Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
[UPDATE 2 AM Christmas morning, and of course Murphy is still alive and his Law is still in operation. I find a decimal point error in my calculations … grrr, I hates that, ocean energy flows shows at 1/10th size. Public exposure of error, the bane of any scientific endeavor.
And Murphy being who he is, the correction doesn’t solve the puzzle at all. It only makes it more complex. I have updated Figure 2 and some of the text, and added a third figure. The only good news is, it doesn’t affect my conclusions, there’s still something very wrong in the canonical climate equations.
Merry Christmas to all, it can only get better from here.]
In the Climategate emails, Kevin Trenberth wrote:
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!
Although I sympathized with him, I was unclear about exactly where the hole was in the energy budget. However, my research into the climate sensitivity of the GISS model has given me some new insights into the question. Intrigued by the findings I reported in “Model Charged With Excessive Use of Forcing“, I wanted to look closer at the results from the NASA GISS climate model. As you may recall, I was trying to understand the low sensitivity I had calculated for the GISSE model. I went to the CMIP archive to see if I could get the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) forcing for the GISS model month by month, but the GISS folks didn’t archive that data. Rats.
Figure 1 (may take a moment to load). Anomalies in the heat content of the top 700 metres of the ocean from 1955 to 2003. Units are zettaJoules (10^21 Joules).
Someone pointed out on that previous thread that I was neglecting the ocean in my calculations … guilty as charged. The basic energy equation for the planet is that energy added to the climate system equals energy leaving the system plus energy going into the ocean. Energy can’t just disappear, it has to go somewhere. It either leaves the system, or it goes into the ocean. So I went off to see what the change in the heat content of the ocean has looked like over the period of record. The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) has the data. Figure 1 shows a movie of what I found. Not much of a movie, but it’s the first one that I’ve made in R, so I was happy about that. The legend says “∆H” where it should say “H”, but it’s 3AM and I’m not going to fix it. So how can this ocean heat content information be related to the question of climate sensitivity?
As you can see in Fig. 1, nature is a puzzle. Things happen in blobs and patches, without immediately obvious reasons. However, we can see that the heat content of the top layer of the ocean has increased since 1955 by a total of 154 ZJ.
First, a bit of math. Not much math, and not complex math. We’re looking at one of the fundamental equations of the current climate paradigm. The statement above was that:
Energy added to the climate system equals energy leaving the system plus energy going into the ocean.
Mathematically this can be restated as ∆Q (change in energy added, Joules/year) = ∆U (change in energy lost, Joules/year) + ∆Ocean (change in energy in/out of ocean, Joules/year), or
∆Q = ∆U + ∆Ocean (Joules/year) (Equation 1)
Note that this is different from a statement about a general equilibrium, which may or may not be satisfied in any given year. This is an absolute requirement, because energy cannot be created or destroyed. If we add extra energy to the system, it has to either leave the system via increased radiation or get stored in the ocean. There is no “lag” or “in the pipeline” possible with Equation 1. The atmosphere has far too small a thermal mass to store a significant amount of energy. The earth warms too slowly to serve as a reservoir for annual changes. Global ice amounts are fairly stable (although they might make a very small change over the long-term, global annual variations are small). So any large annual change of incoming energy has to either change the ocean storage or leave the system.
Now, the current climate paradigm holds that “U”, the energy leaving the system, is equal to the surface temperature “T” divided by the climate sensitivity “S” (∆U=∆T/S). This is another way of stating the idea that the surface temperature is linearly related to changes in the top-of-atmosphere radiation. [See e.g. Kiehl (PDF). Be aware that Kiehl uses lambda (λ) as sensitivity, which in my terminology would be 1/Sensitivity].
