PHY3244: INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL AND SPACE PHYSICS

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL PHYSICS

SUMMARY OF CONTENT (NOTES) : Assoc. Prof. Jean Uwamahoro

NB: Summary of the content was mostly adapted from course notes by M. Dželalija: Environmental
Physics; University of Molise, University of Split, Valahia University of Targoviste, 2004.

UNIT 5: Water

5. Water
The density of water is at a maximum at 40C. Ice I (there are at least ten phases of ice) is an
open structure, held together by hydrogen bonds, and is less dense than liquid water. This is
useful since the oceans freeze from the top down, not the bottom up. The latent heat of fusion
(i.e. the heat required to convert 1 kg of ice to water without changing the temperature) is 0.334
kJ/kg. The latent heat of vaporisation (i.e. the heat required to convert water to vapour without
a change of temperature) is 2300 kJ/kg.
5.1. Hydrosphere
The total volume of water on the Earth is about 1284 M km3; 97 % of this is in the oceans. If
it were spread evenly over the Earth, the planet would be covered to a depth of 2.8 km; 2.25
% is locked up in the polar ice-caps and in glaciers; about 0.75 % is in soil, lakes and rivers;
0.035 % is in the atmosphere. To give some idea of what this amount is: if all the water
vapour in the atmosphere were instantly converted to rain, the total rainfall (averaged over
the Earth’s surface) would be about 3 cm. Yet the annual average rainfall here is 90-100 cm.
There is a hydrologic cycle.

5.2. Hydrologic cycle

Water is cycled between the oceans and the atmosphere. As always, the cycle is driven by
the Sun. Most of the water vapour in the atmosphere (84 %) comes from the oceans.

1
Transpiration from plant leaves accounts for most of the rest. The Sun heats the water in the
oceans (and on the land surface), giving evaporation. The warm, moist air rises, expands
(under reduced pressure higher in the atmosphere) and cools. The water vapour condenses to
form clouds. The winds then carry the clouds across the Earth’s surface until the water is
released as precipitation (rain, hail or snow) to fall on the Earth for further recycling. Most
of the precipitation falls into the oceans (75 % of the surface of the planet being ocean). The
rate of circulation of water within the hydrologic cycle is very rapid. Since the total mass of
water in the atmosphere is constant, precipitation is balanced by evaporation. Thus,
comparing throughputs shows that the average residence time of water molecules in the
atmosphere is about 10 days.

5.3. Water in the atmosphere

Water greatly affects the behaviour of the atmosphere. The main areas are:
• Thermodynamics (through condensation and evaporation)
• Cloud formation (and thus the planetary albedo as well as precipitation effects),
• Cleansing of the atmosphere by rainout (e.g. Removal of substances within clouds such as
hygroscopic (water-absorbing) aerosols), washout (removal of aerosols and dissolution of
soluble atmospheric gases through capture by falling raindrops), • chemistry of the
atmosphere (as a solvent or participant in reactions), and
• Absorption of radiation. Water is a major greenhouse gas.
The amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is limited by the saturation vapour pressure.
This is the partial pressure of water vapour in equilibrium with the condensed phase (i.e. the
attempt to add any more vapour will cause condensation). Note that this is the partial pressure
of the water. The total pressure of the atmosphere is irrelevant. This quantity can be obtained
from the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, a standard result of equilibrium thermodynamics. This
states that, for a vapour in equilibrium with its condensed phase, the partial pressure, p, is given
by

2
Where L is the latent heat of evaporation (in kJ/mole). This is often given in J/kg, i.e. LS =
L/Mv, where LS is the latent heat and Mv is the molecular weight. We can define a specific
gas constant for water, RS(H2O) = 1000 R/Mv. In the case of water, the partial pressure, p, is
conventionally represented by the symbol e, and the saturated partial pressure by es. Setting
p = es, we can easily integrate the above equation, to give

where es0 is a constant (usually the saturated vapour pressure at S.T.P., 298.15 K and one
atmosphere pressure) and T is the temperature. Note that this equation shows that es is
strongly dependent on temperature. Warm air can contain much more water vapour than cold
air. For example, in the tropics (air temperature 250C) the partial pressure of water vapour is
32 mb. In the polar vortex (temperature –200C) the partial pressure is 1.2 mb.
The other measure is the relative humidity, RH. This is the ratio of the partial pressure
of water in the atmosphere to the saturated vapour pressure at that temperature, expressed as
a percentage, i.e.

5.4. Clouds
There is a general classification of clouds summarised in the list below. Terms can either be
nouns (the –us form) or qualifiers (the –o form):
• cirrus (cirro). A cloud containing ice-crystals - therefore high altitude.
• Stratus (strato). A layer cloud. This may be continuous or show structure.
• Alto. A middle-height cloud.
• Cumulus (cumulo) indicates vertical circulation within the cloud. This gives the ‘fluffy’
shape and is quite different from the stratus form.

