Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Once again, the crazy idea that downwelling longwave radiation (DLR, also called infra-red or IR, or “greenhouse radiation”) can’t heat the ocean has raised its ugly head on one of my threads.
Figure 1. The question in question.
There are lots of good arguments against the AGW consensus, but this one is just silly. Here are four entirely separate and distinct lines of reasoning showing that DLR does in fact heat the oceans.
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 DLR 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 … but 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, because the atmosphere has far too little thermal mass. If DLR were heating the air we’d all be on fire.
Nor can it be going to evaporation as many claim, 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 that a maximum of less than a quarter of the energy of the DLR might be going into evaporation, and the DLR is not heating the air … then where is it going?
Rumor has it that energy can’t be created or destroyed, so where is the energy from the DLR going after it is absorbed by the ocean, and what is it heating?
Argument 3. The claim is often made that warming the top millimetre can’t affect the heat of the bulk ocean. But in addition to the wind-driven turbulence of the topmost layer mixing the DLR energy downwards into lower layers, heating the surface affects the entire upper bulk temperature of the ocean every night when the ocean is overturning. At night the top layer of the ocean naturally overturns, driven by the temperature differences between surface and deeper waters (see the diagrams here). DLR heating of the top mm of the ocean reduces those differences and thus delays the onset of that oceanic overturning by slowing the night-time cooling of the topmost layer, and it also slows the speed of the overturning 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 DLR not slowed the overturning.
Argument 4. Without the heating from the DLR, there’s not enough heating to explain the current liquid state of the ocean. The DLR is about two-thirds of the total downwelling radiation (solar plus DLR). Given the known heat losses of the ocean, it would be an ice-cube if it weren’t being warmed by the DLR. 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.
But the average solar input to the surface is only about 170 watts/square metre.
So if the DLR isn’t heating the ocean, with heat gains of only the solar 170 w/m2 and losses of 390 w/m2 … then why isn’t the ocean an ice-cube?
Note that each of these arguments against the idea that DLR can’t warm the ocean stands on its own. None of them depends on any of the others to be valid. So if you still think DLR can’t warm the ocean, you have to refute not one, but all four of those arguments.
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 …
w.
pochas says:
August 20, 2011 at 8:38 am
…
I disagree with most of that. Warmer water is more buoyant for a start, so tend upwards. Secondly, water thermally stratifies. This is why the thermocline exists as a relatively sharp boundary. Thirdly, the ocean emits more IR than it absorbs, the net flux is cooling the ocean. Fourthly, the air is colder than the ocean generally, so the heat flow is upwards not down.
tallbloke says:
August 20, 2011 at 9:42 am
“I disagree with most of that. Warmer water is more buoyant for a start, so tend upwards. Secondly, water thermally stratifies. This is why the thermocline exists as a relatively sharp boundary. Thirdly, the ocean emits more IR than it absorbs, the net flux is cooling the ocean. Fourthly, the air is colder than the ocean generally, so the heat flow is upwards not down.”
If the surface temperature is higher that the sublayer temperature, then heat flow is down.
pochas says:
August 20, 2011 at 12:15 pm
If the surface temperature is higher that the sublayer temperature, then heat flow is down.
I think you probably need to review the discussion of the surface skin layer (warmer underneath than on top), and have a think about buoyancy.
I’m not going to argue with you, tallbloke. I agree that sunlight is absorbed within the top 100 m of surface and that heat has to be released at the surface, and this involves convection, warm water up and cool water down, yielding a well-mixed surface layer with little temperature variation.
And I’m about to leave it at that.
Willis – please read this.
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All I’ve given above in other posts.
I don’t know what more I can do to bring this to your attention.
You are talking about “backradiated” infrared. From around 10 microns upwelling from the Earth, which is what we radiate out..
Heat energy direct from the Sun is far more powerful. It’s what you stop feeling on a bright sunlit day when a cloud temporarily hides the Sun and you can feel again when the cloud passes..This is the real, longwave, thermal infrared directly heating the oceans and swimming pools.
Heat, thermal infrared, works on a vibrational level of molecules. It is the heat we feel from the Sun, it reaches the surface in 8 minutes.. Water is a strong absorber of Heat, thermal infrared, and has an extremely high capacity to store it. Water does not absorb Light.
Light, visible, is not thermal energy, it is not hot. It is much smaller than Heat, it works on an electron scale.
Water is transparent to Light, visible. Light is transmitted through unchanged, it is not even absorbed on the electron scale as it is in the atmosphere where it is absorbed by the electrons of the nitrogen and oxygen molecules and bounced back out the way it came.. Visible therefore cannot create heat, it does not heat water because it cannot. It is physically imposssible.
It’s a con.
A deliberate and malign campaign of disinformation. What I have given you is traditional physics. Very well known because tried and tested in real physics and, therefore, real life.
