Clouds: The Wild Card of Climate Change

If the cloud cover is included in many AGW models, they deal with them on a daily basis, that is, they do not consider the persistence of clouds. When a cloud is formed during the day, it may condense and disperse at night, but equally it may persist for several days.
One day’s cloud production, reducing the temperature in that first day in a region, may go on to affect perhaps several subsequent days elsewhere. Is this not an extended inter-day and geographically widespread negative feedback effect?

Jimbo said:
“The issue is one of causation. They have not accounted for cloud changes causing temperature changes.”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/04/the-great-global-warming-blunder-how-mother-nature-fooled-the-world%e2%80%99s-top-climate-scientists/”
Nor have they considered that the cloud quantity changes might themselves be caused by reverse sign ozone reactions in the mesosphere (cooling when the sun is active and vice versa) altering the atmospheric heights, shifting the jets and their cloud bands and thereby altering albedo.

NSF? Really? Maybe Roy Spencer hasn’t just been pounding his head against the wall in vain on this subject then.

“In order to help clear the air on clouds…”
Bad pun.

All this talk of clouds not being understood. What is to not understand ?
All clouds of any type, at any height anywhere on earth, at any time, ALWAYS reduce the amount of primary solar radiation energy that reaches the surface. The same is true of just water vapor itself; even in the absence of any clouds.
More WATER in any form in the atmosphere ALWAYS reduces the amount of solar energy that gets absorbed by the earth; no matter what.
When climatists start talking about positive cloud feedback; they immediately bring up last night’s balmy weather and the high clouds; And they claim that the higher the clouds are the more they warm the ground, and vice versa. So Noctilucent clouds are really are doing a job on us; keeping us warm.
The weather was balmy last night because it was even warmer during the day, and humid too, so there was plenty of water vapor in the air. And when the sun went down and that warm moist air rose; it eventually reached the dew point and formed clouds; yes nucleation conditions, will affect just how much and how quickly clouds form; and as it continues to cool at night you will get more of those clouds up high. Those high clouds at night are the result of the balmy weather conditions later in the daytime; they are not the cause of those conditions at the surface.
And the question is not:- do clouds at night cool or warm the planet ? The question is:- Over some meaningful climate time scale; does an increased amount of cloud cover make earth warmer or does it make it colder? And bear in mind, that MORE clouds ALWAYS means LESS solar energy being absorbed by the earth.
The sunlight lost to cloud reflectance is a no-brainer; a total loss to space. But the H2O vapor, and liquid, and solid H2O clouds ALL absorb additional solar radiation energy; primarily in the 0.75 to 4.0 micron wavelength range where about 45% of total sun energy resides. And the water absorption spectrum looks like it could be removing up to as much as half of that. I wouldn’t say more than 20% of sunlight.
That solar energy that is absorbed by the H2O in the atmosphere, warms the atmosphere. In that sense it is quite indistinguishable from the effect of LWIR radiation emitted from the ground. Regardless of GHG species, the net result is to warm the atmosphere. That warmed atmosphere then radiates isotropically, so an average about half can return to the surface, and the other half is lost to space. And don’t forget, whether going up or going down; there will be a cascade of multiple re-absorptions, and reheatings, and re-radiations from that warmed atmosphere; but only half of it should reach the surface.
