Guest post by Ira Glickstein
A real greenhouse has windows. So does the Atmospheric “greenhouse effect”. They are similar in that they allow Sunlight in and restrict the outward flow of thermal energy. However, they differ in the mechanism. A real greenhouse primarily restricts heat escape by preventing convection while the “greenhouse effect” heats the Earth because “greenhouse gases” (GHG) absorb outgoing radiative energy and re-emit some of it back towards Earth.
The base graphic is from Wikipedia, with my annotations. There are two main “windows” in the Atmospheric “greenhouse effect”. The first, the Visible Light Window, on the left side of the graphic, allows visible and near-visible light from the Sun to pass through with small losses, and the second, the Longwave Window, on the right, allows the central portion of the longwave radiation band from the Earth to pass through with small losses, while absorbing and re-emitting the left and right portions.
The Visible Light Window
To understand how these Atmospheric windows work, we need to review some basics of so-called “blackbody” radiation. As indicated by the red curve in the graphic, the surface of the Sun is, in effect, at a temperature of 5525ºK (about 9500ºF), and therefore emits radiation with a wavelenth centered around 1/2μ (half a micron which is half a millionth of a meter). Solar light ranges from about 0.1μ to 3μ, covering the ultraviolet (UV), the visible, and the near-infrared (near-IR) bands. Most Sunlight is in the visible band from 0.38μ (which we see as violet) to 0.76μ (which we see as red), which is why our eyes evolved to be sensitive in that range. Sunlight is called “shortwave” radiation because it ranges from fractional microns to a few microns.
As the graphic indicates with the solid red area, about 70 to 75% of the downgoing Solar radiation gets through the Atmosphere, because much of the UV, and some of the visible and near-IR are blocked. (The graphic does not account for the portion of Sunlight that gets through the Atmosphere, and is then reflected back to Space by clouds and other high-albedo surfaces such as ice and white roofs. I will discuss and account for that later in this posting.)
My annotations represent the light that passes through the Visible Light Window as an orange ball with the designation 1/2μ, but please interpret that to include all the visible and near-visible light in the shortwave band.
The Longwave Window
As indicated by the pink, blue, and black curves in the graphic, the Earth is, in effect, at a temperature that ranges between a high of about 310ºK (about 98ºF) and a low of about 210ºK (about -82ºF). The reason for the range is that the temperature varies by season, by day or night, and by latitude. The portion of the Earth at about 310ºK radiates energy towards the Atmosphere at slightly shorter wavelengths than that at about 210ºK, but nearly all Earth-emitted radiation is between 5μ to 30μ, and is centered at about 10μ.
As the graphic indicates with the solid blue area, only 15% to 30% of the upgoing thermal radiation is transmitted through the Atmosphere, because nearly all the radiation in the left portion of the longwave band (from about 5μ to 8μ) and the right portion (from about 13μ to 30μ) is totally absorbed and scattered by GHG, primarily H2O (water vapor) and CO2 (carbon dioxide). Only the radiation near the center (from about 8μ to 13μ) gets a nearly free pass through the Atmosphere.
My annotations represent the thermal radiation from the Earth as a pink pentagon with the designation 7μ for the left-hand portion, a blue diamond 10μ for the center portion, and a dark blue hexagon 15μ for the right-hand portion, but please interpret these symbols to include all the radiation in their respective portions of the longwave band.
Sunlight Energy In = Thermal Energy Out
The graphic is an animated depiction of the Atmospheric “greenhouse effect” process.
On the left side:
(1) Sunlight streams through the Atmosphere towards the surface of the Earth.
(2) A portion of the Sunlight is reflected by clouds and other high-albedo surfaces and heads back through the Atmosphere towards Space. The remainder is absorbed by the Surface of the Earth, warming it.
(3) The reflected portion is lost to Space.
On the right side:
(1) The warmed Earth emits longwave radiation towards the Atmosphere. According to the first graphic, above, this consists of thermal energy in all bands ~7μ, ~10μ, and ~15μ.
(2) The ~10μ portion passes through the Atmosphere with litttle loss. The ~7μ portion gets absorbed, primarily by H2O, and the 15μ portion gets absorbed, primarily by CO2 and H2O. The absorbed radiation heats the H2O and CO2 molecules and, at their higher energy states, they collide with the other molecules that make up the air, mostly nitrogen (N2), oxygen (O2), ozone (O3), and argon (A) and heat them by something like conduction. The molecules in the heated air emit radiation in random directions at all bands (~7μ, ~10μ, and ~15μ). The ~10μ photons pass, nearly unimpeded, in whatever direction they happen to be emitted, some going towards Space and some towards Earth. The ~7μ and ~15μ photons go off in all directions until they run into an H2O or CO2 molecule, and repeat the absorption and re-emittance process, or until they emerge from the Atmosphere or hit the surface of the Earth.
(3) The ~10μ photons that got a free-pass from the Earth through the Atmosphere emerge and their energy is lost to Space. The ~10μ photons generated by the heating of the air emerge from the top of the Atmosphere and their energy is lost to Space, or they impact the surface of the Earth and are re-absorbed. The ~7μ and ~15μ generated by the heating of the air also emerge from the top or bottom of the Atmosphere, but there are fewer of them because they keep getting absorbed and re-emitted, each time with some transfered to the central ~10μ portion of the longwave band.
