I’m sure WUWT readers will recall this excellent guest post at WUWT just over one year ago:
Now published in E&E Volume 21, Number 4 / August 2010
The thunderstorm thermostat hypothesis: How clouds and thunderstorms control the Earth’s temperature
Authors
Willis Eschenbach
Abstract
The Thunderstorm Thermostat Hypothesis is the hypothesis that tropical clouds and thunderstorms actively regulate the temperature of the earth. This keeps the earth at an equilibrium temperature regardless of changes in the forcings. Several kinds of evidence are presented to establish and elucidate the Thermostat Hypothesis-historical temperature stability of the Earth, theoretical considerations, satellite photos, and a description of the equilibrium mechanism.
See it here, PDF is available (£18.00 worthwhile to support E&E in my opinion). Or, read the WUWT version here:
Seems like there a lot of papers coming out now showing the negative feedback of clouds. Could it be that we are nearing the end of this insanity!?
JB
Willis,
Congratulations on the publication.
My late uncle, Fred Scrase, ScD, OBE had done some early research into thunderstorms and lightning at Kew in London. circa 1930s
I feel an obligation to dig out his contribution to geophysical research, which I am sure was not without significance.
JimF writes: “I look at your Figure 1: the same process that transfers so much heat from the surface to near-space in the equatorial area of earth (Hadley cells) is repeated in more northerly and southerly areas by the Temperate cells (and maybe the mobile polar cells). The earth is rejecting quantities of heat from the sun, and transporting lots of what it accepts back to near-space where it can be got rid of easily.”
This figure is reflecting an obsolete knowledge and the circulation described does not stand to observation. This has been known since 1993!
http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/2/32/25/79/Leroux-Global-and-Planetary-Change-1993.pdf
Leroux “Dynamic analysis of weather and climate” Springer 2ed 2010
Belated congrats on the publication of your article, Willis. I look forward to your next contribution here at WUWT.
R. Gates
So you dispute what I said about you is true?
R. Gates
Your bitterness toward those who think the AGW hypothesis is likely correct is overpowering.
I ask that you publicly retract this lie.
R. Gates,
are there limits to the accuracy of the PIOMAS graph?
R. Gates,
Are there any questions about what global warming says about glaciers? The polar bear population? North Pole ice? South Pole ice? Hurricanes? Heat waves? Snow in the Sierra Nevada? Snow extent in Northern Hemisphere winters? Missing heat? Rotted ice? Tropospheric warming? Integrity of data handling among global warming scientists? Political involvement in global warming science? Co2 controling climate?
Do you have questions or doubts about any of these things?
_Jim says:
July 24, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Great. Latent heat of evaporation is released into the ‘air’ at altitude … can you ‘splain to me how it gets into ‘space’ via air that is a poor black body at best (bearing in mind effective IR emission occurring only from certain molecules like CO2 and H2O)?
Air is a poor black body, the atmosphere I think goes like T^6 instead of T^4, but the common misconception that it is only green house gases that are emitting radiation from the atmosphere is something that should be corrected. All matter at a certain temperature emits radiation according to the black/gray body or whatever body formula. . Thermodynamics knows nothing of green house gases, just specific heats and heat capacities are enough to have the energy content of the matter under consideration.
To say that only 0.4% of the atmosphere ( combined H2O and CO2) radiates away is very wrong, and illustrates the confusion climate blurbs have introduced on all our houses ( from a “plague on both your houses”).
Lets take this further. If the energy lost through the black body ( for simplicity) radiation is not replenished by an outside source, the temperature of the body falls. It keeps radiating and loosing temperature until it reaches 0K, green house gases or no.
Paul Clark says: July 24, 2010 at 8:04 pm
….. Vukcevic if you’re reading can you please reconsider putting backgrounds on your graphs and slides? It makes it harder to read. Thanks.
Thanks for the note. You may have a point there, I have removed dark-grey background in this version.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NFC1a.htm
Darkinbad the Brightdayler says:
There are two statements that I made. Thank you for quoting them, much appreciated. Quoting is much better than paraphrasing.
