Wrong Again …

Great post as usual, even better when you improve the product. Is June really positive in the forcing? 2.3 where every other month is negative?

Of course it leads to the question of what causes a certain temperature to be ideal?
In other words, if water (in the form of clouds obviously) moderates temperatures, what causes it to keep temperatures for the most part mostly stable? Is there sweet temperatures so to speak that the Earth cycles through as the system can not maintain a certain temperature? (ice ages for instance..) and if so, this leads to further implications and necessity into studying the hydrological cycle in much more detail.
I have said it before, but we live on a water planet and our temperature has much more to do with this influence then anything else. Clouds not excluded of course.

My gob is suitably smacked. Dead obvious, but very powerful.

If Willis’ and Svensmark’s cloud theories can be cobbled together, perhaps there will be progress on our understanding of the climate system

Typo in last part of paragraph:

I have hypothesized elsewhere that the earth has a governor which works to maintain a constant temperature. One of the features of a governor is that it cannot be simple feedback. By that, I mean it much act in two directions…

Should read By that, I mean it must act in two directions…

I found it peculiar that temp records for the 1930s showed not only record numbers of (all time) highs, but (if I recall correctly) a large number of (all time) low records. It seemed to be a period of extremes, after which, the trend changed direction, and global temps declined into the late 70’s. If clouds are a buffer, reducing them might subject us to greater extremes.

Willis,
With your regards to your engine & governor theory, have you had any thoughts on ozone holes being some sort of ‘choke’ mechanism? I’m just a dumb mechanic but in regards to the ozone hole now forming over the north pole as opposed to the south, do you think this coulb be significant to the NH being warmer than the SH when we had cool times while we had an ozone hole down under during this time?

Willis,
Thank you for the adjustments you made, however, there are still some unclarities about what you are actually calculating here. Here is the first :
Net cloud forcing is defined as the amount of downwelling longwave radiation (DLR, or “greenhouse radiation”) produced by the cloud, minus the amount of solar energy reflected by the cloud (upwelling shortwave radiation, or USR).
This does not sound right. With “DLR produced by the cloud” do you mean the DIFFERENCE between DLR for the cloud MINUS DLR of clear sky ? If so, can you adjust the formula’s ?
And with “downwelling longwave” do you mean the IR radiated downward (from the cloud back to the surface) ?

Willis;
The way I make sense of it is that the clouds respond on a minute-to-minute basis to the daily fluctuations in temperature. This is different from the slow warming and cooling of the seasons. But like I said, I’m just reporting. I don’t think it’s a granularity issue, the matchup on the phase diagram is good.>>>
For the record, not questioning what you are reporting 😉
A lag of even a minute or so would make sense to me. Perfectly in tandem…that’s an awful fast cause and effect!
That said, let’s go with “in tandem” for the moment. We’ve got at least some evidence that GCR’s affect cloud cover, which raises the question in my mind as to what frequencies of solar flux (and/or solar wind?) might exist that promote cloud formation. If that were the case, would not cloud cover rise and fall in tandem with insolation (assuming that frequence X rises and falls with insolation over all)? If that were the case, then cloud cover could well change not only in tandem with insolation, but even in advance of temperature change?

Thank you for the post Willis: not only technically very interesting but a good demonstration of how science is supposed to be done. I look forward to the phase diagrams.

Willis Eschenbach says:
October 11, 2011 at 5:12 pm
…
The way I make sense of it is that the clouds respond on a minute-to-minute basis to the daily fluctuations in temperature. This is different from the slow warming and cooling of the seasons. But like I said, I’m just reporting. I don’t think it’s a granularity issue, the matchup on the phase diagram is good.

Hm. Since the upper atmosphere and cloud H2O is the first to intercept insolation, perhaps it gets “first cut” at causing system response. Especially since H2O is so much more efficient at such interception than other substances under consideration.

I am glad that you have disaggregated by month, latitude and longitude.

“…negative feedback is defined as dampening it…”
That’s only if the clouds bring rain, I suppose.

Great post. Although I don’t comment a lot here, I have what seems an obvious question to me:
Where are there meteorology/climatology students, or post-grads, or PhDs, in the research/academic/real world, that could team with Willis in order to answers these questions/provide data or resources/, etc. to help solve these issues?
. . is this too much to ask . . ?

Clouds are an important part of the governor. The most important ingredient of which is water vapor. The temperature, vapor pressure point of water is the thermostat that determines dew point and therefor cloud formation and dispersal at altitude / latitude. The more moisture in the atmosphere, the greater effectiveness of clouds on the energy in and out. pg

Willis, I see that many of your commenters are confused about the difference between cloud forcing and cloud feedback.
What you are showing (even though your definition is wrong) is clouds forcing : the cooling effect of the planet because of the existence of clouds.
Ramanathan et al 1989 used ERBE to show that cloud forcing is negative (in the range of -18 W/m^2. That is the ‘cooling’ effect of clouds on the planet, and numerous other papers have confirmed that. Clouds cool the planet by some 18 W/m^2,
This does NOT mean that cloud feedback is negative. For feedback, you have to show that cloud forcing CHANGES if the planet gets warmer, and quantify how much.
So what you are showing has been known for 22 years (using the same ERBE data you use), and tells NOTHING about cloud feedback. (so any assertions that this data shows that clouds are a “thermostat” or so are simply incorrect).

Martin Clauss;
Where are there meteorology/climatology students, or post-grads, or PhDs, in the research/academic/real world, that could team with Willis in order to answers these questions/provide data or resources/, etc. to help solve these issues? >>>
They are awaiting written permission from Trenberth confirming they won’t have to resign their positions, give up their research grants, or return their degrees if they get involved. Kellog’s declined comment.

