A few days ago I posted a story highlighting the drop in water vapor in the atmosphere which initially looked like the entire atmosphere due to a labeling issue by ESRL, but turned out to be only at the 300 millibar height and not up to 300mb as the ESRL graph was labeled.
Even so, that brought a lot of people into looking at and analyzing the issue further. Barry Hearn of the website junkscience.com brought to my attention a review of the various atmospheric levels contained in the ERSL database. I had planned to do this myself, but I’ve been traveling this week and didn’t have as much time as I normally would, so I’m pleased to present Barry’s writeup here for further consideration.
For some background into atmospheric absorption efficiency of common gases compared to the electromagnetic spectrum, this graph is valuable:
Note the CO2 peak at 15 microns is the only significant one, as the 2.7 and 4.3 micron CO2 peaks have little energy to absorb in that portion of the spectrum. But the H2O (water vapor) has many peaks from .8 to 8 microns, two that are fairly broad, and H2O begins absorbing almost continuously from 10 microns on up, making it overwhelmingly the major “greenhouse gas”.
Click for a larger image
Is the atmosphere holding more water vapor?
JunkScience.com
June, 2008
As followers of the enhanced greenhouse controversy are no doubt aware carbon dioxide cannot, unaided, drive catastrophic global warming — it simply lacks the physical properties.
In order to generate interesting outcomes climate modelers include impressive positive feedback from increasing atmospheric water vapor (marvelous magical multipliers, as we call them). By trivial warming of the atmosphere increased CO is supposed to facilitate an increase in the atmosphere’s capacity for the one truly significant greenhouse gas, water vapor, which then further heats the atmosphere, facilitating more water vapor and so on.
So, the obvious question is, is the atmosphere getting “wetter” and, if so, where?
Fortunately ESRL provides time series for various layers of the atmosphere:
Note that all graphics are confusingly labeled “up to 300mb only” but this refers to their maximum availability and not the current representation. Water vapor is given as specific, not relative humidity (grams water per kilogram of air) and is thus temperature independent for our purposes.
Firstly, there has been a moistening trend in the 1000mb (up to about 500 feet) layer.
Click for a larger image
While mostly flat the 925mb (to about 2,500 feet) layer has seen a rise over the last decade (slightly exceeding the 1950s)
Click for a larger image
850mb (to about 5,000 feet — underground in much of Colorado. Colorado’s mean altitude is 6,800 feet) trend is essentially flat, perhaps lower than the 1950s.
Click for a larger image
700mb (about 10,000 feet) down and flat.
Click for a larger image
600mb (under 15,000 feet or about the height of Colorado’s tallest peaks) Well down and flat.
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500mb (about 18,000 feet) Same again.
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400mb (under 25,000 feet) Falling.
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300mb (30,000 feet or just above Mt. Everest) A little quirky but falling.
Click for a larger image
So, what do these time series tell us?
Secondly, the atmospheric region of most interest from a weather/climate perspective appears to be on a drying trend, contrary to that expected under the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis.
Simply eyeballing the time series suggests the 1977 Pacific phase shift is a much better fit with changes in trends than is the steady increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Bottom line is that the regions climate models are programmed to expect atmospheric moistening are not actually doing so, making either the models or the atmosphere wrong. None of the above time series leads to a plausible conclusion that we should anticipate any increase in weather activity.
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MarkW:
“Another thing that I have noticed is that as the earth’s temperature increases, the peak of the outgoing radiation band starts to shift into a region that is much more transparent to IR radiation.”
Very good point. Yet another negative feedback?
Does anybody know how to pronounce “Miskolczi”? His work (http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Proofs_of_the_Miskolczi_theory.htm) seems to me to be more robust than that of Gerlich and Tscheuschner (http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161).
Although the latter has the best description I’ve seen of why the greenhouse effect works and how it differs from the atmosphere, they seem to go too far in several arguments: denying the existence of an average surface temperature of a body (because it cannot be calculated from first principles), the proposition that because the atmospheric greenhouse effect as commonly described constitutes a perpetuum mobile of the second kind the atmosphere does not provide overall warming, and their questioning of the meaning of the arrows in the radiative heating diagrams (the obvious answer being “energy”, which is conserved). On they other hand, their description of the folly of trusting GCMs, especially those that would purport to give accurate solutions to the Navier-Stokes equation from uncertain initial conditions over dozens of years, is exactly right. Their analysis left me puzzled by certain observations, such as why it becomes much colder at nights where there is no cloud cover than on nights where there is.
The analysis by Miskolczi has much more explanatory power, in my opinion, taking into account convection and the optical depth; it also makes predictions that are upheld by current measurements.
–Mark
[…] · Filed under Uncategorized A recent set of posts at Anthony Watt’s blog, particularly this one has sparked some interest over the internet as of late. Readers were quick to pick up on the […]
I have replied to this post here
http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/is-the-atmosphere-drying-up/
RE: Philip_B (04:44:38) :
They love swamp coolers in Asia. Even non swamp cooler AC systems add moisture to the air.
Anthony,
If you ever feel like it, I would love to read a post about dry lightning, a somewhat related subject, and one that has my attention as a forester and fire guy. Possibly it has your attention, too, as a Chicoan and CA meteorologist, during this unusual fire bust there.
