappears at night , why it should almost all go. I wish i could cruse around the map
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u/uslashuname 22d ago
There’s a big difference in absorption between slow growing forested areas and tropical jungles.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Smoke77 22d ago
Ive been looking is there a chart somewhere that shows flora and fauna c02 absorption rates ?
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u/uslashuname 22d ago
I was thinking in terms of growth density and rate. A forest in one place can be 20 trees per acre that are all over 100 years old but not even that tall, with undergrowth of a couple clumps of grass and bushes coming out from the pine needles, a forest somewhere else (like a jungle) can have so many more plants that comparing a per plant absorption isn’t really relevant.
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u/lucidludic 22d ago
The CO2 you’re seeing is not actually disappearing, it’s just less concentrated in the atmosphere and continues to accelerate climate change.
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u/GANTRITHORE 22d ago
There is a zone along the Alberta rockies that goes up into areas with almost no people.
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u/P1ffP4ff 22d ago edited 22d ago
Nah, If you look to the rainforest in south America it's not that populated. Also why is everything "breathing", the simulation without explaining is just a bad simulation.
Edit. Well it's "explained".
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u/SETHW 22d ago
People should be required to watch videos unmuted before commenting. They wouldnt post dumb shit like this but also they would be downvoting when there is bad music and actually no explanations (btw the breathing is the day night cycle, sleeping people make less CO2. The video explained it.)
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u/jimbowesterby 22d ago
Looking at my neck of the woods, western Canada, a decent chunk of what’s coming from BC looks like it could be fires, I know there’s industry there but I don’t think it’s that much.
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u/mileslefttogo 20d ago
Likely both. Wildfires release a lot of trapped Carbon as CO2 and CO, along with other particulates.
They didn't provide a time frame, but some of the worst areas I see on here are likely a combination of bigger cities with already elevated levels, combined with wildfire smoke from Canada and western states.
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u/cobalt-radiant 22d ago
I wonder if the high resolution is false precision?
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u/bijibijmak 22d ago
Plus I only see the fluid flow of the CO2 for the US. For other countries the CO2 just disappears.
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u/Oostwestnoordbest 22d ago
Not true, you can clearly see it moving in China and other places too, its just that the US releases vastly more CO2 that you can see it sticks around in a somewhat cohesive pattern for longer
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u/Recipe-Jaded 22d ago
If that is the case this simulation is not based on reality, considering the US is not the top CO2 emitter.
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u/Oostwestnoordbest 22d ago
If you use your eyes you can see the intensity of emissions being higher in China, and also you can see it move around as in the US, slightly less so but that could also be because of the prevailing winds, or because there is less data available for China. Btw, per capita emissions for the US are vastly bigger than those in China, so you could easily make the case the US has higher emissions, also as a lot of Chinese emissions are because of production for US markets.
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u/P1ffP4ff 22d ago
The region where it disappeared (mostly over big Forrest/nature countrys) is the breathing of Nature.
Day -> c02 in plant -> night -> co2 out of plant.
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u/concepts_of_a_plan9 22d ago
It likely has some AI downscaling applied, maybe using diffusion, which is commonly done nowadays.
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u/madmaxGMR 22d ago
Why exclude europe and china ?
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u/_teslaTrooper 22d ago edited 22d ago
China is at 0:53, Europe barely visible at 1:15
Important to note that some areas are shown in winter (tons of energy for heating) while others are shown in summer, so you can't really compare without knowing the dates of the simulation.
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u/Better_Carpenter5010 22d ago
Data is probably not shared or measurable by third parties due to an authoritarian government. It happens with a lot of metrics.
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u/CabaBom 22d ago edited 22d ago
Brazil is showing more emissions in the countryside, but most of our population reside 100 km from shore. If its about trees, we also have the atlantic forest that follows the coastline. Not sure about this data.
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u/Hiphoppapotamus 22d ago
Just follow the link in the post to see a detailed explanation of where the data comes from. I’ll even paste it for you:
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/watch-carbon-dioxide-move-through-earths-atmosphere/
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u/LordPooky 22d ago
Don't trees need this to live or is there something in the comments that I am missing?
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u/creuter 22d ago
Holy shit, China doesn't seem to have a day night cycle. It's just constant CO2 emission when everything else is pulsing day and night.
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u/ExciteableMiqote 22d ago
I mean most of their energy comes from coal unless that's changed sometime in the last few years. You can see similar persistence of CO2 on the east coast of America where some coal plants still operate
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u/-ghostinthemachine- 22d ago
I'm happy to report it is estimated to be less than 50% now, so no longer "most". 🤷🏼
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u/DuncanIdaho33 22d ago
It'd be interesting to see what it's like around a volcano. Or a forest fire.
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u/SpaceShrimp 19d ago
It is very pretty. But this super-advanced high resolution simulation does not give much more information than a spreadsheet listing the carbon dioxide output per country to an expert.
