Does CO2 Drive the Earth’s Climate System? Comments on the Latest NASA GISS Paper
by Dr. Roy Spencer
There was a very clever paper published in Science this past week by Lacis, Schmidt, Rind, and Ruedy that uses the GISS climate model (ModelE) in an attempt to prove that carbon dioxide is the main driver of the climate system.
This paper admits that its goal is to counter the oft-quoted claim that water vapor is the main greenhouse gas in our atmosphere. (They provide a 1991 Lindzen reference as an example of that claim).
Through a series of computations and arguments, the authors claim that is actually the CO2, not water vapor, that sustains the warmth of our climate system.
I suspect this paper will result in as many opinions in the skeptic community as there are skeptics giving opinions. But unless one is very careful in reading this paper and knows exactly what the authors are talking about, it is easy to get distracted by superfluous details and miss the main point.
For instance, their table comparing the atmospheres of the Earth, Venus, and Mars does nothing to refute the importance of water vapor to the Earth’s average temperature. While they show that the atmosphere of Mars is very thin, they fail to point out the Martian atmosphere actually has more CO2 than our atmosphere does.
I do not have a problem with the authors’ calculations or their climate model experiment per se. There is not much new here, and their model run produces about what I would expect. It is an interesting exercise that has value by itself.
It is instead their line of reasoning I object to — what they claim their model results mean in terms of causation– in their obvious attempt to relegate the role of water vapor in the atmosphere to that of a passive component that merely responds to the warming effect of CO2…the real driver (they claim) of the climate system.
OUR ASSUMPTIONS DETERMINE OUR CONCLUSIONS
From what I can tell reading the paper, their claim is that, since our primary greenhouse gas water vapor (and clouds, which constitute a portion of the greenhouse effect) respond quickly to temperature change, vapor and clouds should only be considered “feedbacks” upon temperature change — not “forcings” that cause the average surface temperature of the atmosphere to be what it is in the first place.
Though not obvious, this claim is central to the tenet of the paper, and is an example of the cause-versus-effect issue I repeatedly refer to in the past when discussing some of the most fundamental errors made in the scientific ‘consensus’ on climate change.
It is a subtle attempt to remove water vapor from the discussion of “control” over the climate system — by definition. Only those of us who know enough of the details of forcing-feedback theory within the context of climate change theory will likely realize this, through.
Just because water vapor responds quickly to temperature change does not mean that there are no long-term water vapor changes (or cloud changes) — not due to temperature — that cause climate change. Asserting so is a non sequitur, and just leads to circular reasoning.
I am not claiming the authors are being deceptive. I think I understand why so many scientists go down this path of reasoning. They view the climate system as a self-contained, self-controlled complex of physically intertwined processes that would forever remain unchanged until some “external” influence (forcing) enters the picture and alters the rules by which the climate system operates.
Of course, increasing CO2 is the currently fashionable forcing in this climatological worldview.
But I cannot overemphasize the central important of this paradigm (or construct) of climate change theory to the eventual conclusions the climate researcher will inevitably make.
If one assumes from the outset that the climate system can only vary through changes imposed external to the normal operation of the climate system, one then removes natural, internal climate cycles from the list of potential causes of global warming. And natural changes in water vapor (or more likely, clouds) are one potential source of internally-driven change. There are influences on cloud and water vapor other than temperature which in turn help to determine the average temperature state of the climate system.
After assuming clouds and water vapor are no more than feedbacks upon temperature, the Lacis et al. paper then uses a climate model experiment to ‘prove’ their paradigm that CO2 drives climate — by forcing the model with a CO2 change, resulting in a large temperature response!
Well, DUH. If they had forced the model with a water vapor change, it would have done the same thing. Or a cloud change. But they had already assumed water vapor and clouds cannot be climate drivers.
Specifically, they ran a climate model experiment in which they instantaneously removed all of the atmospheric greenhouse gases except water vapor, and they got rapid cooling “plunging the climate into an icebound Earth state”. The result after 7 years of model integration time is shown in the next image.
