Declining global average cloud height: “A significant measure of negative feedback to global warming”

Compare that graph to the sunspot numbers of 2008. Hmmmmm.

I see no statistically significant trend in Figure 1.

The length of daylight in the Northern Hemisphere is increasing. This increase has been going on for at least two months. If sustained, this increase will inevitably lead to 500 hours of daylight and -476 hours of night in each 24-hour period. We need to stop breathing RIGHT NOW!

Gaia knows best!

Here’s a new graph showing a significant increase…
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/02/~/media/Images/Reports/2012/02/cda1202/CDA2012indexdependencegovtchart1.ashx?w=400&h=737&as=1

I’m glad to see this stuff start to be published more frequently. When I say “this stuff”, I’m referencing mechanisms and phenomena which up until recently were associated with our actual climate.
The sun and clouds, throw in some wind and ocean currents and they might have a good general idea about what comprises our climate……… naaw….. let’s go chasing around some trace gas or two and attach meaning to every cow fart we detect.

I simply cannot agree with this logic about clouds “The higher up they are, the cooler they are, and thus the less radiation they lose to space, which means the surface stays warmer.”
One could say the higher they are the sooner they will reflect incident radiation back to space before it warms some of the atmosphere below it.
Less radiation to space may well mean the atmosphere gets a little warmer, but then we do still have carbon dioxide to help with the radiation to space and thus cool the atmosphere.
But my main point is that there is only one way in which thermal energy from the atmosphere can get back to the surface. It does not “fall” out of the sky by downward convection. It does not get radiated back down because radiation from a cooler source cannot transfer thermal energy to the warmer surface. The only way it can transfer back to the surface is by being transported downwards in precipitation. Yes, cooler clouds mean cooler rain and more hail and snow.
The fact that the clouds are getting lower and warmer may well be a reason why the world is perhaps not cooling quite as much as the 60 year cycle would appear to cause. But then, there is still a slight rise in the ~1,000 year cycle of about half a degree C per century and that may still have one or two centuries before reaching its maximum.
And, by the way, there is absolutely no “positive forcing from an increase in greenhouse gases from human activities.” The author needs to catch up with the fact that, as Prof Claes Johnson has proved in Computational Blackbody Radiation, (summarised on my site) radiation from the atmosphere has a frequency which is below the cut-off frequency for absorption by the surface, so it is merely reflected or scattered without slowing the rate of cooling or increasing the rate of warming of the surface one iota.

Doug Cotton wrote:
>>But my main point is that there is only one way in which thermal energy from the atmosphere can get back to the surface. It does not “fall” out of the sky by downward convection.
The primary heat transport mechanism between clouds and the Earth’s surface in convection, evaporation and condensation. Radiative transfer is very small because of relatively small temperature differences (30 degrees C or so). This applies to the 70% of the Earth’s surface covered by clouds.

Climate Review: III
by Bob Carter
February 9, 2012
Being the final part of a summary and analysis of selected events and papers relevant to global warming, in Australian political context. Climate Review: I is here and Climate Review II is here.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/02/climate-review-iii

I would hate to have to tease out the AMO and ENSO effects along with the effects of lower solar activity.

Global temperatures are falling with a big dip in 2008, cloud height is decreasing with a big dip in 2008. What is the mystery? Why are they talking about global warming?

Peak Fog is on the way.

ShrNfr says:
February 9, 2012 at 3:20 pm
I would hate to have to tease out the AMO and ENSO effects along with the effects of lower solar activity.
The paper above has a first go at that. The good thing from that paper is the sense they give that the instruments in space have the potential to get to the bottom of the problem of clouds.

“the negative climate forcing from a decrease in the average global cloud amount during the past 10 years has more than offset the positive forcing from an increase in greenhouse gases from human activities. ”
Something wrong here. Why are the clouds declining? Because it is cooling! In the polar regions cummulus are about 600 feet; at the equator its 6000 feet or more. You cant have global warming going on with the clouds declining in height, so you can’t say increased forcings from GHG are being neutralized by negative feedbacks from declining cloud height. Have I got this right?