The symbols 1/2μ, 7μ, 10μ, and 15μ represent quanties of photon energy, averaged over the day and night and the seasons. Of course, Sunlight is available for only half the day and less of it falls on each square meter of surface near the poles than near the equator. Thermal radiation emitted by the Earth also varies by day and night, season, local cloud cover that blocks Sunlight, local albedo, and other factors. The graphic is designed to provide some insight into the Atmospheric “greenhouse effect”.
Conclusions
Even though estimates of climate sensitivity to doubling of CO2 are most likely way over-estimated by the official climate Team, it is a scientific truth that GHGs, mainly H2O but also CO2 and others, play an important role in warming the Earth via the Atmospheric “greenhouse effect”.
This and my previous posting in this series address ONLY the radiative exchange of energy. Other aspects that control the temperature range at the surface of the Earth are at least as important and they include convection (winds, storms, etc.) and precipitation that transfer a great deal of energy from the surface to the higher levels of the Atmosphere.
I plan to do a subsequent posting that looks into the violet and blue boxes in the above graphic and provides insight into the process the photons and molecules go through.
I am sure WUWT readers will find issues with my Atmospheric Windows description and graphics. I encourage each of you to make comments, all of which I will read, and some to which I will respond, most likely learning a great deal from you in the process. However, please consider that the main point of this posting, like the previous one in this series, is to give insight to those WUWT readers, who, like Einstein (and me :^) need a graphic visual before they understand and really accept any mathematical abstraction.
davidmhoffer
The igloo insulates in exactly the same way as the jacket around a hot water tank.
The material chosen for the insulator will reduce heat loss by conduction, convection and radiation
The jacket is in fact a better radiator than the atmosphere.
Yet no one would talk about the “greenhouse effect” of a water tank jacket.
“”””” P. van der Meer says:
March 2, 2011 at 8:36 am
>>>>>Ira Glickstein, PhD says:
March 1, 2011 at 7:19 am
I googled images for “outgoing infrared spectrum” and found this: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/infrared_spectrum.jpg
It should the spectrum looking up from somewhere in the arctic on a clear day and the view looking back down from 20 km. The incoming radiation would be the re-emitted IR from the atmosphere that you wanted. It clearly shows the 7 um, 10 um and 15 um bands Ira is talking about.
THANKS Tim Folkerts for the link. I knew some WUWT reader would be alert enough to answer Fred Souder’s good question . GREAT LINK, let me repeat it: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/infrared_spectrum.jpg
Here it is for all to see:<<<<<
The link shows a chart of upwelling radiation at 20km looking down and downwelling radiation at the surface looking up. As I see it, the upwelling radiation is only between 9.25μ and 10μ (1080 and 1000 cm^-1 wave number). But if the N2 and O2 molecules are radiating like a dense body without absorbing any radiation, as so many seem to be claiming, wouldn't one expect to see a BB radiation between ~8μ and ~14μ (1250 cm^-1 and 715 cm^-1 wave number). This would be the open window between the H2O and CO2 absorption windows.
As that doesn't seem to be the case here, one can only conclude that the blip on the chart is due to something else unknown, but certainly not downwelling radiation from N2 and O2. """""
The mystery "blip" PvdM is the Ozone (O3) blip at around 9.6 microns.
I presume these are calculated spectra; not actual measured data. I have no idea what all the multitude of BB dotted spectra at various Temperatures are all about. The 260 and 270 K plots are the only ones of any interest.
In any case, you can'tr ead too much into these graphs; THEY DO NOT SUM TO 1.0.
In other words, the bottom graph (b) of surface looking up, can reasonably be presumed to be downward radiation from the atmosphere, including atmospheric emissions, reflections, or scatterings. Personally, I would expect the atmosphere looking down to look pretty much the same as the atmosphere looking up. The upper graph (a) does NOT prove that it is not.
Clearly, the bulk of that emission in (a) looking down is emitted from the earth surface, and most of it is simply passing through the atmosphere.
The (a) diagram should be contrasted with a very similar graph published by Peter Humbug, in his January 2011 Physics Today article. In his fig 3 he plots data from a calculated model, and also actual measurements from the AIRS Instrument.
The graph in PT much more closely tracks the 285 K BB curve, which is what I would expect, since the supposed mean global surface temperature is 288 K, and that is the principal source of the outgoing radiation.
Where PH differs dramatically from the Skeptical Science graph you cite, is that the SS graph is a plot of Radiance; actually Spectral Radiance, in units of (m)Watts per m^2 per Steradian per cm^-1 and peaks around 100 .
The Physics Today plot is a plot of FLUX measured in Watts per m^2 .steradian or W/m^2/sr if you want to put it that way.
This is NOT a plot of Spectral Radiance as it has NO per cm^-1 units, and has a curve peak of around 0.11 in those FLUX units.
The SS plots would have a similar peak value of 0.1, if the units were Watts per m^2/Sr/cm^-1, rather than milliWatts; but the units are entirely different for the Physics Today graph.
In any case, the dissimilarity of the two graphs (a) and (b) merely demonstrates that most of the escaping radiation is emiited from the surface, and passes mostly through the atmosphere to space.
One should note that if Kirchoff's law was applicable, and the emission spectrum and the absorption spectrum were identical by reason of that law, then by definition the radiation would be a complete black body spectrum at the equlibrium Temperature, and it wouldn't have any holes in it. The fact that the observed spectrum in the case of the AIRS instrument, does have holes in it, is prima facie evidence that Kirchoff's law is NOT applicable, and there is no equilibrium condition.