Such a result is not unexpected for the GISS model. But while this is indeed an interesting theoretical exercise, we must be very careful about what we deduce from it about the central question we are ultimately interested in: “How much will the climate system warm from humanity adding carbon dioxide to it?” We can’t lose sight of why we are discussing all of this in the first place.
As I have already pointed out, the authors have predetermined what they would find. They assert water vapor (as well as cloud cover) is a passive follower of a climate system driven by CO2. They run a model experiment that then “proves” what they already assumed at the outset.
But we also need to recognize that their experiment is misleading in other ways, too.
First, the instantaneous removal of 100% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere except for water vapor causes about 8 times the radiative forcing (over 30 Watts per sq. meter) as does a 100% increase in CO2 (2XCO2, causing less than 4 Watts per sq. meter), something that will not occur until late this century — if ever.
This is the so-called ‘logarithmic effect’…adding more and more CO2 has a progressively weaker radiative forcing response.
Currently, we are about 40% of the way to that doubling. Thus, their experiment involves 20 times (!) the radiative forcing we are now experiencing (theoretically, at least) from over a century of carbon dioxide emissions.
So are we to assume that this dramatic theoretical example should influence our views of the causes and future path of global warming, when their no-CO2 experiment involves ~20 times the radiative forcing of what has occurred to date from adding more CO2 to the atmosphere?
Furthermore, the cloud feedbacks in their climate model are positive, which further amplifies the model’s temperature response to forcing. As readers here are aware, our research suggests that cloud feedbacks in the real climate system might be so strongly negative that they could more than negate any positive water vapor feedback.
In fact, this is where the authors have made a logical stumble. Everyone agrees that the net effect of clouds is to cool the climate system on average. But the climate models suggest that the cloud feedback response to the addition of CO2 to our current climate system will be just the opposite, with cloud changes acting to amplify the warming.
What the authors didn’t realize is that when they decided to relegate the role of clouds in the average state of the climate system to one of “feedback”, their model’s positive cloud feedback actually contradicts the known negative “feedback” effect of clouds on the climate’s normal state.
Oops.
(In retrospect, I suppose they could claim that cloud feedbacks switched from negative at the low temperatures of an icebound Earth, to being positive at the higher temperatures of the real climate system. But that might mess up Jim Hansen’s claim of strongly positive feedbacks during the Ice Ages).
CONCLUSION
Taken together, the series of computations and claims made by Lacis et al. might lead the casual reader to think, “Wow, carbon dioxide really does have a strong effect on the Earth’s climate system!” And, in my view, it does. But the paper really tells us nothing new about (1) how much warming we can expect from adding more CO2 to the atmosphere, or (2) how much of recent warming was caused by CO2.
The paper implies that it presents new understanding, but all it does is get more explicit about the conceptual hoops one must jump through in order to claim that CO2 is the main driver of the climate system. From that standpoint alone, I find the paper quite revealing.
Unfortunately, what I present here is just a blog posting. It would take another peer-reviewed paper that follows an alternative path, to effectively counter the Lacis paper, and show that it merely concludes what it assumes at the outset. I am only outlining here what I see as the main issues.
Of course, the chance of editors at Science allowing such a response paper to get published is virtually zero. The editors at Science choose which scientists will be asked to provide peer review, and they already know who they can count on to reject a skeptic’s paper.
Many of us have already been there, done that.
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“What might those ‘longer-term’ changes be?”
Wind patterns for one. Ocean temperatures for another. And both of those taken together can cause long term changes in the number of and the location of clouds. For example, the movement of the ITCZ , as happens from time to time, can greatly change where clouds are. Move something several hundred miles North or South changes the sun angle on them and changes the amount of cooling they provide.
An ocean current change can greatly change surface temperatures someplace which can greatly change cloud patterns which can greatly change warming or cooling. A wind pattern change can greatly change surface temperatures on the ocean someplace which can greatly change cloud formation which can greatly change warming or cooling.
Cloud formation isn’t modulated primarily by CO2.
La Nina and El Nino for example are created by changes in the trade winds. Those conditions greatly change equatorial Pacific cloud formation.
