Clouds: The Wild Card of Climate Change

These are just a layman’s observations that relate to clouds, but given the fact that the science is obviously not settled, a layman’s observations and thoughts are as good as those of someone who has a string of Phd’s: Where I live, Hobart Tasmania, Australia, (43 degrees south, roughly), the coldest-ever maximum temperature, (4 degrees C), occurred after a minimum of about – 1.5. The sky had been covered by cirrostratus for a few days. This uniform sheet reduced the sun to a pale disc by day and did absolutely nothing to keep Hobart warm by night. Decks of high clouds do not prevent frost here.
Hobart, like San Francisco, is often kept cool by a stubborn layer of marine stratocumulus on summer mornings when the anticyclone produces a southeast breeze. You don’t have to have a computer model to work out that high clouds keep the surface temperature down and do nothing to keep the nights warm, while hill-hugging clouds keep the weather cool by day, and retain some heat during the night.
These low clouds moderate the overnight temperature, but delay the warming of the ground until around midday or sometimes mid afternoon so their presence in the morning keeps the maximun temperature down because the ground has less time to soak up the sun.
A warming climate world-wide, will mean more evaporation but the atmosphere can’t hold H2O vapour when it cools. Man might contribute to GW, which I doubt, but there is no doubt that man can’t stop the earth from spinning and from revolving around the sun, so increased evaporation in a warming world inevitably leads to the world being cooled by clouds which form when air is cooled during the daily and seasonal cycles. Therefore GW is self limiting! It is scandalous that so much money is wasted on a phantom problem. Meanwhile Australian politicians have done nothing to bolster the defences of places like the Gold Coast. The 1954 Gold Coast cyclone destroyed a sleepy little village. A similar cyclone today would wash the sand away from the foundations of skyscrapers, inundate the canal estates and destroy highways and communications. But we don’t have to worry, because we can prevent cyclones by controlling our emissions!!!!!!! Green pundits like Tim Flannery have been made to look like fools by the recent floods. Melbourne is going to use massive amounts of coal-fired electricity to remove NaCl from seawater, because rainfall was supposed to be a thing of the past. I wonder what the people in Gippsland think about that while they scrape silt off their walls and carpets. A dam on the offending river could be built at a fraction of the cost of the desal plant and relieve Gippslanders of their dreary floods. Ask any farmer over eighty years of age. The recent drought in SE Oz was not unprecedented; it was just part of what mother nature does in the “sunburned country the land of drought and flooding rains.” When opera singe Dame Nellie Melba returned to her home state early last century she was horrified by the news that Victorians were actually starving to death because of drought and famine. So what’s unprecendented about the recent drought?
I used to vote Labor, but I can’t do that anymore. A vote for Labor in Australia is a vote for Green madness. I consider myself a true green. Green politicians have the lost their way; they are looking at the wrong side of the carbon cycle. They need to ask themselves where molecular oxygen comes from. It is apparent in Australia that the Greens in parliaments are interested in all sorts of non-green things, (eg euthanasia, gay marriage), and they are quite happy to promote so-called eco-friendly cars, and solar panels as long as the minerals needed for their electronic components are not mined at Uluru or Fraser Island. What the world needs is plenty of forests and plenty of phytoplankton in clean oceans. I just read Andrew Bolt’s blog. Apparently the Taiwanese people have lower electricity bills than the Australian people, even after paying for Australian coal and paying for its shipment. I just read an article on WUWT, “Carbon Shoe Comparisons”and it put my blood pressure up. I get really mad every time I think about the hypocrisy of politicians. I would like to see the greens get out of politics and rediscover their true purpose in the scheme of things, which is to agitate to preserve forests and keep the world clean.

