Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The current climate paradigm believed by most scientists in the field can be likened to the movement of balls on a pool table.
Figure 1. Pool balls on a level table. Response is directly proportional to applied force (double the force, double the distance). There are no “preferred” positions—every position on the table is equally attainable and probable.
The current climate paradigm is as linear and as mechanistic as that pool table. At its heart is the belief that the controlling equation for the future evolution of the climate is:
Forcing Change of 3.7 watts/metre^2 = 3°C Surface Temperature Change
This can also be written as:
∆T = λ ∆Q
where ∆Q is the change in forcing, ∆T is the change in temperature, and lambda (λ) is the climate sensitivity of 3°C / 3.7 w/m2 = 0.8 degrees C for each additional watt/m2 of forcing.
Everything else is claimed to average out, leaving only that relationship. The ratio between the imposed forcing and the supposed resulting temperature change is assumed to be a constant, called the “climate sensitivity”. There is much discussion as to the value of the climate sensitivity, which swirls around whether there is net positive or negative feedback from things like clouds and water vapor. According to the prevailing theory and equation, if the climate sensitivity is high, a small forcing change is said to cause a larger temperature change, and vice versa.
Me, I don’t believe that equation one bit. I discussed problems with the equation in “The Cold Equations“. For me, the idea that surface air temperature slavishly follows forcing goes against everything I know about complex natural flow systems. I cannot think of any complex natural flow system which is linear in that manner with respect to its inputs. I find it completely astounding that people actually believe that the global climate system, with all of its intricate feedbacks and forcings and resonances and chaotic nature, is that linearly simple. But that is the current paradigm for the climate, a completely linear system.
I am neither a climate sceptic, nor an AGW believer, nor an agnostic on the subject. Instead, I am a climate heretic. I think that the dominant climate paradigm is completely incorrect. I hold that there is no level pool table. I say that there is no constant “climate sensitivity”. Instead, there are preferred states. I say, and have discussed elsewhere, that the temperature of the Earth is kept within a fairly narrow range through the action of a variety of natural homeostatic mechanisms.
So what is a homeostatic mechanism when it’s at home?
The concept of “homeostat” is a more general version of the word “thermostat”. A thermostat keeps temperature the same. A homeostatic mechanism keeps something the same. A familiar version is the “cruise control” of a car, which keeps the car’s speed the same. Per Wikipedia, homeostasis is “the property of a system, either open or closed, that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition.” Not a bad definition. It is a natural governor which regulates some aspect of the system.
The first thing to understand about climate homeostasis is that it has nothing to do with feedback. This is because in general the controlling mechanism involves a regime shift, rather than a variation in some feedback value. The current furore about the exact level of feedback in the system, while interesting, is not directly relevant, as variations in feedback are not a feature of the control mechanism.
To see why the control mechanism regulating the earth’s temperature does not involve feedback, here is the evolution of the day and night in the tropical ocean. The tropical ocean is where the majority of the sun’s energy enters the huge heat engine we call the climate. So naturally, it is also where the major homeostatic mechanism are located.
At dawn, the atmosphere is stratified, with the coolest air nearest the surface. The nocturnal overturning of the ocean is coming to an end. The sun is free to heat the ocean. The air near the surface eddies randomly.
Figure 2. Average conditions over the tropical ocean shortly after dawn.
As the sun continues to heat the ocean, around ten or eleven o’clock in the morning there is a sudden regime shift. A new circulation pattern replaces the random eddying. As soon as a critical temperature/humidity threshold is passed, local circulation cells spring up everywhere. These cells transport water vapor upwards to the local lifting condensation level. At that level, the water vapor condenses into clouds as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Average conditions over the tropical ocean when cumulus threshold is passed.
Note that this area-wide shift to an organized circulation pattern is not a change in feedback. It has nothing to do with feedback. It is a self-organized emergent phenomenon. It is threshold-based, meaning that it emerges spontaneously when a certain threshold is passed. In the “wet” deep tropics there’s plenty of water vapor, so the major variable in the threshold is the temperature.
Under the new late-morning cumulus circulation regime, much less surface warming goes on. Part of the sunlight is reflected back to space, so less energy makes it into the system to begin with. Then the increasing wind due to the cumulus-based circulation pattern increases the evaporation, reducing the surface warming even more by moving latent energy up to the lifting condensation level.