The current paradigm also holds (wrongly, in my opinion) that the sensitivity “S” is a constant. The IPCC says that the central value for the climate sensitivity constant “S” is about 0.8 °C per W/m2 (or 3°C per doubling of CO2). So according to the current paradigm, we can replace ∆U (change in energy leaving the system) with ∆T/0.8. This gives us:
∆Q = ∆T / 0.8 + ∆Ocean (Joules/year) (Equation 2)
It struck me when I was looking into this that we actually have the means to test this claim of mainstream climate science. We have the historical forcings, from the GISS tables. We have the historical GISS temperatures. And we have the historical heat content of the ocean. (The conversion from Watts/m2 to joules/year is covered in the Appendix.)
Figure 2 shows annual changes in incoming energy (∆Q, red), outgoing energy (∆T/S, light blue), and energy moving into and out of the ocean ∆Ocean (dark blue). We can express them either in joules per year or in W/m2. I have chosen joules per year, to emphasize that this is the movement of actual energy that cannot be created or destroyed. It has to go somewhere, and there’s not many choices.
Figure 2. The missing energy puzzle. Every year, the amount of energy entering the system (red) should equal the energy leaving the system (light blue) plus the energy going into/out of the ocean (dark blue). It doesn’t.
Figure 3. Annual Energy Budget Error, ∆T/S + ∆H – ∆Q. Positive errors indicate excess heat in the ocean. Some folks have commented that they don’t like having photos in the background. This Figure’s for you.
As you can see, something is really, really off the rails in this. The total forcing Q is known through observation to take large drops after volcanic eruptions (from the volcanic aerosols reflecting away the sunlight), with similarly large and fast recoveries. But this is not reflected in the sum of the outgoing energy (∆T/S) plus the ocean changes. In other words, the forcing drops because of the volcanoes, but there is no corresponding drop in temperature or ocean heat storage as you would expect. The forcing springs back when the stratosphere clears after the eruption, but there is no corresponding rise in either temperature or ocean storage.
The real surprise is the absolute size of the missing energy. It is often more than 20 ZJ. This means that something very fundamental is wrong here.
Some of the possibilities for unraveling this koan are:
• Foolish math or logic error on my part. I don’t think so, as I have checked and rechecked my figures, units, and logic. But I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life. Please check my numbers and everything else. [UPDATE – well, I sure called that one …]
• Bad data in one or more of the datasets. Always possible. However, the huge size of the discrepancy argues against that. Even though there are errors in all datasets, these would have to be very large errors. Even the forcings dataset is mostly based on observations (CO2 and volcanic aerosol changes). So bad data seems doubtful, it would have to be really, really bad.
• One of the datasets is off by one year, so the timing is wrong. That doesn’t work, though, correlation doesn’t improve with a lag or a lead.
• IPCC climate sensitivity is too large. If it were smaller, ∆T/S would be larger to help balance out the ∆Q. The problem is, the temperature changes are not well correlated with the forcing changes. In addition, the regression of (∆Q – ∆Ocean) on ∆T has an R^2 of 0.01. This means that the climate sensitivity has no explanatory power in respect to the error, regardless of its value.
• The change in energy at the top of the atmosphere (∆U) is not represented by ∆T/S. I would say that this is the most likely explanation. I think that the current paradigm, in which the temperature is linearly related to the forcing, is highly unlikely. Simple consideration of the complexity of the system discourages assumptions of linearity.
• The change in energy at the top of the atmosphere ∆U is correctly represented by ∆T/S, but S in turn is not a constant but a function of T “f(T)”. Thus the substitution in Eqn. 1 should actually be
∆U = ∆T/f(T)
This is a refinement of the previous possibility. I put this forward because of the obvious daily change in climate sensitivity in the tropics, with the sensitivity dropping as the day progresses and the temperature increases. Since that variation in the climate sensitivity occurs daily over about a third of the planet, the part of the planet where the energy enters the system, it is not unreasonable to think that the global climate sensitivity should be a function of temperature. (Note that even here the sensitivity is unlikely to be a linear function of temperature, as the natural situation contains clear thresholds at which the climate sensitivity changes rapidly.)