Robert Brown says:
February 9, 2012 at 3:18 pm
“O2 and N2 lose heat by transferring it to the CO_2 and H_2O which can then radiate the heat away, the only way any part of the upper atmosphere can lose heat.”
Not the only way. I’d be tempted to give it a pass if you had wedged “significant” in there somewhere. O2 and N2 both radiate and absorb, too, though at much lower rates. But, NO and O3 are produced in the upper atmosphere from these constituents. Production of NO causes airglow, and O3 is a GHG at relevant wavelengths.
You are also neglecting another very significant GHG: CH4, which exists in the stratosphere at significant concentrations.

Sorry – correction: No amount of downward radiation will be converted to thermal energy in warmer layers, as per Johnson’s Computational Blackbody Radiation.”

Doug Cotton says:
February 9, 2012 at 6:39 pm
“The atmosphere may well retain extra thermal energy, but temperatures underneath can only rise if there is an actual transfer of thermal energy downwards.”
There is a continual transfer of thermal energy downwards. It comes from the Sun. When it is impeded from leaving, it pools up until equilibrium between incoming and outgoing can be reestablished. That pooling up leads to a rise in temperature.
It is not unlike a dam across a river. Putting a dam across a river, which has a constant source pouring water into it, will cause the water to pool up until it overflows the top of the dam, and equilibrium is reestablished. The water level behind the dam is higher, even though the dam itself is not a source of water.

Bart says:
February 9, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Doug Cotton says:
February 9, 2012 at 6:39 pm
Since you’ve broadcast your crackpottery here for all to see, it is only fair that I take it as an opportunity to broadcast mine . 😉
This is where the analogy gets interesting. Suppose the dam is infinitely high, but it has two rows of floodgates in it. One, at low level, we will call the CO2 floodgates. One, at higher level, we will call the CH4 floodgates.
The water rises until it starts flowing out of the CO2 floodgate. But, the outflow isn’t enough to establish equilibrium before this row is saturated, so the water keeps on rising. Eventually, it reaches the level of the CH4 floodgates. Here, the water has enough of an outlet that the level stabilizes.
Now, we add more CO2 outlets. To make the analogy fit, let’s assume that we had to raise the level of the CO2 floodgates a bit to fit more in. If the CO2 floodgates had previously been sufficient to allow an equilibrium level to be established, that equilibrium level would be pushed higher.
BUT, since the level previously rose to the CH4 gates, and we put more CO2 gates in below that level which are now able to remove higher volumes of water, the equilibrium level will go down.
I hope maybe this analogy will get a read from some people who did not understand what I was talking about on an earlier thread.
Adding CO2 does not necessarily raise surface temperature, because there are other radiative emitters in the atmosphere which have interacted to create the equilibrium temperature.

Maybe the clouds are getting shorter because there is less heat to go around?
Or, there are more clouds nearer the ground?

This is why computer models have no prospect of working. The behavior of clouds has a huge impact on the amount of solar irradiance received at the surface, Changes in cloud pattern alter both the albedo and the amount of solar irradiance absorbed by the atmosphere
The variations are all but infinite since variation occurs depending upon the size of the cloud both 2 dimensionally and 3 dimensionally,the composition of the cloud, the altitude at which the cloud forms, the location where the cloud forms, the time of day the cloud forms and dissipates, the day & month when the cloud forms.
This is infinitely more complex since a cloud forming say over the snow covered Himalayas will have a significantly different impact on albedo than a similar sized cloud forming over a tropical rain forest So one has to look at the ground surface albedo that is being interrupted by the cloud to get a proper appreciation of albedo change. Of course, surface albedo is often seasonal and therefore the changes in albedo change also with the season.
The latitude of cloud formation and the date and time of day is very material to azimuth issues, quite obviously a cloud forming at say 11 am and dissipating at say 4pm in the tropics has a significantly different effect to a similar cloud forming say at 2pm and dissipating at 5pm over mid Canada.
There is no such thing as average cloudiness and our estimate of cloudiness conditions need be out by just 1 or 2% to fully explain the 20th century warming.
Since the process by which clouds form, dissipate and how and why they take the composition they take is not sufficiently well understood to have a reasonable stab at modelling. . .

