16 year old Kristen Byrnes got some national media exposure today on National Public Radio. You can read the article and listen to the story via MP3 here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89619306
You might also want to visit her website and offer some words of support or perhaps a little help towards college:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder/index.html
Kristen has surveyed many stations in New England for www.surfacestations.org and I appreciate her (and her parents) hard work on the project.
Sorry for distracted comments by new father:
By “is an aproximation avoiding integrations of two dimensions,” I meant ‘simplification to avoid a double integral’.
I have never seen a derivation using Beer’s Law that approaches a legitimate attempt at accuracy. The absorption coefficient when so calculated may range from 0.6 to 0.8, but this value is arrived at with an ‘optical depth’ corresponding to the entire atmosphere. I suspect therefore, your absurd values for CO2 at 15u relies on such an attempt.
Whether, in each case, this is incompetence or deliberate deception I care not.
And this is also the case with the IPCC transfer equations.
I am happy to evaluate the spectroscopic issues with you, as you seem to feel this is your ‘wheelhouse’ but the remainder is beginning to bore me (look a little further into the troposphere/stratosphere predictions of AGW).
“The measure of the emitted radiation is emissivity, which for CO2 at atmospheric concentrations, can be calculated.”
…
” I refer you directly to Allen’s Astrophysical Quantities (3rd Ed.). This book is a standard reference for astronomers and astrophysicists. Have a look at the figure on p.130 there. You will see plotted infrared absorption of a number of atmospheric gases”.
You do realize these are very different applications, the latter is signal attenuation for Astronomy. There Beer’s Law is fine, I have no problem. The signal is indeed passing through the entire atmosphere.
However, if your coefficient of absorptivity for CO2 in the former case is derived from this value, you have a problem. In fact the very problem I suspected. You have not been careful to establish the instantaneous cross-sectional area of CO2 at any given point.
I will proceed with your sources, peterd, but things don’t look good for you.
peterd (01:59:11)
I was not attempting pseudo-scientific language, I was attempting to frame my question as clearly as I could, to get an answer.
What you can do with me is provide answers.
I post questions here because I get answers and any misinformation is quickly corrected.
I started off with the simple question of how does CO2 cause global warming
My search of the net turned up only a cartoon showing the Sun warming the surface which emitted IR that bounced of CO2 in the Sky and back to the surface.
This was not good enough, so I started hunting web forums.
Peterd or anyone else feel free to correct any of my misconceptions here.
I appreciate it and I have no ego to be bruised.
This is where I am so far with my question.
The Sun does indeed heat the surface which cools by convection and does emit IR.
IR does not bounce of CO2, but is absorbed by CO2 (and other GHGs) and the heat is passed on by convection and re-emission of IR.
Now the reason for my question.
I have read that heat returning from colder layers of the atmosphere to the warmer surface has a problem with the 2nd law of Thermodynamics (and yes I had to look it up), so I am not at the stage of the surface being heated by the re-radiated IR yet.
Link to paper citing and confirming Hottel in DOD library:
http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0006675
Example of Climate Science classic using Beer’s law with invalid ‘e = C(1-a)’ relation for Gas emissivity to absoptivity. This is valid for solids in Kirchoff’s equations, not gases.
Hottel has e=a=9*10^-4 at STP for CO2.
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/162/ibmrd1602L.pdf
Note k = 0.7 is the value for absorptivity refered to in text but the formulae include another k without specification in the text.
While more sophisticated than most CS treatments the approach has a number of problems.
Note also that they are integrating across wavenumbers a successive altitudes without worrying about varying emissivities. They make an accomodation for difference in Pressure but, I gather, assume Temperature constant.
[…] http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/kristen-byrnes-interview-on-npr/#comment-12304It’s hard, even for a spectroscopist, to work out what you’re trying to say here, but what do you think CO2 is, if not polar and covalent? The most sense I can make of this is that you’re confusing the various kinds of molecular changes … […]
You don’t suppose peterd wants me to resume at His Blog? I feel warm-fuzzies all over!
CO2 has covalent bonds, but the bonds weren’t my point, rather the spatial arrangements of the components and the bonding determines, in this case, the relative degree of assymetry between two otherwise similar molecules.
The pattern is clear, if unintended: Take issue with some point incidental or extraneous to your adversary’s reasoning to monopolize his time and eventually enhance your self-image.