Radiating the Ocean

Wouldn’t DLR be absorbed deeper than a mm in water due to the difference between a solid and a liquid?

I think that the arguement is a question of degree and residence time, not a question of does it heat, but how much? “But the average solar input to the surface is only about 170 watts/square metre.” I am not certain average is what is moat important here. SWR at the tropics and even subtropics is far greater, and because it penetrates far deeper it likely has a much greater residence time. Thus any change in SWR flux may accumulate far more energy over time then a similar W/M2 change in SWR caused by a GHG. Yet I have seen none of this quantified.

Bystander said:
“So the physical properties of say, rock, and water are identical?”
And I say . . . Huh? Is there a point to your statement? The physical properties of rock (lets say basalt) and rock (lets say limestone) are not identical, so I would suspect that rock and water do indeed differ. What has that got to do with the article?

Although the end result is the same it is incorrect to state that DLR heats the surface. DLR is radiation that has already left the surface and been absorbed and re-radiated. It is the sun that does the heating. All the DLR does is slow down the heat loss from the surface. Without a heat source such as the sun the surface would gradually cool as the surface flux and DLR decline. So saying DLR heats the surface is not strictly accurate.

So a IR lamp directed at a one square meter tub of water of say one meter in depth to radiate the surface at 170W wouldn’t warm that body of water if it was circulating?
If it only heats the first mm why then are several inches usually warm when going swimming? Or is that an odd question?
170W per square meter, a few billion years . . . it hasn’t done all that much though, except around the equator, has it, I mean the north atlantic, the arctic sea and the antarctic sea is cold as bloody hell year around, but where there’s lots and lots of sun the sea is pretty darn cozy all year around.

Dunno about the rest of the notions, but
Evaporation is known to be on the order of 70 w/m2, while average downwelling longwave radiation is more than four times that amount …
is not apt.
it is not the downwelling LWR that is significant, but the net of LW and SW, (the imbalance) that is either met by another process (convection), or results in a temperature change.
Net longwave and shortwave, in the average, is not more than four times 70 W/m^2.

DLR cannot be absorbed by the first mm of water because it is clear therefore it must be absorbed by the second mm of water.
DLR cannot be absorbed by the second mm of water because it is clear therefore it must be absorbed by the third mm of water.
Actually DLR cannot be absorbed by any of the water because it is mm all the way down.
/sarc

You would think that the average ninth grade science student could design an experiment to measure what happens when IR hits water in a tank . . . a great Science Fair experiment.
But if a ninth grader could do it, it will be beyond the tall forehead types who walk posts on the IPCC ramparts.

The time lag between local apparent noon and max surface temperature is no more than 4 hours. The time constant for the surface heating an cooling rate is VERY short. If every night the surface on the planet cools 2-5 degrees…or more, then what is the big deal about 0.1 degree of warming…notwithstanding the fact that the thermometer sensitivity (globally) is incapable of reporting that level of precision… as Lord Monckton has frequently said.

The choice of an infrared lamp as a heat is not the best experiment – too much visible light. Put a just-red-hot heating element over the pan of water. The point is to try to heat without visible radiation.
The heater will send out LWR and it will not get nearly as far as 1mm into the water because it is very effective at stopping it penetrating at most IR frequencies. The water will get very much hotter at the surface than a few inches below, unless it is stirred (which of course happens in a real ocean). Water stratifies very well when it is hotter on top. It of course tends to evaporate more even when calm, and when stirred, much more so t here are several considerations.
The 4 arguments seem to mix all frequencies and LWR in together, or shall I say, perhaps do not separate them well enough. Tropical ocean water is definitely heated by the 1 kW/m^2 of incident solar radiation. The question is how much more is it heated by additional LWR (only, not additional sunlight). Well it certainly is not heated deeply by LWR unless there is significant overturning, which in many cases exists, yes?
So, if we are going to live in a real world (and ocean) then we have to consider that there is a great deal of water vapour immediately above the water’s surface absorbing the IR like crazy, remaining heated and not condensing to return, condensed, to the surface. Over a real ocean, the humidity is very high near the surface. How much of the additional LWR reaches the water’s surface, if any? If it does, it will be absorbed in the very top of its surface and promote immediate evaporation in the zone there there is a continuous exchange between the surface and the very bottom of the atmosphere. Any additional LWR that reaches the top of the water will shift the balance to produce slightly more (IR absorbing) water vapour immediately above it. Rapidly too. That thin air-water exchange layer just above the surface is basically in a constant state of saturation or supersaturation and is a really good IR shield.
Please convince me that any of the downwelling IR reaches the surface of the water. I am quite prepared to be convinced and it is essential to the argument that additional downwelling IR can heat the ocean. How much IR hits the water, in Watts? Does this heat flux depend on the local temperature and wind conditions?

Really? There are people that believe that? How do they have time to post because they must spend all their time rewatching Loose Change.
Without DLR heating the water, there would be no point to Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer. Next.

For those who doubt the greenhouse effect, here is a standard thermodynamics question.
If you know how to solve this, you know why Willis is correct.
Here is the problem (mechanical engineering profs should feel free to include this on the next thermodynamics exam).
1: A continuously heated, flat plate at 15 C is on one side, a parallel, continuously cooled plate at -273C is 20 meters away. What energy flux is required to maintain the heated plate at 15C under the following conditions:
The atmosphere in between is 10% CO2, 72% N2, 18% O2, 1 bar pressure.
The atmosphere in between is 20% CO2, 64% N2, 16% O2, 1 bar pressure.
2: Solve again, assuming that the energy input to the plate is constant, and determine the temperature of the plate at the higher level of CO2 if the temperature at the lower level is 15C and the second plate remains at -273C.
Now comes the part that seems to be missed by our friends in the climate field:
3: At what level of CO2 does the increase in CO2 no longer result in an increase in temperature of the first plate.
If you studied heat transfer at the university level, you may have seen a question like this. If you did, you would know that the plate would be warmer in the second instance (I am procrastinating at work right now, so will leave it as a blog post later to fully answer) and the level of CO2 would be 25%.
Cheers
JE

As someone else noted it is the term warming. If DWLR doesn’t reverse the direction of net flux it is not warming. There is also the legitimate question of is conductive heat transfer at the surface more significant than radiative heat transfer. Since the radiative situation is liquid water shooting photons at water vapor which shoots back etc., the average 0.8 degree temperature difference between the water and the air seems pretty reliable. With more CO2 that average may become 0.78 degrees.

The problem seems to be a lot of folks who just don’t understand thermodynamics.
Light is energy. If the water absorbs light it absorbs that energy, hence its heat increases. It oes not matter how thick the absorbing layer is.
Radiant heat transfer is not the same as conductive heat transfer. Conduction depends on the ratio of the temperatures. Radiance depends only on the temperature of the radiating body not the temperature of any sink.
Convection in the air is much different than convention in the seas. The lowest layers of air are heated then rise as they expand. In the seas it is the upper layers that heat and expand, but there is nowhere to rise because they are already above cooler denser layers.
An awful lot of Zeno’s paradox going on as well.
The basic physics of GW is relatively sound. The weaknesses lie in the guestimates of sensitivity/forcings.