What is “Insolation” as you use the term?

Willis Eschenbach Stop being an ass! OK your smart! 🙂

Taking the simplistic view of a single cloud (mathematical limits of a sort): The solar radiation that contributes to the formation of a cloud for the most part bypasses that same cloud;is minimally reflected by that cloud. When the sun comes up, it shines under every cloud–cloud shadows fall out in space, not on land or sea, so no heat disruption from reflection. And while the sun’s radiation is admittedly minimal albeit growing as the morning progresses, just once a day does each spot on the earth experience maximum incidence angle–before or after that the sun’s energy falls a significant distance laterally from any cloud that may be in the way; for the most part, a cloud has no influence on the thermal energy that forms it.
So wouldn’t this spherical geometry and the fact that clouds are elevated make clouds secondary in the system? You say:

“This means, of course, that the clouds move first, and the temperature follows.”

But on a daily basis, my little cloud starts with no shading function whatsoever, and it declines again to zero as the sun sets. And because temperature is a function of the sun, it seems temperature would move first, followed by clouds.

Willis,
Please note I intend no offence. Feel free to squash me like bug, if you wish. However : –
If you place anything at all between a source of heat e.g. the Sun, and an object, e.g. the surface of the Earth, the object will not miraculously heat up. It cannot and will not. The temperature is maximal when exposed to the direct radiation from the heat source. Placing some sort of magic gas between the radiation source and the body will not cause the body’s temperature to rise.
It doesn’t matter if you talk about thermostats, rheostats or aerostats. You can analogise and conduct thought experiments until your brain explodes. You can try with ethane or methane or carbon dioxide, it makes no difference.
I have seen diagrams of bouncing balls, coloured arrows, scales, springs, big letters and numbers and all the rest, until my eyeballs spin. You can subject me to Fourier transforms, fourth order derivatives, vector calculus, the Riemann hypothesis, until I scream for mercy.
The physics won’t change. And yes, I am aware that all bodies above absolute zero radiate heat. That presumably is how we establish they are not at absolute zero.
The atmosphere appears to have a mild insulating effect. This makes the Earth’s surface a little warmer during the night, and a little cooler during the day, than it would be in the absence of atmosphere a la the Moon. Clouds “block” radiation by reflection. Therefore, clouds can reflect insolation during the day, and reflect “reverse insolation” (outgoing heat) during the night.
There is no “magic” required. Anybody who believes in some magic “additive” effect of greenhouse gases, should join one of the many Over Unity forums. They have plethora of diagrams, formulas, calculations etc., to prove perpetual motion is possible, and plenty of tinfoil hat conspiracy theories to explain why perpetual motion machines don’t actually work.
Just like the AGW theories that assign magic properties to CO2. Does anybody stop to consider that Man’s activities generate heat, and in most cases CO2 results from burning something? In other words CO2 results from living and combustion, which is how we generate most of our energy for industrial and domestic use.
If you lift a ball, your muscles generate heat. This results from cellular activity, and you will eventually purge CO2 as a combustion product from your body via the lungs. Some energy is stored in the ball as potential energy. Drop the ball and the energy is dissipated as heat energy as the ball loses energy and comes to rest. The activities of Man generate lots of heat, including the heat from atomic power plants and submarines. Wind generators create heat – losses in bearings, conversion, line losses, and eventual conversion to kinetic energy or direct heating.
Luckily, heat radiates. Stop producing heat, and the effects are lost to the near absolute zero of outer space in short order.
There is NO greenhouse effect that can magically warm the Earth, Never was, never will be.
Thanks.

If clouds are a buffer, reducing them might subject us to greater extremes.
If the above is true, then…
So, lets see what this means in terms of Global Warming, Climate Change, or Climate Disrution.
For Warming, it means that the governor will kick in and reduce the warming of increased CO2 to below what we need to worry about.
For Change, more CO2, more heat, more evaporation, more clouds, less change.
For Disrution, less change means less disruption, smaller temperature swings even in short time frames.
You may have just caused the whole CAGW movement here to plum run out of names.

RE: Like anyone else, I’m not fond of being wrong, particularly very publicly wrong. However, that’s the price of science, and sometimes you have to go through being wrong to get to being right.
I think it’s reasonable to expect that what may seem correct at the time, ends up being flawed. In other words, no one bats 1,000.
Making a mistake, later discovering it, and correcting it, that’s one thing, but making a mistake and then “hiding the decline”, that’s another. The first person has my respect, the second person is shameful.

This is great work Willis. I appreciate the time and effort it takes to prepare and present these. (and envy the internal excitement you must experience doing the work)
The thing that hits me at first glance is the size of the numbers we’re dealing with with respect to clouds.
Then we compare that to the size of the numbers we’re dealing with with respect to 2 x CO2. A small margin of error in clouds easily overshadows a large margin of error in 2 x CO2. (I think I expressed myself ok there?)
I know where my research time and resources would be directed to.
p.s. warms in winter cools in summer eh? Substitute the word CO2 for clouds and the statement is still true.

