CERES Satellite Data and Climate Sensitivity

A linear trend? Based on a 13-year period? In other words, projected far enough into the future, we will burn? This assumes everything remains constant, of course. As if nature is static and the climate never changes.

For comparison has anybody done RSS and UAH?

Any chance of an essay expanding on and consolidating all @AlecM’s points? That would be really useful!

Katherine says: January 16, 2014 at 12:28 am

A linear trend? Based on a 13-year period? In other words, projected far enough into the future, we will burn? This assumes everything remains constant, of course. As if nature is static and the climate never changes.

The dataset is short, so the extrapolation is uncertain, but it is the best dataset we have. The calculated transient climate response is the estimated effect of increasing greenhouse gases only. The small warming effect of CO2 can be easily be offset by natural climate change. We believe that the sun is a major driver of climate changes based on long-term correlations between solar activity and temperatures, so yes, temperatures might not increase for many years if solar activity remains low. The advantage of this direct calculation of changes in the greenhouse effect over the CERES era is that we do not need knowledge of total forcings or feedbacks.

Silver Ralph says: January 16, 2014 at 1:38 am

But isn’t CO2′s absorption of LW inversely logarithmic, did I hear? i.e.: its ability to absorb maxes out at 500 ppm or something? I would be grateful for clarification on that.
But if so, then the absorption is not linear, even if the increase in concentration is.

Yes, the CO2 absorption of LW is logarithmic. That means it does NOT max out at 500 ppm.
See Figure 7. It is a graph of temperature versus the LOG of CO2 concentrations.

AlecM says: January 16, 2014 at 1:11 am

@Peter Ward: in the mill. Climate Alchemy has been on the wrong track since Carl Sagan made 3 major physics’ mistakes leading him to conclude, wrongly, that GHGs cause Lapse Rate warming (it’s actually gravity).
I see even now Physicists assume the atmosphere is a grey-body emitter/absorber of IR energy – it’s really semi-transparent which is why OLR has been badly misinterpreted.

There must be some GHGs for there to be a lapse rate, ie, a decline of temperature with altitude to the tropopause. The value of the lapse rate does depend on gravity, which is not changing. An increase in GHG would cause the height of the tropopause to increase. Some data suggests that water vapor in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere declines with increasing CO2, partially offsetting the CO2 direct effect, resulting in the low transient climate response I have calculated.
Climate models do not assume the atmosphere is a greybody. They are based on line-by-line code calculations that correctly simulates a semi-transparent atmosphere, ie, with an atmospheric window. But the climate models apparently greatly overestimates positive feedbacks from clouds and water vapor.

Two mysteries:
1) If the CO2 increase is largely anthropogenic as claimed by the IPCC, why does Figure 6 show no evidence of the decrease in consumption in much of the world after the 2008 financial crisis?
2) Why does AlexM repeat the same claims on every thread that mentions the GHE despite being unable to convince anyone ever that he knows what he’s talking about?

Ken,
You can only say that the average surface temperature is -18C if you assume the following;
1. The Earth is flat and not a sphere
2. There is no day/night cycle
3. The solar energy input is reduced by a factor of 4 from what it actually is at TOA.
Not a good basis to build any sort of analysis really …

@Ken Gregory: you are correct:; the radiation transfer modelling does not assume a grey body. Indeed, the RTM is about the only thing in Climate Alchemy I trust!
My comment about the grey body assumption is that it was used by Houghton, copying Sagan, to claim the GHE causes lapse rate warming. It doesn’t; gravity does. A recent paper from Brookhaven used a grey body assumption so this beast is still alive in atmospheric physics.
We now get to the ‘enhanced greenhouse effect’ and Sagan’s ‘Venusian thermal runaway’ transferred to the Earth. It came down to the idea that when temperature exceeds a critical level, water ceases to condense so pH2O increases at the same time as lapse rate nearly doubles.
The problem is that these calculations assume the planetary surface emits net IR energy at the black body level. No professional scientist or engineer can accept this. I have measured, experimentally, coupled convection and radiation in metallurgical plants, also in research. We invented GHG physics so know rather a lot about it.
Radiation fields interact vectorially so there can be no emission from equal temperature surface to atmosphere of IR energy in any self-absorbed GHG band. [There’s a new bit of physics here.] The concept of ‘forcing’ is plain wrong. Increased pGHG reduces net surface IR emission. In the absence of any other factor the surface temperature would increase, hence the 1.2 K CO2 climate sensitivity would be correct. However, other processes offset this temperature rise reducing real CO2 climate sensitivity; it’s probably <0.1K.
To summarise, in climate modelling the RTM works fine. However, the Big Mistake is to put in 333W/m^2 imaginary IR from the surface to the atmosphere, apparently offset by applying Kirchhoff's Law of Radiation at ToA. I have spoken to modellers attempting to justify this by crazy S-B calculations. They are absolutely wrong because 134.5 of the net 157.5 W/m^2 'Clear Sky Atmospheric Greenhouse Factor' is a perpetual motion machine of the 2nd kind, hence the need for arbitrary cooling in hind-casting, that cooling having been apparently hidden until 2010.

richardscourtney says: January 16, 2014 at 2:34 am

And your error estimates for those trends are?
Please note that the [HadCRUT] trend values span zero.