There is no doubt that some warming takes place somewhere but the issue is whether that warming does in fact get transmitted downwards and/or whether it does in fact slow down the ‘normal’ rate of energy loss from the oceans.
As far as I can tell the DLR warming just affects individual water molecules at the very surface merely microns deep. Other wavelengths get in deeper however.
DLR having warmed those individual molecules there is an increase in all of convection conduction radiation and evaporation. Effectively all that happens is that the moment of evaporation for all the water molecules affected is brought forward by whatever energy is left over after conduction radiation and convection have taken their portions.and of course evaporation is a net cooling process as we all know.
Willis has previously told me that the increase in evaporation alone is not sufficient to deal with ALL the DLR but suppose the increased evaporation only has to mop up what is left over AFTER increased upward radiation convection and conduction. The figures are then much more believable.
Looking for some evidence one way or the other I read about that 1mm deep layer at the top of the oceans that is always (averaged globally) about 0.3C colder than the ocean bulk below.
The thing is that that layer is still there day and night so it isn’t even overcome by the coming and going of sunlight so I don’t see how DLR would make a difference.
That layer represents the net cooling effect of all surface cooling processes.It is on average globally negative.Energy is always leaving the surface layer faster than it is arriving at the surface and is replaced from below by solar shortwave that penetrated deeper. If the energy hitting the surface from DLR were penetrating downward significantly then that layer would become shallower or warmer or dissipate but on average overall it doesn’t.
So to accept what Willis says I need that point addressing. Why does that cooler layer not seem to get warmer, shallower or dissipate (except locally and temporarily) under the influence of more DLR or even under the influence of solar insolation ?
Could it be that it is a permanent feature of the ocean surfaces set by pressure and density differentials such that it provides a buffer between energy arriving in the topmost molecules and that leaving the ocean bulk for a zero effect on both energy into and out of the ocean bulk ?
I like the analogy of a tributary joining a river. The volume of flow downstream of the junction increases but the rate of flow from upstream is not changed. There may be a small area of buffering (akin to that cool layer on the oceans) where there is a slowdown in the rate of flow but nonetheless the rate of flow from higher upsatream is unaffected.
I suspect that that happens at the ocean surface too.

I have just read your steel greenhouse post.
Surely the myth that the earth receives only 235 W/sq m insolation and thus the earth would only be ~minus 18 or 19 C is the big lie of GHG theory.
To model the earth as a disk illuminated by only one quarter of the solar constant is nonsense and we ought to say so. At noon at the equator the insolation is probably at least double the 235 W/sq m (perhaps nearly triple) so often quoted while at one of the poles it is probably close to zero.
The only thing maintaining the poles at the modest temperaturesthey are at compared to absolute zero is the energy transmission of atmospheric and oceanic currents.
I do not believe that at a place like Death Valley or central Australia DLR is responsible for the increase in energy from 235 W/sq m to the ~617 W/sq m necessary to explain a temperature of 50 C as has been observed or the 544 W/sq m required to explain the 40 C temperatures regularly recorded less than 50 km from where I live.
Clearly that energy comes from the sun so why perpetuate this “average” 235 W/sq m myth that the AGW use to distort truth and science ?

@tallbloke
“The question is, do DLR heated water molecules make it downwards far enough for long enough to warm the ocean bulk. I think the answer is no, because warmer water molecules are naturally buoyant”
BINGO!
Give the man a cigar.

No matter how patiently you explain things to some people, they won’t get it. Some people will, no matter how hard you try, still believe that radiation from the atmosphere somehow doesn’t heat the ocean. And yet the physics has been understood for hundreds of years, and tested so thoroughly that to doubt it is simply unreasonable.
Are these people unable to understand? Or are they unwilling? That’s the next interesting question.

The Science of Doom has the first of a very good multi post series on DLR and the ocean here http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/10/06/does-back-radiation-heat-the-ocean-part-one/
Most of the questions that have been asked and will be asked are answered there.

What does it matter? It’s been happening for billions of years without problems, no way is it anthropogenic. Isn’t this a complete red herring in the AGW debate?

DLR doesn’t exist. It’s the artifact of a mathematical mistake by Sir Arthur Milne in 1922 when he used an infinite atmosphere boundary condition to solve the PDE for IR absorption.
‘Climate science’ made another mistake when it believed the radiometer pointed upwards measured DLR. That signal is real, but exactly counterbalanced at equilibrium by IR in the opposite direction.
Grizzled engineers like me know this because it’s the first law of Radiation – Prevost’s theory of Exchanges [1840].
So the question you pose is irrelevant.

Here’s an experiment. Let me know how it turns out.
At normal room temperature fill two identical styrofoam cups with water at 98.6F. Hold your hand about a foot over the top of one of them. Your hand will be providing extra downwelling radiation to that cup. After a few hours measure the temperature in both cups. Let me know how much warmer the cup is that had the extra downwelling longwave radiation. Thanks in advance for actually performing an experiment instead of bloviating about physics you don’t understand, Willis.
.
.

“Your suggestion of putting an infra red source over a pan of water was I believe the most sensible part of your post.”
Yes, it is. The infrared source should be approximately the same temperature as the water because that’s how it is over the ocean where the air temperature is very near the sea surface temperature. I know what the result will be. Willis is in for a big surprise.

“”””” 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 and espouse impossible things … “””””
Well first off, an “infrared lamp” has a temperature in the range of about 1000 K and is not too bad an imitator of a black body radiator, being incandescent. That said it emits near infra red radiation that peaks at about 1.0 microns wavelength and also at about 4.0 megaWatts per square metre. Compare that to the average atmosphere which has a Temperature around 288 K, and is emitting wavelengths more in the 10 micron range and about 400 W/m^2.
So your heat lamp is 10,000 times the radiance of the atmosphere, and is spectrally peaked where H2O is an extremely good absorber, in fact at 3.0 microns, H2O has its maximum absorption coefficient of around 10^4 cm^-1..
Why not use an ordinary bottle of water at about 15 deg C (288K) as a source to demonstrate how “downwelling” LWIR radiation heats the ocean.
And that 10-15 micron radiation from the atmosphere is absorbed in more like the top 50 microns (99%) of the surface, not the top mm.
On the other hand, the solar energy can go 100s of metres deep in the oceans before full absorption.
So we are being asked to accept that a thermal energy source at a mean Temperature of about 288K (some say it is only 255K) can thermally excite GHG molecules (CO2), causing them to emit LWIR radiation at a wavelength around 15 microns, and that radiation (well maybe half of it) gets absorbed in the ocean which has a much higher specific heat, and will be absorbed in no more than 50 microns of sea water, most of which is already at a much higher temperature than the 255 or even 288 atmospheric source.
Temperature. The Temperature gradient would seem to be in the wrong direction at the surface, to cause much conduction of that surface “heating” into the depths.. I’ve spent enough time out in the deep oceans to believe that most of the time, the deep oceans are rather calm, and deep mixing due to turbulence is far from the norm.
But as to whether “downwelling” LWIR from GHGs can heat the ocean; I don’t know; I’d like to see the results of some actual measurements that demonstrate the phenomenon.

Of course if that extra downward DLR DOES get into the oceans then we have thousands of years before the ocean temperature would change enough for us to notice any climate effect. The same energy cannot be in two places at once and the heat capacity of the oceans is magnitudes greater than that of air.
Willis, what proportion of DLR do you contend gets into the oceans ?
No, the truth is that it does not warm the oceans but it DOES add to the energy content of the system from those affected molecules upwards through the atmosphere to space.
Thus there IS a climate effect but it is manifested by a change in the surface pressure distribution from more radiation convection conduction and evaporation.
The problem for AGW then is that such changes are miniscule compared to the natural forcings of solar and internal oceanic variability.
Full analysis here:
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/news/environment/wilde-weather/setting-and-maintaining-of-earth%e2%80%99s-equilibrium-temperature/18931.html
This issue is not comparable to denial of the existence of a greenhouse effect. I am here accepting the warming capability of GHGs but simply advancing the description as to how they influence the system and in doing that it is not possible to have such a tiny effect warming up both vast oceans and the atmosphere to a significant degree simultaneously (or even separately) because all they do is accelerate the energy flow through the system to offset that warming effect.
Radiative processes alone need to warm up an entire system to a higher equilibrium temperature in order to regain balance. That is true and the essence of AGW.
In this case radiative processes are not acting alone. Other processes are speeding up the energy flow out to space which reduces the need (or possibly eliminates the need) for any rise in equilibrium temperature for the system as a whole.