Well how well do you believe those Temperatures and values.
Let’s start with a fairly non controversial mean value for the TSI at 1366 W/m^2. I assume that’s an average value over the earth’s elliptic orbit, and say averaged over a sunspot cycle.
At that irradiance level; the equlibrium Temperature for an insulating Black Body (cavity) is 393.96… Kelvin; call it 394 or 120.8 deg C
Now the earth is not an open black body cavity facing the sun. Next approximation would be a perfectly conducting black body, so it is isothermal. So we expect it to be radiating at an average of 341.5 W/m^2 from 4 times the area that is receiving solar energy. The equilibrium Temperature at 341.5 W/m^2 is 278.575 K or 5.425 deg C
Well the earth is not one of those either.
Next version seems to be the above isothermal earth with an albedo of 0.3
That has the effect of dropping the TSI down to 239.5 W/m^2 everywhere on an isothermal planet. and now we get an equilibrium Temperature of 254.81 K; the often cited 255 Kelvins; sans greenhouse effect.
Problem is that a 255 K body with no greenhouse gases also has no clouds; so no way is it going to have an albedo of 0.3
70% of the surface is ocean, and that tends to be concentrated in the tropics, so somewhat greater than 70% of the incoming solar radiation, will see an albedo that is more like 0.03; 3% instead of 30%.
Well I could go on twiddling and you would get bored as fast as I would.
But if you get just a little bit more real, and actually let the planet rotate, as it is believed to do, then suddenly the earth’s surface sees more like that 1000 -1366 range of insolation values, albeit over only part of a 24 hour cycle; but no way is that going to permit, a cloudless water vapor less atmosphere.
During the sunlit noonday tropical period, the earth is going to be shooting for that 394 K (121 C) equilibrium Temperature; and that most certainly is going to result in lots of evaporation, and lots of H2O vapor, and H2O cloud , so I can’t see how the need for the CO2 kindling wood is proven.
With NO GHG other than H2O, the earth will self start just fine. Actually, even in a CO2 less situation you will have an ozone band right at that 9.6 micron wavelength where the earth wants to head to as it warms up.
The requirement for CO2 to jump start this planet from a frozen ice ball is pure speculation; and a big part of the problem is this silly insistence that the earth is an isothermal body in stable thermal equlibrium.
It isn’t; it rotates; and that’s why I ROFLMAO every time I see Trenberth’s caricature of what HE thinks the earth energy budget is.
The TSI is 1366 W/m^2 part time, not 341.5 full time.

I think that it should be pointed out that no heating is required for clouds to form.
Water will evaporate or sublimate if the water vapor pressure is low enough according to Henry’s law. Air with water vapor in it is lighter than air that is dry, therefore the dry air will displace the humid air upward. This results in more dry air passing over the surface of the water, damp soil or ice and more evaporation or sublimation as air movement increases the effect. Therefore, water on its own can cause convective currents and the hydrologic cycle. Once the air currents are large enough then the Coriolis force will start altering the vector of the winds and colder air from the poleward side will move under warmer air from the equatorward side and weather fronts can start forming a larger version of the small scale with cold dry air moving under the warm humid air the air will be lifted till the lapse rate results in 100 percent humidity at the dew point and cloud will form. As the water condenses out it releases heat either warming the atmosphere or being radiated – slightly more than 50% will of the radiated IR will be upward to space. As the convection continues the water carried upward will turn to ice again releasing latent heat. If the winds cross hills then there will be orographic uplift and it may rain on the windward side of the hills.
No GHG are needed only water.
Even in ice ages the tropics will be above freezing with similar insolation as now. So there will be clouds forming in the tropics but their albedo could keep the Earth cold.
The idea that ‘clouds are only a feedback’ is incorrect. Clouds will form if there is water on the surface. Water vapor is light and is its own GHG and will self generate more water vapor. All that CO2 can do is move the hydrologic cycle faster to a climatological equilibrium point where cloud albedo cancels out any warming due to the CO2.

The mechanism of clouds and what controls their formation are so complex that it is impossible to quantify the effect they have on climate. They are a major part of the heat pump which maintains our climate in it’s benign state, and which allows the biosphere to thrive. They are driven by the same deterministic chaos which produces the regular quasi-cyclic oscillations we observe, and the sudden ‘black swan’ events of temperate zone glaciation – the ice ages.
It is not just the type, height, colour, density, temperature e.t.c. which is important, but when and where they form and their persistence. Climatologists really don’t know clouds, at all.