The temperature trend is near zero, but the trend in the greenhouse effect is significantly positive. You can judge the uncertainties in the estimates by observing how closely the greenhouse effect curves follow the best fit line. The R2 value for the fit in Figure 4 for HadCrut3 is R2 = 0.012. The difference in the TCR results between HadCRUT3 and HadCRUT4, 0.45 C and 0.87 C, respectively, further shows that the TCR is uncertain. The data is messy, that that is the best we have.
This calculation does not require direct knowledge of the total forcings operating in the climate system. The forcing from indirect solar effects are unknown, but they must be substantial because there are strong correlations between solar activity and global temperatures. Any method to estimate climate sensitivity that requires an estimate of total forcing but only uses the IPCC recognized forcings are totally useless because they ignore indirect solar forcings.
You provided a link to my article “Out-going Longwave Radiation and the Greenhouse Effect” which estimates climate sensitivity at 0.4 C. That paper used a long dataset from 1960, and used radiosonde humidity data to calculate OLR, which is uncertain, but the general method is the same. This article uses a short, but high quality CERES dataset, and also gets low climate sensitivity.

The blackbody radiation equates to a surface temperature of -18 degrees.
Why should we assume that the “surface” as seen by an instrument in space is ground level and not some altitude within our atmosphere? How is the lapse rate accommodated by GHG theory or is it ignored?

AlecM says:
January 16, 2014 at 3:17 am
Right on Alec.
You do not have to convince me.
@steveta_uk ; you are going to have do your homework before making untrue comments.
He should also read this post………
“johnmarshall says:
January 16, 2014 at 2:54 am ”
@steveta_uk ; try this:
http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/

The greenhouse effect was a topic of study in our 1970 theoretical geophysics course. At that time the greenhouse effect was a theoretical metric for comparing the atmospheric insulation of the planets. we did this using the solar constant of 1367W/m^2 (and an appropriate increase for Venus which is closer and for Mars which is further). We used 0.3 for the Earth’s albedo and assumed a surface temperature of 288 k (approximately 15°C). This gave us 255 k for the effective radiative temperature which subtracted from the 288 k surface temperature gave us 33°C for the greenhouse effect.
Ken’s calculation of the greenhouse effect based on CERES OLR data covers the period since 2000 during which there was net global cooling. This exposes the fallacy of AGW in two ways.
First of all the CERES OLR data shows a net decrease in OLR with cooling temperatures. For this to occur there has to be a net decrease in incoming energy and since this change is not visible in the TSI measurement the only source for this decrease in incoming energy is increased albedo from a net increase in cloud cover.
The second and more critical aspect to the issue of AGW is that the greenhouse effect is increasing as the temperature is decreasing which is contrary to the AGW conjecture which would require a decrease in greenhouse effect with decreasing temperature for the AGW hypothesis to be valid and this is simply not the case.
Since the issue here is global warming and there has been a net 0.4°C of global warming since 1980 (ending by 1997), to see how this relates to global warming we need to look at OLR data covering the period when warming occurred. Fortunately this data was recorded by weather satellites since their launch in late 1978 and a graph of this OLR data is nicely presented on the Climate for You website (www.climate4you.com) compiled from data available from NOAA at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.interp_OLR.html
This dataset is clearly not as accurate as the CERES data showing OLR to be on average 232W/m^2 compared to the 239W/m^2 shown on the CERES data, but it does go back to when the global temperature was increasing and can provide the basis for a calculation of the greenhouse effect over the period from 1980 to 2010.
When calculated for these two years the greenhouse effect actually decreased from 35.56°C in 1980 to 35.42°C in 2010 demonstrating that the 70.9% increase in CO2 emissions since 1980 never actually enhanced the greenhouse effect and therefore completely refuting the basis for AGW conjecture.
Ken’s demonstration using CERES OLR data shows an increase in greenhouse effect with decreasing global temperature and my demonstration using OLR data from weather satellites shows decreasing greenhouse effect with increasing global temperature. Either of these demonstrations proves that changes to incoming energy from changes in albedo and definitely not CO2 is driving the changes in global temperature and combined these demonstrations make the proof incontrovertible. This change in albedo is demonstrated by Project Earthshine which shows the albedo decreasing to 1998 and then increasing since.
A change in albedo resulting from changes in cloud cover fits very nicely with Svensmark’s hypothesis of solar activity controlled cosmic ray cloud nucleation giving us both confirmation of solar theory for global temperature change and incontrovertible evidence that the AGW hypothesis is pure bunk.