• Something else that I haven’t thought of yet.
I make no hard claims about any of this, as I don’t know where the missing energy really is. I don’t even know if this is the missing energy that Trenberth was talking about. My theory is that the energy is not missing, but that Equation 2 is wrong. My hypothesis is that the earth responds to volcanoes and other forcing losses by cutting back on clouds and thunderstorms. This lets in lots of energy, and as a result neither the air temperature nor the ocean heat storage change very much. I have detailed that hypothesis here.
About the only solid thing I can say out of this analysis is that if my numbers and logic are correct, then one of the fundamental equations of the current climate paradigm is falsified …
We’ll see how it plays out. All comments and explanations gladly accepted.
w.
[UPDATE: This discussion continues at Some of the Missing Energy]
APPENDIX: Converting Joules/year to W/m2 involves the fundamental relationship:
1 Joule is the application of 1 Watt for 1 second
So … one Watt/m2 applied for one year gives us 1 * 31.6E6 Joules/m2 per year. (Watts/m2 times seconds in 1 year.)
To get total Joules for the planet, we need to multiply that answer by 5.1E14 square metres, to include the total surface area. So one Watt/m2 of forcing, acting on the planet for 1 year, delivers 16.3E21 Joules/year (16.3 zettaJoules). This allows us to convert easily between Joules/year and W/m2
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Willis, why is there not a component for heat going into the ground?
Re: “Note that this is different from a statement about a general equilibrium, which may or may not be satisfied in any given year. This is an absolute requirement, because energy cannot be created or destroyed. If we add extra energy to the system, it has to either leave the system via increased radiation or get stored in the ocean. There is no “lag” or “in the pipeline” possible with Equation 1. The atmosphere has far too small a thermal mass to store a significant amount of energy. The earth warms too slowly to serve as a reservoir for annual changes. Global ice amounts are fairly stable (although they might make a very small change over the long-term, global annual variations are small). So any large annual change of incoming energy has to either change the ocean storage or leave the system.”
Although I’m hardly an expert on thermodynamics, it’s imperative that we all agree that this statement appears to assume the conventional physical framework — the gravity-centric universe and all of the models inherent to that system.
Within the competing plasma cosmology, all bodies in space can acquire and trade electrical charge with each other and their surroundings. This electrical transfer *must* have energy consequences. In that view, this electrical energy is transferred from space to the Van Allen radiation belts, where it awaits discharge to the planet’s surface, and eventually to the core, in the process creating the magnetic and electric fields which we observe to be affiliated with the Earth.
If this seems ridiculous to anybody, then they should answer why we observe lightning going to space at many miles up from the cloud layer? And, why do we observe the Van Allen radiation belts blink each time that a terrestrial lightning bolt strikes? Don’t forget that scientists have wondered at lightning’s ability to emit x-rays for many years now. These two legs are in fact critical components of this energy transfer system which we should not ignore.
Also, why does Gerrit Verschuur observe the interstellar hydrogen to be extended in long twisted filaments? Are these shockwaves, as is suggested by conventional theorists — or more likely, the characteristic electromagnetic behavior of laboratory plasmas?
Our plasma models have been designed to suit the dominant cosmology — which requires that our universe be electrically neutered. The Big Bang cosmology demands that electricity not be a first-order, driving phenomena — but, instead, some sort of second-order byproduct of the gravity-centric universe. This issue of how to model the cosmic plasmas is one of the pertinent questions in cosmology, upon which our selection of the appropriate cosmology depends.
If we accept that bodies in space can exchange electrical charge with one another and their surroundings in space, then we essentially question the conventional physical framework itself. And, any student of the history of science will tell you that theorists are these days not eager to ask such questions. After all, we never trained them on the competing plasma-based cosmologies. So, admitting even the possibility of such a thing represents an admission that they are not the experts, as it calls into question many assumptions which conventional thinkers have come to think of as undeniable facts.