Note that the system is self-controlling. If the ocean is a bit warmer, the new circulation regime starts earlier in the morning, and cuts down the total daily warming. On the other hand, if the ocean is cooler than usual, clear morning skies last later into the day, allowing increased warming. The system is regulated by the time of onset of the regime change.
Let’s stop at this point in our examination of the tropical day and consider the idea of “climate sensitivity”. The solar forcing is constantly increasing as the sun rises higher in the sky. In the morning before the onset of cumulus circulation, the sun comes through the clear atmosphere and rapidly warms the surface. So the thermal response is large, and the climate sensitivity is high.
After the onset of the cumulus regime, on the other hand, much of the sunlight is reflected back to space. Less sunlight remains to warm the ocean. In addition to reduced sunlight there is enhanced evaporative cooling. Compared to the morning, the climate sensitivity is much lower. The heating of the surface slows down.
So here we have two situations with very different climate sensitivities. In the early morning, climate sensitivity is high, and the temperature rises quickly with the increasing solar insolation. In the late morning, a regime change occurs to a situation with much lower climate sensitivity. Adding extra solar energy doesn’t raise the temperature anywhere near as fast as it did earlier.
So climate sensitivity varies … which means, of course, that the constant “temperature sensitivity” that they claim exists must be an average temperature sensitivity. Fair enough, let’s take a look at how that works.
Suppose the early morning regime and the late morning regime are the same length, maybe three hours each. In that case we take the simple mathematical average. But here’s the problem. As noted above, when it’s warm the cumulus circulation starts up earlier than usual. More hours of cumulus means lower sensitivity.
On the other hand, when the ocean is cooler than usual, the clear skies prevail for more of the morning. As a result, the average climate sensitivity rises.
In other words, in the all-important tropical region, climate sensitivity is not a constant in any sense. Instead, it varies inversely with temperature.
Moving along through the day, at some point in the afternoon there is a good chance that the cumulus circulation pattern is not enough to stop the continued surface temperature increase. When the temperature exceeds a certain higher threshold, another complete regime shift takes place. Some of the innocent cumulus clouds suddenly mutate and grow rapidly into towering monsters. The regime shift involves the spontaneous generation of those magical, independently mobile heat engines called thunderstorms.
Thunderstorms are dual-fuel heat engines. They run on low-density air, air that rises, condenses out the moisture and rewarms the air, which rises deep into the troposphere.
Figure 4. Afternoon thunderstorm circulation over the tropical ocean.
There are a couple of ways to get low density air. One is to heat the air. This is how a thunderstorm gets started, as a strong cumulus cloud. The sun plus GHG radiation combine to heat the surface, warming the air. The low density air rises. When that gets strong enough, a thunderstorm starts to form.
Once the thunderstorm is started, the second fuel is added to the fire — water vapor. Counter-intuitively, the more water vapor there is in the air, the lighter it becomes. The thunderstorm generates strong winds around its base. Evaporation is proportional to wind speed, so this greatly increases the local evaporation.
This, of course, makes the air lighter, and makes the air rise faster, which makes the thunderstorm stronger, which in turn increases the wind speed around the thunderstorm base, which increases the evaporation even more … a thunderstorm is a regenerative system like a fire where part of the energy is used to run a bellows to make the fire burn even hotter.
This gives thunderstorms a unique ability that, as far as I know, is not represented in any of the climate models. It is capable of driving the surface temperature well below the temperature that was needed to get it going. It can run on into the evening, and at times well into the night, on its combination of thermal and evaporation energy sources.
Thunderstorms can be thought of as local leakages that transport heat rapidly from the surface to the upper atmosphere. They cool the surface in a host of ways, utilizing a combination of cold water, shade, wind, spray, evaporation, and cold air.
And just like the onset of the cumulus circulation, the onset of thunderstorms occurs earlier on days when it is warmer, and it occurs later (and sometimes not at all) on days that are cooler than usual.
So again, we see that there is no way to assign an average climate sensitivity. The warmer it gets, the less each additional watt per metre actually warms the surface.