Roger
Regarding your observation: Roger Knights says:
October 22, 2010 at 10:05 am
richard verney says:
October 22, 2010 at 9:09 am
In a chaotic system, one does not need outside/external drivers to effect a change within the self contained system itself. The climate is a chaotic system (I understand that this is accepted on both sides of the debate), …
I’ve read statements on their sites saying that only weather is chaotic; climate is not”.
What a surprise, well not really because these guys (by which I am referring to the wider proponents AGW theory) keep contradicting themselves and will say anything that promotes their cause, eg., AGW will mean that there is less snow, later to be replaced by more snow is the result of AGW etc.
In the IPCC Third Assessment Report, it is stated that:
“In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Clearly the view held at the time was that the system was a non linear chaotic system, and the manner in which the climate works has not changed since the publication of the Third Assessment Report. It was at that time a non linear chaotic system and it still is today a non linear chaotic system.
I fully endorse their noted conclusion, namely that ” therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
The paper is behind a paywall so I can’t check for myself, but I would like to know if they tried running their model by instantaneously removing all of the atmospheric gases except for CO2?
Then the Earth would have the same atmosphere as Mars, except thinner. I suspect that the temperature would be very cold, so I guess CO2 isn’t the most important greenhouse gas after all.
“In retrospect, I suppose they could claim that cloud feedbacks switched from negative at the low temperatures of an icebound Earth, to being positive at the higher temperatures of the real climate system. But that might mess up Jim Hansen’s claim of strongly positive feedbacks during the Ice Ages.”
I think it is more likely that water vapor feedback is positive on an icebound arid Earth and negative in the current conditions. Much of this explained by increased cumulus and cumulonimbus development given the current conditions.
George E. Smith-There are a number of locations in Colorado called Elk Park. They should have been more specific as to which one. If you follow this link, Google suggests a number of places. The location marked on the map near Hotchkiss is at about 10,000 feet or so, and is NOT a town-it is on the south side of Grand Mesa, far from anywhere. I know because I have fished the nearby Overland Reservoir.
P.S. I always enjoy your comments, though usually have to struggle to understand. My sincere thanks for your continuing contributions.
Dan
Link did not come through, here is the url: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=elk+park,+co&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl#
“”” richard verney says:
October 22, 2010 at 11:42 am
I am not sure that there is any call for a resoponse to be made on what George says, however, I will briefly reply.
George E. Smith says:
October 22, 2010 at 9:22 am
“”” richard verney says:
October 22, 2010 at 9:09 am
Apologies for the long post but I wish to make 5 points. “””
…………………………….
You are describing something quite different, namely that with time, and in the absense of some further inputs, the temperature of an object assimulates the temperature of its surroundings. An equalibrium is eventually achieved.
But if you are serious in your point, you might wish to consider the Gas Laws and put forward your proof disproving Boyle’s Law, Charles’s Law and the Ideal Gas Law. If you can do this, there is probably a Nobel Prize in it for you. “””
Well I don’t think I would bother to write something to get a Nobel Prize. I figure that Al Gore and Barack Obama between them have done about as little as anybody could, to thoroughly discredit the Nobel Prizes; and the committees who award them. For a start; does it not grasp you that the Nobel Committee this year saw fit to bestow prizes on three Economists; about the only “science” that is about on a par with Climatism and Ancient Astrology.
As to disproving Boyle’s Law, and Charles’ Law and the Ideal Gas Law; all three of them relate to a closed system; which the earth’s atmosphere is not. So what is the Volume of the Atmosphere.
So the density and pressure of the atmosphere varies with altitude; an elementary function of gravity; which also diminishes with altitude.
So all layers of the atmosphere whatever their density or pressure are radiating soem thermal radiation spectrum according to the local Temperature. As a result, they are radiating energy to space which must therefore tend to lower the Temperature with that energy loss. Well due to the Temperature gradient that results from that, there is a continuous conduction and convection of both heat and atmospheric gas to higher altitudes, where it can cool down, and perhaps return to a lower altitude after it cools..
The primary cause of the Temperature gradient, is the input heating at the earth surface, and the space cooling at the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Well eventually of course when the density gets low enough and the number of molecules small enough the temperature starts to rise again for various reasons; non of which have much to do with those gas laws you cited.