“Many physics teachers traditionally attribute all the heat from the Sun to infrared light.” http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Infrared
The above quote mentions this, before disagreeing, most teaching now doesn’t, but erroneously teaches that Heat is Light ..
Water is transparent to Light, the visible electromagnetic spectrum. Which means it is not absorbed. It cannot heat the oceans.
The backradiated Heat, thermal infrared, is not hotter than the direct Heat from the Sun.
The clouds will also be absorbing thermal infrared from the Sun, however, the main function of the Water Cycle is to take heat away from the Earth; it would be 67°C with our atmosphere but without the water cycle, think deserts.
We really need more traditional teachers of the real basics.
Bob_FJ says: August 20, 2011 at 1:38 am
Willis,
It disturbs me that you still do not acknowledge advice that it does not matter how much EMR* is whizzing around, unless there is a potential difference (PD) between two sources of it. Otherwise, it amounts to nothing in terms of HEAT transfer. Furthermore, unless there is a change in HEAT level in matter, there is by definition NO change in temperature.
Exactly, and that is why the physics literature expresses heat transfer on the potential difference (Ta^4 – Te^4):
E_net = sigma (Ta^4 – Te^4)
rather than using the form assumed by pyrgeometers
E_net = sigma Te^4 – sigma Ta^4
which assumes massive heat transfer is occurring from both cold to hot and vice versa, in violation of the 2nd law.
The whole DLR heating red herring is based on this false assumption of 2 way heat transfer. Doing the calculations this way leads to false answers because it does not consider the fact that if a cold body could heat a warm body, the warm body would simply emit more heat to compensate. Doing the calculation properly using only the potential difference eliminates this error.
http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-to-fool-world-by-measuring-masive.html
Tim Folkerts,
“To maintain energy equilibrium, the temperature of the new, higher radiation layer must adjust to be the same as the older, lower layer had been. ”
Actually, since there would then be more GHG’s at higher altitudes, where there is little delay in IR going to space, the chances are that the extra GHG’s will be as likely to send more IR to space. The idea that an increase of low density will cause a blockage of energy emitted from lower levels simply does not seem reasonable to me.
The real GHE is this idea you are protraying where it is claimed that the extra GHG’s somehow block more radiation from the current levels than they add due to their low temp. My idea is that adding GHG’s does cause a small warming that expands the atmosphere slightly that offsets this blockage. Since the GHG’s added are still minimal as far as actual atmospheric density it simply doesn’t seem believable to me that the conventional explanation will happen.
Over at Curry’s no one has given me any hard data on which way it can be expected to go. As 1998 and 2010 El Nino’s do not appear to have caused a noticeable hot spot, IF it is possible to bottleneck radiation it certainly does not appear to be happening yet.
Myrrh says: (August 18, 2011 at 5:45 pm)
“It appears that you are suggesting that photons after going so far through the water just get tired and wink themselves out of existence. Not quite–conservation of energy applies.”
“What happens when your car runs out of petrol?”
Cars are not fundamental particles of the universe. They also don’t vanish when they run out of gas. If it is gone when you get back, you are going to assume it was taken away.
Every photon is a packet of energy. That energy can be reconfigured but not destroyed. If photons are observed to be entering the ocean and not coming out, we know that the ocean has acquired their energy. What would you think if you took your car to a garage and later when you came back they told you it had mysteriously vanished?
Myrrh,
As I and at least two others have pointed out, whether PURE water is TOTALLY transparent to Visible wavelengths or not, the oceans of THIS world Earth contain a rather large amount of organic and inorganic matter that is NOT TRANSPARENT to Visible wavelengths. Our oceans could not provide fish, seaweed, salt, minerals, phytoplankton, mammals, crustaceans and numerous other interesting and tasty things to us if they were pure water. The Arctic and Antarctic would have MUCH more sea ice due to freezing more easily and not absorbing as much energy if they were totally transparent. Sometimes a physical truth is overidden by the messy facts of what we actually are dealing with.
As an article I linked to above shows, there is even a rather busy biozone in the very region under discussion here. Please actually consider this possibility. Denying reality is a lonely job.
I have conducted some initial experiments and I believe that backscattered LWIR is not able to slow the cooling of Earth’s oceans to any significant degree. I would encourage others to conduct similar experiments to confirm my results. The equipment required is not overly expensive and the results can be observed in minutes. The results show the dramatic difference between reflecting LWIR back to warm water when its free to evaporatively cool and when it can only cool through conduction and radiation.
What is required –
Two identical probe type digital thermometers with 0.1 degree resolution
Two identical insulated water containers (I used 5 litre Styrofoam cooler boxes)
One IR reflector (I used an A4 sheet of 10mm Styrofoam with aluminium foil attached with spray adhesive.)