Swift says:
August 15, 2011 at 3:17 pm
“The Science of Doom has the first of a very good multi post series on DLR and the ocean here http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/10/06/does-back-radiation-heat-the-ocean-part-one/
Most of the questions that have been asked and will be asked are answered there.”
The science of doom article has a huge glaring flaw in part two. It uses a simple application of the Stephen-Boltzman law on perfect black bodies to show the temperature of the ocean with and without DLR and concludes DLR must heat the ocean because otherwise it would be -15C instead of plus 15C.
The flaws are twofold. First of all, unlike the surface of a black body, the ocean is a greenhouse unto itself. Shortwave radiation easily penetrates to a depth of some 100 meters depending on clarity. This is absorbed and warms the water. Water is just about totally opaque to long wave radiation so none of that solar heated water below the surface can cool radiatively until it is somehow mechanically transported to the surface. These are the exact same properties that CO2 has – transparency to visible light, opacity to infrared. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If CO2 is a greenhouse gas then the ocean is a greenhouse fluid.
The greenhouse properties of liquid water is what raises its temperature far above what it would be if it were a passive black body surface.
The second flaw in the science of doom black body graph is that black bodies don’t give up heat by evaporation. The ocean does. In fact that’s the primary cooling mechanism. 70% of the solar heat in the ocean escapes by evaporation, 20% via radiation, and 10% via conduction. Moreover the ocean retains a lot solar heat absorbed in the summer and releases it in the winter when the air is dryer and evaporation rate is faster. That’s why there’s a much smaller seasonal temperature change in the ocean versus land. The much greater seasonal temperature variation over land is called continentality.
Willis might have learned a lot about the ocean by sailing, surfing, and diving but he evidently needs to learn more about land by doing some driving and digging. The notion that land and water are equivalent in the way they heat and cool is demonstrates utter ignorance of both.

Willis, Gary Wilson, crosspatch, Climate Weenie etc …
I am not sure what the main thrust of this post is (or is ssupposed to be).
The existence of IR radiation downwards is not disputed AFAIK. But as already pointed out, the IR-exchange between to bodies depends on mainly their respective temperatures, and for gases also the spectral properties of the radiating molecules.
And since noone disputes that the net heat flux from the earth’s and ocean surfaces is outgoing, everybody is aware of that in- and outgoing IR-radiation mustbe there at the same time. They are counterparts of each other. The net heating of the surface is by sunlight short wave radiation, making it all the way to the surface. (There is also a part of the sun’s IR being absorbed in the atmosphere and there reradiated in all directions, so that part of the ‘downwelling’ IR also originates from the sun, and only the remainder can be attributed to the ‘greenhouse effect’, but thats a minor detail).
The ‘greenhouse effect’ slowers the IR-radiating cooling mechanism (which would be zero if one had a perfect 100% IR-mirror holding it just above the surface). The net received heat must however be cooled away (in steady state) and the other available cooling mechanisms are mechanical transfer of heat through: Thermal convection and transport of phase-transitioned water vapor, both being heat transported uppwards from the surface.
I don’t think you’ve got this wrong, but I object to the notion that there are ~170 W/m2 (SW-sun)) plus ~330 W/m2 (atmospheric DLR), adding upp to a ~500 W/m2 total. Because the the DLR part is an ongoing inner process, which is only ~half of an ongoing exchange, which by necessity has and must have flows in both directions. between two adjacent bodies each with a temperature. The outgoing counterpart being somewhat larger, ~390 W/m2.
There are only a total of ~342 W/m2 of heating available, and all of that is from the sunlight. Inner processes are going on inside the atmosphere, that’s true. But saying that ~500 W/m2 heats the earth’s surfaces is awkward.

In a discussion elsewhere on this topic, I made a mechanical analogy (for the case of perfect IR-radiation insulation, ie 100% greenhouse effect):

Another highschool example: A balancing scale has a weight of its own, say 2kg. Its function depends on that at zero (external) load the 1kg on either side perfectly balance/cancel each other out, ie equilibrium (mechanical here, thermal with a perfect insulator). Adding 40g on the tray alters that, making the scale tip towards one side.
[Warmist troll] now says: a) You cannot account for the tipping without the 1kg already on that side (true), b) the 1kg contributes much more than these tiny 40g, and c) you are ignoring the 1kg already there!
[Jonas replies: a)moot, b) nonsensical and c) wrong]

The analogy is undefirmed mechanical equlibrium, corresponds to thermal equlibrium (all temperatures being equal), and that deformed state, due to external load (or heat source) correspond to thermal steady state, with net deformation and/or net heat flow, determined uniquely by the the external load, and where it is applied.

For what it’s worth, here is a paper that may add to this discussion ‘Induced Emission and Heat Stored by Air, Water and Dry Clay Soil.’ Nasif Nahle http://www.biocab.org/Induced_Emission.html
“Abstract: In this paper, I have resorted to basic formulas obtained from experimentation and observation by several scientists for calculating the heat stored by any substance and the subsequent change of temperature caused on a determined system. I demonstrate that the climate of Earth is driven by the oceans, the ground surface and the subsurface materials of the ground. I explain also how the photon streams from oceans, ground and subsurface materials of ground overwhelm the emission of photons from the atmosphere to the ground during both daytime and nighttime…. Concluding, atmospheric gases do not cause any warming of the surface given that induced emission prevails over spontaneous emission. During daytime, solar irradiance induces air molecules to emit photons towards the surface; however, the load of Short Wave Radiation (SWR) absorbed by molecules in the atmosphere is exceptionally low, while the load of Long Wave Radiation (LWR) emitted from the surface and absorbed by the atmosphere is high and so leads to an upwelling induced emission of photons which follows the outgoing trajectory of the photon stream, from lower atmospheric layers to higher atmospheric layers, and finally towards outer space. The warming effect (misnamed “the greenhouse effect”) of Earth is due to the oceans, the ground surface and subsurface materials. Atmospheric gases act only as conveyors of heat.”

re: Alexander Duranko says: August 15, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Anyone ???, I’m hearing crickets on this item.

steven mosher says:
August 15, 2011 at 4:07 pm

One way to think about it is this.
The shiny surface on a thermos does not warm the coffee inside.
The shiny surface retards the heat loss via radiation.

The reflective surface is not the primary mode of insulation. “Thermos” is a brand name that became attached to all of what were orginally known as “vacuum flasks”. The primary means of insulation is the vacuum between the inner vessel and outer walls which stops almost all conductive heat transfer. Most the remaining heat loss is blocked by the reflective coating. That’s why laying tin foil over non-reflective attic insulation doesn’t help a whole lot but does help some.

You lost me when you quoted that insolation is reduced to 170 W/sq m at the surface while DLR is more than 4 times the 70 W/sq m you say is accounted for by evaporation – ie ~280 W/sq m.
I guess reality is dead.
How can DLR exceed insolation ? That is impossible !