The fact that a gas will heat as it is being compresed and cool as it is being uncompressed, is just a temporary transient effect, and the temperature change does not persist; which is why the tires in my garage on my bike are at the garage temperature despite the high internal pressure; and when I say “exactly” the same temperature I am of course meaning “Relative to the prevailing +/- tolerances that are common to climate science.” Which means substantially better than a 3:1 fudge factor.
And in the Atmosphere T is not constant (with altitude) so Boyle’s law does not apply, and the Volume is not constant so Charles’ law does not apply; and the ideal gas law would hardly apply with both T and V not constant. And let’s not forget the Gay-Lusac Law either since we have a variable Volume; but then does that apply with both P and T varying.
So maybe you can make a differential form of all of those that might apply to the open ended atmosphere; heck even the mass of the atmosphere in moles is not constant.
Why does Science publish such garbage? The basic equations show that CO2 is a strong factor at low concentrations, but a weak one at current concentrations. Did they think that removing all CO2 and other “greenhouse gasses” (but not water) from the atmosphere would have no cooling effect? Surprise! Duh.
That’s the whole point; water vapor is a condensing gas with the ability to efficiently move massive quantities of heat from one part of the Earth to another, using change of state, something which puny CO2 cannot do within climate parameters.
There are about 1.5E7 substances known to man. One – AND ONLY ONE – substance always exists in the solid, liquid and gaseous state, somewhere within our climate system. That substance is water.
Even the EPA and IPCC admit wv is the most important ghg. When is Schmidt et al going to get on board?
If CO2 is so controlling, how come the GRIP2 ice core data shows that CO2 increases come about 800 years AFTER the temperature increases? Hmmm?
Isn’t it obvious that water vapour is very important to the earth’s average temperature as proven by night temperatures in desert regions. The air over deserts is very dry (ie., lacks water vapour). At night, temperatures quickly fall so that high daytime temperatures are balanced by relatively cold night time temperatures thereby producing a lower average temperature over the course of a 24 hour period. This is so notwithstanding that the air over deserts has broadly similar CO2 concentrations to that over non dessert land. Thus the concentration of CO2 cannot act as a sufficient blanket to stop heat ratiating away at night.
On the other hand, if the air over the desert was not dry but instead had high concentrations of water vapour, night time temperature would be far higher thereby leading to a higher 24 hour average temperature.
This suggests that water vapour and not CO2 is the dominant factor behind maintaining high temperatures.
Well I have the complete paper to take home for the weekend.
Darned if I can find the Oct 15 issue though; I must have 120 copies of SCIENCE somewhere on my desk, along with all the other stuff.
I started a quick glance through reading, and already reached the can’t stop laughing phase. These jokers claim that if the Temperature cooled a bit for a year, that the amount of water vapor would drop to 10% of current value resulting in a negative forcing of 30 w/m^2 causing much of the remainign water vapor to precipitate; which would increase the snow ice albedo and further reduce the solar radiatoion levels. .
Hey dummies; most of that condensed water vapor would simply fall in the ocean, and Ooops!! lookie here; no clouds. And they think the albedo would increase with no clouds.
Hey Peter Humbug ran his playstation over at c-r ^-1 and took ALL of the H2O out of the atmospehre, and it all came back in three months; so how are these jokers going to lower it for a year.
You take most of the H2O out of the atmosphere, and you get a huge increase in the ground level solar insolation which will rapidly heat the ocean surface, and cause massive evaporation.
Evaporation is caused by the Temperature of the WATER (ocean); not the Temperature of the Atmosphere; that only determines how much can stay in the atmosphere, and as soon as you get ANy water vapor int he atmosphere you get immediate and massive heating of the atmospehre by direct soalr radiation capture.
I can’t believe these guys wrote this; let alone that sCIENCE published it; and who on earth did the peer review.
Well I have to give it a good read over the weekend.
In any case; it is all their climate computer model that is running; not Mother Gaia’s planet that is doing this experiment.
John S. says:
October 22, 2010 at 6:22 am
Because you speak of the role of clouds in “feedback,” I presume you’re not the same John S. who has argued (correctly, I think) here and at CA that this term, misappropriated from system analysis, leads many analyses of climate dynamics into confusion between input power sources and output responses. Indeed, from a rigorous physical standpoint, the only true forcing acting on the planetry climate systrem is solar iirradiance. The rest is hand-waving mumbo jumbo.