Willis : I have shown that when the planet gets colder, cloud forcing increases, and that when the planet gets warmer, clouds act to cool it.
I’m sorry Willis, but you most certainly did NOT show that at all.
What you did was take the cloud forcing at each pixel (which we know a negative number on average) and divided it by the insolation at each latitude (which we know is a positive number). So result is a negative number for each pixel, which you then plot.
That’s still the ‘forcing’ and not the ‘feedback’.
To show negative feedback, you cannot simply divide, but you need to take the derivative : You need to show that if the surface temperature goes up that the forcing goes down (becomes more negative).
For example, you could show that over a full year, that the most negative (most cooling) cloud forcing occurs in the tropics. That would suggest negative feedback. Well, lets see what ERBE tells : here is a plot of the ERBE results from a full year (1989) :
http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/browse/badc/CDs/erbe/erbedata/erbs/mean1989/netcf.gif
And, surprise, surprise, the most cooling (most negative cloud forcing) occurs in the cooler (higher latitudes) regions, which suggests that clouds amplify temperature change, which hints at positive cloud feedback.
Ramanathan also hinted at positive cloud feedback from these ERBE results when he wrote :
For example, during past glaciations a migration toward the equator of the field of strong, negative cloudradiative forcing, in response to a similar migration of cooler waters, could have significantly amplified oceanic cooling and continental glaciation.
Now I don’t want to by sarcastic here, but you started with the wrong definition of cloud forcing, then confused forcing and feedback, then used the wrong math and finally interpreted your results incorrectly. It looks like you may need to write another post called “Wrong again..”

dp, let’s say, your blanket is 3cm away from your skin. Nothing hinders your skin from emitting heat according to Boltzmann’s formular. The heat hits the blanket after 100ps (pico seconds) and its temperature increases. Nothing hinders the blanket to emit heat according to Boltzmann… in any direction, some of it hitting your skin after 100ps… which may lead to the impression that your skip doesn’t cool (after the blanket reached about the same temperature as your skin) but in fact both (skin and blanket) play sort of ping-pong.
HTH

Willis: See how at any moment the clouds are warming the cool parts, and cooling the warm parts? You are right, that’s not the feedback at all, because as I have pointed out, it’s not about feedback. What you are looking at in Figure 1 is a different bird from feedback. It is a governor.
“Governor” again implies teleology, like “Gaia”, or “intelligent design”. If current increased clouds are a result of recent warming, and if they result in cooling, then clouds are a feedback. If current reduced clouds resulted from recent cooling, and if the reduction results in warming, then they are a feedback. Each way, they are a (probably nonlinear) negative feedback.
If I remember correctly, I wrote a similar comment after your report on your TAO/TRITON analyses. After reading those, I am surprised that you can get this result with monthly aggregate data.
In my opinion (pending another self-discovery of a blatantly obvious (*) flaw), this is better work than Andy Dessler’s 2010 Science paper.
* yeh, right — obvious to the master perhaps.
sincerely,
Matt

I noticed a curious thing…
Just off the west coast of South American, in the center, and off the west coast of Africa, a bit below center, there are areas where the net effext is always cooling. Looking at reference pages show these areas always seem to have sea surface temperatures below the average of the other waters at that latitude.
The question is, what would cause this to be always true, all the year round? Is there a certain type of cloud always at these two spots which always creates this net negative effect? Is there some other effect, say a current or some such, which creates this year long pattern? How do these spots effect the weather/climate/currents etc?

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
– Theodore Roosevelt.

Willis: Re: Fig. 2 Phase diagramm: “Black line shows no lag, gold line shows one month lag, red line shows two months lag between maximum insolation and maximum temperature. Numbers after month names show months of lag.”
No, it does not. NH: Black line shows a 1-2 months lag, gold line shows a 0-1 month lag and red line shows max temp _preceding_ max insolation by 1 month. SH: black shows 2 month lag, gold shows 1 month lag, and red shows 0 month lag but also more preceding than lagging.

Note bene, I still have to think that looking at June, July, and August there is something funny about the SH near to Antarctica. June and August have larger missing data regions than July. WUWT.

Willis : I’m totally uninterested in annual averages, Rob, they are a snare and a delusion. The clouds are warming the surface during the cold part of the year, and cooling the surface in the warm part of the year.
Willis, are yyou are still confused.
For starters, clouds are warming the surface during the night, and cooling the surface during the day. Neither of which tells anything about cloud forcing (which talks about cooling to space rather than warming the surface), but either way, why would you think that taking the monthly average (as you did) is all fine but taking the annual average is “snare and a delusion” ? Does radiation have some magical property that shows up only at monthly averages, but not at daily or annual average ?
Second, you keep on using the wrong definition of “cloud forcing”. You define it in terms of “downwelling longwave radiation” (DLR), but in reality, cloud forcing refers to “upwelling” longwave radiation, or the IR radiation that escapes to space (cooling the planet) rather then to the surface (warming the surface). Maybe this is why you got so confused with your math and get conclusions that contradict observations.
Willis : You keep thinking of it as feedback. It is not. It is a shift in cloud types and altitudes and colors as the earth warms and cools. The important thing is, when the earth cools, the clouds act to warm it, and when the earth warms the clouds act to cool it.
You call this conclusion a “a governor which works to maintain a constant temperature”, I call it “negative feedback”. As I pointed out, your conclusion is incorrect as a result of your now abundant amount of mistakes. To show “a governor which works to maintain a constant temperature” or “negative feedback”, you cannot simply divide the cloud forcing by insolation, but you need to take the temperature derivative : You need to show that if the surface temperature goes up that the forcing goes down (becomes more negative). And ERBE results show the opposite (positive feedback) from what you present, as was already noted by Ramanathan, 22 years ago.