Sun Spot says:
August 15, 2011 at 5:05 pm
re: Alexander Duranko says: August 15, 2011 at 3:28 pm
“Anyone ???, I’m hearing crickets on this item.”
It’s so wrong it’s not worth a response would be my guess. That’s certainly why I didn’t bother. A cheap remote IR thermometer aimed upward on a clear night with air temperature exactly the same with the only difference being humidity will register a higher temperature on the more humid night. A rather expensive gadget costing in the five figure range can measure DLR day or night under any conditions. It’s called a pyrgeometer. Doesn’t every grizzled old engineer have one of those puppies on his bench sitting between his ohmmeter and oscilloscope? /sarc

I cannot see why it is considered valid to reduce the insolation to Earth by a factor of 3/4 because half the earth is in darkness at any one time and a disk has half the area of a hemisphere.
Almost nowhere on earth therefore receives the 234 W/sq m used to calculate the fictional minus 18/19 C.
Surely the whole of the tropics is subjected to an insolation 2-3 times more than this figure during a significant portion of any day and then it commences cooling at night.
The mean is meaningless and ought not be used. I refuse to believe DLR heats the earth more than the sun – it defies logic.
The real question we ought to consider is given space is ~3 K why is it Earth isn’t even colder ?
Perhaps then we may perform better analyses than being done at present.
Even IPCC documents quote higher insolation figures than the oft quoted 235 W/sq m but they trickily often lead with the Kiehl & Trenberth diagram which defies logic or science.
You can’t argue with someone who is trying to deceive you and using a model which in no way reflects reality is deception.

gnomish says:
August 15, 2011 at 1:08 pm
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_pond”
Solar ponds are shallow, need a dark bottom, and have to be shielded from turbulence so that saline stratification can occur. The mode of operation is that visible light from the sun is absorbed by the dark bottom and that conductively heats the water from the bottom up. The high salinity of the bottom water changes the temperature/density relationship such that the hot brine can’t rise off the bottom and mix with the low salinity layer on the top.
The ocean is nothing like that. It is effectively bottomless with regard to light from the sun and no signifcant saline stratification occurs in the mixed surface layer which absorbs the solar radiation.
.

Dave Springer says:
” Most the remaining heat loss is blocked by the reflective coating. That’s why laying tin foil over non-reflective attic insulation doesn’t help a whole lot but does help some.”
on the floor, where little heat is lost by conduction and absolutely none by convection, a layer of foil, shiny side up, will provide quite excellent insulation – that floor will be the warmest one in the house. next time you tile a floor, try it. it works great.
if you consider co2 functioning as a mirror for IR, then it’s obvious that it is preventing heating from above exactly as much as it is preventing cooling below – except at night, of course.
now, if you could bring that agw ocean.in.a.bottle out of the virtual world inhabited by alarmist witch doctors, the computer models might apply. but not in real life.
no real ocean is anything like that. there is a constant flow of water gas from surface to stratosphere (and back). any co2 gets swept along in a refigeration cycle by the hadley heat pump. it does not sit like a reflective shield over the sea.
you can add all the shiny crap you want to the freon in your air conditioner – it will not alter the efficiency of the refrigeration cycle through radiation physics.
similarly, the heat pump of the hadley cell- IR radiation exchange within the flux has zero effect on the transfer efficiency.
adding heat capacity, however (and co2 is a bit more dense than elemental gasses) improves the efficiency, not the opposite as claimed by the fetishist rent seekers.

Willis
First of all and importantly, we are not talking about mm but rather microns. Due to the wavelength, DWLWIR cannot penetrate more than a few microns into water. The problem is that nearly always these first few microns of the ocean are divorced from the ocean being in reality wind swept spume and spray. These few microns are therefore, in the limit, not connected with the ocean and thus even if there was sme physical process (which no one on the warmist side has yet sought to explain) whereby heat can in effect be conducted downwards, it beggars belief that there can be any transport of the warmer micron layer into the bulk ocean. The most likely scenario is that the DWLWIR absorbed by these first few microns are heated and evaporate thereby causing cooling not warming. As you know, the ocean is constantly evaporating and in your earlier article, you discuss the cloud formation which is the result of this evaporation. The DWLWIR cannot overcome the evaporative and convectional forces that are at play (which forces have principally been driven by solar energy). If you like the DWLWIR cannot swim against the tide.
Your dismissal of the first argument is with respect complete and utter rubbish. The DWLWIR absored by the first few microns of the ocean is burnt off and evaporates thereby preventing any transport of heat into the deeper ocean. There is no equivalent process with respect to the land. Rocks or sand or tarmac or whatever does not get burnt off and evaporate away. Further, I suspect that there is a large number of people who consider that backradiation cannot heat the land. Whilst the warmists struggle to describe the basics of their conjecture, many armist acept that backradiation does not heat but rather it acts in some way akin to a blanket and reduces the rate of heat loss, ie., because of backradiation the land cools slower than would be the case if there were no backradiation.
As regards the second argument. DWLWIR is not heat. We all know that the DWLWIR cannot effectively heat anything and cannot do sensible work. That is why no one is seeking to utilise the alleged 333 mw per sqm of backradiation and use this to cure the world’s energy needs. After all, according to Trenberth, the backradiation is nearly twice the solar energy and if it was truly a source of heat or if it could truly do work, man would exploit this valuable resource.
As regards argument 3, I dealt with that at the outset. We are taliking about the first few microns which is wind swept spume and spray and which if anything is evaporated (eventually giving rise to the clouds in your earlier post) and never mixes with the bulk of the ocean.
As regards argument 4, I believe that I have had that argument with you before. One of the biggest problems in the AGW debate is that climate scientists seek to deal with averages. However, this hides what is going on. The reality is that huge amounts of solar energy are being input into the tropical oceans such that these oceans would never freeze. The heat being absorbed by these oceans is then transported towards the poles with the ocean current conveyor belt acting as a huge heat pump distributing the heat absorbed by the tropical oceans. Of course, by late summer/winter there is not quite enough energy being absorbed by the tropical oceans to offset the reduced solar energy being received by say the Artic ocean such that that ocean begins to freeze over.
I had enjoyed your previous recent articles but this latest one is very light weight and nothing more than conjecture.
If you want to suggest that the oceans would be frozen but for the absorption of backradiation, you need to do 2 things. First, prove that DWLWIR is absorbed to a significnt degree by the oceans. Second, you need to carry out a calculation for each kilometre square of ocean based upoj the amount of solar energy received by the ocean at that point and ignoring DWLWIR and detailing at what point in time that part of the ocean would freeze.
Presently, I am extremely sceptical of the points that you raise and consider that they fall well short of discharging the burden of proof that lies on someone claiming that DWLWIR heats the oceans and prevents them from freezing. .

1DandyTroll says:
August 15, 2011 at 1:22 pm
“So a IR lamp directed at a one square meter tub of water of say one meter in depth to radiate the surface at 170W wouldn’t warm that body of water if it was circulating?”
Not if it’s longwave infrared. An “IR” lamp emits shortwave infrared and a significant amount of visible red light which will penetrate and heat both the water and the walls of the vessel. The infrared coming from the air above the ocean is emitted by a source that’s about the same temperature as the water. DLR cannot possibly warm the water warmer than the air from which the DLR comes from. The argument is over whether it can slow down the rate of cooling. So the experiment to try would be taking two vessels of warm water, say 100F, and suspending a third vessel with water at the same temperature over one of them. The third vessel is your “heat lamp”. If the DLR from the third vessel is capable of slowing down the cooling rate then as all the vessels cool down to room temperature the one without the LWIR “lamp” over it will cool more slowly and you should be able to see this with a therometer in each of the test vessels after some period of time.
Actually duplicating what happens over the ocean makes it sound a lot less likely to the lay person that the “lamp” hung in the air over one of the vessels is going to make any difference in the cooling rate of the vessel beneath it once they realize that the “lamp” is an object the same temperature as the water. Otherwise they imagine the kind of heat lamp commonly used for home heating purposes which has a heated element hot enough to glow cherry red.
“If it only heats the first mm why then are several inches usually warm when going swimming? Or is that an odd question?”
Visible sunlight is heating it far deeper than 1mm with decreasing effectiveness over increasing depth so more heat is added nearer the surface. Without significant turbulence a warm surface layer develops. This discussion isn’t about visible light. It’s about longwave infrared light. There’s very little LWIR in sunlight. Virtually all the LWIR that shines on the surface is LWIR emitted from the surface where a portion of it is reflected back downwards from the atmosphere above it. More or less is reflected back down depending on the exact composition of the gases.