#
John S. says:
October 22, 2010 at 6:22 am
“It is the net cloud effect that counts, and it has been argued that could make clouds a ‘buffer agent’ in the atmospheric ‘solution.’
Low clouds are result of solar heating during the day. They tend to go away at night, over land at least. On average they would be a cooling effect.
Robert of Ottawa says:
October 22, 2010 at 6:58 am
“More CO2 in the Martian atmosphere than Earth’s. Hmm, I’ve never thought of it like that. Good factoid.”
You need to be a little careful. Mars is a lot smaller than Earth and the atmosphere is thinner but over every square meter of Martian surface there is about 25 to 30 times the mass of CO2 as over every square meter of Earth.
The frozen Al Gore picture is a brilliant stroke of wit. I am jealous!
@stumpy
October 21, 2010 at 11:54 pm
“Its obvious circular reasoning combined with blatant ignorance.”
————
a jones says:
October 21, 2010 at 9:54 pm
“That such balderdash can be written and is thought worthy of publication tells us much about the authors, the reviewers, the editors and their intellectual abilities and standards. It tells us nothing about the real world.”
=======================
Right. And the fact that Science publishes these exercises in circle drawing is very telling of the sorry state we have come to.
It reminds me vaguely of a paper published at Nature a couple of years ago, announcing that a model predicted that fewer female lizards will be born as a result of global warming. William Briggs had a witty review of that paper, worth reading in full. Here is an excerpt:
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=150
For those of you who are not as computer savvy as I, let me summarize. Researchers programmed a computer to show that when the temperature rises, fewer female lizards are born. They then told the computer that temperatures were in fact rising. The computer then said “fewer female lizards are born.”
The researchers pored over this result and came to the conclusion that “warmer temperatures caused by global warming imply fewer female lizards will be born.” They wrote this in a paper which was duly summarized at Nature. Science in action!
In regard to the results of our Science paper, I made the comment in Roy Spencer’s blog to the effect that I was in basic agreement with [Roy’s] assessment that “there is not much new here … that the model produces about what is expected”.
I should have elaborated a bit more on this point.
For those who understand the basic physics of the terrestrial greenhouse effect, and the distinction between a radiative forcing and a feedback effect, then the conclusions reached in our Science paper would not come as a surprise. Back in 1984, we understood full well how the terrestrial greenhouse works and that water vapor and clouds were feedback effects that magnified the CO2 forcing when we described those results in the Hansen et al (1984) paper on climate sensitivity. But it did not occur to us at the time to draw the now obvious conclusion that atmospheric CO2 is the principal control knob that governs the equilibrium temperature of Earth.
The point that was new in the Science paper was to clearly identify and demonstrate the climatological behavior of the non-condensing GHGs (the source of temperature independent radiative forcing) and the fast reacting feedback components (water vapor and clouds that require a sustained background temperature to remain in the atmosphere). Upon zeroing out the sustaining support for the feedback components, the obvious thing to happen was for water vapor to condense and precipitate from the atmosphere, thus resulting in the collapse of the greenhouse effect, demonstrating very clearly that it is the non-condensing GHGs (at current climate temperatures) that sustain the terrestrial greenhouse effect, with CO2 contributing 80% of the non-condensing GHG forcing.
It is this point that may come as a complete surprise to those who may be in the habit of wanting to believe Richard Lindzen’s erroneous contention that “water vapor and clouds are 98% of the greenhouse, with CO2 contributing less than 2%”.
It is sensible to look at the ongoing climate change in terms of the basic physics that is driving global warming. Superimposed on the CO2 fueled global warming is a significant amount of natural variability of the climate system, which are fluctuations about the global equilibrium temperature that occur even in the absence of any external radiative forcing.
Trying to make sense of the observed climate change by means of statistical analyses only is not the best way study climate change, and can easily lead to confusion in attributing what exactly may be happening in the climate system. There is absolutely no reason to be ignoring the physics that we know for sure is there.