John M says:
February 9, 2012 at 6:05 pm
“GeoLurking: Just curious what software you used to digitize the graphic data (of Fig 1). It looks like you’re using DPlot”
Yes, I set the params of the plot after measuring the extent of the the graphic and setting it at as the background. A little tedious, but it works.
I’ve used it for about two years now… great program. What I liked about it was it’s integration to Excel. (OT: I even managed to get the coordinator of Involcan (El Hierro) pissed off at me for my interpretation of GPS data (quadratic sheet) for his “volcanic crisis.” Had to yank a few vids off of my Youtube channel… most of the vids were done using Dplot and a video capture program)

I would like to embarrass gyptis444 by seconding the recommendation to watch:
http://sites.agu.org/fallmeeting/scientific-program/lectures/bowie-and-named-lectures/6dec/
g444 says “I strongly recommend this as it is extremely enlightening as to the specific details of cloud physics which have not been adequately characterised.”
I strongly recommend this for that reason, and ALSO because it implicitly indicates how much has been achieved already. In addition, it indicates how climate scientists really talk to each other, and what one of the key roles of simulation models is in the actual practice of climate science.
Indeed, the availability of the principal AGU lectures online is a wonderful thing. In future I’ll attend the less prominent sessions and watch most of the big name lectures after the fact.

Our little watery blue ball, held captive by old Sol, and perturbed by a captive moon, and various other divers influences. Fights back to reset the thermostat for the passengers. Reset takes a while and the rampant sun experienced for a few cycles has reset our world to cold, thus the change in clouds. The rather sudden holiday old Sol decided to take will mean an over shoot of temperature toward cold. If old Sol does not wake up. there will be no reset signal to warm, and our thermostat will be set at cold. I do not like cold.

Reblogged this on The Blogspaper.

Bart says:
February 9, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Doug Cotton says:
February 9, 2012 at 6:39 pm
“The atmosphere may well retain extra thermal energy, but temperatures underneath can only rise if there is an actual transfer of thermal energy downwards.”
(1) There is a continual transfer of thermal energy downwards. It comes from the Sun.
(2) When it is impeded from leaving, it pools up until equilibrium between incoming and outgoing can be reestablished. That pooling up leads to a rise in temperature.
________________________________________________________
(1) Yes, the Sun is what keeps you warm. It’s been happening for a few billion years without getting too hot. But the IPCC hangs its hat on a thing they inappropriately call the greenhouse effect – due to what they also inappropriately call “backradiation.” So let’s keep to the topic I was talking about, shall we?
(2) Yes, maybe the atmosphere gets a little closer to freezing point until a fraction of a second later when more radiation is emitted from the atmosphere and eventually makes its way to space, perhaps after being rejected by the surface and a billion other warmer air molecules it visits.

Dr Burns says:
February 9, 2012 at 2:36 pm
Doug Cotton wrote:
>>But my main point is that there is only one way in which thermal energy from the atmosphere can get back to the surface. It does not “fall” out of the sky by downward convection.
(1) The primary heat transport mechanism between clouds and the Earth’s surface in convection, evaporation and condensation.
(2) Radiative transfer is very small because of relatively small temperature differences (30 degrees C or so). ….
____________________________________________________________
(1) Condensation pf course leads to the precipitation I was talking about. Did you really mean to include convection and evaporation in the downward transfer of thermal energy?
(2) You seem to be talking about net upward radiation (not downward as I was discussing) for why else are you referring to a temperature difference of 30 degrees? Even the good old Stefan-Boltzmann Law would expect the warmer temperature to be the source of net radiation. Indeed such radiation from the surface is not large because there is often a temperature difference of less than 3 degrees (never, well hardly ever 30 degrees) between the surface and the first millimeter of the air – and that’s all that counts. Most thermal energy leaves the surface by diffusion, conduction, convection, evaporation and chemical processes, not by radiation – which is why that -18 deg.C figure is garbage if you follow me.