Legatus: “The question is, what would cause this to be always true, all the year round? Is there a certain type of cloud always at these two spots which always creates this net negative effect? Is there some other effect, say a current or some such, which creates this year long pattern? How do these spots effect the weather/climate/currents etc?”
Yes, there are cold water currents (Benguela in Africa and Humboldt in South America) that result in low level clouds reflecting sunlight.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ocean_currents_1943.jpg
http://www.sat24.com/image2.ashx?region=af&time=201110120945
(c) by sat24.com

@willis
No, the major mistake you make and that you continue to make is that you treat all radiation as generic power sources measured in Watts/m2 and all surfaces as generic absorbers. The fact of the matter is that when a cloud covers a snowfield the shortwave that is blocked has no effect because it would be been reflected in any case. Albedo matters. The ocean on the other hand has an albedo close to 0 so when a cloud covers that it deprives the surface of a tremendous amount of shortwave energy. But on yet another hand there’s a huge difference between rock (albedo 15%) and ocean (albedo 0%) that goes beyond albedo. The ocean can d)store (buffer) huge amounts of energy for undetermined (not well understood) periods of time from months to perhaps thousands of years while rock retain daytime heating for just a matter of hours. DLR also has game changer considerations with different surfaces. Rocks are great absorbers and emitters of DLR. Water is not. Water is heated by shortwave and near infrared from the sun just like rocks but it doesn’t give up the heat predominantly by DLR as is the case for rocks. The ocean gives it up by evaporation which has the effect of reducing the role of DLR to insignificance when compared to DLR on rocks.
Nothing is going to make sense in this controversy and no one’s predictions are going to pan out under the vast over-simplification represented by expressing energy purely in Watts and surfaces as generic gray bodies. The form of the energy and the nature of the surface makes all the difference in the world.

I am really sorry, and the last thing I want to do is upset anyone, but since the ‘clouds warm’ is an integral part of the conclusions of this post, I have to humbly confess that I am with DP on this. To have stood outside on a cloudy night and to have felt the warming effect of clouds is anecdotal and not scientific. As a minimum, I would want to see the following: A cloudy, quiet day turning to a cloudy quiet night. Temperature reading at (say) 9pm. Somehow exclude wind/convection or any artificial mechanisms as a vehicle for imported heat. Temperature reading at (say) 5am the next morning turns out higher than the 9pm reading. Then one could postulate (but remember correlation is not causation) that the clouds caused warming. Unless proven otherwise, I am pretty much convinced that the 5am temp will be lower than the 9am temp. But the difference will be less than if the sky was clear. So, let’s be specific: clouds can slow down cooling but cannot ‘warm’. As such, they can have a nett warmer outcome, but they have not ‘warmed’ anything. Sorry if I am being too pedantic.

You could also extend the data beyond the annual cycle.
Plot each data type across the whole time horizon.
Net cloud forcing, temperature, insolation by month (and then the same by different latitudes). See what type of changes have occured over time. [Pinatubo is in the middle and likely to impact the data].
I might also pick two near-by regions that have similar insolations (the Sahara at 15N versus Equatorial Africa). Clouds cool off the more cloudy equatorial region while leaving a smaller diurnal/seasonal cycle. Sahara is warmer overall but has a greater diurnal change from day to night and a greater seasonal cycle.

Willis – thanks for all your hard work to keep genuine science moving…

Thanks for keeping on top of this Willis. One thing I noticed in the graph in your first post was that the cooling when warm, and warming when cool effect was split by temperature. It appeared that sub-0°C (ice crystals), warm; while above 0°C (water vapor) cools. Yet these occur in the counter-intuitive seasons, ie. ice crystals form clouds when the surface is warm, and water vapor forms clouds when it is cold. Does this imply a difference in altitude of cloud formation seasonally?

Willis: This is “on topic” believe it or not. When you talk about Op Amps, I remember a friend of mine, going to De-Vry Tech in Chicago. (I was going to a liberal arts school also in the area. He eventually got a BS EE and MS EE from U of MN, me BS ChemE, BS Metallurgy, MS Mech.) He showed me one time a set of Op Amps, a Triangle Wave generator, a Linear Resistor, and an Oscilliscope. Straight signal and you could easily use the linear resistor to compensate the triangle wave and keep the “spot” centered on the scope.
One Op Amp (one integrator, first order..) after about 1/2 hour to an hour you could learn to keep the “ball” centered.
Two Op Amps and it was IMPOSSIBLE.
Translation: In terms of the “bare” human mind, we can work with: 1. Directly linear effects, 2. Something of the “first order” response effects…with a LOT of practice and effort. BUT when we come to 3rd order or above, we can’t handle it. (With our “observational/coordination” skills.)
Therefore if the responses of the “climate” to various “forcings” are actually 3rd order or above (I suppect they are) the ONLY way to understand them will be with EXTENSIVE data analysis. And sometimes very involved.
This is the way you are heading, and I just caution you, because of that very “human” 1st and 2nd order effects “limit”, when you get to 3rd and 4th order, you’ll get a lot of people who will “tune out”.
Max
PS: I took my P.E. Exam in Electrical, and passed it. Due to some other educational background and work that I got into after graduating. So Op amps, Bode Plots, Nyquist Criteria, Z transforms, Laplace Transforms, etc. are all part of my mix.

Phase shift of water may be one of the factors to explain what happend in Your statement: “clouds act strongly to warm the earth when it is cold and to cool the earth when it is warm”
Some of the explanation may be “Cloud forming act strongly to warm the earth when it is low insolation and to cool the earth when it is high insolation”
Cloud forming release latent heat and the process to load water vapor into the atmosphere use energy. When the temperature going down due to lack of insolation will latent heat be released,
During high insolation conditions are latent heat used to vaporise water into the atmopshere.
Focus are on cloud but maybe it is partly cloud and partly cloud forming.
That is a dynamic process which explain the different sign of the Net Cloud Forcing (W/m2) as a percentage of gridcell insolation (W/m2)

Willis:
Tell interested parties to go to http://www.nengo.ca and download the Nengo Neural Network Simulator.
Takes about 15 minutes to download and install. About 15 minutes to learn the basics. Use the “simple integrator” *.py example.
Plot the input and the output, use the slider to control the input. Keep the output a “Zero”.
I was wrong, took me about 2 minutes to master it!
Then put in #2 integrator. HA! Good luck. (Actually NOT quite the same as the demo my friend did 30 years ago. As his system had a Triangle Wave driver. In the Nengo case you ARE the driver.
Max