I think you could only do this if you had data extending beyond known cycles (60-80 years to cover a complete PDO, AMO etc…). Because of where we are in the PDO cycle with this data, I would have to assume your result estimates the lower bound rather than the center.

There is a cyclic variation in OLR of about 8W/m^2 over the course of a year due to changes in albedo from the snow cover in the larger northern hemisphere temperate landmass. That being said the average OLR over the course of a year must by energy balance equal the average net incoming energy minus that portion of the energy permanently incorporated into the Earth system through such processes as plant growth and ocean warming.
If over a ten year period OLR decreases, temperature decreases and the greenhouse effect increases the trend is long enough for an incontrovertible conclusion that the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration over the last decade did not cause global warming through enhancement of the greenhouse effect.
Similarly over the period of the last 33 years there has been a net increase in OLR a net increase in global temperature but a net decrease in the greenhouse effect. This means that the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not enhance the greenhouse effect causing the observed 0.4°C of net warming since 1980.
We do not need trends any longer than either of these to confirm that CO2 is not driving global temperature in the way predicted by the IPCC climate models explaining why they have all been wrong predicting warming when the Earth has been cooling since 2002

Mike Jonas says: January 16, 2014 at 2:29 am

The essay asserts that “Changes in the sun’s TSI, aerosols, ocean circulation changes and urban heating can’t change the GHE“, but can they affect these calcs?- eg. GHE is being estimated using measured OLR as one of the inputs, OLR includes reflected LR, so would change if TSI changed.

In the equation TCR = F2x dT/dF, the dT is the temperature change of the greenhouse effect, it is NOT the surface temperature change nor the top-of-atmosphere effective radiating temperature alone. A change of TSI it would change both the surface temperature (Ts) and the effective radiating temperature (Te) equally, so there would be no change in the GHE, which is Ts – Te. The GHE will change only if the longwave absorption in the atmosphere changes, resulting in a change in the downward longwave radiation. Changes in TSI, aerosols, PDO, and albedo do not change LW absorption. The dF is the forcing that caused the change in dT, which is ONLY the change in greenhouse gases during the period.

Bill Marsh says: January 16, 2014 at 5:29 am

“Only changes in anthropogenic greenhouse gases can cause a significant change in the greenhouse effect. ”
I don’t understand why you believe this base assumption to be axiomatic. Doesn’t it imply that all natural sources of CO2 are constant?

It implies that natural sources of CO2, averaged over the annual cycle, does not change other than any feedback temperature response. There is an obvious annual cycle of natural CO2 production and absorption. I used the CO2 anomaly to calculate the CO2 trend so the annual cycle doesn’t affect the trend. There was no temperature change during the CERES period, so there was no feedback response of natural CO2 production. If volcanoes increased emissions, sure, that would affect the trend, but there have been no major volcanic eruption during the period, and volcanic CO2 is very small compared to human sources.

Norm Kalmanovitch says: January 16, 2014 at 5:18 am

First of all the CERES OLR data shows a net decrease in OLR with cooling temperatures. For this to occur there has to be a net decrease in incoming energy and since this change is not visible in the TSI measurement the only source for this decrease in incoming energy is increased albedo from a net increase in cloud cover.

This Climate-4-you graph;
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverAllLevel%20AndWaterColumnSince1983.gif
shows a decrease in low level clouds and an increase in high and middle level clouds during the period of the analysis. The total cloud cover:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverTotalObservationsSince1983.gif
shows a large reduction in cloud cover to July 2000, resulting in natural warming. There was a small increase to 2002, then it stays constant. Perhaps cloud cover has increase in the tropics and decreased elsewhere causing a decrease in incoming energy over the last 13 years. A change in albedo during the period of my analysis would not affect my calculation of TCR because albedo would change surface temperature and effective radiating temperatures equally, and wouldn’t change the GHE = Ts – Te.
Norm correctly points out that the long term NOAA OLR data, while less accurate than CERES, also demonstrates very little change in the GHE, so CO2 can’t be the main driver of climate change.

richardscourtney says: January 16, 2014 at 5:44 am

For your results to be valid they should be obtained from the extreme values allowed by the confidence limits of the trend lines (at 95% confidence). This would increase the spread of indicated global temperature rise projections to January 2100 to be greater than the 0.24 °C to 0.46 °C. …
Each data set provides a range of possible trend values to within specified confidence (climate science uses 95% confidence). Hence, there is a maximum trend and a minimum trend at 95% confidence for EACH of your two analysed time series. Using these values would provide A RANGE OF PROJECTIONS FOR EACH DATA SET to within 95% confidence.