But, the public does not have to share in their antipathy for the electric theories. We are not bound to their preferences, prejudices or education. We did not place the wager that they did. We are free to follow the evidence wherever it leads with an open mind to alternative inferences.
So, I encourage the people of WUWT to learn about the behavior of plasmas within the laboratory, as it has the potential to settle all of these various enigmas which are discussed on this blog. We will not resolve the greatest questions in physics with band-aids. We have to revisit our assumptions, and reconsider the models for the universe’s preferred state for matter — the plasma models. After all, the Earth is bathing in plasma, and within the laboratory, plasmas conduct electrical current.
Stephen Wilde says:
December 23, 2010 at 3:47 am
“Cloudiness and albedo actually decline when the system warms up… a warmer world has less clouds not more clouds…”
Do I understand this correctly?! If the earth warms, there is less cloudiness and the albedo declines, which let’s in more energy from the sun. But, wouldn’t this mean that the earth would get warmer? So, a global warming would beget further global warming.
May I assume that the converse also is true, that a global cooling would increase clouds and albedo, causing further global cooling?
This sounds like an inherently unstable situation. Though we, miraculously, are at a climatic state that supports life, it would seem that we shouldn’t make any long-term plans, as either we’ll boil or freeze to death in short order.
Unless, I misunderstand what you meant.
BTW, this is a large objection that I have with the concept of positive forcings. If CO2 goes up, temps go up, and positive forcing causes temps to go even higher. In the next period, the then extant higher temps cause temps (through positive forcings) to go higher still… as infinitum. Unless CO2 falls, in which case the positive forcing will cause the opposite loop, and with it a snowball earth. Magically, humanity exists on the razor’s edge, threatened by imminent destruction from even a minuscule change in CO2 in either direction. Unless I misunderstand the concept of positive forcing, as well.
Here is a repeat of a comment I posted a while ago:
In a previous post (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/11/27720/) there is a comment by Spector on November 11, 2010 at 11:02 pm that includes a link to a doctoral dissertation by Andreas Lotter (http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/volltexte/2006/6686/pdf/dissertation_lotter.pdf) on “Field Measurements of Water Continuum and Water Dimer Absorption …..”
It seems to me that the paper includes a good overview of the current orthodoxy on climate change. However, there are some very surprising statements that should be brought to the fore when presenting the current orthodoxy (i.e. the “Consensus”) to the general public. On page 26, Lotter has a section titled “2.2.3 Excess Absorption”, which contains the following statement:
Compare to Lotter’s statement on page 20:
Notice that the excess absorption as stated by Lotter is 10 times larger than the purported anthropogenic forcing. It would seem that there there is a very large discrepancy between the theory (i.e. the physics) and the reality that dwarfs the purported effect caused by mankind. Given this very large discrepancy, how can anyone be confident in predicting how absorption will change in the future if the mechanisms of absorption cannot be explained in detail and with greater precision than the variable (i.e. AGW) that is the focus of the current debate? I wonder if this is not (IIRC) what Trenberth was referring to in his comment that it was a “travesty” that they have not been able to find the missing heat?
It is very important to understand that the uncertainty isn’t whether or not the excess absorption exists and therefore that there is, presumably, warming as a result of it. The issue is that the excess absorption, through the focus on CO2 and the modeling assumption of a positive feedback by water, is being modeled without a clear theoretical explanation of how exactly and by what the excess absorption is being absorbed. Furthermore, given that the unknown related to excess absorption is estimated to be about 10 times greater than the anthropogenic effect, the modelers don’t seem to have any problem with what would appear to be unreasonably precise projections of what the anthropogenic effect will be. Major changes in public policy should demand a better accountability of what is unexplained, especially when the unexplained appears to be much greater than the purported effect (i.e. AGW) that the changes in public policy are being imposed to prevent or mitigate.