The PT article contains some totally surprising claims; but then Peter Humbug is a Professor of Geophysical Sciences; and not just any Professor, but THE Louis Block Professor, at the University of Chicago, so I would take everything he says as gospel; even thoguh I don't undertand much of it; such as the earth heating to 800,000 K in a billion years, if it had no means of ridding itself of the energy it gets from the sun. If that were the case I would have expected the entire earth to have evaporated ages ago.
The
“”””” davidmhoffer says:
March 2, 2011 at 3:24 am
George E Smith;
I read the papers on CO2 being “lumpy” quite a while ago and only skimmed them. My recollection is that what you say is pretty much correct. That said, the distribution of CO2 is still FAR more even than water vapour in the atmosphere. Convection at the equator in particular drives CO2 upward as well as water vapour. As temps cool, the holding capacity of the air drops, driving water vapour out as droplets, snow, what ever the balance of conditions dictate. I’m guessing that some of the CO2 gets scrubbed out as well with the rain/snow, but the bulk of it continues upward. Point being that there is a band below which water vapour dominates the absorption spectrums where the two overlap, and a band above which CO2 becomes significant by comparison. Insignificant to climate, but still not representated well by a lab cylinder with artificial atmosphere or two plates of what ever with CO2 between them.
I’d far rather spend time getting people to understand the fallacy of this thing called an “average” temperature, or the misleading way the IPCC calculates and presents sensitivity, but I don’t get a lot of traction on those issues. “””””
David, I don’t think we are in much disagreement about any of this. If you have gleaned an impression, that I considert he global CO2 “lumpiness” to be important; please let me disabuse you of that notion; I agree with your thought that H2O is far lumpier. For me personally, my ONLY interest in the CO2 lumpiness, is that it can lead to some understanding of what mechanisms are causing seasonal CO2 variations. And the relatively rapid variations in that lumpiness suggest to me that things like “residence Time” of CO2 is a way overblown issue. I don’t have any problems accepting the usual claimed amounts of CO2, although I don’t necessarily accept claims as to its origins; but none of that matters to me, because I don’t think CO2 is the controlling factor.
As to your comment on the “Mean Global Temperature”; well I guess it has been some time since I last referred to that as being similar in importance to the average telephone number in the Manhattan phone directory. I’m in total agreement with you that the mean global Temperature is neither known nor of any real value if we did know it.
I’m still mystified by repeated claims by the CO2 fans that H2O is not a GHG, but simply an amplification of the effect of CO2, and that absent CO2; the real green house gas, the earth would simply be a frozen ice ball.
This claim has been most recently been made in the much publicised featured article in the Jan 2011 issue of Physics Today, by Peter Humbug; climate modeller supreme.
Without the heating by CO2, he says there would be no water vapor in the atmosphere; well to be fair he didn’t say that but he did say it would all rain out. That to me DOES mean there would be NO CLOUDS.
So let’s take his fozen ice ball, which presumably will be below 273 K
Well the globally averaged solar input would be 340.5 W/m^2 based on the newly determined 1362 TSI number. That would put the radiation balanced equilibrium Temperature at 278.4 K Well that is before we take out the ozone hole at 9.6 microns.
It’s not a very deep hole but maybe it can cut the incoming enough to squeeze under 273 K, and get to an ice ball Temperature.
At this point the critice will say, that this frozen ice ball will reflect 80% of the sunlight back out into space, so the Temperature would go much lower. So it seems that PH is on solid ground; well solid ice.
What I object to in this picture is two assumptions. We already have places on earth where the Temperature routinely gets below 250 K even with all the CO2 (well mixed), and those places still have plenty of clouds, made of ice crystals, so all the water has not rained out.
My biggest objection is that the solar input to planet earth is NOT 340.5 W/m^2; that is the globally averaged value. The sun is actually delivering 1362 w/m^2 but only to a portion of the earth; half of it roughly; but non-uniformly.
If you shine that 1362 W/m^2 blow torch on to the surface of a frozen ice ball at 250 K Temeprature, in the earth tropical zones, those places will NOT remain frozen. More importantly, if you remove ALL the CO2 and
ALL the H2O, from the atmosphere; they can never freeze in the first place; but i’ll humor him and assume they are frozen; so the sun got shut off for a long time to allow that to happen.
That energy is going to melt the surface of any ice ball, which will refreeze at night to become a solid ice rather than snow, and that ice will trnasmit a whole lot of solar energy, which will eventually get trapped by TIR in the ice “glass”.
More importantly, H2O molecules will sublime off that frozen surface; and you WILL get H2O vapor in the atmosphere; even at 250 K Temperature.
Well I won’t bore you with the gory details; but iceball earth is a crazy construct of Trenberth’s equally crazy cartoon of Earth’s energy balance. The real earth DOES NOT AVERAGE the sun’s energy input. Its thermal conductivity is not high enough to equilibrate to some isothermal Temperature of Trenberth’s model.
It is heated by that 1362 W/m^2 attenuated by whatever absorptive gases there are INCLUDING BOTH CO2 AND H2O, which both absorb part of the solar spectrum; and that heat is stored mostly in the very slowly equlibrating oceans, so tomorrow morning when the sun rises again, the local heating from yesterday’s sunbathing, will have not dissipated, and so tomorrow it will continue to get hotter until we again reach today’s conditions.