Richard, I agree with everything you said here, and for a technical journal submission, a statistical analysis with 95% confidence intervals would be necessary. A 95% confidence range of possible values for TCR would be significantly wider than the two values I presented. The uncertainties are much more than just the random noise. We don’t know what systematic errors are in the surface and satellite measurements, so even a 95% confidence interval will not give the full range of possible values. It is clear that the values presented are just the best estimates based on the two datasets used. That is fine for a blog post.

Joe Born says: January 16, 2014 at 7:29 am

The surface-temperature anomaly comes from the average of the local temperatures, not the fourth root of the average of the temperatures’ fourth powers. Even though the surface-temperature anomaly stays constant, the extremes could moderate, and that would reduce the average Stefan-Boltzmann radiation.
You may have checked that this effect is negligible here, but your post doesn’t say so.

Willis Eschenbach had commented on this point a few times. The 4th root of the average surface radiation flux is not quite equal to the average of the 4th root of the surface radiation fluxes. Over the range of temperatures we are dealing with, the error is small. I don’t think this is relevant to my post because the the earth’s temperature range over the surface area has not likely changed over the 13 year period, so it wouldn’t affect the trends.

It doesn’t add up… says:
January 16, 2014 at 7:11 am
The moon has a Bond albedo of 0.11, and a SB theoretical temperature of 270.7K according to NASA:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html
Yet the average temperature at the equator (the hottest latitude) is just 206K according to NASA using its Diviner measurements:
http://diviner.ucla.edu/science.shtml
There is no significant atmosphere, but a large divergence between supposed theory and actual measurement.
The lunar surface absorbs some energy and re-emits it, but it also reflects some without absorption. Presumably then the surface heating is less than total incoming energy. Presumably at least some of the difference can be accounted for by that.

What,for goodness sake is going on here !. Barely four days after this site invited a guest to write an article that included this –
‘GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL’
“Yes, the world has warmed 1°F to 1.5°F (0.6°C to 0.8°C) since 1880 when relatively good thermometers became available. Yes, part of that warming is due to human activities, mainly burning unprecedented quantities of fossil fuels that continue to drive an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. The Atmospheric “Greenhouse” Effect is a scientific fact!”
Damnest thing I have seen in over two decades on the forums

AlecM 3:17am: “The Law of Conservation of Energy between the material and EM worlds is: qdot = -Div Fv where qdot is the monochromatic rate of heat generation per unit volume of matter and Fv is the monochromatic radiative flux density…I …made real measurements “
Cite? I am interested to read up on your publications or those of others that are similar, thx. The top post discussion of forcings, GHE and atm. fluid SW/OLR energy conservation seems complete enough without need of applying this formula.
One of the few others you claim exist “..around the World set out to understand the real nature of radiative energy transfer” published Radiative Heat Transfer 3rd. ed. 2013 – Dr. Michael F. Modest. So I pulled out a copy to try and understand your clipped equation. (Wish he had called it Radiative Energy Transfer but that’s just a SIF for you).
Here the text book shows qdot term is as you imply “..the heat generated within the medium (such as energy release due to chemical reactions).” p.297. Since the medium is earth’s atm. this qdot term must be 0 as the atm. uses up no reservoir on its own generating energy, the atm. energy is ultimately derived from using up sun’s H reservoir.
To obtain your steady state simplification for atm. radiative equilibrium the qdot = 0 = -Div Fv (eqn. 10.75 which is just 0 = SW energy in – LW energy out, i.e. for a planet LTE) from the general form of the energy conservation equation (10.70) for a moving compressible fluid; Dr. Modest explains the situation must be where radiation is the dominant mode of heat transfer, meaning that convection and conduction are negligible. Radiative equilibrium using this formula you write is applicable extremely high temperatures, plasmas, nuclear reactions that happen fast* where conduction and convection are negligible and so forth p. 298 – quite unlike the atm.
Lord Kelvin in 1862 wrote a paper that still stands today showing convection is the dominant mode of energy transfer in Earth’s atmosphere (cite Bohren 1998 for discussion).
I am curious how you can apply and draw correct conclusions from this formula on earth atm. based on making “real measurements of coupled convection and radiation”. I would like to understand why you claim “It’s a Big Mess and until Climate Alchemy dumps the ‘back radiation’ and ‘forcing’ concepts, there can be no progress…”
NB: *fast = being defined as the cases where radiative transfer occurs so fast that radiative equilibrium is achieved before a noticeable change in temperature occurs (so can drop the unsteady terms in generalized fluid energy cons.).

lgl says: January 16, 2014 at 8:49 am

“A change of TSI it would change both the surface temperature (Ts) and the effective radiating temperature (Te) equally”
Don’t think so. Ts would rise faster than Te, even with constant GHE.

