Rudy's Runaway Greenhouse Peer Review edit

Hey Rudy! Here are my suggestions for your article. Overall, I thought it was really well written, organized, and you definitely put a lot of research into it. :)


Intro edit

  • I think the first sentence should be a more accessible definition geared toward someone who doesn't have a background in physics/science. Something like: The runaway greenhouse effect is a process by which certain gases continuously trap heat without having an efficient method of releasing that heat, causing the gas to get hotter over time. (This may not be entirely accurate but it gets the point across, feel free to adjust it as you see fit.)
  • Make this two sentences: The runaway greenhouse effect is often formulated with water vapor as the condensable species, in this case the water vapor reaches the stratosphere and escapes into space via hydrodynamic escape, resulting in a desiccated planet. -> The runaway greenhouse effect is often formulated with water vapor as the condensable species. In this case, the water vapor reaches the stratosphere and escapes into space via hydrodynamic escape, resulting in a desiccated planet.
  • Maybe spell out IPCC and give a one-sentence definition of what it is
  • I'm not sure if the IPCC sentence belongs in the intro... Maybe move it to the end of the Venus section? It just seemed a little out of place.

History edit

  • The physics relevant to the, later-termed, runaway greenhouse effect was explored by Makoto Komabayashi at Nagoya university. Adding a date will help put this sentence into context.
  • Short and sweet, looks good!

Physics of the runaway greenhouse edit

  • "Outgoing longwave radiation" lowercase o
  • "Negative feedback" lowercase n
  • "An increase in temperature from greenhouse gases leading to increased water vapor (which is itself a greenhouse gas) causing further warming is a positive feedback, but not a runaway effect, on Earth." Can you add a sentence after this describing why?
  • "Water vapor feedback" lowercase w
  • "Saturation vapor pressure" lowercase s
  • explicitly define OLR-- I was confused for a second when I saw that

The moist greenhouse limit edit

  • Cold trap (astronomy) lowercase c

Connection to habitability edit

  • "The concept of a habitable zone has been used by planetary scientists and astrobiologists to define an orbital region around a star in which a planet (or moon) can sustain liquid water." Source?
  • Quickly define "grey atmosphere"

Venus edit

  • Looks good!

Earth edit

  • "The switch from using HITRAN to the more current HITEMP absorption line lists in radiative transfer calculations has shown that it previous runaway greenhouse limits were too high" I think "it" is a typo in that sentence
  • "climat esystem" typo
  • "earth" capital E
  • "Additionally, during 80% of the latest 500 million years, the earth is believed to have been in a greenhouse state due to the greenhouse effect, when there were no continental glaciers on the planet, the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (such as water vapor and methane) were high, and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) ranged from 28 °C (82.4 °F) in the tropics to 0 °C (32 °F) in the polar regions.[30]" I think it would be a good idea to break this up into a few sentences rather than one long sentence.

Distant Future edit

  • Looks good!

Overall comments: edit

  • This is really nitpicking but when you link another page, make sure the capitalization (or un-capitalization) fits the sentence structure
  • I think I would like to see an entire section devoted to the misuse of the term to describe what is happening on Earth. Maybe near the top so it's visible when you first click on the page
  • Is there anything that can be said about Mars?
  • A section runaway greenhouse on exoplanets might be interesting, but I totally understand if it would be too much work last minute to add this because it could end up being a pretty hefty section.
  • Overall, great work! I think you have great content and did a good job of describing everything so that it is understandable.

Mcurr (talk) 18:01, 12 June 2019 (UTC)McurrReply