A Lacis says:
October 22, 2010 at 9:17 pm
Upon zeroing out the sustaining support for the feedback components, the obvious thing to happen was for water vapor to condense and precipitate from the atmosphere, thus resulting in the collapse of the greenhouse effect,
I am sure what you have proven is the wrong programming in your GCM, which is what skeptics have been skeptical about since the year 1 of them.
It is not possible for all the water vapor to condense and precipitate. at a given temperature. There is a basic level that remains throughout as seen for example at the poles (where most of the heating is observed in truth). That basic level is more than what CO2 in ppm is now.
There seems to be a problem with condensation and GCM’s and it seems you have stumbled on its expression.
Modeling the Basics, A mathematical summary of condensation in climate models.
A Lacis;
There is absolutely no reason to be ignoring the physics that we know for sure is there.>>
Sir,
The physics to which you refer is not in fact physics. Your paper and your explanation above are clearly a computer model that simulates the results of your assumptions regarding the physics. Your attempt to construe one as the other is shameful. Further, even were your explanation actually rooted in the physics you claim to be sure of, there is no more excuse for ignoring the physics than there is in representing them in such a misleading fashion. The paper was clearly designed to give the impression to those not familiar with the math and physics that increased CO2 concentrations would have as dramatic an effect as decreased ones. As you know full well, the logarithmic nature of CO2 is as well defined and accepted in physics as are the balance of the effects to which you refer. The absence of any reference in your article or in the explanation above suggests that ignoring the physics of which we are certain is a sin that you should accuse yourself of before implying it of others.
I doubt that my name will be recorded in any history book of any significance. Thank goodness, for it saves me from explaining some embarassing moments from my life to my grandchildren. You on the other hand, had best start preparing a plausible explanation. Give it considerable thought because your credibility in regard to speaking plainly in regard to the facts will have already been shattered.
anna v, the paper in the article you link to is actually bogus. They seem to think condensation causes the pressure to drop, when actually the condensation is caused by the pressure dropping, as is well know for ascending air saturating, not descending air. Difficult to get cause and effect in the right order, but there it is.
On the Science paper here, it is very illustrative of how basic physics, which is all the model is solving after all, can be used to quantify ideas more thoroughly. The basic cooling effects as you remove CO2 make sense and hold together if you just think it through. They have a helpful time series of the development of cooling in the paper. Increase of cloud cover is part of it, so of course water is left, and they show it.
Jim D says:
October 22, 2010 at 10:58 pm
the paper in the article you link to is actually bogus. They seem to think condensation causes the pressure to drop, when actually the condensation is caused by the pressure dropping, as is well know for ascending air saturating, not descending air. Difficult to get cause and effect in the right order, but there it is.
Are you saying that condensation does not happen when the temperature drops at constant pressure?
Increase of cloud cover is part of it, so of course water is left, and they show it.
Then there is something seriously wrong with the programing:
CO2 has maybe 10% of the spectrum coverage of H2O, and is 5% or so in ppms. I am saying that water overlaps in the function of radiation absorption and emission the rest of the greenhouse gases.
There is no way that solutions of macroscopic thermodynamic equations can separate CO2 from H2O in their functions as absorbers and radiators.
Lets put it another way. According to the logic of programming you defend, if 5% of water vapor is removed the downslope to an ice age should start precipitously, because solutions of macroscopic thermodynamic equations do not know CO2 from H2O. As we know much larger diminutions of H2O do not herald the ice age where they happen.
That is physics.
So their prejudices must be in by hand in the program, and then, surprise surprise, they find them.
A Lacis says:
October 22, 2010 at 9:17 pm……… There is absolutely no reason to be ignoring the physics that we know for sure is there……
Really? What a strange statement, ponderous and utterly meaningless.
As in reply…. davidmhoffer says:
October 22, 2010 at 10:43 pm……… The physics to which you refer is not in fact physics. Your paper and your explanation above are clearly a computer model that simulates the results of your assumptions regarding the physics. Your attempt to construe one as the other is shameful……….
Quite so.
As anna v observes
anna v says:
October 22, 2010 at 10:05 pm…… It is not possible for all the water vapor to condense and precipitate. at a given temperature.
Only too true.