Wikipedia might not be the best source, but it is easy. The “Greenhouse effect” article says,

[The] planet’s effective temperature (the temperature of a blackbody that would emit the same amount of radiation) would be about −18 °C.[7][8] The surface temperature of this hypothetical planet is 33 °C below Earth’s actual surface temperature of approximately 14 °C.[9] The mechanism that produces this difference between the actual surface temperature and the effective temperature is due to the atmosphere and is known as the greenhouse effect.

So yes, GHE = Ts -Te. Therefore, if GHE is constant, a change in surface temperature would be matched by the same change in the effective radiating temperature.
Note the Wikipedia author can’t add! 14 C – (-18 C) = 32 C, not 33 C. The surface temperature should be about15 C.
Why do the think Ts would rise faster than Te?

mkelly says:
January 16, 2014 at 9:02 am

You are correct he did such a experiment in Death Valley I believe and demonstrated that some 1000 W/m^2 was raining down on the earth at that location. Tough to get 255 K out of 1000 W/m^2.

1000 W/m^2. seems about right when the sun directly overhead in a clear sky. The sun probably never gets directly overhead in Death Valley, but close. What you have to take into account is that when the sun is overhead in one place, it is not overhead over the rest of the earth. It provides no heat input at all to the darkside for example. Averaged over the surface area of the earth we get a solar input at the surface of about 240 W/m^2. Now, according to the Stephan-Boltzmann Law, 240 W/m^2 is equivalent to a temperature of 255K. That’s how we get it. Not too tough I hope?

AlecM 11:39am – Thanks, I take it you have no cites for the experimental work you mention?
Rented Goody&Yung awhile ago, I learned it was telling the same exact story as the top post here so I fail to as yet understand the alchemy you claim. Perhaps need to reconcile Goody/your work with Dr. M.F. Modest’s modern tome, a relevant link is here:
http://books.google.de/books?id=J2KZq0e4lCIC&pg=PA298#v=onepage&q&f=false
“You integrate this over time, space and wavelengths…”
This integration is exactly what is done using the CERES data in Stephens et. al 2012 (i.e. integrated over the wavelength spectrum) so at that point you seem ok with the top post science. I am not sure where the alchemy starts as yet.
Goody’s qdot = -div Fv reconciles to 0 = energy in avg. over spectrum – energy out avg. over spectrum for a planet atm. in ~LTE for the respective CERES time period (Stephens is 2000-2010 spatial-temporal avg.d) so I don’t as yet see where your claim of alchemy materializes, need to see the published experiments you discuss.
Note the minus sign is not a big deal, means whether any energy flux qdot added within system is in direction of local system flux or against it (shows up as sun energy in direction or terrestrial energy out direction). Since there is effectively 0 qdot flux added within atm. (well, except for burning leaves, camp fires, forest fires, car radiators, rocket blast offs, Colorado hemp burning, and the like) the minus sign issue is trivially eliminated.

Ken, is there a way to plot the uncertainty over time of the projections?

It doesn’t add up 7:11am: Agree that NASA 270.7K S-B and Diviner equator 206K topside measured; need to consider along with 40-45K higher subsurface temperatures from Apollo sites. Could be at equator the subsurface will be found much delta warmer than Apollo sites.
http://www.diviner.ucla.edu/science.shtml
Read 2012 paper No. 3 – Fig. 7 has equator 240K at 0.3m deep from the Diviner site ‘publications’ page, you can get the standard PDF here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JE003987/abstract
Note Fig. 7 showing equator avg.s to 240K mean 0.3m deep in the regolith. Plus the 220K crater rims at pole. The moon Tmean deep in regolith being better indicator to compare S-B than emitted from the dust on top seen by Diviner radiometers; moon’s Tmean deep still isn’t known very well AFAIK but future papers should start to develop a conclusion possibly with added in situ drilled measurements.
I would bet will be found ~consistent with S-B from insolation and albedo avg.d. reducing the divergence between theory and actual you mention.

Here is where my mistake was,in my haste to post in the other thread which practically gushes with the news that Americans really don’t care about global warming,this website saw fit to post an argument supporting global warming/carbon dioxide four days earlier.
The wider world has no idea whatsoever what the actual problem is but I assure you that I do. Having looked at the high school science curriculum most people don’t stand a chance as the science curriculum is written by the speculative/predictive empiricist for the same type of audience who engage in reaching a conclusion first and then modeling everything to suit that conclusion.
A unique astronomer died today in California,he also realized a problem that has gotten much worse over the last three decades as the modelers who were normally restricted to destroying astronomy moved into terrestrial sciences .Once they could state this in the very Discover magazine that the owner of this website now lampoons –
“A Langrangian is not a physical thing;it is a mathematical thing – a kind of differential equation to be exact.But physics and maths are so closely connected these days that it is hard to separate the numbers from the things they describe.In fact,a month after [Philip] Morrison’s remarks,Nobel Prize winner Burton Richter of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center said something that eerily echoed it: ” Mathematics is a language that is used to describe nature” he said “But the theorists are beginning to think it is nature.To them the Langrangians are the reality ” Discover Magazine ,1983
The problem that began in astronomy has now spread to terrestrial sciences and nobody wants to know.