MarkW: “Another thing that I have noticed is that as the earth’s temperature increases, the peak of the outgoing radiation band starts to shift into a region that is much more transparent to IR radiation.”
That’s the kind of beautiful homeostasis that makes me go all misty-eyed about Gaia again. Shame Lovelock himself no longer seems to believe it’s powerful enough to deal with our puny efforts at messing things up.
MarkW (10:56:34) :
“Do you know how the radiation curves are generated? Do they just take the average temperature of the earth and draw a curve from that value?”
I suspect there is no empirical data in the radiation curves. While I have no connection with the source, I think they generated one black body radiation curve from Planck’s Law (or drew it by hand) and put four copies on the graphic at the appropriate points.
I haven’t looked at that in detail and don’t intend to – too much other stuff demands attention first!
“Seems to me that the most accurate way to do such a chart would be to grid the entire planet, calculate the radiation curves for each grid, then average the curves together. That sounds like a lot of work, but it seems to me like something worth doing. If we don’t know exactly how the earth is radiating, how the heck are we ever going to figure out what is being blocked.”
Well, we have satellites telling us what’s getting radiated away. And reflected away – that’s a key part of the cooling and it’s not part of blackbody radiation. As for what’s being blocked within the atmosphere, I’d think there’s both lab and satellite data for that, though in real life clouds provide complications.
Can anyone refute the conclusion drawn below by Ian Fordon this subject?
From: Ian Ford
Sent: 23 June 2008 17:58
To: Marshall Stoneham
Subject: Re: FW: “Saturated Greenhouse Effect” Wrecks Climate models
Dear Marshall,
This email carries the implied message ‘All these so-called scientific experts have missed some basic physics which when treated correctly eliminates the Greenhouse Effect’. There are a lot of people out there who wish to make such a claim. The basic physics he mentions is the dynamics of water exchange between ocean and atmosphere. The partition of water between gas and liquid phases is modelled phenomenologically, I imagine, but it is surely incorrect to claim, as he does, that the relative humidity is assumed to be fixed. I am not totally au fait with the inner assumptions of GCMs, but I cannot accept that everyone in the field has ignored this extremely important question. There will be dynamics of evaporation and condensation, which depend on temperature. So my view is to disregard this claim.
In any case, the article makes much of a model by Miskolczi describing the self-stabilisation of a climate system. This is the first I’ve heard of this model. It appears in a rather obscure journal. The description of it makes me wonder. The reference to a virial theorem with radiation considered as potential energy here and kinetic energy there sounds screwy. This is central to a claimed fraction of surface-emitted radiation that escapes into space. I am dubious.
He says that adding CO2 to the atmosphere raises the temperature but the relative humidity declines. Possibly, dependent on the evaporative dynamics. He goes further to say that adding CO2 reduces the content of water vapour. Adding one greenhouse gas is compensated by the removal of quantities of another. This is such nonsense.
So my view is that it is wishful thinking!
Ian
Marshall Stoneham wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dear Ian
Do you have a view on this?
Best wishes
Marshall
Professor Marshall Stoneham FRS
Emeritus Massey Professor
London Centre for Nanotechnology and Department of Physics and Astronomy
University College London, Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
ucapams@ucl.ac.uk
marshallstoneham@tiscali.co.uk
+44 207679 1377 (direct) 1308 (secretary) 1360 (fax)
From: Jack Sarfatti [mailto:sarfatti@pacbell.net]
Sent: 22 June 2008 22:23
To: Jeremy Asher
Cc: Marshall Stoneham
Subject: Fwd: “Saturated Greenhouse Effect” Wrecks Climate models
Great..!! Great report.
Global warming is very dangerious for all countries.
It challange the world’s future.
Close chacol turbines.
Maintain evergreen forests.
Use electric cars.
Clear Nuclear Weapons from earth.
Welcome with good environments to the next generations.
http://hlaingmore.wordpress.com
Hlaing of Myanmar
David,
in fact Ian is quite right. Though I don’t think he addresses some of the real issues of the paper, including completely misunderstanding Kirchoff’s law, and he thinks his applications of the Virial theorem somehow relate directly to atmospheric and surface radiative fluxes. But like usual, it’s always better to scream that “I’m the new Galileo” than to read a textbook.
davidsmith1
That looks important.
This “trend” in precipitable water with time appears to decline and then increase.
That is about opposite the temperature trend over that period.
Could this evidence that the precipitable water is negatively (or inversely?) related to the global temperature?
If solar cycle 24 is longer and colder as is being predicted – then this would suggest an INCREASING trend in precipitable water over the coming decades.
Miskolczi’s theory is based on equilibrium for a given solar flux and albedo. His prediction of declining precipitable water content vs increasing CO2 would appear to be a second order effect compared to the primary effect of the larger changes with global temperature.
Miskowczi’s paper is full of trivial errors. Links here but you can go argue with the guys on the Climate Audit Bulletin Board if you like.
[…] had enough time to fool around with the website that Watts extracted the data from, he made this post, which quotes an article from JunkScience. I’m not satisfied […]
[…] debate happening in the weather and climate modeling wing of the blogosphere. Seems that over at Wattsupwiththat someone has pointed out the significant part water vapor may play as an absorber of solar energy. […]