One IR window (I built an A4 size “picture frame” of 10mm square balsa wood strips and stretched cling film over it.)
One 10 litre bucket
Extra cling film
Optional extras – computer fans, transformers and an A4 ”dark cool sky” panel of matt black aluminium with ice cooling.
What to do –
Tape probe thermometers in identical positions in both water containers. (I placed the tips 25mm below the water line)
Position IR reflector and IR window 50mm above either water container. You may need to built balsa wood legs or two Styrofoam side walls, but air must be free to move over the surface of the water. (The use of the IR window is to ensure that air flow is similar over each water container.)
Fill bucket with warm water, mix, then fill each water container from the bucket. I used water around 40c as the ceiling was around 18c not a 3k sky.
Observe the temperature change over time for each tank. Less than an hour is required for such a small amount of water. Use a long soft paint brush or similar to keep IR window and reflector free of condensation. You should observe that both tanks cool a the same rate.
Now the important bit – Repeat the experiment, but this time lay a sheet of cling wrap on the surface of the water in each water tank. This allows cooling through radiation and conduction but prevents evaporation. You should be able to observe the water under the IR reflector cools slower.
If results are difficult to observe, try using smaller insulated water containers.
From what I have observed, backscattered LWIR can slow the rate at which substances cool. However in the case of liquid water that is free to cool evaporatively this effect is dramatically reduced. It would appear that including the oceans in the percentage of Earth’s surface that could be affected by backscattered LWIR may be a serious error.
I will conduct further tests using fans to simulate wind, a cooler “Sky” over the IR window and salt in the water. I would encourage others to conduct similar empirical experiments and share their observations. This thread is now over 500 comments long. The time for hand waving and analogising is surely over. Real world observations please.
Spector says:
August 20, 2011 at 4:27 pm
Cars are not fundamental particles of the universe. They also don’t vanish when they run out of gas. If it is gone when you get back, you are going to assume it was taken away.
Let me re-phrase that. What has happened to the petrol in your car when your car stops because it has ran out of gas?
You are postulating that light created by the Sun is eternal.
You are taking laws out of context…
A well-tried and tested and obviously successful way for AGWScience Fiction Inc to spread its disinformation memes.
You should also take into consideration that light slows down dramatically in water, which is, iirc, some 800 times denser than air which is the volume of our fluid gaseous atmosphere, weighing a ton on your shoulders… A plane will use a considerable amount more fuel flying into headwinds because there is resistance, so, similarly, an electromagnetic wave is affected by the density of the medium it travels trhrough. An opaque medium is one which blocks it, so it can’t get through. Sound waves can travel through walls, light waves can’t. So you cast a shadow (though I’m not sure about the people who create these memes).
Back in the finite real world where things get created and destroyed… I gather some sticks on a cold dark night and some time after vigorously drilling one piece with another I get a spark which sets the whole alight until it burns out and only ash is left. There is a finite amount of wood. There is a finite amount of Light and Heat and ash created. The Heat warmed the surroundings, the Light lit up the surroundings, and then there was only a small pile of ash to remind me that I felt warmer and could see better with a fire than without.
There is another well used AGWScience Fiction Inc meme – that all electromagnetic energy is the same. It ain’t. A radio wave is not a gamma ray. This meme is promoted to turn all ‘energy’ into ‘heat’, (‘and here’s the convenient law to enable you to work it out’), and to stop you thinking.
It’s called properties when one looks at the differences between things. They are different sizes, do different stuff, work in different ways on different levels, as the wiki page I gave above describes the differences is a good place to start. One of the ways Light energy is used which does not create heat is in photosynthesis, this is a chemical change, the creation of sugars. Some 90% of the oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by the photosynthesis happening in the oceans. That’s a lot of chemical change that does not produce heat. Even if Light could heat water, which it can’t.
Good luck trying the find the differences explained well, without omissions or downright lies from the AGWScience Fiction Inc’s overbearing influence..
…but it was created.. There’s still hope for us.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/web-ucscalendar-notnuez-attack_sceptical.jpg
(From Marc Hendrick http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/20/saturday-silliness-concerned-cartoon-contest/#more-45511)
Willis seems to be losing it:
“jae, your question doesn’t get answered because it is based on a false assumption. The fallacy is that downwelling longwave radiation can’t be demonstrated empirically.
Willis, I humbly beg you to practice what you preach. Just where the hell did I make this assumption???? Please respond to what I wrote, instead of what you “heard.” DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?
AND I DON’T SHARE YOUR FEAR/DISGUST/?? ABOUT ALL CAPS. IT IS SIMPLY A WAY OF EMPHASIZING SOMETHING. IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, TOUGH DONUTS, “COWBOY.”
Tallbloke writes “Is this the constructal law which Willis likes at work? Or simply the entropy law at work?”