Dave Springer;
No, the major mistake you make and that you continue to make is that you treat all radiation as generic power sources measured in Watts/m2 and all surfaces as generic absorbers. The fact of the matter is that when a cloud covers a snowfield the shortwave that is blocked has no effect because it would be been reflected in any case.>>>
Willis is doing a simply energy balance analysis Dave. If you’re read through the comments, you would note that he is proposing no driving physical mechanism to support his observations, he’s just reporting his observations. His observations are that cloud forcing varies in tandem with insolation. There’s no need to take into account ANY other factors to substantiate that the correlation exists and is significant.
It is like weighing a bucket of rocks. You can argue all day long that the bucket is filled with rocks of different sizes, shapes, and densities, and you would be right. Doesn’t change the weight of the bucket of rocks by a single gram.

Dave Springer;
These are the facts and they are, being observed facts not theoretical predictions, beyond dispute.>>>
Ah, I see. A “the science is settled” variant but from a coolist perspective instead of warmist perspective. Sigh. Was only a matter of time….

kcrucible: So if an area had been without cloudcover on a cool night, and a cloud moves over an area, did that not just have the effect of adding a heating source to the area that had not previously been present? It’s not hot like the sun, but it has more themal mass than space.
So the cloud radiates heat downward, and the earth radiates heat upwards. The net effect is the change in heat content for the land mass. If the surface temperature is cooler than the cloud temperature (fast wind bringing a cloud from over the ocean), then it seems obvious that the cloud would actually warm the area up.
Well said.
It is astonishing how many people there are who post regularly and who do not grasp this.

@Septic Matthew: Hmmm… do you have some special knowledge about this? In my ignorance I would strongly suspect that any cloud warmer than the surface (ok maybe not over snow or ice surface) would most likely evaporate and disappear? I think that the idea that clouds may warm the earth because they are warmer than the earth is a REALLY suspect idea. A non-starter. But I am happy to be expertly informed otherwise…

GabrielHBay: In my ignorance I would strongly suspect that any cloud warmer than the surface (ok maybe not over snow or ice surface) would most likely evaporate and disappear?
Everything takes time. As the unfrozen water vapor in the cloud cools by radiation, it warms the earth, and settles down as dew. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. But “evaporate and disappear” is a brief and slightly misleading phrase for a time-consuming process.

As some have mentioned, I think it is important to not look at the units being used, as this is just used because it is the measurement used by the satellites. Whether or not this paradigm is a correct measurement of the system is really besides the point when discussing subject such as this which take raw data and just show what is happening over a certain time period.
The largest thing so far that has been seen was pointed out by Willis himself.
Namely, that there is a lot of missing data that could actually change the results quite a bit due to the arbitrary timing of said results. This would be interesting to read about how the data changes if you attempt to fill it in. Does this eventually have an effect on say feedbacks and their effects? I would hazzard to guess it could “fine-tune” the results so to speak, but nothing drastically would be changed since the longer-term averaging tends to filter out most (but not all) of the (noise in the data.)
I think Rob for instance misses the point that this is a seaonal (monthly) look at the data that attempts to show the warming and cooling influence (forcings) on a shorter time-scale then feed-backs. This is important because it shows how the water in the atmosphere via clouds is actually moderating the temperature of the Earth differently depending on the seasons. Why does this matter? Well it has been known for awhile, but I don’t think a study was ever done that showed how this works and to what effect.
Water as a moderater has been known for years. I use that term because that is what water is used for in nuclear reactions for instance because it is very good at that. Another term such as Governer of the system works too, as a fine control knob for instance.
It would only stand to reason that the effect of this is less differences between seasons (temperature-wise) which goes to keeping the Earth in balance for life. What could be interesting further study (after some refinements of course) would be to looking at how this changes as the global temperature goes up and down.

Sorry, cooler not cooder… the shock was too much for me…

“I have no specific information on that, but I would certainly be VERY surprised if it were a common occurrence. Certainly not sufficiently so to be relevant in the context of a general hypothesis? ”
Snow-covered land should have a temperature right about freezing right? Or else it would be water. If the cloud was at freezing, it would start snowing?

Why is it important to get clouds right?
Have a look at the MODTRAN results in Cloudy-Sky conditions versus Clear-Sky conditions.
Almost all the Modtran charts you have seen on the internet are done for Clear-Sky conditions (you never see the results including clouds). As shown here, the Clear-Sky back-radiation looking up from the surface in the Tropics. Radiating at 6.0C.
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/4308/rad12081141.gif
Now throw in a Low Cloud Layer. A completely different picture. Now it looks like a perfect Blackbody radiating at 20C. That is clearly going to warm / slow-down long-wave radiation escape from the surface (particularly in the atmospheric windows). Low Cloud completely overwhelms the GHG absorption bands.
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/7268/tropicalsurfacelookingu.gif
Now let’s take the previous Low Cloud Layer and double CO2 levels. There is an imperceptible, unmeasureable change according to Modtran.
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/295/tropicalsurfupclouds2xc.gif
Now middle level clouds are a mix of blackbody and clear-sky, not as strong as low cloud; CO2/other GHGs are still operating in the amtosphere above the clouds (particularly 10 kms to 20 kms high); different latitudes show the same pattern just at lower energy/radiation levels.
Clouds are present 65% of the time. They make a very large difference. This is just long-wave radiation, the short-wave solar Albedo changes are even larger. If the climate models can’t get clouds right, how are they supposed model radiation changes in the atmosphere accurately – which what they are supposed to be based on.