Mkelly

No it was not too tough I just disagree with the 255 K average temperature idea.

On what basis do you just disagree with it? In general, facts, physics and mathematics are not things you can choose not to believe just because you don’t like the answer – although AlecM seems to manage it all the time.

“”””””……The CERES OLR data is converted to the effective radiating temperature (Te) using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation…….””””””
Well last time I studied Physics, the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, is an equation that is only valid for a theoretical, and non-existent object called a “Black Body” which has the absurd property, that it absorbs 100.000…% and reflects 00.000…% of ALL electromagnetic radiation energy that is incident on it, over the frequency range from zero to infinite frequency; not counting both ends. Such an object is impossible, because NO physical object has the same optical properties over all frequencies, as does free space; ergo, the reflection coefficient, cannot be zero.
But in particular, the top of the atmosphere is a very low molecular density environment, and so any EM radiation from it, can hardly be BB like. So using the SB equation to compute its Temperature is simply absurd.
However, not to worry, everybody does it so why not climatists.
But back to the essay, above; which I have read several times. No! I only clicked on one of the “here” tags, so maybe, I missed it; but nowhere in the entire “paper”, did I find the word “WATER” or even “WATER VAPOR”.
And for the life of me, I didn’t understand the author’s exposition on why it is ONLY anthropogenic green house gases that affect the climate sensitivity.
This reminds me of the miracle of the thermos flask; which keeps the hot things hot, and keeps the cold things cold. But how on earth does it know ??
So the climate sensitivity sensor, can distinguish volcanic CO2 from human exhalation; but how does it know ??
“””””…..The determination of the global warming expected from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), called the climate sensitivity, is the most important parameter in climate science……”””””
Finally, a definitive definition of “Climate Sensitivity”. pretty much as I believe the late Stanford Professor Stephen Schneider, is reputed to have defined it.
But I don’t have a good mental picture of exactly what “global warming” is, and it’s in the definition of the most important parameter in climate science is.
But I do understand what means “Doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide CO2.”
That’s 400 ppm -> 800 ppm ; or 100 ppm -> 200 ppm ; or 3 ppm -> 6 ppm …etc. etc. , you get the idea.
But I do like the graphs.
One problem I see with the model; the climate sensitivity model, that is, is that ML CO2 and or its anomaly, have been steadily going up for at least the last 17 years or so, but I can’t fit the log of that to the quite stationary global Temperature over that same 17 year period. In fact I get as good a fit as a linear CO2 to Temperature graph, or even a CO2 to log of Temperature, over that period; or for that matter, any other period of history or even prehistory.
And the ancient pre-history data, seems to favor about an 800 year delay between the Temperature data, and the subsequent CO2 data; but nowadays, everybody seems to use zero delay.
Shouldn’t we be matching today’s CO2, data, to the Temperature data from 800 years ago, about the time of the mediaeval warm period ??
But it is good to learn that “climate sensitivity” is the most important parameter in climate science.
I’d be more interested, in knowing how many otherwise unemployable “scientists” get their life’s gravy train, from grant financed climate studies; knowing that they will retire, having never learned the exact value of “the most important parameter. in climate science”; such a deal !!

Gregory says: January 16, 2014 at 1:40 pm

Ken, is there a way to plot the uncertainty over time of the projections?

I haven’t done that. But I have now added the 95% confidence intervals to the two plots of the GHE vs time. On the article, click on the links “Figure 4” and “Figure 5” under the plots.
or
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/CERES/GHE_Anomaly3.jpg
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/CERES/GHE_Anomaly4.jpg
The 95% confidence was calculated as per;
http://people.stfx.ca/bliengme/ExcelTips/RegressionAnalysisConfidence2.htm

Hi Mike,
The CERES website defines short wave as radiation with wavelengths 0 to 5 micrometers, and longwave 5 to 100 micrometers.
http://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/products.php?product=EBAF-TOA
See under EBAF-TOA Product Parameters.
Here is the spectral radiation diagram showing solar radiation and earth thermal radiation.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Atmospheric_Transmission.jpg
Note that all of the solar downward shortwave is from 0.2 to 3 micrometers.
There is essentially no solar downward or thermal upward radiation at 3 to 4 micrometers, which is the natural dividing line between longwave and shortwave in climate science.
The diagram also shows a range for infrared radiation from 0.7 micrometer. Something under half of the solar shortwave radiation is infrared.