For the first, I find that the idea of a gradual, billion year long decrease in average GHG forcing, at exactly the same rate but in the opposing direction of the change in solar forcing, to be very unlikely. I can’t quote odds or give references for that, we have no other billion year old Earth-like planet to compare it to. But it would be one hell of a coincidence …
As to the second statement that I made, I said I find it likely that there is a natural regulating mechanism. I would base this on the Constructal Law (Wiki, main site. This law applies to all flow systems far from equilibrium, such as the climate.
The Constructal Law says that the flow system will reshape itself constantly so as to maximize some aspects of the system. Constructally, climate operates so as to maximize the sum of the work done and the work that is lost to turbulence.
What all this means is that the operating point of the climate heat engine is not randomly pushed around by small changes in forcing. There are much larger forces at work that set the operating point.
Climate is a flow system like a lowland river. A river constantly changes shape. It widens at the bends and builds up land elsewhere. It cuts new channels, it creates oxbow lakes, it moves and shifts.
But through all of that, the length of the rive changes very little. When one section of the river gets a bit longer, another gets a bit shorter. The length of the river oscillates around some fixed value. Basically, the river stays as long as it can possibly be given the physical constraints.
So that’s why I think that there is some natural governing system at work maintaining the global temperature within a narrow range. This type of maximization is common in natural flow systems.
Thank you very much for such an elegant hypothesis.
I have a question, which may be a little simplistic, but here goes.
How much would global cloud cover have to increase as a % to nullify any potential from Co2, or how much would the equatorial cloud mass(es) have to move toward the equator to achieve the same?
Many thanks for such a great website A- my education continues due to the work everyone does here.
Mr. Eschenbach
The ocean currents as the principal transporters of heat to the poles, have variability factor in the certain critical areas by factor of 2. Efficiency of ocean currents heat transfer is crucial to the temperature oscillations in the polar regions, consequently to the ice coverage and albedo; resulting in a feedback.
Faster currents more heath to the poles, less ice, less reflection, more energy absorption, even warmer poles.
Of course, the reverse also holds true: slow current, less heath to the poles, more ice, more reflection, even colder poles.
I wonder what is your view of this particular feedback effect ?
See also my post
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/24/willis-publishes-his-thermostat-hypothesis-paper/#comment-438689
Correction
Must disable auto spell checker !
Heat
HeathCongratulations Willis!!!
vukcevic, keep in mind the effect of reduced ice on cloud during the polar day. I certainly wouldn’t be inclined to think that most polar heating is of polar origin.
The other important thing to bear in mind is that temperature-precipitation relations flip sign around the freezing point. Arctic hydrology is confounded with Arctic temperature due to the low temperatures.
Furthermore temperature is not independent of pressure, so I would be interested in seeing some studies on how decadal-timescale atmospheric pressure variations impact geomagnetism via relative motion of Earth’s shells – (i.e. the causation chain seems more likely to run from hydrology to geomagnetism than vice versa, as is suggested by piecing together clues from the Russian literature).
As for the larger swings in the northern polar region, that’s easy: Continental vs. maritime. [And bear in mind that ice is continental from an atmospheric perspective.] Also, there isn’t the giant stir-stick (the Southern Ocean) in the NH to rapidly mix (and even out) inter-basin differences.
One last note: I would advise not underestimating the role of the N. Pacific. It’s not all about the Gulf Stream. Bear in mind atmospheric teleconnection.
Thanks for sharing your very interesting GMF graphs. They really reinforce the Russian literature on hydrology.
I’ve always liked Willis’s hypothesis because it concentrates on the obvious importance of equatorial tropospheric air circlation and explains it very nicely.
As Willis says there does seem to be a climate ‘governor’ in place and the findings of Miscolczi concerning a stable optical depth add weight to the idea.
As for my part I have tried to collate all those ideas into a broader global climate description and to do that one needs to go somewhat further to consider internal oceanic cycling, solar cycling and the latitudinal shifting of the air circulation systems which indicate cycling in the speed of the hydrological cycle globally and not just in the tropics. All those aspects show cycles on varying periodicities but the most apparent one of significance is the 500/1000 year cycling from the historical past (as far as our records go) through the MWP to LIA to date.
Anyway, it all seems to be coming together with a set of workable hypotheses that account for observations, comply with basic physics and present AGW alarmists with an alternative that cannot be ignored for much longer.