“All that CO2 can do is move the hydrologic cycle faster to a climatological equilibrium point where cloud albedo cancels out any warming due to the CO2.”
Exactly Tenuc, you’ve got it.
And the change in speed of the hydrological cycle manifests itself by a miniscule unmeasurable shift in the air circulation systems that are regularly moved latitudinally by 1ooo miles or more over a few centuries by entirely natural forces.

@ur momisugly sky says:
November 5, 2010 at 4:48 pm
——
Sky, thanks for taking the time to watch! What I took away from Dr. Norris’s talk was the following;
a) the effects of clouds on climate change have not been adequately addressed by the climate change community in AR4 etc.
b) clouds of different altitudes and depth can have quite different effects upon forcing
c) technology to different cloud cover from snow-covered ground is much less than perfect, so actual cloud coverage is very much guesswork.
His was nowhere close to the barn-burner that Dr. David Archer gave to Fermilab with his “The Big Thaw” lecture!
I’m professional enough to engage in the most vociferous climate change proponent or absolute climate change skeptic. In fact, I quite enjoy the fight! I would have enjoyed having an open debate with Dr. Archer, but the crowd would have torn me to bits…
I’m quite impressed with Dr. Spencer’s “global thermostat” concept, and believe this has great merit for further exploration!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/28/congratulations-finally-to-spencer-and-braswell-on-getting-their-new-paper-published/

CO2 as ‘kindling’ for the water cycle.
I like that. A very helpful metaphor, thanks.

@Stephen Fisher Wilde
George Smith came up with kindling to describe CO2’s hypothetical primary role of activating the water cycle. The hypothesis is mine but not the metaphor.
The sun doesn’t provide enough energy to raise the surface equilibrium temperature above freezing. If we only had an atmosphere but no greenhouse gases and a liquid ocean the earth would be the same average temperature as the moon (5F) albeit with less radical day/night temperature swings. Albedo would be about the same at around 15%. Fortunately the earth is large enough so that gravity is sufficient to hold an atmosphere. The most critical role of the atmosphere is it gives us 14.7 psi surface pressure which allows liquid water to exist on the surface over a broad range of temperatures. But a liquid ocean does not in and of itself help to warm the earth above freezing. It drastically lowers the day/night temperature swing but without a greenhouse gas it would be a frozen ocean and even colder than the moon because frozen water has a very high albedo. Now we get to where CO2 is critical. The earth does get enough energy from the sun to keep CO2 gaseous at all times so its action as greenhouse gas is never diminished by freezing it out of the atmosphere.. Because its insulating effect requires exponentially more of it to get a linear increase in effect it’s only the first 100ppm or so that is critically important to surface temperature. That is sufficient to raise the average surface temperature above freezing. Once we get above freezing we get a liquid ocean and a water cycle. Water vapor is a far more powerful greenhouse gas which, unlike CO2, has many wide infrared absorption bands and on average it exists at hundreds of times the concentration of CO2. Once the water cycle is activated it essentially makes CO2 into a bit player and takes over as the primary greenhouse agent. The neat thing is that the water cycle has a negative feedback called clouds. As the surface temperature rises from water vapor acting as a greenhouse gas its material properties (lighter than air) causes it to rise and then due to gas laws (expanding gases get cooler) it gets cool enough to condense into a cloud some small number of kilometers above the surface. The cloud then reflects most of the sunlight away from the surface back into space which greatly reduces the energy available for evaporation at the surface which reduces the cloud cover and lets in more energy. So as long as the water cycle is active we get a self-regulating surface temperature that is uneffected by further increases in CO2. The only game changer is then a tipping point (we’re close to that tipping point now) where snow and ice, which has a positive feedback, can freeze enough water out of the atmosphere to start runaway cooling. But there’s another very long term feedback there as well. As the land and ocean freezes over and green plants are drastically reduced the carbon cycle screeches to a halt. At that point there’s little left to remove CO2 added to the atmosphere from vocanic emissions so over the course of thousands and millions of years atmospheric CO2 doubles several times until there’s enough of it acting as a greenhouse gas to overcome the runaway cooling and re-activate the water cycle. Green plants then recover with a vengeance feasting on the excess CO2 quickly turn the earth back into a liquid water world again. The only thing we have to fear is runaway cooling – there’s no such thing as runaway warming.