Whereas Jim D says:
October 22, 2010 at 10:58 pm…anna v, the paper in the article you link to is actually bogus. They seem to think condensation causes the pressure to drop, when actually the condensation is caused by the pressure dropping, as is well know for ascending air saturating, not descending air. Difficult to get cause and effect in the right order, but there it is…..
Bogus eh? strong stuff which sounds impressive: still it is certainly clear that some people are very confused about cause and effect.
Again as anna v observes in reply:
anna v says:
October 23, 2010 at 12:00 am…. Are you saying that condensation does not happen when the temperature drops at constant pressure?
Indeed. That’s the style Anna: roll ’em up horse, foot and guns.
Time we cut through this trashy pseudo scientific charlatansim with with some hard physics.
Cause and effect indeed! next they will be telling us that mechanism is cause not vice versa. Oh wait they are. Must be something to do with all these clever calculating engines you know. Useful for those who can’t think I suppose, they imagine the engine does it for them. And what it says is true.
Consult Mr. Briggs about that: he would put it much more concisely than I.
Interesting times.
Kindest Regards
The so called Greenhouse effect is provided primarily by our oceans. The gases in the atmosphere provide but a trivial portion of that effect. The CO2 in the air even less and the human contribution less still:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1487&linkbox=true&position=3
“The Hot Water Bottle Effect”
Then the other main omission from all this is the potential for variability in energy flows from oceans to air (ocean induced) and from air to space (solar induced) that is vastly greater than from any variations in any atmospheric portion of the greenhouse effect.
And, then there is the new data from Joanna Haigh which confirms my suspicion that the temperature of the stratosphere which then controls the air pressure distribution patterns in the troposphere is in reality controlled by the temperature of the mesosphere above rather than by the level of incoming UV acting on stratospheric ozone.
In turn the temperature of the mesosphere is controlled by the number of incoming solar protons which variably deplete ozone in the mesosphere to reverse the temperature trend of the mesosphere (and the stratosphere below) as against that of the thermosphere.
So an active sun with a stronger solar wind destroys more ozone in the mesosphere which then cools. The temperature of the stratosphere then declines with the tropopause rising and the air circulation systems being drawn poleward.
Ozone holes the occur at the poles because the solar protons being charged particles are pulled in at the poles where maximum destruction of mesospheric ozone then occurs and varies closely with the strength of the solar wind.
Climate change can therefore have a link with both the solar wind and the interaction between the magnetic fields of sun and Earth as many have previously commented.
The poleward movement of the global cloud bands decreases albedo by reducing total cloud quantities and reducing cloud reflectance as the clouds move to regions of less powerful sunlight.
More energy then enters the system from more solar shortwave entering the oceans. The oceans then ration and regulate the rate of release of that energy back to the air.
Full discussion here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6482
“New Climate Model – First Review”.
Until the models are updated appropriately the real world observations will never follow projections.
anna v says:
October 23, 2010 at 12:00 am…. Are you saying that condensation does not happen when the temperature drops at constant pressure?
This is not a reversible adiabatic process. They are talking about a reversible process, but fail to see it in the lagrangian frame of reference. I think they will get their Eureka moment when they see how contrails form over airplane wings. Do the contrails cause the pressure to drop or vice versa?
Then they talk about an initially isothermal atmosphere that cools till condensation occurs. This is not how convection works, but their paper is about convective processes. They need to go down the hall and talk to some cloud physicists.
anna v, on the point about H2O and CO2, you don’t seem to realize GCM physics clearly can distinguish the absorption lines of H2O and CO2 and integrate this effect into their solutions. Lacis was at the forefront of research in these details of radiative transfer in the atmosphere, so of course this in included.
Jim D says:
October 23, 2010 at 8:15 am
on the point about H2O and CO2, you don’t seem to realize GCM physics clearly can distinguish the absorption lines of H2O and CO2 and integrate this effect into their solutions.
I realize very well that these people should go back and do a solid thermodynamics graduate course so they can realize that there is no “GCM physics”, just physics that must not be misused. Misuse of physics becomes evident when simple thermodynamic concepts are violated, as the fact that in thermodynamics there is no way to separate which radiation comes from what molecule.