Iceball earth is a silly idea; not based on reality.
“”””” Myrrh says:
March 2, 2011 at 2:44 am
George E. Smith says,
March 1, 2011 at 5:52 pm
I posted it for the variations of explanations… You could add yours to it. “””””
Well Myrrh, I never said any such thing. I would appreciate it if you would not cite stuff as being originated by me; when I said no such thing. I have NO PROBLEM if you DO want to cut and paste things I HAVE said; I do that all the time; but pleae do NOT put anything under a label:-
“”””” George E. Smith says,
March 1, 2011 at 5:52 pm “””
Unless it IS something I did say.
Phil. says:
March 2, 2011 at 9:19 am
Phil, the -18 C comes from the standard model of radiated heat transfer given approx 240 w/m2 at surface. Thus having GHG’s take us up 33 degrees to 15 C.
Without any GHG no H2o, CO2 etc the sun would essentially have free rein with no absorbtion, so surface would get 340 w/m2 thus raising up to 278 K or 5 C to start. I think the 340 number used is to low. It can easly be show via a pan of water and a thermometer that large protion of the surface get 700-1000 w/m2. Heck SOD has a graph on his web site showing the radiance of the sun on a plot of ground in Canada where measured solar radiation is about 700 w/m2.
I think that ignoring the (PV=nRT) pressure of the atmosphere is a mistake. STP is 0 C. So not a bizarre statement. You are free to agree or disagree as you wish. So at most for me GHG’s will only add 15 degrees C so the effect of CO2 is less than thought. If any at all.
Also, would N2 or O2 cool if they went up. If they cannot radiate just going up will do little. Granted some work will be done so energy will be lost but how much?
As 99% of atmosphere is N2 and O2 we need to look at them. I am trying to find out. I have an idea they do radiate just like any matter at a temperature but I have not seen a temperature graph for each showing their respective pattens or amounts. If they do not I will change my idea.
No, the igloo doesn’t generate any heat. But it does absorb heat from you when you crawl in. Some of that heat it passes along to the outside, and some it radiates back at you. So you are in fact being warmed by heat from a colder surface radiating toward you.
Is the above post serious or not?
George E Smith;
EXACTLY! EXCELLENT!
RJ says:
March 2, 2011 at 11:44 am
No, the igloo doesn’t generate any heat. But it does absorb heat from you when you crawl in. Some of that heat it passes along to the outside, and some it radiates back at you. So you are in fact being warmed by heat from a colder surface radiating toward you.>>>
Is the above post serious or not?>>>>
Oh for gosh sakes. Are you seriously asking if I’m serious? I quit, I’m not answering anymore. Go to the top, read the article, then read every comment afterward if you undersand it or not. When you get back down to the bottom, please advise if you think I am serious, and also if you think I am right. Get one of two wrong, and you have to go back to the top and do it again. Two of two wrong… I got no cure for that.
You know Ilearned just enough Physics to be hazard to myself, and anyone who is foolish enough to believe what I write, without sanity checking it for themselves.
Some times I rely on the fact that Phil is lurking out there somewhere, and if I totally screw up, that he will jump all over me.
I never learned quite enough Wave or Quantum mechanics much beyond the Bohr Sommerfeld Atom; and I only recently realized that Maxwell’s equations didn’t go into the trash can as a result of a quite arbitrary, and unsupportable assumption by Bohr, that Maxwell be damned, an electron in orbit around a nucleus, did not have to radiate per Maxwell, so long as it stayed in one of those orbits. If I had studied another year beyond that, I would have found out that the Bohr Sommerfeld elliptical planetary orbit concept was what was wrong; despite its spectacular importance in explaining the mysteries of Atomic line spectra.
If now the electron was just “somewhere there” (who said anything about moving), the continuous acceleration vanishes, and Maxwell is redeemed. Must have been since he is now enshrined in the exactly defined value of (c) and its Maxwellian components; epsilon-naught, and mu-naught.
There was a time when I could actually solve the Schrodinger equation for some simple cases.
So right now, in front of me on my desk, I have the definitive Extended Edition of the Feynman Lectures, as Well as Gerhard Herzberg’s Atomic Spectra, and Atomic structure, plus Feynman’s little QED book.
So if I have to solve the Shrodinger equation for the entire atmosphere; sooner or later, I am going to figure out how the radiation of the atmosphere really works. And I’m not overjoyed with many of the explanations I have heard or read.
But even that is just a curiosity of mine. I simply note that every single addition of another H2O molecule, or for that matter a CO2 molecule to the atmosphere anywhere on earth MUST reduce the total amount of direct solar spectrum energy that reaches the surface of the earth (solid or liquid); regardles of whatever else happens.
And NOBODY ever observed it to get warmer (higher Temperature) in the shadow zone, when a cloud passes in front of the sun; it ALWAYS gets cooler (lower Temperature) And of course I also believe that it is the warmer more humid conditions at the surface, during the day, that creates the high level balmy cloud conditions at night; those clouds did NOT create the conditions on the ground.
George E. Smith – I was replying to what you said. Apologies if that wasn’t clear.
If it had been a quote I would have used quotation marks or put it into italics.
Bill Illis posted earlier an IR image of Earth, but did not submit optical conditions for the image. He was complaining that continents are not visible, therefore the infamous “IR transparency window” of real atmosphere seems to be in doubt. Here is what I found, an image in 11um band from GOES-10 satellite, 1998:
http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/goes/980221.goes10.ir4.gif
Mexico, California, Florida, entire America is pretty much recognizable. Same goes for 12um (Ch5) band:
http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/goes/980221.goes10.ir5.gif
Enjoy.