Certainly at all times the entropy is maximised. There is a general flow of energy to space. I’m not really familiar enough with the nuances of constructal theory to know whether the parts of the ocean interacting to maintain balance represent a system self “constructing” to do that job but it certainly seems possible.
Willis:
Science is ALL about EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE, not diagrams, theoretical prose, “shell models,” etc. Even Einstein was held to that requirement. Perhaps you need to think more about that.
There is absolutely NO empirical evidence for an “atmospheric greenhouse effect,” so all your prose about DLR, etc. has no import. Sorry, man, but you gotta face the facts. In FACT, the empirical evidence is going the other way, if you haven’t noticed (more OCO, less temperature–for about 15 years….No “hot spot” in the upper tropopause, as predicted by your shell nonsense….No warming in the oceans….No increase in sea level…
When do you let go of a flawed theory??
One more thought for Willis:
“I can feel DLR, it’s warmer when a cloud passes over during a winter night. When the cloud goes away, the clear sky just sucks the warmth out, but when the cloud is over me, I can feel the warmth from the cloud. So I know from my experience that there is DLR, regardless of what EINSTEIN AND OTHER SCIENTISTS might say about it.”
BALONEY. This “feeling” is just typical of the guiding principle of all liberals and has no bearing in the scientific literature, AFIK. Prove it with some data, fella!
Oh, and dumb me, I just realized that Willis DID NOT EVEN RESPOND TO THE GIST OF MY POSTS! He just did a RealClimate on me!! I can do a lot of speculating as to why, but I will leave it to his highness to explain this problem.
Jae,
Re this oft repeated observation:
“I can feel DLR, it’s warmer when a cloud passes over during a winter night.”
Clouds come in warm moist air that originates in the tropics traveling polewards.
If there is no cloud and the air is drier. Its been through the wringer somewhere and had its moisture removed. In the process it got colder. Local temperature very much depends upon where the air is coming from.When it gets cold you know the rain is finished.
There is always some direct long wave radiation leaving the surface but as a heat transfer mechanism in the atmosphere radiation is insignificant when you compare it with conduction, evaporation and convection. The exception is when water is either very cold or not present.
Myrrh,
“You are postulating that light created by the Sun is eternal.”
You do realize that most Cosmology and Physics do come close to that?? Remember the Microwave Background Radiation?? It has alledgedly been literally flying around the universe since the BB!!! That would be about 14 billion years the last I checked. If you disagree with BB, I can understand that. If you think electromagnetic radiation attenuates because it uses up its initial energy just propagating in less than one light year, I think we have a problem. If you think the oceans are so pure that visible light doesn’t get absorbed or reflected by something, you have a serious reality issue.
Jae,
if a problem is so poorly stated or of no value it should be rather trivial to point this out. Ya gotta wonder with that type of treatment. He seems to be morphing to another Steven Mosher. Going from reality based to conformist.
Willis, in my August 17, 2011 at 12:49 am above I concluded with:
Further my post just above, I tested the link I gave and see that it is declared down for a few days.
You could try the following instead, or search around elsewhere; whatever you might feel like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_energy_budget
There are a bunch of similar diagrams in similar vein around the ether.
Bob, is this the one you’re trying to link?
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/energy-budget-new.jpg
Would anyone be so kind as to answer the question I asked in line six of this post? David A says:
August 20, 2011 at 6:06 am
jae says:
August 20, 2011 at 8:17 pm
When do you let go of a flawed theory??
A good question. Yet so many sceptics still believe this flawed GHG backradiation theory.
It means for example if say 100 units of energy are in a box. 25 leave and one (8% times 50%) return (after hitting CO2. 92% pass straight though but 8% do not)
Somehow this returning 1 unit of energy (LWR) replaces not only the energy from the other 24 units but also quite a bit more. It is total and utter nonsense.
Jae
See my comments of 20th August at 5:01 am.
I have made similar observations.
I can understand your frustration.
Willis has gone very quiet recently, which is disappointing given that he raised this debate. It is likely that Willis is a little out of his depth. This is quite understandable given the lack of empirical data and experimentation carried out on the issues involved. The upshot of this is that inevitably there will be a significant degree of speculation behind the vast majority of arguments being put forward no matter from which side those arguments come. That is the truly amazing fact that comes out of the AGW theory/conjecture. It has been rumbling on for 30 years or so, and no proper experiments have been carried out testing the fundamental issues involved. Quite extraordinary.
Good to see that Konrad has done an experiment. However, I suspect that laboratory conditions are required, before one can draw conclusions. Nonetheless, his experiment is a pointer, and is generally consistent with my view that AGW very probably does not work over water due to the different processes involved. The phase changes of water are fundamental to how the system works and the true consequences and effects of this are in my opinion not fully accounted for.