And when the atmopsheric downward LWIR thermal radiation reahces the surface IT DOES NOT simply add to the original solar spectrum energy. They are 20 times apart in spectral wavelength, and they DO NOT have comparable effects on the surface. The solar energy propagates tens to hundreds of metres deep (in the ocean), the LWIR propagates tens of microns into the ocean surface; where it promotes prompt evaporation. So how much of that energy is actually re-absorbed in the ocean ?
In any case the original solar part of it, is a net loss to the planet, since without the water all of it would reach the surface; but with the water, only half will (roughly). < That's half of the energy that got absorbed by the atmosphere; not half of total solar.
The sun always illuminates half of the earth surface; actually slightly more than half due to atmospheric refraction which adds at least one degree at each end of the day. When the lower limb of the sun touches the horizon off Waikiki beach in the evening, the sun is already completely below the geometrical horizon. Well half is good enough. The other (slightly less than half) has no sunlight.
Anybody who believes that a cloud blocks more outgoing energy during the shortened night, than it blocks incoming sunlight during the lengthened day; just clearly doesn't understand simple geometry; nor the laws of geometrical optics.
The FEEDBACK question is very simple. Does a 1% increase in mean global cloud coverage from say 50% to 51%; ( lets say we just average that over a full one year trip around the sun; to get all the nuances), cause the earth to gain energy, or to lose energy ?
To believe it could cause the earth to gain energy; knowing that it absolutely MUST LOSE solar energy; is just plain idiotic.
I don't need any supercomputers to tell me that just can't happen.
There's a handful of seminal papers that between them point to what is wrong with climate science.
1/ SCIENCE July-7, 2007 Frank Wentz (RSS, Santa Rosa CA) et al. "How much More Rain will Global Warming Bring ?"
Their MEASURED results say that a one deg C increase in mean global surface Temperature causes a 7% increase, in total global evaporation, total atmospheric water content, and total global precipitation. Arguably the latter must be accompanied by about a 7% increase in precipitable clouds. This is a simply huge negative feedback cooling effect. (Don't for get the astonomical amount of latent heat that is conveyed to the upper atmosphere along with that water vapor, during the evaporation, and the dumping of that heat to the upper atmosphere during the precipitation portion.)
2/ Geophysical Research Letters (I think) Jan 2001. John Christy et al. A report on results from oceanic buoys of SIMULTANEOUS oceanic near surface water temperatures, and near surface atmospheric temperatures. Over about 20 years of data gathering, the warming of the one metre depth water Temperatures was about 40% greater than the warming of the + 3 metre high atmospheric Temperatures. BUT most importantly; they found that the water Temperatures, and the air Temperatures ARE NOT CORRELATED ! Why the hell would anyone expect them to be, with ocean currents of a few knots, and wind speeds in multi tens of knots.
SO WHAT. Well for one thing, it means the vast amount of global temperatures data taken from the 70% of the earth's surface prior to about 1980 by reading water temperatures; is all bogus as a measure of lower tropospheric air temepratures to integrate with land station readings.
And since they aren't correlated; the historic lower air temperatures are not recoverable. So most of that HADCrut global temeprature data, is pure garbage before about 1980.
Also, you can go back to the exact same GPS global co-ordinates, you were at six months ago; and find yourself in totally different water from that you measured previously.
So (a), I don't believe their historic measured temperatures data; and (b) I don't believe their GCM cloud models; other than that; those chaps are doing one hell of a job !
I presume that if anybody had peer reviewed research published that refutes either Wentz et al, or Christy et al, we would all sure have heard about it.