Have I misunderstood something?
erlhapp says:
December 23, 2010 at 7:40 am
……………………..
Sun-Earth tilt angle ?
This may not be relevant to this discussion but may be relevant to the energy in-out situation overall:
If cloud cover is (as we perceive) a time function during the day, actually a surface temperature RISE function, the cloud cover cannot be averaged out, and nor can its impact on the albedo be averaged out on the planet simply as a function of area. Will this not result in a disproportionate impact on insolation?
Not a scientist, but if I follow your arguement correctly:
The “missing” heat energy could be converted to kinetic energy, i.e. wind.
The extra wind will push on the land and trees, etc.
Voila: Disrupted Continental Drift
See, I knew we could connect SUVs to earthquakes 😉
As we all know IR it is NOT all the spectrum, so, there is another interesting form of energy we usually forget:
Nikola Tesla patent 00685957: “Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy”
http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Biographies/TeslaBio-Patents.htm
Willis, I think we have discussed some of this before.
1)When you go from temperature to energy, do you take the 2meter temperatures of the air? That is one error for energy content, because the ground can be much hotter than the air above or much colder than the air above.
2) Land surfaces are fractal, this means there is a lot more area than the map area that can absorb and radiate. Ocean surface is fractal too, but not to 700meters 🙂
3) Land has variable gray body constants.
4)There is kinetic energy in the system, ocean and atmosphere.
All these have to be taken into account to get an energy balance, imo.
Thanks, Willis.
joletaxi says:
December 23, 2010 at 3:42 am
something amaze my:earth is a rotating object, and I never found an energy budget off the “dark” side off the earth?
I have worried about this too but I am not bright enough to think how to resolve it. There are two big issues for me.
The first is that clouds on the ‘dark side’ keep the earth warm (we all know that a cloudy night is warmer) whilst clouds on the ‘bright side’ keep the world cooler. So any change in the cloud distribution between day and night will have major a major impact on the energy balance. So for climate sensitivity to be a constant the distribution of clouds between day and night would have to be independent of temperature. Does not sound likely to me.
The second issue revolves around the impact of greenhouse gases. The altitude at which energy is radiated from the earth is a function of wavelength. Around the ‘atmospheric window’ between 8 and 14 micron the air is pretty transparent so at these wavelengths the radiating source is quite close to the surface. The same is true for a range of wavelengths below 5 microns. However at 3, 4, 5-8 amd 14-18 micron the absorption by water and CO2 blocks the direct radiation into space. The energy at these wavelengths goes through numerous absorption and re-radiation steps until it reaches an altitude at which radiation into space is possible. For the CO2 absorption peaks this is close to, or possibly within, the tropopause and for water vapour peaks it is at various altitiudes but typically a few kilometres up. The temperature at these altitudes is much less than the surface and so less energy is radiated than it would in the absence of these gases. This is the so called (but poorly named) greenhouse effect. Lower emissions at these wavelengths means higher emissions at other wavelengths (to maintain the energy balance) and that implies a higher surface temperature.
My problem is that whilst the surface temperature over land changes considerably between day and night the temperature I would have thought that at higher altitudes it would be more constant. So whilst most of the radiation losses (over land) within the atmospheric windows will occur during the period between mid morning and early evening, radiation at wavelengths around the absorption peaks will be pretty constant during any given 24 hours. At night the surface is cold so much more of the energy radiated into space from the dark side of the earth must be drawn from horizontal energy flows which are not affected by the CO2 concentrations. How do the climate models deal with this?
Occasionally the NWS issues a strong radiative cooling warning, meaning that any heat we might have had on the ground is rapidly heading up through our atmosphere, unimpeded by excessive greenhouse gas or water vapor (IE humidity and clouds in its many forms and degrees). I wonder if the average statistic of radiative balance catches these sudden upward releases of warmth?