I wonder, here are many posters interested in IR science. Could anyone return a favor and point to reasonably-resolved OLR spectra averaged for ALL_WEATHER CONDITIONS? Not like the one clear sky from arctics and another from tropics. Somehow I have difficulties to locate this kind of data. I know that Griggs and Harris went through some serious efforts to sort out 99% of all available IRIS (1970) spectra in order to select clear-sky for their particular purpose. I wonder where I can find the remaining 99% part of IRIS data. Or similar. Thanks in advance.
Re: Ira Glickstein, PhD says:
March 2, 2011 at 9:22 am
The second Law of thermodynamics refers to the NET transfer of heat energy that must be from warmer to cooler bodies. But, as was noted earlier in this thread, if you are spraying me with a fire hose and I am simultaneously spraying you with garden hose that has blue-tinted water, I will get a lot wetter, but you will get some blue water on your clothes.
When, question to all here, did this idea of “NET” appear? I recall reading a discussion a few years ago when some applied scientist was arguing this point and saying that word wasn’t in the original statements of the law, he quoted from old physics text books he had learned from as well as current ones in use in his industry.
Also, is this of any use in the Thermodynamics discussion going on here?
Thermodynamics – Historical Background, Temperature, Expansion Coefficients, Thermostats, Water, Heat, The First Law of Thermodynamics – Conservation of energy
http://science.jrank.org/pages/6816/Thermodynamics.html
and, http://science.jrank.org/page/6814/Thermodynamics-second-law-thermodynamics.html
From the second, bearing in mind the blue water in the exchange described by Ira above:
“One of the most remarkable facts of nature is that certain processes take place in only one direction. For example, if a high temperature object is placed in contact with one of lower temperature, heat flows from the hotter to the cooler until the temperatures become equal. In this case (where there is no work done), the first law simply requires that the energy lost by one object should be equal to that gained by the other object (through the mechanism of heat flow), but does not prescribe the direction of the energy flow. Yet, in a situation like this, heat never flows from the cooler to the hotter object. Similarly, when a drop of ink is placed in a glass of water which is then stirred, the ink distributes itself throughout the water. Yet no amount of stirring will make the uniformly-distributed ink go back into a single drop. An open bottle of perfume … . These are all examples of the second law of thermodynamics, which is usually stated in two different ways. Although the two statements appear quite different, it can be shown that they are equivalent and that each one implies the other.”
The first page goes through examples in various practical applications to explain these laws. As far as I can tell, (Don V et al?) none has any idea of there being some “NET” exchange concept.
Re: Boltzmann -this is interesting, maybe, on http://science.jrank.org/pages/19739/Physics-SECOND-LAW-THERMODYNAMICS.html
It say that “Bolzmann had less success answering a second set of objections regarding atomism. The British physicist William Thomson (1824-1907) and Scottish physicist Peter Tait (1831-1901) rejected atomism as a result of their adherence to the dynamical theory of matter, which rejected the existence of a void. Similarly, Ernst Mach put forward empiricist counterarguments, which rejected Boltzmann’s adherence to entities that could not be confirmed by direct observation.”
Is this void aspect involved somehow in how the 1st and 2nd laws are understood differently by AGWScience and Real Science in the energy exchange argument? And, is this connected with the NASA rejection of Stefan-Bolzmann for their moon landing: “..NASA, proved there was no such thing as a greenhouse gas effect because the ‘blackbody’ numbers supporting the theory didn’t add up in a 3-dimensional universe:”
http://sppiblog.org/tag/stefan-boltzmann-equations
George E. Smith,
“And NOBODY ever observed it to get warmer (higher Temperature) in the shadow zone, when a cloud passes in front of the sun; it ALWAYS gets cooler (lower Temperature) And of course I also believe that it is the warmer more humid conditions at the surface, during the day, that creates the high level balmy cloud conditions at night; those clouds did NOT create the conditions on the ground.”
Careful, I think they are trying to pass laws so they can again burn heretics!! 8>)
Bryan says:
March 2, 2011 at 10:31 am
The igloo insulates in exactly the same way as the jacket around a hot water tank. The material chosen for the insulator will reduce heat loss by conduction, convection and radiation
The jacket is in fact a better radiator than the atmosphere.
Yet no one would talk about the “greenhouse effect” of a water tank jacket.
In my attempt to work out just how big this “insulating blanket of CO2” was of AGW claim, I calculated that to wrap around an area the size of the human body and if all the CO2 was gathered in one place it would amount to an insulating blanket around 7cm2 in a 2 square metre, 1 square inch in a couple of square yards blanket. (Roughly, taking skin area of human body and CO2 at 400 ppm). Some blanket! If this was “well-mixed” as AGW claims, where’s the CO2 blanket?
Even if AGW use the unsubstantiated claim that CO2 stays in the atmosphere accumulating for hundreds and even thousands of years, take your pick, they make up the numbers to suit, and double current amounts actually stayed in the atmosphere, this would be nonsense as “insulating blanket” to not only stop heat loss globally but raise the global temperature of the Earth.
So, no igloo, just a really really insignificant scattering of CO2 molecules around the frozen body in the snowy wastes.