Even what I describe above doesn’t exhaust the variety of self-organization to decrease incoming sunlight and move more energy aloft. If the day continues to warm, the thunderstorms self-assemble into long, long rows of thunderstorms called “squall lines” (not illustrated). Between these long lines of thunderstorms there are equally long areas of clear descending air. Instead of the regime of individual “doughnut-shaped” circulation around each thunderstorm and cumulus cloud, it has all been replaced by long cylinders of air which sink in the valleys between the serried rows of thunderstorms, and rise up through their centers. This increases the rate at which the energy can be moved from the surface and converted into work.
Like all of the regime shifts, the change from individual tropical thunderstorms to squall lines is temperature dependent and threshold based. It occurs at the warmest temperatures.
Finally, once all of the fireworks are over, first the cumulus and then the thunderstorms decay and dissipate. A final and again different regime ensues. The main feature of this regime is that during this time, the ocean radiates about the amount of the energy that it absorbed during all of the previously described regimes.
Figure 5. Conditions prevailing after the night-time dissipation of the daytime clouds.
During the nighttime, the surface is still receiving energy from the GHGs. This has the effect of delaying the onset of oceanic overturning, and of reducing the rate of cooling. However, because there are no clouds, the ocean can radiate to space more freely. In addition, the overturning of the ocean constantly brings new water to the surface, to radiate and to cool. This increases the heat transfer across the interface.
As with the previous thresholds, the timing of this final transition is temperature dependent. Once a critical threshold is passed, oceanic overturning kicks in. Stratification is replaced by circulation, bringing new water to radiate, cool, and sink. In this way, heat is removed, not just from the surface as during the day, but from the body of the upper layer of the ocean.
And as mentioned above, by dawn the combined effect of clear skies and oceanic overturning has lost all of the heat of the previous day, and the cycle starts over again.
So let me recap.
1. There are a series of temperature thresholds in the tropics, each of which when crossed initiates a completely new circulation regime. In order of increasing temperature, these are the thresholds for cumulus formation, thunderstorm formation, and squall line formation.
2. The time of crossing of each temperature threshold depends (on average) on whether the local area is warmer or cooler than usual. As a result, the entire system is strongly homeostatic, tending to maintain the temperature within a certain range.
3. Feedback does not play any significant part in this temperature control system. Nor do small changes in the forcings. The system adjusts by means of the timing. The various regime change occur either earlier or later in the day (or not at all), to maintain the temperature.
4. In each of these separate regimes, the climate sensitivity is quite different.
5. The climate sensitivity for the tropical ocean varies inversely with the temperature.
My conclusion from all of this is that the climate, like other flow systems far from equilibrium, contains homeostatic mechanisms. One effect of these mechanisms is that the tropical temperature is constrained to remain within a fairly narrow range.
And that’s why I describe myself as a climate heretic. I think the earth has a thermostat, one that is not represented in any of the current generation of climate models. I don’t think that climate is linear. I think that climate sensitivity is not a constant at all, but is a function of temperature. And to return to the title of the post, I think that the debate should not be about feedback at all, it should be a debate about the types and the effects of the various natural homeostatic mechanisms.
And all of those are definitely heresies to the latest IPCC Council of Nicean Climate …
My best to all,
w.
The Stefan-Boltzmann law states that the power radiated from a surface is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature. Thus the rate change of radiated power with respect to temperature is four times that constant times the cube of the absolute temperature.
It is my understanding that the common practice, in some cases, is to say the change in absolute temperature over the range being examined is minimal and this allows replacement the cube of the temperature in the original equation with temperature times the square of some average absolute temperature over the range of interest. Now an easily solved, slightly inaccurate linear equation is obtained.
The important thing is not to forget that this has done.
Correction:
The Stefan-Boltzmann law states that the power radiated from a surface is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature. Thus the rate change of radiated power with respect to temperature is four times that constant times the cube of the absolute temperature.
It is my understanding that the common practice, in some cases, is to say the change in absolute temperature over the range being examined is minimal and this allows replacement the cube of the temperature in the original equation with temperature times the square of some average absolute temperature over the range of interest. Now an easily solved, slightly inaccurate linear equation is obtained.
The important thing is not to forget that this has been done.
R. Gates says:
August 14, 2011 at 7:37 pm
“Who said anything about linear feedback? When feedback is positive, it most definitely may not linear…for if it was, we would never have gotten out of the last glacial period.”
So we agree that feedbacks are non-linear. Fine. So we don’t need any further assumptions about complexity to agree that the system as a whole is non-linear.