I have expressed this before, I consider that at least some of the water vapour released from the ocean skin is condensed well before it drifts magically upwards in a pristine state to condense only at a certain altitude.
If the air at the ocean surface is humid that means it has already condensed and released its heat; there are plenty of nuclei available, salt, DMS, dust particles near land.
This could be a source of DLR.

@Willis Eschenbach says: August 15, 2011 at 2:04 pm
“…You are right. To be accurate, DLR means that the surface is warmer than if the DLR weren’t there. So you are technically correct, but in common parlance we don’t usually say “It slows the cooling so it ends up warmer than it would otherwise”. We just say “it warms it”.
///////////////////////////////
It is only in climate science that such a statement could be made!!!
It is akin to a bioligist claiming that he has created life by not killing a laboratory rat. Sure, by not killing the rat, the net effect is that you have a living rat, but not killing something is not the same as giving life to something. Likewise slowing the rate of cooling is not the same as warming. They are quite different processes. No wonder climate science is so off the rails.
One obvious reason why Trenberth cannot find his missing heat in the oceans is that it never made its way into the oceans because DWLWIR does not heat the oceans.

Tallbloke @ August 15, 2011 at 1:46 pm seems to have kicked off the concept that DLR is absorbed in what is a nano-skin of the water from where it is rapidly reemitted.

“…Argument four is a numerical misunderstanding. The ocean surface very efficiently absorbs 95% of DLR, and promptly re-emits half of that (the other 5% being reflected). The other half makes it another couple of molecules deeper and then the molecules it warms become more buoyant than their neighbours and rise to the top, losing another half upwards…”

Others have added supportive arguments, to which I’d like to add a point:
I think an important aspect of this concept is that it is an inconceivably rapid process, so fast that wave action and water turn-over etc is not a consideration. Since it all happens so fast in a very thin skin, those naughty photons and evaporating molecules radiate hemispherically back into the air where their free path lengths are very much longer and things are more complicated.

Trenberth et al are looking in the wrong direction for the “missing heat”. After making a quick pitstop in the cloud deck the missing heat from the last 50 years is now unformally distributed radiation in a sphere surrounding the earth with a radius of 50 light years. They aren’t going to find the missing heat looking down into the ocean. It just ain’t there.

Anyone who has a pool knows full well that the top few inches gets warm first. That goes down quite deep, even in a pool where there is little turbulence (ie not being used) by the end of the day.
If the pool is being used, that warm water is spread pretty much all through.
I would imagine the sea would behave in the same way, and my experience when out surfing makes me believe it is.

Keith Minto says:
August 15, 2011 at 7:01 pm
“If the air at the ocean surface is humid that means it has already condensed and released its heat;”
Wrong. You can see it if it condenses. If it condenses near the surface we call it fog. If it condenses farther up we call it clouds. In either case you can see it after it condenses. If you can’t see it then it hasn’t condensed.

richard verney says:
August 15, 2011 at 7:12 pm

@Willis Eschenbach says: August 15, 2011 at 2:04 pm
“…You are right. To be accurate, DLR means that the surface is warmer than if the DLR weren’t there. So you are technically correct, but in common parlance we don’t usually say “It slows the cooling so it ends up warmer than it would otherwise”. We just say “it warms it”.
///////////////////////////////
It is only in climate science that such a statement could be made!!!
It is akin to a bioligist claiming that he has created life by not killing a laboratory rat.

I think it’s more like when I told my wife that I earned an extra $20,000 by purchasing a new Corvette instead of a used Ferrari.
The government pulls that one on the taxpayers all the time. They “reduce spending” by increasing it less than they planned. I don’t know who that’s supposed to fool but it won’t work on me and it certainly didn’t fool my wife when I tried it on her.

@george Smith
“For example, there is absolutely no tendency for an individual molecule that currently has a high KE (velocity) to seek out and target a neighboring molecule, that has a much lower energy and velocity.”
Well sure, it’s not going to seek out slower moving molecules, per se. But it has a greater chance of hitting slower moving targets since they bunch together more.

_Jim says:
August 15, 2011 at 8:38 pm
“Dave Springer,
Since the ocean doesn’t glow in the infrared,
Excuse me!? (Smokey or Dave – it’s late an I’m not sure which one wrote the comment)
What do you think you’re seeing on GOES (8–15 µm wavelength) IR satellite image?”
Smokey said it, not me. I quickly corrected him.
What are we seeing on GOES? That depends. You have be looking through some pretty narrow IR windows to see the temperature of the ocean. When viewing a spectrograph from above there are a great many step changes across the spectrum. The tops of each step follow a blackbody curve for a different temperature. The highest steps follow the curve of the ocean temperature. Clear sky only of course. You can’t see through clouds.

@_Jim
Further on spectrograph looking from above. Given the tops of the steps follow a curve for a certain blackbody temperature and given we can see through to the ocean surface we can calculate the temperature difference between the ocean surface and any of the lower steps. Given we also know which gases are causing the lowered steps and given we know the adiabatic lapse rate we can determine the effective emission altitude for any of those gases. Pretty neat, huh? I made a comment in another thread where I did the calculation for CO2 and found it has an effective emission altitude at 15um of about 2000 meters above the surface IIRC.

Willis, when did you start taking acid again???
“We know the radiative losses of the ocean, which depend only on its temperature, and are about 390 w/m2. In addition there are losses of sensible heat (~ 30 w/m2) and evaporative losses (~ 70 w/m2). That’s a total loss of 390 + 30 + 70 = 490 w/m2.”
A man of your intelligence and learning should NOT be throwing BS like this around. The ocean is NOT losing 390 w/m2. It is losing 390-~320w/m2=~60w/m2 which is far less than the 170w/m2 that it is absorbing. Where that heat comes from for the 30+70 is then quite obvious.
This is the kind of BS that you get involved in when you start ignoring real physics. Now, where is the fabled BACKRADIATION in that equation??
You also mention the air has no thermal mass. The air has enough thermal mass that there would be pretty much no convection if the GHG’s did not transfer their energy to it. It may not hold a candle to water or even the earth, but, it is much more substantial than the thermal mass of the lightweight CO2!!!
So, the answer is equivocal, the LW does NOT heat the ocean, the SW does and the GHG’s spread the heat through the atmosphere or cool the atmosphere depending on the balance at that moment!!! Basically all the DLR goes UP one way or another!!!

Just in case some people misunderstand, I had better clarify an important point.
The argument that I have used above involves averages that include both sea and land.
Of course, both the ocean surface and land surface are exposed to ~ 324 W m^-2 infra-red back radiation. The land surfaces absorb virtually all of the 324 W m^-2 and redistributes a large part
to heat subsurface and atmosphere above. Much of this is then re-radiated back to the atmosphere as infra-red light.
The sea surface also absorbs much of the 324 W m^-2 as well. The difference is that this absorption takes place in the top mm or so which is the part of the ocean that is being actively evaporated and transported back into the atmosphere. So little of this absorbed energy actually goes into heating the deeper ocean.