Doug Cotton says:
February 10, 2012 at 2:47 am
‘But the IPCC hangs its hat on a thing they inappropriately call the greenhouse effect – due to what they also inappropriately call “backradiation.” ‘
The “backradiation” paradigm is just an equivalent way of looking at the result in equilibrium. If you don’t like it, look at it the other more proper way, as atmospheric impedance to heat dissipation. Water cannot flow from a low point to a high point, either. Yet, a dam raises the water level upstream. You are arguing that it cannot, but I am certain that it can.
“So let’s keep to the topic I was talking about, shall we?”
Let’s not, because you are advancing a crackpot thesis: essentially that the atmosphere cannot retain heat. Atmospheric retention of heat, and consequent raising of temperature at the surface due to it, is a slam dunk. There is no doubt at all that the Earth’s surface is hotter than it would be without an atmosphere and, ignoring other processes, the addition of heat trapping gases to a homogenous unsaturated atmosphere would tend to heat it more.
BUT, I have imposed very specific conditions, here. The situation is complex. There are other processes occurring which cannot be ignored, as the IPCC wants to do. Feedback effects, e.g., from clouds, can mitigate the effect, and alter the characteristics. In addition, the atmosphere is not homogeneous and CO2 radiative emissions are nearly saturated.
Inhomogeneity and saturation mean that the partial derivative (sensitivity) of temperature with respect to added CO2 can be negative, i.e., adding CO2 can actually tend to cool, rather than heat, the surface. I believe that my little thought experiment above demonstrates that adding more CO2 to the Earth’s atmosphere should, in fact, reduce the amount needed to be radiated out by CH4 to establish equilibrium, and therefore the sensitivity of Earth’s surface temperature to additional CO2 is actually negative.
And, other negative feedback effects can (and almost certainly do) reduce the magnitude of the sensitivity in the closed loop, and alter the steady state conditions.
I am not carrying the IPCC’s water here. I am not defending their position in toto. I am very specifically stating that they have simplified the situation to the point that it no longer reflects reality. But, the fallacy does not disprove the premise. The greenhouse effect being wrong would invalidate the IPCC’s postion. But, the invalidity of the IPCC’s position does not prove that the greenhouse effect is nonexistent.

PS – Bart (and others)
We have seen here at WUWT that there has been a reduction in relative humidity this century which should indicate that there is no radiative feedback from water vapour having any positive effect. That in itself demonstrates what Prof Johnson is saying that any radiation from a cooler atmosphere cannot transfer thermal energy to the warmer surface or to any (significantly) warmer atmospheric layer. This does more than just negate any amplification of any carbon dioxide forcing: it also negates the possibility of any GHG forcing whatsoever, which is in accord with what Johnson has proved. If WV does not warm with “backradiation” neither will any GHG.
I have written in other posts explaining how thermal energy merely appears to transfer only from warm to cool. It does not actually itself travel at the speed of light. Only radiated energy does so. Radiated energy only gets converted back to thermal energy when it meets a target which responds appropriately and converts the radiated energy to thermal energy. For this to happen the peak frequency of that radiation has to be above the cut-off frequency for the target itself, as Johnson explains. If it is below cut-off, the radiation (if not already reflected) will be transmitted or scattered and no energy left behind in the target. The very fact that thermal energy only ever appears to go from warm to cold is fully explained by Johnson’s result and no other process. If it could go from cool to warm there would be no end to the process and infinite spontaneous adiabatic warming would be a theoretical possibility by just surrounding a small object with numerous cooler radiating bodies. Is there any evidence of waves from a radio broadcasting tower actually warming something nearby? Is there really any evidence of radiation from the atmosphere doing likewise? No.
If and only if there is conversion to thermal energy will there be any effect on the rate of warming or cooling of the target. So climate cannot be affected by radiation from the atmosphere.
Now, finally, there is considerable doubt that the capture of photons by carbon dioxide will necessarily lead to sharing of that energy among O2 and N2 molecules. These have different quantum energy steps for a start. Collisions may appear to transfer KE, but they in themselves can generate low amounts of radiation due to acceleration of electrons. What happens appears to depend very much on temperature also. If there is warming then there will be a greater propensity to radiate anyway. So, either radiation happens before any warming, or any warming causes more radiation. All radiation from the atmosphere eventually gets to space because the surface and warmer molecules lower down will not accept it.