“””””…..Ken Gregory says:
January 16, 2014 at 4:17 pm
Gregory says: January 16, 2014 at 1:40 pm
Ken, is there a way to plot the uncertainty over time of the projections?
I haven’t done that. But I have now added the 95% confidence intervals to the two plots of the GHE vs time. ……”””””””
Ken, I read this part including clicking on your link to the definition or computation of “95% confidence level.”
I hasten to point out that the process described in that link, is a rigorous and exact mathematical computation of a specific property of a specific set of accurately and completely known numbers (data set); numbers known with NO uncertainty of any kind; they are all listed in a table of that data set.
As such, the result of that computation is a defined property of that set of numbers, and it makes NO PREDICTION of any kind of anything. It will not even predict whether the next number that might be added to that data set, by whatever process those numbers were obtained, is higher than, or is lower than the last number added to the known data set.
People have to stop believing that statistics predicts any future event. It does not; it computes properties of an already completely known set of numbers. It doesn’t care what those numbers are; or whether they actually represent anything at all, or nothing.
If you add the integers from 1 to 9, the sum is exactly 45; no ifs, ands or buts; mathematics is an exact discipline. Divide 45 by nine, the number of elements in the set and you get 5, a statistical mathematics definition, of average or mean. Order those elements from one to nine, and the middle one is also 5, and that is called the median in statistical mathematics. It matters not a jot what the numbers are or how they were obtained, whether from a CERES satellite of from the District of Columbia telephone book; the rules of statistical mathematics define exactly how to manipulate the numbers in the subject data set; the results of applying those algorithms predict exactly nothing.
What is known with 95% confidence, is the 95% confidence level calculated using that algorithm; the very next number might turn out to be a new record high or a new record low, and 95% confidence does not override, what the next number turns up to be with 100% confidence once it is known.

George,
See my replies to Richard Courtney,
Yep, the 95% confidence interval just assume the variations about the mean is random noise. It knows nothing about systematic errors. We had the HadCRUT3 data set. They didn’t like the recent numbers so that changes the version to HadCRUT4 and voila, a cooling trend changes to a warming trend.
Climate science data is messy and there are large uncertainties that can’t be quantified. There are known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
But by either HadCRUT version, warming due to CO2 is small and beneficial, with uncertain values.

lgl says:
January 16, 2014 at 11:57 am
Ken
Because GHE is not Ts-Te. GHE is the portion of surface radiation beeing blocked by the atmosphere, roughly 60%.

You’re right that additional energy emission from surface and TOA would be different. For example an extra 1 w/m2 emitted from the surface would result in an extra ~0.6 w/m2 emitted at TOA. However, the temperature change would be roughly the same, i.e.
deltaT for an increase from 390 w/m2 to 391 w/m2 is about the same as for an increase from 240 w/m2 to 240.6 w/m2. Given that TSI only varies by about 0.1% over a solar cycle, the fact that surface and TOA temperature increases aren’t exactly the same isn’t going to have a significant effect on Ken’s analysis (I accept that’s probably not what you were suggesting)

You’d know.
=======
Steven Mosher says:
January 16, 2014 at 10:18 am
knowledge is limited but stupidity is unbounded

lgl says:
January 17, 2014 at 7:15 am

Hang on a minute – your example uses a forcing due to a doubling of ghg at TOA. Perhaps I misunderstood your earlier discussion with Ken Gregory but I thought he was making the point that Ts-Te remained broadly constant if GHE remained constant.
Ken’s point being that Ts-Te varies only if the GHE varies (apart from, as he mentions in his essay, cloud cover changes).
Ken Gregory’s analysis teases out the recent (last 13 years) increase in the GHE without the need to consider natural variation. While we should be careful about over-interpreting the results, there is a strong indication that climate sensitivity is much lower than is popularly claimed.

Wayne wrote –
“There are many here just wanting to learn never spending the time in the past years to delve into planetary atmospheres, some are here with agendas behind their words, you I am sure will discern who is who over time.”
There are a three distinct groups.
One group deals with the terms of agreement which can be found on both sides including this forum as they travel in the same circles and use the same terms. This group is going nowhere however they do inhabit the education system which indoctrinates students from one generation to the next hence the dismal prospect of a continuation of modeling their way into trouble followed by others trying to model their way out of trouble.
The second group are partitioned by terms of surrender and this is not going to happen in an atmosphere of assertion warfare,they are basically an offshoot of the first group and exist as commentators and cheerleaders. You see in the vindictive streak in posts driven by conviction rather than genuine passion.
The third group would be considering terms of reconstruction,not just of climate but the whole panorama where a stable narrative returns to astronomy and terrestrial sciences from the speculative/predictive excesses of the last number of centuries. This is done by revisiting errors and manipulations of historical and technical data in a transparent way but unfortunately few have the ability to do due to the reliance on a particular fictional narrative of achievement and the people involved.

