Water Phonons

Is catastrophic global warming an artifact of an inaccurate model for evaporation?

I have long been bothered by classical models for evaporation kinetics which assume gas phase thermodynamic equilibrium as a starting point for the derivations. Following the classical models for evaporation, some, perhaps all, climate and weather models assume that oceanic evaporation is based on gas phase undersaturation. In support of this position I quote two experts in the field — first Isaac Held, then Gavin Schmidt. It may be that currently implemented models have changed in recent years, but belief in past results persists. Ideas imprint on the human mind the same way that motherhood imprints on baby ducklings.
From Held[1]:
” —– evaporation over the oceans can be approximated by the “bulk formula”
E = (rho C V) (Qs(To) – RH Qs(Ta))
Here Qs(To) and Qs(Ta) are the saturation humidities at the ocean surface and reference level temperatures respectively. . . .

Then Schmidt[2]:
“To first approximation, the water vapour adjusts to maintain constant relative humidity. It’s important to point out that this is a result of the models, not a built-in assumption. Since approximately constant relative humidity implies an increase in specific humidity for an increase in air temperatures, the total amount of water vapour will increase adding to the greenhouse trapping of long-wave radiation. This is the famed ‘water vapour feedback’.”

A consequence of the humidity oriented evaporation models is that increasing the gas phase temperature alone will increase evaporation. In such models CO2 forcing can cause evaporation. Further, atmospheric evaporation and condensation are seldom near equilibrium so the basic idea behind the model is in question.

Part of the uniqueness of water is that an alternative model exists for evaporation kinetics from liquid water. This model exploits the properties of water phonons propagating on hydrogen bonds as identified by Elton[3,4] to trigger the phase change of liquid to gas. It successfully matches experimental data with no reference to equilibrium vapor pressure. The conclusion from the phonon model is that the properties which drive evaporation are the temperature at the surface of the condensed phase (which controls the population of phonons at the surface) and the phonon structure within the condensed phase (which moves energy to the surface). The corresponding macroscopic model is that sea surface temperature is the most significant driver of oceanic evaporation and the various humidities have only second order effects. The statistics of oceanic column water and sea surface temperature are considered in https://waterphonons.blog/2025/01/08/167/

All things considered, the answer to the initial question seems to be, yes.

Details of the phonon evaporation model are listed at waterphonons.blog. The blog includes an evaluation of the phonon evaporation theory by Grok3. This review may be the first by AI of a technical paper. Grok3 provides a roadmap of issues with which you might choose to equivocate.

[1]https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/blog_held/47-relative-humidity-over-the-oceans
[2]https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/#more-142

[3] Elton, Daniel 2016 PhD Thesis: Understanding the dielectric properties of water
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76639
https://ir.stonybrook.edu/xmlui/handle/11401/76639

[4] Elton, D., Fernández-Serra, M. The hydrogen-bond network of water supports propagating optical phonon-like modes. Nat Commun 7, 10193 (2016).
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10193