DirkH says:
August 14, 2011 at 12:11 pm
“Linear feed-back systems are already completely capable of chaotic behaviour, no non-linearity required; ”
I was wrong with that – linear systems are only capable of chaotic behaviour when they are infinite-dimensional. Says Jimbo Wales and i trust him on that one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory#Minimum_complexity_of_a_chaotic_system
So, the coupled pendulum must be a non-linear system. Sorry; i assumed it to be linear. Must have some quadratic term or the likes.
Caleb says:
August 15, 2011 at 1:39 am
I’ve been amazed by their responses over the years. Like you, I got blown off … so I wrote a peer-reviewed paper (PDF) about the experience.
It’s surprising to me because some of the people asking the questions are real smart, and the RealClimate folks either just censor their questions or put them down for even asking the question. Seems like the trifecta of stupidity, bad tactics, bad strategy, and bad manners rolled up into one. I don’t see the upside.
There is an issue with the melting icecap but (for the very reasons you list) the albedo of the poles is not as important as it might first appear. Near the poles the albedo is always high, from a combination of low sun angle and the dependency of albedo on that low grazing angle. It also has the other polar issues (ground angle, thick atmosphere, long cloud shadows) that ensure that little solar heat actually makes it into the ground.
As a result, the changes in ice area don’t make that much of a change in overall all albedo. The area is small, and the underlying albedo is already high. Finally, at any given moment the ice tends to hang out where the sun can’t reach … and ice increases in those areas don’t change the albedo.
Where it does seem to make a difference is in Milankovich cycles, which periodically reduce the amount of ice melt in the northern hemisphere summers. This allows the ice to build up from winter to winter, and this does affect the albedo, as in the ice ages …
Anyhow, keep up the good fight, don’t let folks like the guys at realclimate slow you down. The only foolish question is the one you don’t ask, because you don’t get the answer to that one …
w.
Dave Springer says:
August 15, 2011 at 3:11 am
Thanks, Dave, you’re correct. Basically the work done by the heat engine is the movement of the fluids (ocean and atmosphere). I am using “heat engine” in the standard thermodynamic sense. There’s a good exposition of climate as a heat engine by Adrian Bejan, discoverer of the Constructal Law, here (PDF).
w.
Dave Springer says:
August 15, 2011 at 3:34 am
The claim that downwelling longwave radiation (DLR, also called IR) don’t heat the ocean is nonsense. Let me give you several separate and independent arguments why it can’t be true.
Argument 1) People claim that because the DLR is absorbed in the first mm of water, it can’t heat the mass of the ocean.
But the same is true of the land, DLR is absorbed in the first mm of rock or soil. Yet the same people who claim that DLR can’t heat the ocean (because it’s absorbed in the first mm) still believe that IR can heat the land (despite the fact that it’s absorbed in the first mm). And this is in spite of the fact that the ocean can circulate the heat downwards through turbulence, while there is no such circulation in the land, and still people claim the ocean can’t heat from DLR but the land can. Logical contradiction, no cookies.
Argument 2) If the DLR isn’t heating the water, where is it going? It can’t be heating the air, far too little thermal mass, if it was heating the air we’d all be on fire. Nor can it be going to evaporation as you claim, Dave, because the numbers are way too large. Evaporation is known to be on the order of 70 w/m2, while average downwelling longwave radiation is more than four times that amount … and some of the evaporation is surely coming from the heating from the visible light.
So if the DLR is not heating the ocean, and we know less than a quarter of it is going into evaporation, and it’s not heating the air … then where is it going? Rumor has it that energy can’t be created or destroyed, so … where is the DLR going, and what is it heating?
Argument 3) Heating the surface affects the entire upper layers of the ocean when the ocean is overturning. At night, the ocean overturns. IR heating of the top mm of the ocean delays the onset of that overturning, and slows it once it is established. This reduces the heat flow from the body of the upper ocean, and leaves the entire mass warmer than it would have been had the IR not slowed the overturning.
Argument 4) Without the IR, there’s not enough heating to explain the warming of the ocean. The DLR is about two-thirds of the total downwelling radiation (solar plus IR). If you throw that out, given the known heat losses of the ocean, it would be an ice cube if it weren’t being warmed by the IR. We know the thermal losses of the ocean, which depend only on its temperature, and are about 390 w/m2. But the average solar input to the surface is only about 170 watts/metre squared. So if the DLR isn’t absorbed, with gains of only the solar 170 w/m2 and losses of 390 w/m2… then why isn’t the ocean an ice cube?