I don’t know where Willis has got the idea that it is the Warmista’s teaching that longwave infrared, (thermal infrared), heats the oceans.. For the last couple of decades it has been the AGWScience fiction meme that only the shortwave Visible (Light) UV & NR, heat the oceans and Thermal Infrared (Heat) doesn’t get through the atmosphere to heat the Earth, it is being taught in schools. It is so viral now that anyone not knowing the real difference between these energies takes it on trust.
“Basic mechanism
The Earth receives energy from the Sun in the form UV, visible, and near IR radiation, most of which passes through the atmosphere without being absorbed. Of the total amount of energy available at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), about 50% is absorbed at the Earth’s surface. Because it is warm, the surface radiates far IR thermal radiation that consists of wavelengths that are predominantly much longer than the wavelengths that were absorbed.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greenhouse_Effect.svg
THIS is the Warmista’s claim. That “Solar” is only Visible and UV and Nr Infrared (which isn’t thermal) and it is only this which heats the land and oceans.
“Solar” in, Thermal IR out.
Willis is spouting bull, don’t know where he got it from, but: You’re arguing against a strawman set up here…
Wakey, wakey.
It’s the sceptics who point out that this is junk science and that it’s Thermal Infrared (Heat), which heats the Earth’s land and oceans, and us.
Here’s some of the post I linked above, which is when it came to light that NASA is not only making it difficult for real physics to be taught to children, but it is deliberately teaching this AGWScience meme that downwelling thermal infrared doesn’t reach the surface.
“..thankyou for posting that link to the NASA site which shows clearly that it has now stopped teaching traditional well-known and understood differences between Light and Heat energies from the Sun and replacing it with AGWScience fiction memes. This corruption of basic science is deliberate and systematic – dumbing down science education for the masses.
I think this agenda should be brought into the spotlight and a comparison of the NASA pages pre and post corruption is an excellent example as it easily conveys the extent this manipulation has reached. NASA’s reputation is being used to promoted science fiction. I am greatly saddened by it.
…
I’ll pull a few more quotes into what I posted above, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/spencer-and-braswell-on-slashdot/#comment-711614 for a better look at the difference.
NASA original page teaching previously traditional real world physics to children: http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html

From this NASA page:
“Near infrared” light is closest in wavelength to visible light and “far infrared” is closer to the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The longer, far infrared wavelengths are about the size of a pin head and the shorter, near infrared ones are the size of cells, or are microscopic.
Far infrared waves are thermal. In other words, we experience this type of infrared radiation every day in the form of heat! The heat that we feel from sunlight, a fire, a radiator or a warm sidewalk is infrared.
Shorter, near infrared waves are not hot at all – in fact you cannot even feel them. These shorter wavelengths are the ones used by your TV’s remote control.
Infrared light is even used to heat food sometimes – special lamps that emit thermal infrared waves are often used in fast food restaurants!

compare with:
NASA page now teaching that thermal infrared doesn’t even reach us!: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/emspectrum.html

Electromagnetic radiation from space is unable to reach the surface of the Earth except at a very few wavelengths, such as the visible spectrum, radio frequencies, and some ultraviolet wavelengths. Astronomers can get above enough of the Earth’s atmosphere to observe at some infrared wavelengths from mountain tops or by flying their telescopes in an aircraft.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/Images/introduction/emsurface.gif [Graphic showing downwelling infrared from the Sun stopping short of Earth’s surface, not even reaching mountain tops.]
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/dict_ei.html#em_waves [link from em spectrum page]:
infrared
Electromagnetic radiation at wavelengths longer than the red end of visible light and shorter than microwaves (roughly between 1 and 100 microns). Almost none of the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum can reach the surface of the Earth, although some portions can be observed by high-altitude aircraft (such as the Kuiper Observatory) or telescopes on high mountaintops (such as the peak of Mauna Kea in Hawaii).

From teaching real physics that the heat we all feel from the Sun is thermal infrared, to the new science fiction paradigm from NASA that no infrared even reaches the mountain tops.. This is one step further than the AGWScience fiction KT97 claim, which says near infrared, (the shortwave not thermal in real physics, not hot), is included in their “Solar” downwelling reaching Earth’s surface, (Visible with the two shortwave either side of UV and Nr IR).
KT97 = Kiehl/Trenberth 1997
…
To put into science terms, if a new idea contradicting well known and understood and tried and tested real physics as taught traditionally is being promoted, then the promoters must provide proof that the traditional teaching is wrong and the new idea right. Eliminating the traditional teaching from the education system does not constitute proof…
Thank you Willis for bringing it to greater attention.

Since we have not yet quantified exact change in numbers of all “GH” molecules in time, namely hundreds of water vapor molecules, in the atmosphere, it is nonsense to quarrel how much surface warming is caused by one (bad) molecule of CO2 per 10,000 other molecules, which was added to three (good) molecules of CO2 since 1780. How much has changed the cloud cover? Are there 97 or 103 H2O molecules per the bad CO2 molecule on average? These are much more important questions to be answered before.

_Jim says:
August 15, 2011 at 8:58 pm
“The gaseous state has some different properties, where molecule resonances/vibration modes are more pronounced in gas state molecules like water vapor vs liquid.”
Yes indeed it does. Most significantly there are a number of LWIR infrared windows in the vapor. There are no LWIR windows in the liquid.
“WV atmospheric effects as well as liquid water characteristics on the same webpage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water#Atmospheric_effects”
One of the poorer technical articles on wickedpedia for sure. Ferinstance:

Water vapor is a greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere, responsible for 70% of the known absorption of incoming sunlight, particularly in the infrared region

Say what? First of all most of the energy in sunlight is in the shortwave region and this passes through water vapor pretty much unattenuated just like it passes through pure water pretty much unattenuated. “Particularly in the infrared” is quite the understatement. It’s virtually all in the infrared there’s precious little infrared energy in sunlight to begin with. This sentence was probably one of the nocturnal emissions of William Connolley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley
AGW POV warrior extraordinaire who was finally canned as an editor on wikipedia for bias and disinformation and general obnoxiousness so profound that even the librat powers that be at wikipedia couldn’t tolerate it any longer.
“Of note: “The spectral absorption featu
res of liquid water are shifted to longer wavelengths with respect to the vapor features by approximately 60 nm””
Also of note: a shift of 60nm is a 3 degree fahrenheit change in blackbody temperature
Might be worth considering in some of the finer details but given the context here it doesn’t make a bit of difference since liquid water absorbs fully and continuously across the LWIR spectrum. The only way it would be meaningful is if there were some LWIR windows in liquid water where a change in temperature of 3 degrees might move it into or out of a window. No windows, no effect.

Dave Springer, steven mosher, Jim, smokey
Neither clouds, nor water, fellows DO NOT glow in IR. Since IR is by definition non visible radiation, YOU CANNOT SEE IT. Get it. GOES colors its pictures so you can see something which is incapable of exciting vision. So enough of the crap.

Brian W says:
August 15, 2011 at 10:02 pm
“Dave Springer, steven mosher, Jim, smokey
Neither clouds, nor water, fellows DO NOT glow in IR. Since IR is by definition non visible radiation, YOU CANNOT SEE IT. Get it. GOES colors its pictures so you can see something which is incapable of exciting vision. So enough of the crap.”
http://www.amazon.com/Sightmark-Night-Raider-2-5×50-Vision/dp/B003UCC68E
I never leave home without my passive night-vision gun scope which brings everything you survey into glowing contrast. It makes you glow with confidence that nothing will escape your notice in even the darkest of dangerous dark alleys.
Seriously, that’s a pretty lame nit to pick especially since we defined the glow as an infrared glow which by definition cannot be seen by the naked eye.