The very cold temps at 400 mb the infamous level of trapping the IPCC is looking for, would also argue for lower cloud tops, at least over the last year. Interestingly enough.. the cool enso, then rapid drop off in mid trop temps and now the rapid drop off in the lower trop temps ( the air above the boundary layer would cool first) goes hand in hand with the idea that global temps respond to the large natural cycles ( in this case the turn of the PDO and the cool enso) than the fiction the AGW side is trying to push

The atmosphere can violate physics? Whatever radiation meets the surface from the atmosphere, whatever the intensity or wavelength, if it came from a cooler source it cannot add thermal energy to the surface.
See section 3.9.3 regarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics applying to heat transfer by radiation.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
Prof Claes Johnson proves computationally how and why it applies. If he were incorrect there would be a violation of the law.
This paper also mentions on p.74 the role of the core heat in climate, something which I have written about long ago on the ‘Explanation’ page of http://climate-change-theory.com I am relieved to find a paper that mentions such.

Bart says:
February 10, 2012 at 3:06 pm
Doug Cotton says:
February 10, 2012 at 1:55 pm
“There is no physical process whereby atmospheric impedance to heat dissipation can cause thermal energy to be transferred back to the surface…”
For the last time, the energy flux to the surface is coming from the Sun. The IR emitters in the atmosphere do not heat the surface, the Sun does.
________________________________
I stand by my statement and I couldn’t agree more with yours in italic above.
So how does any thermal energy trapped up somewhere in the atmosphere (or slowed down in its inevitable exit to space) have any effect on what we call climate down here?
So at night how does radiative flux from the atmosphere add thermal energy to the surface in order to slow the rate of cooling? (Sorry, but we need to take the Sun out of the picture to focus on this nocturnal system.) Do try to remember that the Second Law of Thermodynamics also works at night.
Try reading p.74 at least from this peer-reviewed published paper. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
You also said: They only have to impede the energy that gets there from leaving, because there is more coming in every infinitesimal unit of time.
The impeding will have no effect on climate as I said in the statement I stand by above.
Oh, and sorry, but the Sun doesn’t shine here in Sydney “in every infinitesimal unit of time.” I find things cool off at night, don’t you?, Back to about where they were the night before.
Funny how the temperature at 56,000 feet is still the same as it was a decade or so ago, namely about -63 deg.C. That must be having a huge effect on us all down here.