Look, folks, there’s lot’s of good, valid scientific objections against the AGW claims, but the idea that DLR can’t heat the ocean is nonsense. Go buy an infrared lamp, put it over a pan of water, and see what happens. It only hurts the general skeptical arguments when people believe impossible things …
w.
TimC says:
August 14, 2011 at 3:07 pm
While those are lovely claims, I fear that you have merely stated them. For example, given the fact that the planet operates at a temperature well below that it would have absent clouds, you have not explained why you think that a cloud-TSI combination would be inherently stable. I see absolutely no reason it would be, and lots of reasons that a system modulated by clouds would be very unstable … but it is stable.
So simply saying something on the order of ‘the TSI is constant, and the earth’s temperature is pretty constant, case solved’ simply won’t hold water.
w.
Norm Donovan says:
August 14, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Climate models are a bit more complex than the model you described. Both break the subject into small pieces. In your case, you calculated the sum of the pieces.
In the climate models, on the other hand, breaking it into bits is only the first part. From there out it is an “iterative” process where the state of the gridcells at one instant is used to predict the state at the next instant. Then that new state of the gridcells is used to predict the next state, and so on.
There are some very large unsolved problems with this approach. First, small errors tend to multiply as the number of iterations increases. Second, we have no guarantee that the equations used will converge on the actual solution to the underlying Navier-Stokes equations. Third, as gridcell size decreases, things don’t necessarily get better, they often get worse.
Fourth, and relevant to this discussion, gridcell size is much larger than the size of the relevant phenomena, thunderstorms and cumulus. As a result, the phenomena I describe above, with the rapid changes in circulation regimes, are not represented in the climate models at all except as gridcell sized averages …
For a better approach to modeling the climate, look at Bejan’s work here.
w.
w.
Steve Garcia says:
August 14, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Steve, an interesting question. I discuss some of the issues regarding modeling self-organized systems at “The Details are in the Devil“. You are basically correct, but it’s far from simple.
w.
R. Gates says:
August 14, 2011 at 4:30 pm
While Gary’s claim is far from true, I’d say that predicting the evolution of a tropical day given the initial starting conditions can’t be done on a cell-phone either. What I have done is something in between, explaining the parts that have been left out of the current generation of climate models. Not an all-embracing new model by any means … but not solvable on a cell phone either.
Finally, if you think that at this point supercomputers can “simulate the global climate” and produce meaningful results, boy, are you in for a surprise. They can’t even predict the next decade, much less ten decades; despite tuning they only poorly replicate the historical climate; their equations can’t be shown to converge; the number of tunable parameters is far too large for comfort; they show absolutely no skill at regional scales; their results for things they are not tuned to replicate (e.g. rainfall) are abysmal — in short they are glorified Tinkertoy™ models which have one common characteristic … they don’t work well.
w.
HR says:
August 14, 2011 at 6:43 pm
A good question, HR, with a good answer. The things that I say can affect the long term equilibrium are things that affect the rate of cloud formation, as that is the main control on excess temperature. These are cosmic rays (modulated by the sun), aerosols that affect cloud formation, and the like.
CO2 and GHGs, on the other hand, do not affect the temperature or the manner in which clouds form. Since the mechanism I lay out depends on clouds and their formation, and not on the total amount of forcing, changes in CO2 won’t change the operating temperature.
That’s the beauty of the natural system. It adapts to changes in forcing, increasing clouds when the changing forcing warms the planet, and decreasing clouds when the changing forcing cools the planet, in order to maintain a constant temperature range.
w.
HR says:
August 14, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Not sure what you’re saying here. If I walk outside my door right now, the forcing on my body will take a huge jump … but my core body temperature won’t change. No relationship between forcing and temperature.
The issue is not “linear” versus “non-linear”. In a thermostatically controlled system, there is no relationship between forcing and temperature, that’s the point of having a thermostat. My gas use for heating my house doesn’t depend on the temperature inside my house, the two are not related either linearly or non-linearly.
w.