According to Dr. Pielke Sr., “The recent data (2004-2008), according to Josh Willis [who babysits the ARGO data and guards it like a Rottweiler –cg], is quite robust in showing no global annual averaged upper ocean warming.”
We also have extensive satellite radiation data for those years. What happens if you take your equations with dOcean set to zero with data 2004–present? Anything interesting?
By the way, the elder Pielke’s site (link at right) has a wealth of discussion of ocean heat content; search for that phrase to have a good time…
Work to do with the pieces of the spectrum:
1.Pick up all pieces of the puzzle. (all pieces are valid)
2.Put them together in the same place.
3.Assemble the puzzle.
Last but not least: Get to the basics and make some “numerology”. 🙂
“Bob Tisdale says:
December 23, 2010 at 5:50 am
Willis wrote, “The ‘missing’ energy has therefore been lost to space because it was prevented from getting into the oceans in the first place.”
Bingo.
OHC is dominated by natural variables: ENSO, Sea Level Pressure, and the AMO.”
Actually Bob that was me. It’s nice to be in agreement.
Bob Tisdale says:
December 23, 2010 at 7:11 am
Many thanks, Bob. I had heard that the dataset had been revised, but I couldn’t locate the new data. However, for the purposes of this analysis it doesn’t matter, since the swings in ocean heat content are nowhere near large enough to balance the budget. The revisions are minor from that perspective. I’ll redo the analysis with the new data, but it won’t solve the mystery.
w.
A number of people have asked about kinetic energy. All of the work done on the planet eventually (and generally on a short timescale) turns into heat. While the amount of this is critical for the constructal analysis of the planet, it makes no difference to my analysis.
It seems to be, like a Christmas miracle, we are about to break all paradigmatic assumptions and social agreements/mutual or self caressing/holy science beliefs, regarding energy. Then we are about to find the truth.
RHS says:
December 23, 2010 at 7:15 am
We’re looking at the annual changes in energy, and the amount going into/out of plants is (as you point out) about constant. So it doesn’t enter the analysis.
Willis,
Have you checked out Douglass & Knox’ OHC paper at
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/Douglass_Knox_pla373aug31.pdf ?
Although I sympathized with him, I was unclear about exactly where the hole was in the energy budget
Some “numerology”to identify those “holes” (just in case if inquisition friars went on holidays’ vacations):
1/2=0.5
2/3=0.66666666666 (Planck’s “constant” rounded: 0.66252. The difference caused by local field)
3/4=0.75
4/5=0.8
5/6=0.833333333 (Regnault’s constant for gases: 0.082. Difference, id….)
6/7=0.857142857 (the Law of Seven of seven= 1/7=0.142857142857142………)
7/8=0.875
8/9=0.888888889
At the intervals of the musical octave, energy goes in and out.
Enough for Christmas.
“Bob Shapiro says:
December 23, 2010 at 8:25 am
Stephen Wilde says:
December 23, 2010 at 3:47 am
“Cloudiness and albedo actually decline when the system warms up… a warmer world has less clouds not more clouds…”
Do I understand this correctly?! If the earth warms, there is less cloudiness and the albedo declines, which let’s in more energy from the sun. But, wouldn’t this mean that the earth would get warmer? So, a global warming would beget further global warming.
May I assume that the converse also is true, that a global cooling would increase clouds and albedo, causing further global cooling?
This sounds like an inherently unstable situation. Though we, miraculously, are at a climatic state that supports life, it would seem that we shouldn’t make any long-term plans, as either we’ll boil or freeze to death in short order.
Unless, I misunderstand what you meant.”
There is a misunderstanding there,Bob.
I’m considering just the solar portion of the equation and ignoring the oceanic modulation for the moment.
A more active sun causes overall system warming despite cooling the stratosphere for a faster exit of energy to space. The polar vortex intensifies with a faster upward transfer of energy so on the face of it that should result in overall system cooling and not warming.
