Ric Werme introduced the 4:1 ratio of a sphere surface are a to a circle of the same diameter. That has little to do with the issue I raised. When the sun comes up over San Jose California; it doesn nto radiate at 342 W/m^2 less atmospheric absorption; we are used to getting the full 1366 W/m^2 less atmospheric absorption which brings it down to aorund 1000 W/m^2 which is a far cry from the 168 +30 reflected, that NOAA claims. Now we also have a latitude obliquity factor to get actual ground area insolation; but the point is that when we get sun, we get it at a level that is about 5 times what NOAA figures suggest.

This does two things; first of all our surface temperatures warm up much faster than they would under the NOAA sun, and because of the greater flux; the surface temperatures get very much higher than the 15 deg c that corresponds to NOAA’s budget. That means that our surfaces radiate infra red energy at a much higher rate than the NOAA model would lead to, and when the sun goes down in the evenings which it doesn’t in the NOAA budget, our suface temperatures drop very rapidly.

My whole point is that the real planet earth responds completely differently to the real energy and temperature variations than some fictitious planet would to NOAAs global average fictional model.

Harold Ambler says that his surfing temperatures go down evn though no hurricane comes within 300 miles.

Well then that has nothing to do with my post; because what I talked about was what happened to the water surface temperatures AFTER a real live hurricane had already passed over those waters. So NO Harold, if the hurricane didn’t come within 300 miles of you then what I said would not apply to your surfing waters. The astronomical thermal energy in a hurricane can only come from the waters that the hurricane passed over; it won”t transport enegy from the sourth pole or any other place that the hurricane didn’t pass over.

Bill Illis mentioned that a photon escapes from the atmosphere on average within 18 hours. I would venture that it doesn’t last here for more than 18 milliseconds.

An incoming solar photon can traverse 300 km of the atmosphere in a single millisecond. If it encounters elastic scattering on the way, it may meander for a bit, somewhat like Brownian motion or a random walk problem; and something tells me that doesn’t increase the travel time by more than a factor of pi on average, or maybe it is sqrt (pi). So solar photons are all dead in less than 5 milliseconds; having hit something fatal to their existance; like the waters of the ocean mostly; where their energy becomes thermalized as waste “heat energy”, or else they get capture by some clorphyl or other biologicvally active molecule and energise some life form.

Outgoing thermal radiation photons have a more bizarre life since they can escape in one msec or else get captured; and at high altitudes coud re-radiate; but at lower altitudes they get lost to thermalization by collisions with atmospheric gases. This will result in thermal emission at some other energy level and wavelength; only to run the gauntlet again.

But once agfain I don’t see any photon surviving for 18 msec, let alone 18 hours.

Photons are not like high energy neutrons that can get thermalized down to a few eV, and then wander around aimlessly; but they too suffer oblivion; since free neutrons have a half life of 14 minutes

So nearly 99% fo thermal neutrons would be gone in just one hour.

Most of the time, when I post something here; I specify the conditions I am talking about rather carefully. You can introduce arbitrary variation like surfing wet suits if you want to; but that makes it a diffeent problem from the one I was talking about.

I once wrote in Physics Today, in commenting on a review of Spencer Weart’s book; “The Discovery of Global Warming”, that when the floating se ice melts, the latent heat to melt it comes out of the ocean water it is floating on which thereby cools, and shrinks so the sea level will go down when the floating sea ice melts.

Weart scoffed at that suggestion, in his response to my letter; and affirmed that whent he ocean waters heat up; they expand so the sea level will rise.

I couldn’t agree more; but what the blazes does that have to do with the melting of the floating sea ice; which is what I was talking about.

So if you want to change the problem conditions then don’t expect to come up with the same conclusion I reach for my set of conditions.

George

That’s not correct. Here’s the current upper troposphere plot of winds, heights, temperatures and dewpoints: http://weather.unisys.com/upper_air/ua_300.html The sky above me is completely clear (northern VA) is completely clear due to very dry air (300mb dewpoint is -63). That means I have global cooling in my local area.