Clive Best says:
August 15, 2011 at 2:31 am
Clive, you’ve understood the issue exactly. At the world warms, clouds increase, leading to a final temperature which is much lower than it would be otherwise. In other words, the climate at any instant is running as fast as it can given the physical constraints (continental positions, cloud condensation physics, etc.).
If you’re looking at models, the model of Ou or that of Bejan are good starting points.
w.
Spector says:
August 15, 2011 at 3:27 am
You are correct, but because in the deep tropics (also called the “wet” tropics) adequate water is rarely an issue, so the main variable is temperature.
Both cumulonimbus (thunderstorms) and cumulus clouds represent condensing circulation, otherwise there wouldn’t be clouds.
Around each thunderstorm or cumulus cloud, there is an area of downwelling air. This air slowly moves downwards, because something has to replace the air sucked vertically through the core of the circulation.
You say that the descending air would heat up more than the “surrounding atmosphere” … but the air mixes and descends over the entire area and the entire air mass warms, there is no “surrounding atmosphere” in the sense you mean. It is also aided in its downward motion by the melting and falling of the tiny ice crystals that come out of the tops of thunderstorms.
All the best,
w.
keith at hastings uk says:
August 15, 2011 at 3:56 am
Thanks, keith. When I started looking for a long-term feedback mechanism that could keep the earth stable for a million years, I looked at all kinds of long, slow-acting mechanisms … and found nothing.
But one day I thought “Hey, if there is a mechanism that keeps the climate within a certain range every day, it will be in that range for a week, a month, or a million years.” I was looking at the wrong end of the time spectrum, what was operating was a minute-by-minute system involving regime shifts that I outlined in my previous post.
In the same way, climate sensitivity is a long-term measure … but it is the average of the short term measurements. Unfortunately, as I showed in my last post, it turns out those short-term measurements are temperature dependent, which means that the long-term average climate sensitivity perforce has to be a function of temperature as well.
w.
Jose Suro says:
August 15, 2011 at 6:04 am
The answer is that there’s infrared and then there’s infrared. The sun has substantial energy in the near infra-red (NIR). But unlike the IR emitted by the earth from a much lower temperature, very little of the suns NIR is in the bands absorbed by either water vapor or CO2. As a result, it’s not intercepted by the atmosphere. That NIR is included in the “TSI”, the total solar irradiation that comes from the sun.
w.
Nuke says:
August 15, 2011 at 8:17 am
Which feedbacks are you referring to?
w.
Willis – thank you again. May I make clear that (a) I state no claims and submit no proofs, just my personal view of what the climate effects are (for what this might be worth as an interested but non- scientific commentator to this blog) and (b) I hesitate to cross swords with such a learned gentleman as yourself and will be very happy to stand corrected, as your view that “that the temperature of the Earth is kept within a fairly narrow range through the action of a variety of natural homeostatic mechanisms” is very seductive – but I am afraid I still personally think it is wrong. The stablity in TSI is the main factor.
You wrote an earlier article for WUWT at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/
In that article you suggested that that tropical clouds and thunderstorms actively regulate the temperature of the earth to keep it at equilibrium temperature. You described “a pleasant thought experiment” showing how this cloud governor works at a given point on the earth’s surface (very similarly to the homeostatic mechanism described in this present thread).
Somewhat graphically you said “We need a timeless view without seasons, a point of view with no days and nights”, and “The point of view without day or night, the point of view from which we can see the climate governor at work, is the point of view of the sun. Imagine that you are looking at the earth from the sun. From the sun’s point of view, there is no day and night. All parts of the visible face of the earth are always in sunlight, the sun never sees the night time. And it’s always summer under the sun.”
You then described the cloud system from that perspective; you hypothesised that “a self-adjusting cooling shade of thunderstorms and clouds keeps the afternoon temperature within a narrow range” and contended “I hold that the clouds are caused by the warmth, not that the warmth is caused by the clouds.”
I go only slightly further than you. In addition to TSI being very stable I do indeed hypothesise that global cloud cover is also quite stable (taken always in sunlight as viewed from your imaginary sub-solar point as above, and averaged at centennial length timeframes). I also agree that “clouds are caused by the warmth, not that the warmth is caused by the clouds”, in other words that the underlying cause of the mechanism you describe is actually also the (stable) TSI warmth.