Ira, I have spent hours writing an essay in explanation of why we think differently and just now I have accidentally deleted it.- So for now, – Ok the Gods are telling me you are right.
AGW is happening!
But I will be back!
Myrrh asks “When, question to all here, did this idea of “NET” appear? ”
I think it has always been there. Thermodynamics has always involved statistics and averages. If Object A and Object B are in contact and at the same temperature, then there is no flow of energy either direction. But since the energies of particles in the two objects have a wide random variation in speeds, any given collision between an atom of A and an atom of B will transfer energy. There will be millions of transfers of energy from A to B. There will be millions of transfers of energy from B to A.
There is no violation of the 2nd law. While A is transferring energy to B, B is transferring a similar amount of energy to A. Ie the NET transfer of energy is zero (at least when averaged over sufficiently long periods of time to average out short-term statistical fluctuations).
Similarly, if A and B are interacting via photons, A will be transferring lots of energy to B, and B will be transferring lots of energy to A. The net flow is zero.
Even if B is colder than A, there will be some collisions where B transfers energy to A. There will be some photons that transfer energy from B to A. There will just be MORE collisions and MORE photons transferring energy from A to B, so the NET transfer is from the warmer object to the cooler object.
I have to clarify myself on the aspect of oxygen and nitrogen absorption/emission in our atmosphere. After some detailed digging it appears there is a continuum absorption and emission but the exact nature and the mechanisms is where I was off a bit. Vibrational and rotational excitations are quantized and darn I already knew that, but for some reason that wasn’t registering, no sleep. ☺
Here’s the gist gathered from some .mil and hitran and hartcode papers and sites: both oxygen and nitrogen do have bands in the infrared and both also have continuums about those lines. Oxygen’s is in the range of 1345-1820 cm-1(5.5-7.4 µm) and nitrogen is located in the range 2105-2620 cm-1(3.8-4.8 µm). I read HARTCODE is adding O2 & N2 continuum capabilities also. So how does the atmosphere as a whole handle a small portion of the energy within our atmosphere and help move it to space? Never found out how much.
The long wave infrared radiation from the surface is as a near black body continuous spectrum and the tail of this distribution on the short wave side is where both are located. These photons in these ranges will be immediately be absorbed by the respective O2 or N2 molecules near the surface, that is a swag but a sure one. But is that it? No. Not to my best knowledge. That vibrational energy will mainly thermalized just as CO2 or H2O when excited and only sometimes re-emit a photon.
But that raises another question. Can O2 or N2 get excited from within the atmosphere? Seems yes, but it can only occur where hit by a fast enough moving molecule that adds the right additional energy to put it into its respective continuum listed above or exactly at one of the strong spectrum lines, all by electron interaction. Then the same sequence happens as explained above, thermalized. I have yet to find a figure estimating the amount of energy that flow in this manner but would like to know.
Now back to the 8 to 12 µm window. Does a continuum exist there? Yes. That is covered by the water vapors continuum that spans basically the entire IR spectrum to some degree or another and that is a very curious subject that everyone interested in this post should Google and read some about it. Many links. Search “H2O continuum in infrared”. Also that is why almost spectrums you ever see are taken in Antarctica, cold and little water vapor.
I have yet to think through this, to see if this has any real influence, but much of this about continuums was all news to me.
If anyone can fill in more info along these lines, please do so.
But but but — it might cause a tipping point tipping and it might tip any old which way because tipping points are so tippy, and all! Just a tip for you.
😉
Warming = More Life. Cooling = More Death.
Pick one!
Igloos and snow caves operate more or less like any enclosed space: they trap warm air. It helps that ice and snow reflect really well, of course. Re-radiation back atcha is trivial in an igloo.
Also on my [March 2, 2011 at 5:32 pm ] comment:
I mentioned the Antarctica spectrums you see almost everywhere, this is why they are a distorted view of the Earth’s normal spectrum. The oxygen and nitrogen continuums are on the high frequency edge of the Planck gray body curve (assuming Earth’s emissivity to be about 0.96), so as it gets colder, at higher altitudes or high latitudes, the curve shifts to the lower frequencies where these two continuums are of little effect and not visible in spectrums.
The same goes for the water vapor continuum, at locations where there is very little humidity, this continuum is not apparent. And where is that? Over deserts and the arctic or above the top of the atmosphere (TOA). And this might just be coincidence, but if you wanted to show spectrums that wrongly magnify CO2’s influence, where would you take them from? Right, high altitude, over deserts, or at one of the poles and that is exactly where all of the spectrums on the internet are located that I have come across anyway. Now that is curious.
to Wayne
You are looking in the right directions.
Consider a single N2 molecule at the upper edge of the atmosphere, right on the border of outer space, if you will.
Now, the boundary conditions of radiational heat transfer theory are two states (1) a blackbody perfect emitter/absorber and (2) a perfect reflector which is a non emitter/non absorber. Neither one exists in total in the real world. And all material objects (matter, atoms, molecules) exist in between.
Now, our hypothetical N2 molecule at the edge of space, will, regardless of its absortivity, reflectivity, and transmissivity values given in ANY text books, models, calculation, whatever reference you will find… DESPITE ALL THAT….it will indeed radiate whatever internal energy it has into the 4 deg K thermal background radiation of outer space. And it can only give up that energy through radiation. Conduction and convection don’t work in outer space. Think about that.