However the effect is to draw the jets poleward thereby reducing cloudiness and albedo so that more energy enters the oceans.
The net effect is a warming system overall because the extra energy going into the oceans exceeds the extra energy lost to space from the intensification of the polar vortex.
So it’s not a case of a positive feedback. Whether cooling or warming the albedo consequences are a negative feedback to the initial solar forcing and in fact exceed that initial solar forcing because of the composition and dimensions of the essentially water based system.
The obvious question then is as to why a much more more active sun would not cause the oceans to freeze or a less active sun cause them to boil. The answer is that the extra energy entering the oceans from a more active sun is always greater than the extra energy expelled to space by the intensified polar vortices. Similarly the reduction in energy entering the oceans from a less active sun is always greater than the reduction in energy expelled to space by the less intense polar vortices.
Thus the more energy from the sun the faster the hydrological cycle will run with warmer ocean surfaces, more zonal and/or more poleward jets and a faster expulsion of energy to space. Another negative feedback situation.
So, if you follow my proposition correctly we have here an extremely stable system with sufficient negative feedbacks for virtually any situation which is why the oceans have been liquid for billions of years.
But in the end for the physics to work there has to be a reversal of the consensus based sign for the solar effect somewhere in the atmospheric column. A more active sun must result in stratospheric cooling and a less active sun must result in stratospheric warming or my construct fails as currently set out.
But see here:
We see from this link that there was a cooling trend in the stratosphere whilst the sun was more active:
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/5/0/53/_pdf
but note that they also say this:
“The evidence for the cooling trend in the stratosphere may need to be revisited. This study presents evidence that the stratosphere has been slightly warming since 1996.”
Now it is possible to argue, as AGW proponents did, that the stratosphere cooled because more CO2 in the troposphere reduced the upward energy flow. That is no longer tenable because CO2 has continued to rise but the stratospheric temperature trend has changed.
The change in trend coincided with the declining levels of solar activity after the peak of solar cycle 23.
And look what Joanna Haigh recently said:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7316/full/nature09426.html
“An Influence Of Solar Spectral Variations On Radiative Forcing Of Climate.”
“Our findings raise the possibility that the effects of solar variability on temperature throughout the atmosphere may be contrary to current expectations.”
So it may indeed be that the wrong sign for the solar effect on the stratosphere has been adopted by all other current Models and Theories.
Craig Goodrich says:
December 23, 2010 at 9:42 am
“We also have extensive satellite radiation data for those years.”
There is significant disagreement among the satellites. TIM is reporting around 1361 W/m2, ACRIM is reporting around 1366 W/m2.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TSI.jpg
Of course Hansen et al will say it doesn’t matter because they work with anomalies rather then absolute values.
Energy can not be created or destroyed only changed . . . .
Photosynthesis is the process of taking photons, and creating cloryphyll . . . & if wiki is correct
” The rate of energy capture by photosynthesis is immense, approximately 100 terawatts,[3] which is about six times larger than the power consumption of human civilization.[4] As well as energy, photosynthesis is also the source of the carbon in all the organic ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis
I mean, doesn’t E=mc(squared) to me that means energy can be turned to mass and mass can be turned into energy. How that happens is a source of much theory and disussion.
If I recall correctly, there used to be a group of Scientist that would guestimate the weight of the earth over time. . . . .I don’t know what happen to those people, but I recall that they certainly existed.
trbixler says:
“December 23, 2010 at 5:54 am The earth atmosphere is not a slab, it is a dynamic fluid with all of the problems of fluid mechanics layered with heat flow. Think soaring birds to witness the dynamics. Not only does it transport birds but heat as well. Non trivial calculations at best.”
This is why I asked, in a post on Judith Curry’s Climate Etc, why no one has brought in some specialists from the computational fluid dynamics community. I submit that they have the modeling and statistical skills that others have demonstrated are undervalued some parts of the climate science community.