“EIther the radiation from the cold atmosphere is converted to thermal energy in the surface or it isn’t.”
You’re just thinking about this all wrong, Doug. I think you have in mind a sort of pseudo-static situation where various entities are independently bombarding the surface with energy bundles, and the Earth is, in turn, sending them back out toward the sources. According to the 2nd law, the atmospheric particles, in this scenario, will receive back more radiation than they put in, so the net flow is outward.
That is entirely true. The net flow between the surface and the atmosphere is outward. But, all of the energy is coming from the Sun. It is coming in constantly on the day side of the planet. It is re-emitted up into the atmosphere, and some of it is re-emitted back down, and then the surface re-emits it back up again, and so on. Then net result is that more energy puddles near the surface, and so the temperature rises. But, the net flow between the surface and the atmosphere is still upward, so there is no 2nd law violation. What is left is a little larger pool of energy near the surface, and that raises the temperature.
On the night side, the net flux is still out, so there is no 2nd law violation. The only thing affected is the rate of thermal emission from the combined surface/atmosphere, which slows (not the speed of the photons, of course, but the number of emissions per unit of time which result in photons escaping the system), so the surface cools less quickly than it otherwise would have.
I don’t harbor much hope I am going to get through to you. But, in the off chance that I do, I want to point out to you how complex this really all is, which is widely unappreciated. Don’t bother reading beyond here if you are not interested.
————————————————————
All of this back-radiation and thermal energy accumulation is a positive feedback. A temperature rise causes atmospheric absorption by GHG gases, which reduces the rate of outward energy flow, which raises the surface temperature, which causes more atmospheric absorption, and so on it a self-reinforcing cycle. This will continue until the rate of surface emission outside the GHG bands of absorption plus the outward bound atmospheric emissions balances the incoming solar radiation flux.
It is exactly like my analogy of the dam and the floodgates. And, as I showed with that analogy, it is entirely possible for the addition of lower energy emitters like CO2 to cause the equilibrium temperature to go down rather than up. in fact, when you are in an equilibrium situation, as we are, in which a higher energy emitter like CH4 is producing significant emissions to balance everything out, then I believe it is even very likely that the addition of more CO2 would tend to lower the surface temperature.
There is an additional potential for a saturation effect to create more cooling. In that case, adding more CO2 would tend to broaden the peak at which absorption and subsequent radiation occurs. In my dam analogy, that would be like adding additional floodgates below the level of the previous ensemble.
SO, to sum it all up:
1) The GH effect is real
2) But, adding GH gases does not necessarily increase the surface temperature
3) In the case where there are higher energy emitters which are significantly stimulated, and/or the absorption/emittance distribution is broadened, it is quite likely that increasing the concentration will lead to cooling
4) Not discussed here, but additional feedbacks in the system (e.g., cloud dynamics) can suppress the GH effects and make any warming/cooling insignificant – this would be akin to having a spillway that circumvents the dam

Bart you really put your foot in it here: “the net flux is still out, so there is no 2nd law violation” because the Second Law has nothing to do with net radiative flux. It has to do with heat transfer. The IPCC tries to say there is heat transfer into the surface (thus slowing the rate of cooling in the evening and increaing the rate of warming in the morning and the maximum temperature for the day), whilst all the time there is net flux out of the system. This does not make it OK to break the Second Law by transferring heat into the surface from a colder atmosphere, No transfer of heat inwards means no greenhouse effect.

Bart, you’re about a year and a thousand hours of study behind me. I wrote stuff like this on my website a year ago: “It is re-emitted up into the atmosphere, and some of it is re-emitted back down, and then the surface re-emits it back up again, and so on. “
In fact the atmosphere is 3D and radiation “bounces” around being re-emitted millions, perhaps billions of times in random directions. But, whenever it encounters a warmer molecule than is represented by its own frequency it is scattered without being absorbed and without leaving any energy behind in any little “pool” near the surface or wherever. Even when it strikes a cooler molecule when heading toward space it usually gets re-emitted without causing warming of any other molecule. Even if does happen to warm some other molecule, that molecule will then have a greater propensity to emit radiation. The probability is that it will escape to space sooner or later, and in fact at least 99.5% of incident radiation does go back to space, sometimes 100.5%.
The main factors influencing climate are
(a) total solar insolation which can vary with solar distance plus
(b) to some extent, relative humidity and
(c) cloud levels and cover.
Of course there are many other natural variables, volcanoes etc. But carbon dioxide levels are not among the factors involved, other than a very slight cooling effect due to absorption of incoming IR radiation from the Sun. What the IPCC never mentions is that about half the Sun’s radiation is in the infra-red spectrum and there are pockets in the spectrum where CO2 and WV are absorbing and so reducing the warming effect of the Sun..
Now spend at least two hours reading that paper by the German physicists!