We know that because the only alternative is for N2 to be a ‘perfect reflector’ where it can somehow maintain an elevated internal energy despite its environment. And such things do not exist. At least there are none that I know of that have ever been found.
This is a point I keep on bringing up. That ‘longwave’ emission/absorption data for atmospheric gases has never been properly tested under REAL LIFE CONDITIONS.
They are calculated from various theories, opinions, assumptions, etc. The graphs, etc for absorption/transmission beyond 10 or 15 microns are at best just speculations, and at worst, just wild-assed guesses. Personally, I am of the opinion that they are more wild-assed guesses than anything.
Phil. says:
March 2, 2011 at 5:59 am
Re: Myrrh says to George E. Smith:
“But see my post above. How is the example of real light bulb which shows the proportion of Visible to Thermal IR at 5/95, and the real life physics from the steel industry which gives a billet of steel at temp X to have 100,000 times more IR than Visible not relevant to this? Is the Sun different?”
Yes it’s a damn sight hotter!
If you’d take the trouble to look at the Stefan-Bolzmann equation you’d learn that cold surfaces like the earth emit in the IR around 10 microns, your billet of steel around 2 microns, the sun around 0.5 microns. The hotter something is the shorter the wavelength and the more energetic the light.
Because it’s a damn sight hotter it begins emitting in the Visible Light spectrum, in other words, heat creates light. It doesn’t mean that light is hot.
See the NASA page I posted from, Near IR is shortwave next to Visible Light and is COOL.
Short wave energies are not Thermal Energies, they may well be more energetic, but that does not mean they have the ability to warm things.
That’s why there’s a difference in terms used, Light energies and Heat energies.
Thermal IR heats things, we feel it as heat from the Sun, we do not feel the rainbow of colours from the Sun as heat, they do not warm us up.
If any of these rainbow of colours is intensified in some way, concentrated, it can burn surfaces and even burn through, but, luckily for us, Visible Light and short wave IR is Reflective, it bounces off things rather than penetrates. It is the longer wave Thermal IR that heats things, heats the Earth, heats organic matter, heats us, that we feel as penetrating heat from the Sun. We cannot feel the colours, they are Cool. See NASA page.
Earth and we also emit around 10 microns, that’s Thermal IR. Our bodies naturally balance in and out heat to maintain constant temperature, our source of energy is food. The Earth just carries on cooling down from any heat it has obtained once the source of heat for it is gone, with no Sun at night in the desert for example, the temperature drops rapidly and the ground will give up its heat, or rather the colder atmosphere will take heat from it. Heat flows spontaneously from hotter body to colder, but I’ve also seen this explained as: if we grab a colder object, say snowball, it’s not the cold of the object we’re feeling, but the heat loss in our hand.
So, it doesn’t matter that the Light is more energetic from a hotter object, it doesn’t have the ability to warm organic stuff, we and the Earth are organic. It can burn, UV we can’t feel but if particularly intense, as experienced by a body not used to it, it will burn the skin. It doesn’t penetrate, is not absorbed by the body to create warmth as Thermal IR is absorbed, it doesn’t even make it through even the first layer of skin, the epidermis. However ‘more energy’ it has is irrelevant, it can’t warm organic matter. Thermal energy, past the short wave Near IR, penetrates into matter and warms it.
The AGWScience claim that Solar energies (Visible and the neighbour shortwave either side), is what warms the Earth, is total —- (insert favourite nonsense noun).
My reference was to the information I gave on light bulbs and steel billet. Please, do find the links and read what they say. A light bulb gives off 95% of its energy as Heat, this is Thermal IR, a.k.a. Heat Energy. Light energy at 5% of the total energy given off is not giving us any heat, regardless that it is more energetic. It is giving off these two energies, light and heat, at the same time. It isn’t that one grows into the other… The other example of the steel billet at a certain temperature giving off 100,000 times more heat energy than visible light energy, shows amount, most of, the energy given off is in the form of Thermal IR..
The ‘peak’ energy as Visible light is only a choice of reference. If you take the amount of energy that actually warms things up, the Thermal IR, then the peak energy in lightbulb and steel billet is Thermal IR, by a heck of a long way.
Ira said to me (March 1, 2011 at 6:11 am): Myrrh, you really need to get outside more and sit in the Sunshine and feel the warmth! That is how visible and near-visible (“shortwave”) light warms the Earth.
Well, I say different, I say it isn’t and I have gone to a great deal of effort to explain why I say it isn’t. I have given a NASA page which explains it exactly as I explain it, that the heat we feel from the sun is Thermal IR. That’s why it’s called Thermal IR or Heat Energy, because it is.
On that same NASA page it explains that Near IR, which is included in the “Solar” Ira and AGW use because it is shortwave energy next to Visible, is COOL. They give an example of a remote control.
Elsewhere I’ve also used the remote control to explain how Visible and short wave energies are Reflective (these are standard descriptions as Light/Heat energies), rather than Absorbtive as is Thermal IR. You can try it at home, change your TV channel by bouncing the light off the ceiling and walls rather than pointing directly at receiver.
Thermal IR on the other hand, which you can also experiment with if you can borrow a Thermal IR heater, works by heat energy directly penetrating the objects in the room, the walls, the people, the furniture. It doesn’t warm the air, but organic matter. It doesn’t bounce off, it penetrates.
So, Ira is wrong, it isn’t shortwave which warms the Earth. The graphic and AGW claims here are pure, unadulterated nonsense. Read that NASA page. Decide for yourself.