There is gaseous water (water vapor) in that -41C air and there is always water vapor in -55C air. There will be water vapor in any air above absolute zero provided there was some to start out (e.g. ice crystals to sublime like when you watch a contrail disappear). The amount of water vapor will depend on air temperature and pressure.

What I always heard was that the heat hits the roof (the barrier) and then once the barrier heats up it conducts in and heats the air inside.

The barrier itself has a temperature, and it radiates downward and upward (in addition to conduction as you mentioned). If it were only conduction, then you might expect the top of the room to heat up in statically stable configuration (since only the air at the top can touch the hot roof) and the bottom to remain cool, (except for the very slow rate of downward heat diffusion).

What I’m not clear on is to what degree heat that convects up to the upper parts of the atmosphere cools by anything other that temperature/volume considerations.

Eventually, the air has to radiate heat to space, right? There’s nothing else to conduct to at the top boundary and yet heat does escape.

A further observation on the GCMs. If I took on the program of building a climate model, based on my own experience, I’d have a staff of 15-20 Ph.D.s in solar physics, atmospheric science, optical physics, oceanography, thermodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, and finite element modeling…

If there’s a GCM out there developed using this approach, I haven’t heard of it.

You provide the people and the funds, and I’m sure it will be done.

Climate pact in jeopardy as China refuses to cut carbon emissions

China will not make a binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions, putting in jeopardy the prospects for a global pact on climate change.

Officials from Beijing told a UN conference in Bonn yesterday that China would increase its emissions to develop its economy rather than sign up to mandatory cuts.

The refusal is a setback for President Obama’s efforts to drum up support for an agreement at Copenhagen in December on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. As argument erupted between rich and poor nations at the Bonn talks, Yvo de Boer, the UN climate change chief, said that a worldwide pact to prevent global warming was “physically impossible”.

Youre absolutely right about the professional, multi-disciplinary way to construct a climate model. But, then again, you’ve apparently never heard things discussed in a faculty club or a bureaucratic agency. Those guys know EVERYTHING!

I bet experiment doesn’t call for calculation of the pre-existing volume of CO2 in both tanks! A 10 litre bell jar of air will contain less than 5ml of CO2 – I wonder how much the temperature rises with another teaspoonful..?

We have just added your latest post “Suggestions of “strong negative cloud feedbacks” in a warmer climate” to our Directory of Science . You can check the inclusion of the post here . We are delighted to invite you to submit all your future posts to the directory and get a huge base of visitors to your website.

Warm Regards

Scienz.info Team

http://www.scienz.info

“Clouds are less important than the weather that creates them since it is the upper tropospheric moisture that really matters”.

Eric, this statement is utter BS.
First of all, there is no tropospheric moisture in the troposphere.
If any it’s ice or ice needles from Cirrus clouds and the upper amsel of CB clouds. In general the temp at tropospheric level is minus 55 degree celcsus.

Clouds are the visual weather and the proces of heating causing the air to expand and rise (convection) is the
most important energy destructor of the entire weather system.

For example if the atmosphere is 10% less absorbing of surface radiation, wouldn’t the amount of energy of atmospheric back radiation also change?

I think the chaos argument is valid, but climate chaos has some different sources than weather chaos. I assume the sun is a chaotic system which makes us unable to predict the current cycle (or perhaps we just don’t know enough or aren’t taking the right measurements?). The effects on weather are somewhat unknown and possibly chaotic.

Then the circulations like ENSO and PDO are chaotic and coupled. Unfortunately they are also coupled to the atmosphere and the chaotic influences of weather. So presumably it goes butterfly somewhere -> hurricane -> puff of wind somewhere -> PDO shift. None of that will ever be predictable but I still believe that improvements in model fidelity will yield more accurate depictions (a weasel word instead of predictions) of climate under new forcings like more CO2.