Typo: in the last line of my last comment, The surface upward flux increased by 5.38 W/m2 …

Yes, John, thanks for your comments.
I didn’t understand lgl’s comment of January 17, 2014 at 7:15 am
“GHE=60% i.e 2.5 amplification of the TOA forcing.”
Using Trenberth et al 2009, surface upward flux Su = 396 W/m2, OLR = 239 W/m2,
So Su/OLR = 1.66. This is a 66% increase in Su over OLR, which is close to the 60% given by lgl. But where does the 2.5 amplification come from?

Other problems with this, natural variability also changes the GHE and we do not know that the ocean mixing was constant during the period.

You’ll need to elaborate. CO2 concentration changes are well known. The feedback (i.e. water vapour) will change due to natural variability (mainly ENSO). But this is taken into account by using Ts-Te. Even if Ts falls over time (due to e.g. La Nina) any increase in GHE (minus natural variability) can still be calculated. Remember Ts (which includes SST) will reflect “natural variability”.
Look, I appreciate Ken’s analysis has several limitations (length of data series being one) and his Climate Sensitivity figure is bit lower that I’d have expected, but it is a neat piece of work that strongly suggests a modest CO2 influence.

lgl says:

Not when he is assuming all the change in GHE is due to CO2.
You can’t do the calcs like that. The increased forcing will also increase the GHE (more vapor)

The equation is: TCR = F2x X d(Ts-Te)/dF,
where dF means the forcing difference that could cause the change of (Ts-Te), from March 2000 to June 2013.
My previous comment shows from line-by-line computer code, without feedbacks, a 1 C change in causes a 0.97 C change in OLR, therefore, without feedbacks, dF only includes forcings that change the longwave absorbtion. However, during the period of analysis, there was no temperature change, with HadCRUT3 showing an insignificant decline, HadCRUT4 showing an insignificant rise. With no temperature change there is no feeback, so no water vapor change.
Therefore, dF includes only changes in greenhouse gases and potentially a longwave component of cloud changes. But clouds have a large shortwave effect and only a small longwave effect. Over the period of analysis there was only a tiny change in total clouds. Therefore, dF includes only changes in greenhouse gases, and this dF is known.

@RACookPE1978….”””””……BUT – the open ocean albedo for direct radiation is very, very different: At high SEA angles near noon at the equator, it is about 0.05, but then increases significantly as SEA approaches the horizon, until albedo is measured at 0.35 to 0.40 at the horizon. (Some sources measure albedo even higher, but these are the best averages for all open waters. Thus, at low solar elevation angles each morning and evening at all latitudes, approximately 40% of the sun’s direct energy is reflected from the ocean – 7 to 8 times what is reflected at noon…….”””””””
These numbers are quite misleading. Also, it would be better to talk of incidence angles (zenith angle) rather than morning, noon, and evening.
Over the bulk of the solar spectrum (energy wise) the reflectance of water at normal incidence (zenith sun) is easily calculated at 2% ; not 6% so 98% of the sea surface incident solar energy would be absorbed, not 94%.
But it can also be calculated from the full polarized Fresnel reflection formulae, that the total reflectance of both polarizations is almost constant up to the Brewster angle of incidence, which for water is easily shown to be about 53.1 degrees.
Thus, the sea surface reflectance for both specular sun and diffuse sky irradiance, is still about 2% out to about 53 degrees INCIDENCE angle. Because of atmospheric refraction lowering the apparent sun zenith angle (slightly), the actual sun angle is greater than 53.1. Refraction lifts the sun by more than its diameter, at the horizon, so when the apparent sun makes first contact with the horizon, the sun is already more than a half degree below the horizon.
But I’ll stay with the 53 degrees.
On the equator, at the equinoxes, the sun spends over seven hours within 53 degrees of the zenith, with the sea surface transmitting 98% of the incident energy.
For the diffuse (assumed Lambertian) irradiance, the flux within that 53 degree cone is given by sin^2(53.1 deg.), which is fully 64% of the total flux. However, the diffuse radiation from the sunlit sky (clear sky) is clearly NOT Lambertian; it is highly biased towards the sun direction, So somewhat more than 64 % of the diffuse sunlight is contained in that 53 degree Brewster angle cone, that the sun spends up to seven hours in. Exact calculation is more complex, so I’ll leave it at 64%.
At 53.1 deg. zenith angle , the cosine is 0.6 (3,4,5 triangle), so whereas we have an air mass one (AM1) solar spectrum at the zenith, it is already AM1.667 at the Brewster angle , so the incoming atmospheric absorption of solar energy is greatly increased over the zenith absorption. The reflected 2% of the surface incident solar energy, at the Brewster angle, also faces an AM1.667 atmospheric absorption, on its way out, and that atmospheric absorbed solar energy, becomes part of the solar incident energy converted to diffuse LWIR by the atmosphere.
The long and the short of this is that early morning and late afternoon oblique solar energy, become an increasing component of the atmospheric LWIR emission, and a not very significant component of ocean surface albedo, either specular or diffuse.