Having got used to the idea that temperature varies to the fourth power, and recently learning that photon flux varies to the third power, I was hoping I might learn how this fits in the above discussion.

Various people above have claimed that DLR is real because you measure it with a radiometer AND it increases when relative humidity increases. Well folks, you really do need a basic course in engineering heat transfer starting with Prevost’s Law then Hoyt C Hottell’s 1954 paper on calculating the emissivity and absorptivity of gases, then moving onto Kirchhoff’s radiation Law, a corollary of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Prevost’s Law of Exchanges [1840] states that at radiative equilibrium, any body above absolute zero emits radiation and receives exactly the same radiation from the opposite direction. In the case of hot gases, it’s spherical emission and absorption. If there’s an excess in a particular direction, there is no equilibrium. So when you point a radiometer upwards to measure ‘DLR’, you then have to reverse it to measure ‘ULR’ and the difference is what causes heating or cooling.
Hottell showed how you calculate emissivity as a function of pressure and concentration. Increase the concentration of a greenhouse gas and you increase emissivity. So DLR only apparently increases; in reality, the radiative flux in the opposite direction also has to increase.
This is why clouds appear warmer; emissivity tends to unity compared with c. 0.1 for moist air at ambient pressure. This leads onto Kirchhoff’s Law which is that at radiative equilibrium, emissivity = absorptivity.
I find it amazing that any physical scientist should not know these basic scientific facts. Go away until you do know them because this DLR fantasy has to stop.

Hey Willis,
If I sell you a beat up surfboard for $390 and give you an instant rebate of $340 what’s your actual cost for the surfboard?
You and Trenberth sure have some interesting methods of accounting. Maybe you should both be in congress. You’d fit right in. You could collect $390 billion in carbon taxes, refund $340 billion of it in carbon credits, then add to your stump speech that you increased government revenue by $390 billion.
I’m sorry for mocking this but some things just plain deserve mockery.

Tallbloke,
I would add the space blanket also retains the moisture which carries the most energy!! My first experience with a space blanket was one that belonged to a friend. I had a cheap bedroll and we were sleeping on the ground outside a Yosemite campground to save a few bucks. There was a drizzle so my friend loaned me his space blanket. I ended up wetter than if I hadn’t used it!!! All my body moisture condensed in the cheap bedroll soaking me. Of course I didn’t get that cold until I got out of it in the morning in wet clothes. DANG!!!

Eschenbach-sensai.
Moderation leads to generosity,
Mercy leads to courage,
Humility leads to leadership.
Please do not take offense with the deriding tones of various “unpleasantries”. As mentioned before, there are issues with working with the discrete and jumping back to the bulk. I see things discussed here very similar to the counter-intuitive concepts of gravity that Galileo discovered with the balls on a ramp. To some, they may be be clear, but to others, the details cloud the picture.
The two concepts that Mosher-sensai mention are not inconceivable, but the discrete level does cause issues. Unless the atmospheric energy transfer model can be conveyed to why the anticyclonic (Red Spot, and the additional coalition of white spots) event on Jupiter has persisted for possibly hundreds of years, there will be questions.
Thank you for contribution to at least my knowledge.
POST SCRIPT (TO ALL THAT ARE DEBATING DLR):
This issue is NOT the the NET Daytime Radiation. The ISSUE is the NIGHTTIME BLANKET EFFECT. When the SUN is out, it will ALWAYS dominate the “energy budget”. Obviously it is the FIREPLACE that warms our world. When the IR saturated H2O, CO2 and other vibrational molecules fall back to sea level at night, some are not ABSORBING new energy. Nighttime tempertures will be “slightly warmer”, which will allow the oceans to retain more heat from the DLR. Vector algebra still works, only in the dark ;).
I believe a successful model of Jupiter would be a huge step in modelling, that is if there are no solids to screw up the equations 😉

@Willis
“Stop acting like I’m an idiot and like Trenberth is making stupid assumptions, Dave, it’s a foolish error in both cases. We know what we’re talking about. Here’s the part that you seem not to understand:
You (and the cited paper) are talking about net radiation flows. Trenberth and I are talking about individual radiation flows.”
Glad to oblige. Stop acting like an idiot and I’ll treating you like one. The net flow is all that matters. Get that through your thick skull.

For those who insist that DLR reduces the cooling and does not warm the surface consider the following analogy. Consider two groups of people are facing each other. A machine throws huge rocks over the heads of group A towards group B. Some of the rocks richochet and are lost the rest break into pieces. The people from group B pick up the pieces and throw them back. Some of these pieces fly past group A but others are picked up by group A who throw them back to group B. Now we know that all the rocks originally came from the machine but how do we describe the bombardment of group B? Do we say that they are bombarded by big and small rocks? Or do we say that they are bombarded by big rocks and the presence of group A reduces the number of small rocks that group B throws? I do not think the latter describes reality. One can say that the presence of group A reduces the rate at which small rocks are lost from around the feet of group B but this is not analogeous to warming or reduced cooling it is analogeous to heat accumulation. To recognise the difference one only has to consider the melting of ice which involves heat accumulation but no warming. It would be like group B collecting rocks in piles and waiting before throwing them back.

This here is a oiece from a paper by NIWA.
Decadal temperature changes in the Tasman Sea(There was a warming of the Tasman Sea deep to 800 mtre.)
Quote
“The first possible forcing mechanism to consideris air-sea flux. This mechanism is unlikely given the depth penetration of the warming signal, as surfacewarming would increase stratification rather than warm the deep ocean. Air-sea flux can also be eliminated as a possibility by examining European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts(ECMWF) and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) heat flux data. The ECMWF andNCEP products indicate that the annually-smoothedheat flux varies between c. 10 W/m2 and c. 40 W/m2 with a mean of c. 25 W/m2. However, the heatflux is always from the ocean to the atmosphere, i.e.,the ocean is losing heat to the atmosphere rather than gaining it”.
publications-journals-nzjm-2005-107-lo.pdf (261.68K)
publications-journals-nzjm-2005-107-lo.pdf

testing testing the comments under obesity and AGW are not working

Willis Eschenbach @ August 15, 2011 at 9:21 pm

“…And I still haven’t heard you [TimTheToolMan] or anyone else explain why the ocean is liquid, what mysterious energy source you claim keeps the ocean from freezing soltd. Losing 400 w/m2 as upwelling longwave, gaining only 170 w/m2 from the sun, here comes the ice age …”

Willis, I’m shocked! Putting aside just where you get your numbers from, they are somewhat similar to those in the Trenberth et al 2009 cartoon of energy balance. Do you NOT understand that EMR (radiation) IS A DIFFERENT FORM OF ENERGY TO HEAT? Radiation whizzes around in ALL directions but it is not HEAT. The net global average HEAT loss via radiation from the surface according to Trenberth is a mere 66, not 400 W/m^2, and the incoming averaged solar is 181 W/m^2. But, of course the annual global diurnal/ seasonal/ regional averages etc on that cartoon are a nonsense anyway, if you would like to proceed to a more complicated discussion

Not quoting any of your words Willis on this post
but after reading ALL of http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/14/its-not-about-feedback/
and visiting the website on buoys data I would suggest speaking with the pilots & or HQ of Mission Aviation Fellowship.
I am sure they would have much experience and comment for your current thesis.
PS the reason for suggesting this is that I flew as a passenger with them over 30 years and they know their industry and environment.

Willis Eschenbach says:
August 15, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Still unclear on how a so-called “greenhouse” actually works?
The glass stops the hot air rising! Remove a pane from the roof and most of the heat escapes.