It seems some like shawnhet need to learn some basic facts of physics, rather than what they have been fed by climatologists…
It is physically impossible to slow the rate of anything cooling without adding thermal energy, and iIt is physically impossible to add thermal energy by conduction or spontaneous radiation from a cooler source.
The language I speak is that of physics, not that of the IPCC.
Go and read 100+ pages of the peer-reviewed published paper by those two German physicists which I linked above, but link again http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
There is absolutely nothing in that physics paper which contradicts anything I have written on my website http://climate-change-theory.com or in recent posts, even though I have just found the paper yesterday.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics does apply for radiation and you need to remember that radiation is not itself thermal energy. It is only converted to thermal energy when it strikes a target which is cooler than its source – which is why heat only transfers from hot to cold and not from a cold atmosphere to a warmer surface. The target detects the temperature of the emitter by way of its peak frequency which is proportional to its absolute temperature. Radiation which is neither reflected nor converted to thermal energy is merely scattered and thus has no more effect than that which is reflected.
So there is no heat transfer from the cooler atmosphere (as per Second Law) and without any heat transfer from the atmsophere, there can be no slowing of the cooling rate of the surface.
I will not be replying to anyone who does not show evidence of reading the above physics paper at least in part. I am happy to explain any part of it, but will be unavailable for the next 24 hours.

Doug Cotton says:
It is physically impossible to slow the rate of anything cooling without adding thermal energy, and iIt is physically impossible to add thermal energy by conduction or spontaneous radiation from a cooler source.
The language I speak is that of physics, not that of the IPCC.
The language you speak is neither that of physics nor that of the IPCC.
You don’t understand the difference between radiative physics and kinetic physics.

“”””” Stephen Wilde says:
February 9, 2012 at 12:53 pm
“a decrease in the average global cloud amount during the past 10 years”
Is that a typo ?
Average cloud height has declined or so they say but according to other sources cloud amounts have increased over the past ten years. “””””
Tut tut Stephen; the higher you go, the less atmospheric mass there is, the less moisture there is, the less clouds there is. It follows logically, that exactly the opposite happens the lower you go, lower = more clouds.
Quite Easily Done !

“”””” DesertYote says:
February 9, 2012 at 3:24 pm
10 years is not enough time to indicate anything at all. “””””
Well ten years is ample time to observe whatever happens in ten years. I agree that five years is not enough time to observe what happens in ten years, but ten years is plenty of time to do it.

