by Dan Hughes
The contribution of viscous dissipation conversion of kinetic energy into thermal energy has been significantly over-estimated in three recent publications. The kinetic energy content of the macro-scale mean flow is assigned to be the heat dissipation into thermal energy. The estimate leads to temperature increases that make significant contributions to melting ice on Greenland.
A recent news release announced the findings of the research, and a video of a melt-lake draining into the glacier ice is in the news release and also at YouTube here.
A different estimate, in which the viscous dissipation is determined at the micro-scale of the flow, is calculated in these notes. This estimate, and the associated temperature increases in the flow, are significantly less than that based on the macro-scale. A PDF file with my analysis is here [BSLdissip02]
Comments, especially corrections for incorrectos, will be appreciated.
via Climate Etc.
March 8, 2022 at 07:18AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 