Thanks Dave, an interesting perspective.
A couple of thoughts though:
i) I think that from the very beginning the water on Earth was in liquid or vapour form because it started to accumulate on the surface when the Earth was young enough for the necessary energy to be geothermal. Therefore I’m not sure there was ever a point at which the water cycle ever needed to be activated from a frozen start.
ii) Once the water cycle exists then as you say it dominates any similar effect from GHGs and I would argue that the water itself including the oceans should be regarded as part of Earth’s atmosphere for the purpose of solar energy retention. Thus in comparison to water those GHGs have never been of any great significance. It is not the GHGs in the air that keep the troposphere warm. it is all that water in the oceans and in the water cycle.
iii) Even if the entire surface freezes over as per the so called speculation about a snowball Earth it is only the top of the oceans that freezes and the Earth is still young enough for volcanic activity to break through and start a water cycle based global melt process so even then I don’t see the GHGs themselves to be necessary. Once sunlight gets in through a volcanically damaged or discoloured ice surface an unstoppable process would begin would it not ?
iv) If we had an atmosphere with no GHGs other than water vapour from the oceans I don’t see that the temperature of the troposphere would be much different ?

“What I can’t figure is a practical artificial way of warming the planet should it start getting too cold.”
All our proposed nuclear energy generating plants from now onward should be placed in a ring along the equator and the warm water from them allowed to flow freely into the oceans. That should minimise the equatorward drift of the jet streams when the sun becomes less active for long periods of time or the astronomic cycles return to conditions favouring reduced solar energy reaching Earth. One could even build plants with the exclusive function of heating up the equatorial seas. Before long we should become much more efficient at avoiding radiation leakages but anyway there is evidence that at low levels additional radiation stimulates the immune systems and evolutionary efficiency of biological organisms.
We could prevent dangerous global cooling and improve the efficiency of the entire biosphere from the same technology and if the globe warms then we can convert the plants into giant water cooling devices instead.
A win win scenario from all angles 🙂

The lunar declinational total portended angle, is driven from the tilt of the poles magnetic fields of the sun, resulting in pulses in magnetic field’s flux of polarity N/S on a 27.32 day cycle. The lunar declinational angle movement is the part of the atmospheric tidal component that causes the positions of the jet streams to be close or far from the Equator.
IF the astrological effects of the long term patterns of Ice age periods, is driven by the actual movement of the tilt of axis of the magnetic poles of the sun, to where when it decreases, the polarity shifts in the solar wind weaken. Thus less driven declinational movement = total included angle reduced = less atmospheric tidal effect mixing equatorial ITCZ warmth into the mid-lattitudes.
Then IF the alignment of the magnetic poles of the sun continued to decrease to where they were almost vertical at some point, the gradual declinational electromagnetic drive component would by then affect a much smaller included declinational angle for the moon….Hardly moving any massive surges of warmth off of the equator = onset of long term Ice age, until the return of increased strength and critical orientation of the galactic magnetic fields that allow a re-tilt of the solar magnetic poles, to the axis of rotation and we come out of the ice age.
This is the basic premise of action in shifting the spin of atoms and watching them rebound in MRI Magnetic Resonance Imaging. We have it down on an atomic level to where it is used daily thousands of times to save lives. Why could the Galaxy not use the same methods by an external magnetic field surge maintained for the duration of the Ice covered state of the glacial stages?
Thus the quick recovery with the magnetic flip, with the return of the pulses in solar wind polarity shifts once again driving the declinational angle of the moon to greater extremes.