Septic Matthew says:
October 12, 2011 at 11:06 am

Dew comes from clouds?
That isn’t what I wrote. As the water vapor in the clouds cools (it isn’t all frozen ice), it settles downward. When the frozen ice in the clouds acquires heat and melts, it also settles groundward.

Ugh. This is the kind of scientific illiteracy that inspires praise for Eschenbach.
Clouds are not water vapor. Water vapor is a colorless transparent gas. Clouds are composed of water droplets. Write that down.

davidmhoffer says:
October 12, 2011 at 9:44 am

Dave Springer;
These are the facts and they are, being observed facts not theoretical predictions, beyond dispute.>>>
Ah, I see. A “the science is settled” variant but from a coolist perspective instead of warmist perspective. Sigh. Was only a matter of time….

Get a clue, Hoffer. Science offers explanations for observations. The sky is blue is an observation. Science explains why the sky is blue. What I described were observations.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. ~US Senator Daniel Moynihan

Willis Eschenbach says:
October 12, 2011 at 1:17 am
“Interesting catch, Legatus. My guess is trade winds blowing towards the west plus subsurface eastward-flowing currents hitting south america/africa cause year-round upwelling, but we’re a ways into speculation there.”
Not quite, Both these areas have cold currents coming from the south (Benguela/Humboldt currents), and the ocean is always much colder than the nearby land. Both areas are well-known for practically constant and unchanging low cloudiness. The warmer land causes a more or less constant sea-breeze, but the clouds evaporate as they cross the coast, so the coastal areas (Namib desert, Atacama desert) are just about the driest places on Earth. Along the very coastline it is very often foggy with an occasional very fine drizzle, but it never, ever rains. Quite weird really.
Another interesting observation is the very strong cooling over the Southen Ocean in the zone between Antarctica and the Southern Continent during 8 of the 12 months of the year. It has long been known that the Earth’s temperature dropped dramatically in the Early Oligocene when Antarctica became separated from Australia and South America and Australia and a circum-Antarctic seaway opened. This has usually been ascribed to Antarctica becoming thermally isolated and heavily glaciated for the first time, but these maps suggest a further cooling mechanism.

@Dave Springer: Thank you. A small recovery in my faith in my own sanity…..

About all this “cloud make a cold day warmer…
Well, how did the cloud get there, and how did it get to be a cloud anyway?
To have a cloud in the first place, you have to have evaporation, and that takes heat. For that cloud to move from where it formed to the cold clear place you are at, there has to be wind.
So when the cloud arrives, it tends to bring the warmer air with it, that moving air being how it gets there after all.
Thus the anecdotal evidence of clouds warming the formerly cold area may simply be that the clouds arrived with warmer air, and thus you feel the warmth of the warmer air that has moved in.
This of course is not taking into effect other things that can cause warming, high pressure areas being one.
As for the man under the blanket, the analogy is more like this:
It is not a man, it is a corpse, it has no heat of it’s own.
Above the corpse is a heat lamp.
This lamp is turned off and on every 12 hours, turning slowly on till it is at full intensity 6 hours in (noon), and slowly off for 6 hours till it is completely off 6 hours from noon (or a bit later/earlier).
Having a blanket will thus tend to hold the heat that the lamp added to the corpse in longer (and add a little of it’s own that it also absorbed).
The original analogy does not match the earth and clouds, because it is the man that is the source of the heat, and thus having a heat producing man under a blanket will of course lower his heat transfer out (by radiation and convection).

“Thus the anecdotal evidence of clouds warming the formerly cold area may simply be that the clouds arrived with warmer air, and thus you feel the warmth of the warmer air that has moved in.”
Precisely.

Dave Springer: Clouds are not water vapor.
I didn’t say they were. I said that there is water vapor in the clouds. Are you asserting that every single water molecule joins a droplet? And that the water vapor condenses without transmitting energy?
GabrielHBay Not being a climate scientist but merely engineering educated I am clearly far too ignorant to understand this sentence.
Are you being ironic? It’s hard to tell sometimes. Poe’s Law, I think.

[SNIP – David, your ad hominem attacks on me are puerile and unpleasant. -w.]

Septic Matthew says:
October 12, 2011 at 9:48 am

Well said.
It is astonishing how many people there are who post regularly and who do not grasp this.

When that happens we call it convection, and the conveyed heat is latent, already in the system, and delivered by the sun. If insulators did indeed heat things then I could heat my house by stuffing a large box of blankets in each room. Who needs a furnace?
I admire Willis greatly but I have a problem in scientific discussions when these language problems go unchecked. That said, the language does not impact the underlying message Willis is sharing and which I find fascinating.

Richard Courtney :
Rob : “Willis, are yyou are still confused. ”
and “you keep on using the wrong definition of “cloud forcing”. ”and “As I pointed out, your conclusion is incorrect as a result of your now abundant amount of mistakes.”
My question is; Are you joking or dissembling?
Richard, you can check for yourself who is joking or dissembling : Let’s go to the landmark paper that first used ERBE to determine cloud forcing (which Willis interestingly did NOT reference) : http://www.iac.ethz.ch/edu/courses/master/modules/radiation_and_climate_change/download/Ramanathan1989
Check how Ramanathan defines “cloud forcing” so we can tell if clouds warm or cool the planet. Then compare that to Willis’ definition.
Next, note that ERBE (as a satellite) measure space-bound IR, and not “downwelling longwave radiation” as Willis suggests. And then check how Willis get completely confused with between cloud forcing and cloud feedback, to the point where he believes that by dividing by the insolation you magically get from one to the other.
Of course, Willis’ conclusions are irrelevant and also contradict the findings by Ramanathan’s and all other scientific papers determining feedback or forcing from ERBE data.
Let me note that Willis is not the only one confusing cloud forcing with cloud feedback. Even our host Anthony got a bit wrapped around the axle in a recent post on exactly the same subject
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/20/new-peer-reviewed-paper-clouds-have-large-negative-feedback-cooling-effect-on-earths-radiation-budget/
There, he was corrected by Bart Verheggen and Roy Spencer, and Anthony admitted his mistakes and and promised a correction : “Yep, that was a late night blunder. I’m rewriting the entire post while wide awake.”
Would be nice is Willis could do the same with this post.