3
• Nimbus (nimbo). Cloud producing precipitation (rain, snow, hail).

Not all the possible combinations can occur even in principle, but many do. For example, a
cumulonimbus cloud is a cloud with large vertical movement of air producing (usually a lot
of) rain – it is a thunderstorm cloud. Possible combinations are:
• Cirrus (high1, ice, white bands or filaments/patches with fibrous appearance),
• Cirrocumulus (high, ice, white patch regularly arranged in form of grains),
• Cirrostratus (high, ice, whitish veil covering large area of sky),
• Altocumulus (middle, water/ice, white/grey regular arrangement of small clouds),
• Altostratus (middle, water/ice, greyish or bluish layer fibrous appearance covering large area
of sky),
• Nimbostratus (low, water/ice, grey thick layer often with snow and rain),
• Stratocumulus (low, water, grey or whitish layer with dark elements, regularly arranged),
• Stratus (low, water, grey layer with fairly uniform cloud base sometimes with snow and
drizzle),
• Cumulus (low, water, detached clouds, sharp outlines, ‘cauliflower’ clouds),
• Cumulonimbus (5-12 km, water/ice, anvil-shaped thundercloud).
Let is consider an average cumulus cloud. The shape is (crudely) cylindrical. A typical
cloud will be about 2 km in diameter and 2 km in depth. Hence the volume is about πd2H/4 =
6.28·109 m3. A cloud contains of the order of 50-500 million water droplets per cubic metre.
Each of these droplets is about 10 µm in radius. Thus the volume of a single droplet is
4πr3/3, i.e. 4.2·10-15 m3. Given the density of water, 1000 kg/m3, the mass of the droplet is
about 4.2·10-12 kg. Thus the mass of the cloud (at the lowest reasonable density of droplets)
is about 1.3·106 kg. This seems a lot, but if all the water in this cloud fell at once, the depth
of water would be (Volume of water)/(area of cloud base), which for the figures we gave

1
Low is designated from the surface to 2 km, middle 2-7 km, and high 7 km to the tropopause.

4
above is 4.2·10-4 m, i.e. 0.42 mm which is not a lot. During a storm therefore, lots of
‘clouds’ must pass over you.

5.4.1. Physics of cloud formation

Clouds are formed as hot humid air rises and cools by adiabatic expansion. When air reaches
saturation, excess water vapour condenses onto small particles called cloud condensation
nuclei. The partial vapour pressure required to produce condensation is higher than the
thermodynamic vapour pressure because the surface of a drop is curved. On the other hand,
the effect of dissolving material into the drop decreases the vapour pressure. Both effects
depend on the drop radius, r. The solute nuclei come from natural sources such as dust from
wind erosion, sea salt, etc. They can also arise from industrial products (sulphate particles,
coal dust). About 100 such particles per cm3 are needed to form a cloud. Since there are 103
particles/cm3 over the sea, 104 particles/cm3 over land, and 105 particles/cm3 over cities,
forming clouds should not, on the face of it, be a problem. However, matters are not quite so
simple.

5.4.1.1. Growing droplets in cloud

Consider a water drop at rest. Water vapour condenses onto the surface of the droplet,
releasing latent heat. The temperature of the droplet rises, altering the vapour pressure, e,
and eventually, a steady state is reached. There is a gradient of the partial pressure of the
water vapour driving a flux of water vapour towards the drop. Also, the rate of heat loss is
equal to the heat gained by the drop from the latent heat of the water. This gives an equation
of the form for the growth rate of the radius r of the drop

where C is a constant. This integrates to give r2 = r02 + 2Ct, where r0 is the initial droplet
size. The problem is that detailed calculation shows that it would take 1-4 hours for a drop to
grow from 2 to 30 µm. Yet in a typical cloud there are many droplets larger than 10 µm
although the lifetime of a cloud can be as short as ten minutes. One final problem, as the

5
 cloud rises, the temperature falls and so the saturated vapour pressure falls. Thus the super-
saturation in the cloud must rise. This means that more and more nuclei are capable of acting
as condensation nuclei for water droplets. More of the water vapour is removed and,
eventually, equilibrium is reached again. How then does the cloud grow? Clearly
condensation is not enough to explain cloud growth.
Another possible growth mechanism is coalescence: two droplets collide to make a
larger droplet. The probability of coalescence depends on: (i) the size of the droplets (i.e.
their cross-section), and (ii) their relative velocity. The velocity of droplets depends on a
balance between gravity and frictional forces. For reasonably small particles (less than 30
µm in diameter), the terminal velocity is given by Stokes Law,
Fv = 𝟔𝝅𝜼𝒓𝒗,