Olen says:
November 5, 2010 at 11:45 am
Are clouds the new CO2.?
That’s what the Global Warmers/Climate Changers/Climate disrupters/Gaia believers want us to believe, but common sense, tells everybody that it is the contrary.
The fact is that we are living in times which will be recorded in future history as a Dark Age. We don’t know it because we have taught to believe in Names and Tags: “That is called WATER, baby, water,…you drink water”, nobody told us we can make water, for example, from protons and ozone, nobody ever told us, except traditional knowledge, that everything can originate from two opposite charges, and that reality and the knowledge of it, it is not an inextricable entanglement of invented by “post normal scientists” Ghosts: like antimatter, black sucking holes, mysterious strings and infinite
dimensions, etc. something than can only be grasped BY THE HOLY “THEM”, the Shamans of this Era of Darkness. However we can free ourselves from such a servitude by not paying any time more respect to such a witchcraft; we are now at the Apocalypse, at the time of revelation (apocalypse in Greek) :
http://www.scribd.com/doc/40514613/Unified-Field-Explained-8

Anthony Watts has written in some detail about the “Urban Heat Island” effect. In fact bricks and concrete are just two types of mud stone (sedimentary). In aired regions throughout the globe large rocks (hundreds of meters) are exposed to blistering sun. Most of these rocks are both darker and denser than cement or brick. There is anecdotal evidence that these rocks act as super heat capacitors. I know of no rigorous study one way or the other. Rocks absorb visible light and radiate infra red. We assume that given no other forcings but the sun and the rocks ability to radiate that the rock would reach thermal equilibrium at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. That would require the rock to completely radiate all the excess heat it picked up at night. My guess is that different rocks absorb and radiate differently. Remember they would be absorbing different radiation than they would be radiating. While the rocks have been there for millions of years this balance would be significantly affected by even a slight change in cloud cover. I’m not a scientist; but, I don’t see how you can separate the effect of clouds from the thermal characteristics of rocks. Furthermore is all of the warming (33 C) due to GHG? Could large rocks coming to equilibrium account for some of that “lost heat” I keep hearing about? I just don’t know.
Has anybody considered a simple experiment? Get slabs of various rocks. Expose them to sunlight. Measure the ambient temperature, the rocks temperature and the incident sun light (perpendicular to the face of the rock slab). After a year see if the rocks average temperature was the same as the ambient average.

Clouds, pfft, stuff without firm substance, bwahahaha.
The true wild card is the ice and all that other white stuff on the ground. Brrrrr.
T’ink ’bout it.
What do we get with global warming, but less cold therefore snow and ice.
Now what do we get with less snow and ice but more greenery stuff that produce oxygen while sucking up all over abundance of them truly horribly evil carbon dioxide molecules.
But who’d be so dumb to model nature as pretty awesome at being able to self balance itself like a proper balanced system that is never at balance but always is trying to balance itself so to speak.

feet2thefire says:
November 5, 2010 at 12:18 pm
“I have simply never seen any image of the Earth that shows 70% overall cloud coverage, nor even over 50%.”
70% is a direct quote from NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/earthandsun/icesat_light.html

Everyone knows what a cloud looks like, but scientists need to know what percentage of clouds cover the Earth everyday, in order to make their computer climate models and weather forecast computer models work better. ICESat has provided the most accurate figure to date, and tells us that 70 percent of the world is cloud covered. Previous estimates ranged from 50 to 75 percent.
Image to right: ICESat Studies the World’s Clouds: ICESat has helped NASA scientists get an accurate picture of the world’s cloud cover. ICESat measurements show that 70% of the world is cloud covered ICESat’s assessment is arguably the most accurate to date. Pictured here are Cumulus clouds. Click on image to enlarge. Credit: NOAA/Historic NWS Collection

nofate says:
November 5, 2010 at 11:18 am

Henrik Svensmark: “The bottom line seems to be that instead of thinking of clouds as something being a result of the climate, it actually (is?…garbled word) sort of upside down. It is that the climate is the result of changes in the clouds.”

Keep in mind the earth without greenhouse gases would have an average temperature of 5F. If there were no ocean and with current concentration of CO2 the average temperature would be 145F. The water cycle (when active, i.e. a liquid global ocean with average temperature above freezing) caps how warm it can get by working as a heat engine to pump heat from the surface into the atmosphere and drive a heat exchanger that removes excess heat from the topics and radiates it out at the poles. On top of that is cloud reflectivity which can reflect up to 80% of the incoming energy from the sun directly back out into space and which cover some 70% of the surface on average. The water cycle (liquid and vapor anyhow) has a negative feedback. Surface heat drives evaporation which forms clouds which shade the surface and reduce evaporation which reduces cloud cover.
Snow and ice are the things to fear because snow has a positive feedback – snow cover reflects up to 80% of the sun’s energy thus cooling the surface and making conditions favorable for the snow cover to continue growing in extent and longevity eventually reaching a tipping point (last few million years anyhow) which ends the short (15,000yr) interglacial periods and plunges the earth back into a long (120,000yr) glacial epic.
The key role that CO2 plays is helping to warm the earth from below freezing to above freezing. Below freezing the water cycle is pretty much stopped. Cold air doesn’t hold much water vapor and nothing is evaporating when the surface is frozen over so CO2 is the only thing keeping it from reaching an average temperature of 5F and staying there. However, once CO2 gets it above freezing then the water cycle comes alive and through inescapable negative feedback caps the maximum average temperature at a comfortable level when distributed more evenly through the year and from low to high latitudes. The highest temperature the earth ever attained was barely 10F higher than today and the higher northern and southern latitudes were where most of the warming occured. So unless you’re an ice hugger that values permafrost for some dumb reason then whatever global warming we can possibly get is a good thing as far as abundance of plants and animals is concerned. It may be slightly disruptive to human activities but even then there will be far more winners than losers.