@Dave Springer,
Most of us here just want to have a reasoned discussion. This has nothing to do with thinking Willis is “king” or like a “god” or anything of that nature. In fact I argued with him quite a bit on previous threads, just because I am taking the side of the analysis in this case means nothing. When you are discussing things that really do not matter, I mean in this case it is nothing but a hypothesis that seems like it has promise…well in that case it might mean something but for now not really anything.
Why do I like reading his articles (even if I disagree with some of em…)? Well because as the other Dave says, he admits when he is wrong! Look at the title of this article!
In other words, no, I am not fawning over him and I doubt many people are out of any misguided belief that we must bow down to him because he is a sceptic or some other nonsense like that.
I think most of us think proper respect is appropriate perhaps, but nothing other then that. There are other people who post here that I might disagree with as well and yet I will still be respectful for the most part.
So in other words, can we discuss the actual article perhaps? Even Rob’s pointless remarks are better then that. Ad-homs are something I see enough of from warmist fools, can we keep it civil?

Dave Springer says:
October 12, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Bill Illis says:
October 12, 2011 at 11:34 am
“Now throw in a Low Cloud Layer. A completely different picture. Now it looks like a perfect Blackbody radiating at 20C. That is clearly going to warm / slow-down long-wave radiation escape from the surface (particularly in the atmospheric windows). Low Cloud completely overwhelms the GHG absorption bands.”
Not so fast, Bill. What it does is changes the lapse rate so that radiative emission is happening at a higher altitude. Whether it slows down surface cooling, or rather how much,. depends on the surface.
—————————
The extra energy slowed-down / held-in with this Low Cloud Cover is about 60 watts/m2. A massive number. But the solar short-wave reflectance of the same cloud would be in the order of -80 watts/m2.
So, during the day, the Low Cloud cools off the surface but, at night it will keep it warmer than it would have been (compared to if the Cloud dissappeared at sunset). Overall, however, the surface is cooler by net -20 watts/m2.
Doubling CO2, of course, would not change the above numbers at all since the long-wave slowed down / held-in below the cloud deck is unaffected by the presence of CO2. Short-wave solar energy reflected is also the same.
The question is, when temperatures increase, does cloud increase or decrease?; does it become thicker or thinner? The numbers are so big, a small change in the cloud response / feedback could completely overwhelm any extra GHG forcing. It is a make-or-break factor.
And we do not really know what the answer to this question is. No climate science paper has even come close to answering the question. No dataset has been used properly to date in order to answer that important question. No climate model can approximate cloud response / feedback properly.
Hence, Willis trying to demonstrate what really happens in the real atmosphere. I think he is really on the right track here. But it is hard because the data is not easy to work with.

Dave Springer;
You defending him saying he’s smarter than you are makes me think of a couple of 5-year olds agreeing about the top of speed of Santa’s Sleigh and how much hay the reindeer that pull it must be fed each day.>>>
Well given your devastating rebuttal you provided to my challenge to explain the tipping point you claim is settled science, I believe your retorted by calling me “dopey”. Seems 5 year old’s are about your speed.

GabrielHBay: In my ignorance I would strongly suspect that any cloud warmer than the surface (ok maybe not over snow or ice surface) would most likely evaporate and disappear?
Best left at that, I guess.

Dave Springer: Water releases a tremendous amount of energy when it changes phase from vapor to liquid. About a thousand BTU’s per pound actually and it releases all the energy without changing temperature. It takes about a thousand BTUs to turn one pound of water at 212F into one pound of steam at 212F. One BTU is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water one degree F.
So the clouds evaporate when the surface below them is cooler?

davidmhoffer, Interesting concept. By your measure, Willis Eschenbach cannot be hold accountable for the abundant scientific and algebraic mistakes he made simply because he is “trained” to do so.
OK. That’s one way of looking at it.

davidmhoffer says:
October 12, 2011 at 8:18 pm
“A livestock guard dog is a dog that has been trained to do something and either does it well or doesn’t.”
LGDs are born not trained. The guardian quality is instinctive. What they guard is determined by imprinting as pups. [SNIP – ugly gratuitous insult. -w.]

[SNIP – ugly gratuitous insult. -w.]

Rob;
davidmhoffer, Interesting concept. By your measure, Willis Eschenbach cannot be hold accountable for the abundant scientific and algebraic mistakes he made simply because he is “trained” to do so.
OK. That’s one way of looking at it.>>>
I can only assume you are making a feeble attempt at humour and are suffering under the delusion that your remark is amusing.

[SNIP – Dave, despite being politely and repeatedly requested not to post about whether DLR can heat water on this thread, you continue to do so. I will continue to snip them, and I will continue to point out that this is not adult behavior. TAKE IT SOMEPLACE ELSE!! -w.]