Dear Willis,
the climate sensitivity is high on your mind and I remember that at a last years
thread, you tried to grasp the matter, which you now have turned into the global
thermostatic approach.
Indeed, for the impartial spectator, it is hard to figure out, how the Lambda, the Watts,
the 3 ; 3.7 relation to temperature, the 1.6 Watts/sqm of total global RF (radiative forcing)
for the time period (also labelled as total anthopogenic forcing) 1750-2000, the share of
Watts/sqm for each atmospheric constituent, and global temperature intertwine and produce a senseful scientific meaning.
Let me demonstrate, how I did resolve the subject in my booklet ISBN 978-3-86805-604-4:
1. We take the AR3 formula (as you started out in your article beginning), take away
the Delta by analyzing one year only, the year 2000. The linear equation is
T = Lambda x Q, we transform to Lambda = T : Q
2. –Now we need T und Q: We take the climate condition for this particular year 2000,
which are for T= global 14,5 C which is 287 K (is Celsius degrees from absolute
freezing point on) , thus T=287 K
–Now to Q in the year 2000: The measured energy from the Sun is the TSI-value with
1365 W/sqm on a 1 sqm-plate “hinged in space ” receiving vertical solar irradiation.
This has to be divided by 4 to transform this value onto W/per sqm Earth’ surface and
we receive 342 W/sqm per sqm of Earth’s surface, which arrive at the top of the
atmosphere. Now the Albedo (backradiation into space, energy losses) has to be
subtracted with 30% and the IPCC gives the figure of 242 W/sqm on the Earth’surface
received and worked into the climate system after subtraction of the albedo….
.(until here nothing new…)
3 We then calculate: Lambda = 287 K (Temp) : 242 Watt/sqm = 1.18
(conversion factor), therefore:
(A) 1.18 K = 1.00 Watt/sqm (straighforward linearyly),
(B) Lambda is nothing more than a conversion factor between two (T and Q)
scales
4. Now, we have to see, to what does this calculation leads us to: and how we
get from the T and Q values (Q to remember, constitutes the TSI-sunshine
value) to the RF (the IPCC radiative forcing values for 1750-2000):
4.1. We take the 100 year temp-increase 1900-2000 of 0.74 C per century and convert it
with our factor Lambda to Watts: 0.74 : 1.18 = 0.63 Watts/sqm/per century
4.2. The time span 1750- 2000 is 2.5 times 1 century, therefore 0.63 x 2.5 =
1.575 Watts/sqm of more energy received from the Sun, rounded up
makes 1.6 W/m^2 of Radiative Forcing (RF) as it is labelled now by
the IPCC.
5. To continue: The IPCC/RealClimate follows this with the argumentation:
We, with OUR eyes, cannot see further natural RF forcings, therefore, our
result, the 1.6 W/m^2, is AGW man made.
In order to calculate further, the ppm’s of CO2 increase in the atmosphere is
brought into the game and they simply invent the “climate sensitivity” of 380 ppm
of more CO2 (doubling 2000) “is” equal to 3.7 W/sqm on the Earth’s surface.
6. Now the way is free to establish the RF-list 1750-2000 distributing the 1.6 W/sqm
among the various GHGs. Percentage-wise.
Dear Willis,, the IPCC tries to make believe : Due to the Percentages of different
GHGs (“forcing agents”), the Climate scientists arrived at a total sum of
1.6 W/sqm of total forcings, and you are trying to make sense of it and follow this argumentation.
In reality: It is the other way around: The IPCC followed exactly this calculation
from 1 to 4.2, also reached 1.6 W/sqm, because this is absolutely correct and then,
as second step,
filled in their putative forcing shares of the GHG……. with which you are struggling
now…….
Please, give it a thought……
The only question for the reader here remains: “Where then do the 1.6 W/sqm
inceased heat energy since 1750 come from?”
This is answered in above quoted book: Additionally please see:
google at wikipedia” LIBRATION” (contains one animated picture).
The Earth does the same libration movement, as the moon, as the other planets
and the Trojan accompagnon of the Earth numbered 2010TK_7…..and the
varying distances from libration to the Sun explain the 1.6 W/m^2……
Those, who read this rather long blog, have indeed learned something new…..
Yours
JSei.
.
Any of them!
Sorry if that’s vague, but to get the warming, various feedbacks were added to the models. Otherwise, we’d get the widely accepted number of 1.6 degrees C of warming for doubling CO2.