Ira also said to me in that post: If you don’t or cannot get outside, turn on an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb and hold your hand near it (not too close you will get burned). Feel the heat? That is shortwave light because the filament is heated to temperatures similar to the Sun’s surface. You can tell it is shortwave because you can see the light.
I’m sitting in a room at my computer which is directing light at me, just above the screen, it’s a low light, about 15″ from the top of my screen and a couple of feet away from me at an angle to me, is a 40 watt incandescent bulb. The top of my computer screen is hot. The lightbulb has warmed it. The bottom of the screen slightly tilted towards me is colder, colder than my hand. I can even feel the bulb’s heat on the top left of my forehead which is where it reaches me most from the angle I’m sitting. The light from the computer screen isn’t having any warming affect whatsoever..
Ira’s “you can tell it is shortwave because you can see the light”, isn’t proof that that it’s the shortwave that is doing the warming. It only shows the temperature of the light bulb.
It is ‘a proof’ of how hot the object is (but this not applicable to all materials, see Feet2thefire’s explanation elsewhere) in the light bulb, if we were so skilled; the steel worker can tell by the colour of the light how hot the steel is getting.
All that shows is that the filament is hot enough to create high energy colours as well as producing Thermal IR I’m feeling as heat.
If you switch on an electric ring on a stove and begin at a low setting, you will soon feel the heat, the Thermal IR, and when you turn this up to higher settings you will feel more and more heat, you will also notice a change in colour as it gets hotter and hotter and you’re feeling more and more heat from it. It’s not the colour giving off the heat. Is it? The colour is the effect produced by changes in the heated ring, just as the heat given off is an effect of the same changes.
As the ring gets hotter so more heat is given off and the colour of the ring itself changes. They’re both effects. What we see in the Sun is the colour change of it as object because it’s hot enough to be that colour. The visible colours themselves aren’t hot.
The peak wavelength of the Stefan-Bolzmann is only showing the peak of energies emitted by wavelength, this is in Visible light. If the hotter meant more short wave then the peak should be in far shortwave. http://sciencevault.net/ibphysics/astrophysics/stellarradiation.htm
What is WRONG, in the descriptions of these and so all the confusion in AGW as Ira presents it here, is the wording used to describe what’s happening. “Hotter objects emit most of their radiation at shorter wavelengths: hence they will appear to be bluer while cooler objects emit most of their radiation at longer wavelengths.”
It’s not true. As with the light bulb and steel, hotter objects emit most of their radiation in the longer wavelengths, heat. All that stuff under the curve to the right of Visible and Near IR. A small fraction only therefore is emitted as light, which happens to have shorter wavelengths; which get shorter in wavelength, so brighter, the hotter the object. The “peak” is only describing the wavelength peaking in luminosity, not the amount of energy generated.
The peak comparison by wavelengths is not the same as peak comparison in amounts of energy.
(Peak comparison in terms of amounts of energy would have to include other wavelengths, radio for example, but in comparing Solar to Heat as we’re doing here):
So, if as Ira says “the filament of the incandescent light bulb is heated to temperatures similar to the Sun’s surface”, and we know such a lightbulb gives MOST of its energy in Heat and not Light, in Thermal IR, 95%, and only a small AMOUNT in Visible, only 5%, then what is really “the most” energy given off by the Sun?
wayne says:
March 2, 2011 at 5:32 pm
I have to clarify myself on the aspect of oxygen and nitrogen absorption/emission in our atmosphere. After some detailed digging it appears there is a continuum absorption and emission but the exact nature and the mechanisms is where I was off a bit. Vibrational and rotational excitations are quantized and darn I already knew that, but for some reason that wasn’t registering, no sleep. ☺
Here’s the gist gathered from some .mil and hitran and hartcode papers and sites: both oxygen and nitrogen do have bands in the infrared and both also have continuums about those lines. Oxygen’s is in the range of 1345-1820 cm-1(5.5-7.4 µm) and nitrogen is located in the range 2105-2620 cm-1(3.8-4.8 µm). I read HARTCODE is adding O2 & N2 continuum capabilities also. So how does the atmosphere as a whole handle a small portion of the energy within our atmosphere and help move it to space? Never found out how much.
As shown on the figure I’ve shown here several times, more than a million times weaker than CO2 and H2O!
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/CO2N2O2.png
to Phil
Try to get your nose out of the fake world of assumptions, charlatans, naive scientists, fear mongers and dolts…. and into the real world.
The data you keep pointing to are contrived.
THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN ACTUALLY MEASURED.
Tim Folkerts @ur momisugly March 2, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Thank you, that’s helpful.
I think there’s a word missing, or concept, (sorry, it’s late…). I was going to used “possible” in “There will [possibly] be millions of transfers of energy from A to B. etc.”, but that’s not quite right, because if the Law states categorically that heat never flows from cold to hot then it isn’t possible if these energies are carrying/creating heat.
The millions is reduced to a discrete amount of possibilities, so, statistical net isn’t applicable as that only relates to possible range of movement of a molecule as a ‘base’, not the possible range of movement of a molecule restricted by the circumstances it finds itself in.
Hope I’m making sense in that you can understand what I’m trying to say, even if you don’t agree… Will take another look at it tomorrow.
Aggh, I was trying to put Tim’s name in bold, and the rest normal, don’t know where the italics came from. I’m not quoting Tim, that’s all a reply from me to his post above; time for bed.