Dave Springer’s last post I think is what is termed as the “hot water bottle theory”? I am not seeing where this and Willis cloud scenario have to be mutually exclusive.
Dave’s comment :
These clouds in turn will then block shortwave solar energy from warming the ocean and the lower ocean temperature will have a lower evaporation rate, the lower evaporation rate will mean fewer clouds, which will then allow more solar heating, which will then raise the evaporation rate… and so on ad infinitum where the net result is a self-regulating equilibrium point for ocean mixed layer temperature.
is pretty close to half of Willi’s research. This in particular ( self-regulating equilibrium point ) I think most laypeople would call this a “governor”.
We have the oceans as well as the clouds providing self regulation/ governing, now put on top of that the little bit of solar variability that Svenson tosses into the mix and i think it comes a dam site closer to possible working version. Well anything better than the “Team” has pushed threw peer review.
Can anyone else see why these cannot sit side by side?

Dave Springer;
LGDs are born not trained. The guardian quality is instinctive. What they guard is determined by imprinting as pups. As usual you pretend to knowledge about things which you haven’t the first clue>>>
Dogs are pack animals and will learn the accepted norms of behaviour from the pack. Since they accept human beings as being part of the pack, and are intensely loyal to the pack, they can be easily trained by involving them with already trained dogs, or in isolation of any other dogs at all. They can be trained to guard a lamp post if you wanted to, and they can be trained to NOT do things that they learned as pups. Training is much easier if the dog starts with a clean slate, as “untraining” them is a more difficult, but by no means impossible, task.
So regardless of the guard behaviour having been learned from being raised with trained dogs, or from being trained via some other method, the dog still behaves “as trained” and as a member of the pack it belongs to, including humans.
Had you any experience herding thousands of free range cattle and working with a variety of dogs some of which you trained yourself, or had the task of “untraining” a dog onsomething it learned as a pup, then YOU would know what you are talking about.

Dave Springer;
So what happens isn’t an ocean temperature that is warmer than it would be otherwise due to DLR. What happens is a layer of warm clouds where there would otherwise be cold clear dry air.>>>
As I explained in another comment, and processes such as rain, wind, wave action that cause active mixing at the surface as a consequence result in a portion of the water that would otherwise have evaporated instead being mixed with cooler water below, thus absorbing some portion of the DLR.
In addition, the water that does evaporate does not instantly ascend to cloud level, it comes into existance as water vapour exactly at the surface layer of the water. This allows for transfer of energy via conduction. Further, the water vapour being an extremely powerful GHG, the faster it forms, the more upward bound LW it absorbs and re-radiates, a portion of which would then be returned downward that would otherwise have escaped upward. This results in increased DLR back to the water surface, where some portion of it may once again be absorbed by the othwer processes described.

Sorry, it’s late here:
“I think we are all sharing the same view …”
should, of course, have been
“I think we are not all sharing the same view …”

graphicconception,
You are, of course, correct about the loose use of the terms “positive” vs. “negative” feedback.
The clouds have, in all cases, a warming effect and a cooling effect, both, together. In winter, over snow covered ground, their cooling effect (reflection of radiation to space) is less than the cooling effect of the snow covered ground, so they have a net warming effect. In summer – it’s the other way round.
I wish to differ from the opinion of warmists (like say, Dessler) who emphatically stress that clouds are a “feedback” and not a “forcing”. If “forcing” means a modification of the energy balance between Earth and outer space then clouds do modify this balance through their albedo, which is different from the earth’s albedo. I think Dr Spencer is right. The clouds’ influence isn’t merely local – that is – transferring heat from one part of the globe to another. They influence the transfer of heat from the sun to earth through blocking and reflection (relative to earth), and from the earth back to outer space through blocking of IR radiation from earth. These two quantities cannot be equal, and the difference is the forcing – whether positive – more heat trapped on earth – or negative – more heat reflected back to space.

Out-Welling vs. Up-Welling
If we are talking about longwave infra red radiation measured in watts per square meter, I wonder if out-welling radiation might be a more important parameter.
As an example, if one were in a well-insulated room that had a constant temperature, one would see the same amount of down-welling radiation coming from the ceiling as up-welling radiation coming from the floor. In fact, you would see the same amount of radiation coming from every surface in the room in W/m², no matter what the albedo of that surface might be.
Suppose the ceiling were cooler than the floor. Then the down-welling energy from the ceiling would be less than the up-welling radiation from the floor. Thus, there must be a net energy flow from the floor to the ceiling. I would call that energy being transferred up from the floor to be ‘out-welling’ energy and it would be the up-welling energy from the floor minus the down-welling energy coming down from the ceiling.
One might define the minimum of the up-welling and down-welling radiation flow at any point to be the locally trapped energy at any level, assuming that we are only considering vertical energy flows. It would be a little more complex if we were interested in lateral energy flow as well.
As long as all we are talking about is energy flow (power) per unit surface area, the fine structure of absorption spectra is insignificant. It may well be that the increasing out-welling energy with altitude is due to the progressive generation of more photons that can leak around the strong absorption bands.
Just a thought.

[SNIP – no DLR. w.]

[SNIP – ugly gratuitous insult. w.]

[SNIP: Totally uncalled for and juvenile. -REP]
Depending on how you assess and value humor. I thought some humor was called for. Humor is very often juvenile in nature so that’s immaterial. Go back and snip Hoffer telling me I might lose a few teeth for some slight he perceived me saying to him which is what started this in the first place. Where I come from violence of that sort is juvenile behavior and isn’t tolerated among civil adults. But I guess it’s okay here since it wasn’t snipped?
[REPLY: Dave, it wasn’t funny. Sometimes stuff gets by us, but threats of violence are not acceptable at WUWT and if one got by, I apologize. It would be good if you and the other Dave could put aside the acrimonious parts and argue the merits. -REP]

[SNIP: Dave and David, stop this nonsense. People are starting to stare. w.]

Brian, which two experts are you talking about ? Eschenbach has been silent ever since the mistakes in his post were pointed out.