Hallo, Willis, again, just one more point (No. 7) to my blog, above, at 08/15/ 2:01 pm,
for rounding up the analysis:
(7) After having the value of 1.6 Watt/sqm determined (1.57 more exactly, which was
used in papers about the year 2000), the IPCC needed the connection to CO2 and,
I am convinced, they did this the following way:
(A) The CO2 content will increase from pre-industrial 280 ppm to 560 ppm in 100 years,
2100, due to an exponential increasing CO2-curve ( today already up 100 ppm over 280 ppm).
(B) Estimations were then made (SRES-scenarios, 2001 ) in which the temperature
increase for the time of doubling (2000 to 2100) was estimated. These scenarios
ranged from 1 to 9 C of global warming. The IPCC then stayed conservatively in the
middle, took 4.5 C as anticipated temp-increase due to CO2-doubling and converted
this value with the Lambda relation 1: 18 into W/sqm, arriving at 3.7 W/sqm and kept
silent on how this value was derived, just pronounced was that 280 ppm CO2 more
produce additional 3.7 W/sqm RF, and leaned back, to see how institutional
calculations went.
As can be expected, this 3.7 W/sqm tied to additional 280 ppp CO2, led to nothing
more than confusion, especially after evaluating paleoclimatic ice cores, as Wostok
or GRIP2 etc.
The conversion factor kept at 1:1.18 showed that CO2 played no role whatsoever.
In order to rescue the situation, Mr. Venkatachalam Ramaswamy had the idea to
” float” Lambda, called it “Climate sensitivity”, and so was the fixed conversion factor
floated (due to “unsure feedbacks etc”) and is floating now between 1:1.5 and 1:4.5,
as it pleases the authors.
Dear Willis, and if you ponder about applying this climate sensitivity, you only
have to stay within this 1:1.5 to 1:4.5 Lambda range and you can prove, whatever
you want, Lambda can be used according to your individual “gusto”……. Just go
ahead….
With regards
JSei.
The problem is ∆T = λ ∆Q quantifies climate sensitivity as units of temperature per units of ‘forcing’ power. Why even define sensitivity in this way, as temperature is already quantified by units of power via the Stefan-Boltzman law?
This formula allows them to claim watts of ‘forcing’ from GHGs are nearly 3 times more effective at warming the surface than watts from the Sun, so the nonsense continues. If watts are watts, for what physical or logical reason would incremental GHG ‘forcing’ will be amplified by over 400% when solar forcing is only amplified by about 60%?
…and toward the end of summer, the most powerful heat engines take over to “balance” any remaining “excess” heat. Hurricanes are magnificent thermostats and a wonder of our world.
Even beyond hurricanes, less visible or noticable are the three bands of air circulation for each of the North and South hemispherers. There is a constant circulation up and down of the entire atmosphere, and it is driven by heat. All of these convective mechanisms serve to carry “excess heat” outward toward space, thus governing a “global temperature”.
One might wonder why our planet would have some general range of atmospheric temperature that it tends to maintain. Some might surmise that an inteligence monitors and regulates it for us. Being personally unsatisfied with the idea of a Hall Monitor version of a deity, I prefer to believe that the size of our planet (and so its gravitational force and solar exposure area) the presence of liquid water, and the distance from the sun result in an atmosphere that self regulates to a specific temperature range. A major factor is that all of these variables add up to a temperature near the phase change temperature of all that liquid water, and that the phase change of all that water is by far the largest regulator of temperature. If you want to give thanks to a deity, thank him for coming up with the idea of a phase change medium and turning the idea loose to work its magic in the universe.
Life may evolve on other planets with greater temperature variation or different phase change mechanisms, but there can be very little debate that the earth’s relatively stable temperature envelope has been quite conducive to the support of living things for a very very long time. And so, possibly with help from above, we are fruitful and we multiply.
Nuke says:
August 15, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Ah, I see what you are asking.
Do various climate feedbacks exist? Sure. For example, when it gets warmer, the air over the ocean gets moister. This increases the amount of the so-called “greenhouse radiation”, in this case the downwelling longwave radiation due to water vapor.
The question in general is not whether various feedbacks exist. It is their individual and net values. As the title suggests, I don’t see that as a very important question.
w.