Where Fv is the drag force, i.e. the force exerted by the viscous forces on the particle that act
against the force pushing the particle through the medium (in this case gravity), η is the
viscosity of the medium (air in this case), and r is the radius of the particle. When these
forces are in equilibrium the droplet reaches terminal velocity. This obviously depends on
the droplet size. Typical values are given in the next table

Droplet diameter (mm) Terminal velocity (m/s)

0.01 0.003
0.1 0.025
1.0 4.03
5.0 9.09

The expression controlling the rate of growth takes the form

where E is the collection efficiency taking account of the fact that the drop is not a sphere, w is
the volume swept out by the alling droplet, v is the droplet velocity and ρ is the density of water.

6
Combining the two modes of growth, it is possible to see that there is a ‘barrier’ to growth at the
20 µm size where neither process is efficient. The mechanism that overcomes this barrier is still
not understood. Possibilities include increasing the efficiency of collisions by including the effect
of turbulence, invoking droplet-droplet interactions by electrical forces. When the droplet reaches
a diameter of 2-3 mm they are broken apart by collisions rather than built up. Above 6 mm the
droplet becomes unstable anyway. The surface tension cannot hold it together.
Once the drops grow to a size beyond the ability of the up-draughts in the cloud to maintain them,
they begin to fall. Below the cloud, they are in unsaturated air and begin to evaporate again. Rain
falling from a cloud need not reach the ground. Only the larger drops, those that have swept up
their neighbours by coalescence, can reach the ground as rain. In the case of colder clouds, the
precipitation often begins as ice or hail which melts on the way down. Sometimes, of course, it
doesn’t.
5.4.2. Thunderstorms
Thunderstorms occur when moist, warm air near the ground becomes buoyant and rises to
form small cumulus clouds. These clouds grow and surge upwards to combine and form
cumulonimbus, anvil-shaped clouds. These main extend about 1 km into the stratosphere.
Within these clouds there is vigorous movement, updrafts and downdrafts at tens of metres
per second. Such movements lead to a separation of electrical charges within the cloud.
Positive charge gets carried to the top and negative charge to the bottom. The charge carriers
are electrons, molecules, aerosol dust, hailstones and snowflakes. The process of charging is
unclear but may include frictional contact, freezing, melting, and break-up of water droplets.
Once charge separation has occurred, an electric field is established. The air may then
become ionised. Thus a small region of the atmosphere is changed from being a good
insulator to a highly conducting path. Thus, there can be (and is) an electrical discharge. This
is lightning – which is simply a high-voltage spark. The average lightning discharge involves
the flow of ten coulombs of charge across a potential difference of about 100 MV. Thus the
energy is about 109 J (about 280 kWh). The main types of lightning are:

7
• Ground discharges (thunderbolts, forked lightning). These occur between the cloud and the
ground. They consist of a ‘leader stroke’ establishing an ionised path to the ground up which
a ‘return stroke’ passes.
• Cloud lightning (sheet lightning, heat lightning) occurs within the cloud. It gives a diffuse
illumination without a distinct channel being seen. If there are distant thunderstorms on the
horizon, the sheet lightning is what will be seen.
• Air discharges (streak lightning) passes from cloud to cloud or cloud to air but does not
reach the ground (i.e. No return stroke).
• Ball lightning. Unusual and still not fully explained. Usually small balls (but reported
diameters up to 1 m) of electrical discharge. Move slowly in the air or along the ground.
Usually disappear with a violent explosion.

Although lightning is the most spectacular effect of a thunderstorm, it is only a small part of the
total energy budget of the storm.
Thunder is the sound wave produced by a lightning stroke. The sudden rise in pressure in
the lightning channel produces an intense sound wave as in an explosion. Sound travels at
about 330 m/s, so, the sound follows behind the lightning flash. Hence counting the interval
between the flash and the thunder gives a rough estimate of the distance of a storm (about 1
km for every three seconds but there may be echoes which confuse matters).

Questions:
• How does the terminal velocity of a drop depend upon its radius in the range 10-30 µm?

• The horizontal acceleration on an air parcel of mass 1 tonne is 10-4 ms-2. What is the net
force on the air parcel? Estimate the volume of the air parcel at sea level. (Answer: 0.1 N;
1000 m3)

• Given that a cumulus cloud is typically 2 km deep with a similar diameter and contains
5·107 water droplets per m3 each of 10 µm radius, calculate the depth of rainfall shoul the
cloud release all its water in one instant. (Answer: 0.42 mm)
8
• Calculate the space charge, assuming that there are 1000 positive ions and 900 negative ions
per cm3 in the air. (Answer: 16 pCm-3)