That would be confounding. Do you have a link for the reference? I’d be most interested in seeing that. If this can be stated with reasonable confidence, then we have a huge problem. Because sea-level rise hasn’t just slowed, it has been reversing itself. In spite of the Himalayas remaining the same, we’re told that much melt is occurring on Greenland and Antarctic is supposedly shedding ice.
Scientific American no less:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-water-vapor-in-the-stratosphere-slowing-global-warming
or
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100131145840.htm
This summarizes the following article in Science:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1219.abstract
I’d say it can be stated with quite a bit of confidence. One of a whole lot of things that are interesting about this paper is that it makes a mockery out of the “settled science” assertion of the Warmists, who failed to predict this.
Another is that I don’t believe that anybody knows why atmospheric water vapor is increasing or decreasing. Even warm-biased Science magazine has published the article with a statement that the observed 10% modulation of water vapor might have been responsible for 35% of the supposed temperature anomaly.
Interesting hypothesis: a less active sun permits more GCRs to penetrate. This has a quadruple effect on the climate — radiation cascades nucleate clouds at lower saturations, much as do aerosols. The clouds have a high albedo (net cooling). The clouds form at lower altitudes, so that outgoing cloudtop radiation in the water window is warmer than it would be otherwise (weaker GHE). When clouds form lower, less water vapor is left over for transport to the stratosphere, which then becomes more transparent to outgoing GHGs radiating at the top of the troposphere, which in turn lowers the optical depth and raises the temperature where the Greenhouse cooling occurs, which in turn further lowers the tropopause (shifts the entire lapse rate downwards) as the atmosphere underneath is less buoyant.
A change in the mean albedo of the Earth of 0.01 implies a change in mean temperature of around a degree K. From the links above, the 10% variation in stratospheric H_2O may be responsible for anywhere from 0.1 to 0.2 of the temperature anomaly over the last 30 years (although resolving that is nearly impossible, given all of the factors). The lowering of clouds and the troposphere may have a bigger effect in the long run than either of the above. Even solar irradiance itself drops some with lower magnetic activity.
What we could see is that solar modulation of climate is by far and away the largest factor, literally dwarfing the other factors. Since the twentieth century contained a 9000 year Grand Solar Maximum, it could well be that almost all of the heating observed in the latter part of the twentieth century can be attributed directly to the Sun, with only a few tenths of a degree attributable to increased CO_2. If one looks at the speed with which the climate has changed in the past in response to solar state and the magnitude of the variations, this becomes a rather plausible possibility.
Another question: It took decades for stratospheric water vapor to build up and peak in the 80’s and 90’s. It’s dropped 10% in around a decade since. Is it finished dropping? Since we don’t know why it went up we can hardly predict when it is finished going down. Since we have no good measurements that stretch further back than the satellite era, we literally have no data from a non-active sun and cannot computer the relaxation time of the system in any reliable way. If the solar hypothesis above is correct, we may not be particularly close to finished — stratospheric H2O could drop another 20-30% as the anemic sun limps through the rest of this cycle and into the next, probably even less active one. This in turn could drop global temperatures buy — how much? 1-2K from albedo, 0.3-0.4K from extending radiative cooling of CO_2, farther down into the troposphere, 0.5K-0.1K from the shrinking of the thermosphere itself due to cooling and alteration of the lapse rate. — we could see global temperature drops from 1 to as many as 3 or 4 degrees Kelvin — back to levels not seen for 160 years.
Perhaps not quite a new “LIA”, but a new Dalton minimum, complete with radically lowered temperatures.
Settled science, yeah, sure.
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The Second Law of Thermodynamics does apply for radiation and you need to remember that radiation is not itself thermal energy. It is only converted to thermal energy when it strikes a target which is cooler than its source – which is why heat only transfers from hot to cold and not from a cold atmosphere to a warmer surface. The target detects the temperature of the emitter by way of its peak frequency which is proportional to its absolute temperature. Radiation which is neither reflected nor converted to thermal energy is merely scattered and thus has no more effect than that which is reflected.
So there is no heat transfer from the cooler atmosphere (as per Second Law) and without any heat transfer from the atmsophere, there can be no slowing of the cooling rate of the surface.
I’ve been whacked for this myself, so permit me to whack you, because here it matters. You mean to say no net heat transfer. Net heat. Otherwise your statements are laughably wrong. You are also making a straight up error regarding “targets detecting temperature of emitters”. Piffle. A photon does not come with a label for the process that created it, and even blackbody radiation viewed as a semiclassical continuum, once emitted, just becomes “radiation”.
Finally, you are horribly misrepresenting the nature of the GHE. Forget about upwelling and downwelling radiation. I agree that the way that is described is a nightmarish mess — it is filled with incorrect heuristics and oversimplifications. But the GHE does not rely in any intrinsic way on that. All you need to know to understand the GHE is what the top of atmosphere radiation spectrum looks like.
Here is the GHE in a nutshell:
To the extent that the Earth’s outgoing radiation budget comes from greenhouse gases in the cool upper atmosphere — in e.g. the CO_2 band at 150-200K — it must come from warmer sources in the non-CO_2 band(s) in order for the total outflow to equal the average inflow and maintain roughly constant temperatures.
Honey Badger just don’t care how the heat redistribution happens to manage this. Make up any story you like about upwelling or downwelling radiation, conduction, convection, storage in the ocean, or invisible fairies moving it around. At the end of the day, the non-CO_2 radiators have to be hotter to compensate for the colder CO_2 radiators in order to get just as much energy out of the Earth, on average, per day, month, year, whatever.
It’s really that simple. If you have a hose and put your finger over the end to slow the flow over one part of the end, it has to speed up elsewhere to maintain the same flow and the pressure inside the hose has to go up to provide the force that speeds it up. The exact same thing describes the GHE. The Sun is the input of the hose, the upper atmosphere CO_2 is the finger, and it gets warmer on the surface to provide the additional pressure in the non-obstructed channels.
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Looked at “YOUR” website Doug; and I noticed that all of “YOUR” climate research is copyrighted; well that’s what it says at the bottom of your site.
Some of “YOUR” research results look remarkably like ones already well known from other authors.
So what, if any of that stuff on your site is your own work that you are entitled to protect.
I presume that you have authorization from the authors of the other stuff to use their materials without attribution.