Willis, well done. I came to the thread wanting to congratulate you but got distracted by a bad physics argument:).
I looked a bit into “constructal law” and it does sound applicable to the climate:
Adrian Bejan in 1996: “For a finite-size (flow) system to persist in time (to live), its configuration must evolve such that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.”
It is a fascinating research direction.
Paul Vaughan says: July 25, 2010 at 3:49 am
One last note: I would advise not underestimating the role of the N. Pacific. It’s not all about the Gulf Stream. Bear in mind atmospheric teleconnection.
Thanks for the notes. North Pacific and the PDO are not immune to the geomagnetic variations, although correlation is not so clear cut. There are a number of crossover points, shifting with the pacific currents.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PDO.htm
The way I look at it is that the thermostat setpoint is determined by the position of the land masses, which determine oceanic currents and heat redistribution, and determines where mountains and snow/ice can settle. Then comes axial tilt, which changes regional setpoints. But through it all, the Thermostat should work to keep temperatures close to the setpoint.
“historical temperature stability of the Earth”
Ice ages?
I think it’s safe to say there’s a thermostat (essentially the water cycle) which limits maximum temperature but ice ages appear to be prima facie evidence that the only lower limit is established by the amount of energy the earth receives from the sun which, in the case of a snowball earth, is not much as most of it is reflected.
Current thinking holds this is where greenhouse effect comes to the rescue. Volcanism is constantly belching CO2 and soot into the oceans and atmosphere. Absent abundant plant life to use it, and absent complete melting, the CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and the soot (which floats) accumulates on top of the snow and ice. Over the course of time it builds up enough to start melting the snow. Once the melt starts positive feedback from a falling albedo takes over and it’s off to the races. Plants can increasingly utilize to their benefit CO2 up to near 2000ppm in some cases and can tolerate far more. Animals can tolerate a lot more than that too with no ill effects.
The pattern of Earth’s temperature shows a recognizable signature to anyone who has dealt with waveforms, whether in electronic circuits or automotive suspension systems. At longer time-scales you see a soft and flat top, and a widely variable spiky bottom. This means some form of negative feedback is strongly damping the upward moves, and only weakly damping the downward moves.
Thus we shouldn’t be worrying about a wild ‘hotward’ swing in response to external forcing; clearly the world’s climate system is incapable of such a response because negative feedback is in full control. We should be worrying about an out-of-control ‘coldward’ swing!
Paul Vaughan says:July 25, 2010 at 3:49 am
One last note: I would advise not underestimating the role of the N. Pacific. It’s not all about the Gulf Stream.
Additional note to my previous post: vukcevic July 25, 2010 at 4:44 am
There are two crucial differences between the Arctic and Pacific re :GMF vs. currents
– Gmf in the Pacific is much weaker, around 40 or less against 55-60 microTesla in the Arctic
– The Arctic Ocean currents are often constrained by topography and forced trough narrow straits such as Fram, Denmark, Davis etc, while the Pacific currents take ocean wide sways.
As consequence the AMO shows mush higher correlation then PDO.
Congratulations on the publication of your paper, it is an elegant hypothesis. Spending a lot of time outdoors, I am often captured by the at first rolling of small clouds by the sun, the sun side is warmed and rolls up, the shaded side comes down. At some size the internal convection takes over and the cauliflower top emerges. Another, albeit more subtle convection/heat loss, mechanism that seems significant to me is the inverse of cloudiness, the desert and near-desert climes. Moving from the midwest to Colorado almost forty years ago, I have always been impressed with the day/night thermal change, which is typically 30-40°F and can be in the 50-60°F range. While dry air does not have the mass of humid air, I submit these large gradients are evidence of a great deal of heat loss, especially since the area would be several orders of magnitude greater than one or many thunderstorm cells.
Willis,
I haven’t read the full text, and your other presentations don’t mention your methodology for calculating the energy/albedo effects, but if rigorous enough, this should be able to result in a model diagnostic. Similarly for the works of Spencer and Lindzen, if the supporters of the AGW hypothesis can’t yet accept the final conclusions, they should at least have to face comparisons of their model results to the data.
thanx and regards