@mosher,
Thank you for the thermos analogy, I’d always assumed they worked by ‘trapping heat’ ;). Would a more suitable analogy for greenhouse gasses with regard to reflected DLR and the oceans not be a flask covered with a thin layer of soggy toilet paper? Sure, it would slow down heat loss through IR reflection, but to any remotely significant degree? Not making a point, just askin’. It would be nice to see Tallbloke’s points addressed with something other than snark too..

Willis your reply to my post was a question relating to chalk on blackboards. I had actually asked if you had any links to empirical evidence of IR radiation around the 15 micron band heating oceans. Sadly I must conclude from the nature of your reply that you do not have links to any such evidence.
After reading over 170 comments I am starting to believe that for all the money spent on AGW promotion, no one has actually done the simple experiment required.
A tank of sea water at a known temperature.
Air at a known temperature, humidity and wind speed.
IR source emitting only between 10 and 20 microns with a spectral peek around 15 microns.
A few accurate thermometers.
Who cares about chalk on blackboards? Has no one done this very simple empirical test?
(And no, Mr. Mosher the RC link is no where close to what is required. Scattered data points from a ship at sea. Measured emission not just backscattering of clouds and only looked at ocean skin temperature. And as to isolated testing of the 15 micron frequency totally useless.)

Any warming by DLWR must be extremely miniscule. There are two beaches near my home both with different types of sand. The sand at Nokomis Beach is cool even at midday in summer. I assume the properties of the sand reflect almost all SWR (the sand looks white) so it does not heat up. The sand a few miles away at Manasota Beach is extremely hot at midday in summer. I assume that the properties of the sand absorb most of the SWR (the sand is grey). This sand gets so hot you can actually burn your feet. However, as soon as the Sun gets lower in the sky, the sand cools off rapidly so that you can walk comfortably on it even before sunset. My point is that if DLWR had any effect the sand at Manasota Beach would not cool so fast. Even if there was a small change in the rate of heat loss due to DLWR it has no discernible effect and is overwhelmed by the changes in other radiations.

Here is a paper with the absorbtion vs temperature spectrum of water
http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/research/borl/homepages/veronica/thesis/chapter5.pdf

Two words: heat conduction.
As Willis suggests, leave all the silly stuff to the other side.

From tallbloke on August 16, 2011 at 4:33 am:

The core point you’re claiming seems to be this:
The additional co2 in the atmosphere causes an increase in the downward component of the radiative flux, therefore the ocean will cool slighty slower than before, thus getting warmer because it can’t get rid of solar energy as fast as before.
Please let me know if you feel I’ve mischaracterised this from your point of view.

Before Willis gets worked up into an even stronger “quote my words” rage, I’ll point out a glaring one right now. I’ve checked the original post and every reply Willis has made at this post. CO2 is mentioned nowhere by Willis. Why are you tagging him with that? The DLR comes from the greenhouse gases, of which water vapor is overwhelmingly the predominant one, which Willis is well aware of. Why muddle up an otherwise reasonable discussion by attributing a CO2 statement to Willis?
The nighttime overturning is driven by the temperature difference between the surface and lower levels, once the surface undergoes its normal nocturnal cooling resulting in cooler water over warmer water. With more DLR the surface doesn’t cool as much, the difference is less, thus less overturning, thus less warmth from deeper down is circulated to the surface. For that much of what was stated, the source of the DLR doesn’t need mentioning. Adding in the conjecture that increased CO2 causes the increased DLR, especially when Willis has said no such thing here, isn’t called for and isn’t helpful.

Willis says “Please stop the condescending snarkiness, it just makes you look ugly.”
Ah – so condescending snarkiness is only OK when attacking real scientists then….

@Dave in Delaware says:August 16, 2011 at 5:33 am
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ABSOLUTELY
I had not seen your comment (which was no doubt in the pipe;ine) when I posted my above comment (addrssed to Willis).
The warmists need to carefully examine each area and not some conglomerate average.
It is obvious that over the oceans, the role of CO2 is greatly diminished because of the high concentrations of water vapour which dwarf its effect.
Further, the more solar energy received, the more water vapour produced. Now if this increase in water vapour caused the ocean temperature to rise, one would get even more of an increase in water vapour possibly leading to a run away effect. There therefore needs to be some negative feed back in all of this or otherwise the oceans would have evaporated long ago.

Tom in Florida says:
August 16, 2011 at 4:44 am
Exactly, it is extremely small and shows the same result with a volume of water. It is easy to show that DLR can’t warm a volume of water during a day and relies only on solar energy. DLR occurs all the time during day and night so to distinguish this between solar energy, one only has to place identical volumes of water in the sun and in the shade. The shade volume must be outside exposed to the atmosphere and not in the sun so only the DLR is still reaching it. The result which anyone can easily demonstrate (but some at least choose to ignore this observation) shows the water in the shade during one day doesn’t warm, yet the volume in the sun warms greatly. Therefore this experiment provides the scientific evidence that solar energy warms a volume of water and not DLR. The other experiment that also backs this up are based on solar ponds.
http://www.solarponds.com/
All the DLR is mostly (if not all – look later into why) the emissions from solar energy as they escape the Earth’s atmosphere. Thus the 170w/m2 inward and 390w/m2 outward are not really different entities, but from the same source. Both are values measured from the atmosphere only and therefore can’t be compared with a much higher specific heat capacity of water. The water is warmed differently depending on the source of radiation.
Solar energy at 170w/m2 warms the ocean much greater than DLR despite the observed atmospheric value over 2 times greater because it reaches downwards up to 100m. (the experiments above back this with scientific evidence) The warming caused by this is orders greater than DLR just reaching the skin surface. The reason why the oceans don’t freeze is because despite the atmospsheric observed outflux, the energy in the ocean is orders time greater warmed by the sun. If the solar energy 170w/m2 only reached ths skin surface like DLR, then the oceans would freeze.

Some random thoughts and comments after reading most of the above.
My washing on the line drys much much quicker when there is a breeze; however gentle. No white horses necessary.
Average atmosphere temperature is 14-15DegC. Average ocean temperature is 3DegC.
It’s been well over 10,000 years since the last ice age ended. If the atmosphere could warm the oceans, the oceans should be closer to the 14-15DegC level. 10,000 years not enough?
Regards semantics, if we are saying GHGs “reduce rate of cooling” rather than actually “warming”, then the ocean had to be warmer in the first place for it’s rate of cooling to be reduced. What warmed it in the first place then?
Oceans warm in 3 dimensions but cool in 2 dimensions. So I have my doubts about the figures quoted, i.e. 170Wm2 solar input in 3 dimensions, but 390Wm2 radiant heat loss in 2 dimensions. this doesn’t make sense to me.
According to the AGW theory, the sun warms the surface first, the surface then warms the atmosphere, which in turn further warms the surface.
But if the solar input is only 170Wm2, then that’s the maximum the ocean can radiate back up. The atmosphere cannot ‘back-radiate’ any more than the 170Wm2 it receives from the surface for a total of 340Wm2. Where did the 390Wm2 come from? And I haven’t even allowed for the atmospheric window nor the sunlight that reaches down to about 100 metres, the energy from which doesnt make it back up to the top straight away.
The well mixed portion of the oceans are the top few hundred metres. But the oceans are 4-5 kilometres deep. How does warm water mix “down” thousands of metres? physically impossible I would have thought.
The strongest GHG effect, hence the most DWLWIR happens at the tropics. How come the deep even at the tropics is around 2-3DegC only? Why is the deep much the same temperature at the tropics as it is at the poles?
The “bulk” of the ocean is the deep. The temperature of the tropical deep tells me that GHGs cannot warm the deep.
[Reply] Check your figures, ocean avg surface temp is ~17C, warmer than the atmosphere at sea level. TB-mod