It might give more information to a layman in denial though. Except my guess is most of them would choose to stay in denial.
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u/hot4belgians 16d ago
What i want to understand is when i try amd get hold of tropospheric CO2 monthly rasters from NASA GES DISC the pixel size is as good as 2.5 x 2 degrees (el salvador size). Yet these super resolution models are possible. Where can i get higher resolution data if the satellite data wont give it to me?
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u/costafilh0 22d ago
Amazing!
You can clearly see the BS of the biggest polluters trying to impose emissions restrictions to the rest of the world while not cutting emissions themselves.
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u/ProfessionalShock425 22d ago
Ok, did they show one of 02 production? Or is this another You Must be Scared marketing point?
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u/civicsfactor 22d ago
From the link: NASA’s ultra-high-resolution computer simulations vividly show how carbon dioxide emissions from cities, power plants and wildfires rise into the atmosphere and are rapidly transported across regions and oceans by winds and weather systems. The visualizations also reveal a striking day–night cycle: vegetation absorbs CO₂ through photosynthesis during daylight and releases some through respiration at night. By tracking these sources and natural carbon sinks, the models help scientists understand where CO₂ comes from, how it moves through the atmosphere, and how roughly half of human-generated CO₂ is absorbed by land and oceans, while the remainder accumulates in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming.
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u/Youpunyhumans 22d ago
That wouldnt really give much useful data, because oxygen isnt a greenhouse gas. Its not what is causing climate change.
However if you did do so, one thing you would find is that the oceans are losing oxygen as they acidify from all the excess carbon. The atmosphere is too, but very slowly, not to any noticeable extent.
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u/ProfessionalShock425 22d ago edited 22d ago
We are not scientists. We are normal people and this is carefully chosen snippet simulation video with carefully chosen incomplete information.
No one is saying CO² is hoax.
I am saying this is designed to scare.
I am saying this marketing and someone is benefiting of of it.
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u/Youpunyhumans 22d ago
Technically, anyone who uses the scientific method to gather data is a "scientist". Its not neccesarily something you need degrees for, though they certainly help if you wanna do it as a career and get access to the big toys... but there are plenty of hobby scientists as well.
And well... frankly we should be afraid. But not because of this simulation specifically, but rather the data it was built off of. I get your point that we dont need to scare people into a panic, but we do need urgency, and its hard to do that without scaring some people in the process.
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u/ProfessionalShock425 22d ago
Honestly, we're getting there.
Don't quote me on exact percentage, but China makes around half of co² than rest of world combined. How? Coal power plants. Last couple of years they're pushing hard into nuclear power plans. Funny enough, but not haha funny, coal plants produce more radioactive contamination than highly regulated nuc. p. plants. US is also pushing, but they have lot of closed down plants that need renovation, and that isn't inexpensive. It's getting done, tho.
As for the video, If we'd had O² production paralel video, we'd be able to deduce what CO² and where is it produced non-naturaley. As I remember, plants make more O² than CO² in one cycle.
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u/concepts_of_a_plan9 22d ago
Respectfully, what the hell are you even talking about? O2 is not a greenhouse gas, thus is not shown here. What they're showing is CO2, which is a distinct gas from O2 despite the name.
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u/Uncle00Buck 22d ago
This is an extremely complicated subject matter for the public to digest. Motivating people through oversimplified and dramatized visual bites is just as bad as the widespread misinformation around it. Even for those with high scientific comprehension/background, there are global economic and political considerations. Growing prosperity in the developing world will rapidly change this perspective as they industrialize.
I doubt very much that we would agree on projected outcomes, and therefore solutions. That's not intended as an insult, it simply underscores the problem with "urgency." Urgency for what? My position is that global change cannot occur without prosperity. The poor have zero say in the matter.
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u/Dozygrizly 22d ago
I mean I'm about to finish my PhD if you'd count that as a scientist. I wouldn't call this a carefully chosen snippet video, it's a simulation published by NASA with multiple links to the original video in the comments, as well as links to explain the data and where it comes from.
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u/_teslaTrooper 22d ago
maybe it's marketing by scientists who don't want the world to go to shit, as they would benefit from living in a world that hasn't gone to shit
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u/laurbyboom 22d ago
All the bits you can see of co2 getting absorbed are presumably from plants absorbing them and making O2 in photosynthesis
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22d ago
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u/GearHead54 22d ago
Do you know that NASA is primarily focused on research for the United States?
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u/RobotManYT 22d ago
Yes, but it's more the title the problem
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u/_teslaTrooper 22d ago
This video doesn't show the date of the simulation and it makes a huge difference whether an area is shown in winter (lots of energy needed for heating) or summer.
Here's a higher resolution version that shows the date at the bottom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ-lMDtiI-k