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.
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
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
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.
Dave Springer says:
August 15, 2011 at 3:03 pm
I say again, the ocean overturns nightly. DLR heating of the surface slows that overturning. As a result, the bulk ocean below does not cool as much.
Again we are in the realm of semantics, but the energy flow is clear. Since the slowly overturning ocean is warmer than it would be in the absence of nighttime DLR, we say DLR warms the bulk ocean. How? By preventing the bulk ocean from cooling.
Nor is this some kind of accounting trick. The bulk ocean is actually warmer because of the DLR … but not because the “DLR heated water molecules make it downwards” as Tallbloke suggests. It heats the bulk by slowing the cooling, which has exactly the same effect—the bulk ocean ends up warmer, in either case, than if there were no DLR.
w.
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.
Konrad says:
August 15, 2011 at 3:18 pm
I have referred to generally accepted estimates of radiative loss from the surface (usually taken as ~ 390 w/m2), evaporative loss (~ 80 w/m2), convective loss (~ 20 w/m2) and sun hitting the surface (usually taken as 170 w/m2). There is an explanation for the derivation of these in the Trenberth study. The ocean surface loses 390+100 = 490 w/m2 on average, and is warmed by 170 w/m2 of sunlight. That’s a net loss of about 320 w/m2 … here comes the ice.
So I ask again: If DLR is not being absorbed by the ocean, what is keeping it liquid?
w.
_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:
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.
Three great articles from Willis in two days. My head is going to explode !!
Posted on August 15, 2011 by Willis Eschenbach
“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?”
Willis, no amount of theory can contradict observations. A more difficult question is this: Why are the poles a block of ice if DLR is so high?
If average DLR is so much higher that average solar radiation, then why is there so much of a temperature difference between the equator and the poles? Why is summer in the polar regions with 24 hours of (very weak) sunlight (angle of incidence) so much warmer than the polar winter with 0 hours of sunlight? If solar energy is such a small part of the total energy, then DLR should keep the poles very much the same temperature year round, regardless of the (very weak) amount of sunlight.
If DLR is so high as compared to solar radiation, then the polar winter should be much closer to the polar summer in temperature. Observation contradicts theory, especially in Antarctica, where the moderating effects of water are minimal..
Willis says,
” DLR heating of the surface slows that overturning.”
Umm, exactly where do all those GHG’s get the energy to radiate all night? Do they have their own tiny personal cold fusion generators?? Me thinks this statement is also very misleading!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Lemme see, the ocean has a huge thermal mass and radiates all night providing energy to the GHG’s, if they didn’t the rest of the atmosphere would be driving the GHG’s radiation, although at MUCH reduced levels!!
Dave Springer says:
August 15, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Dave, I don’t understand your logic. It seems you think that there is something to be learned from the experiment you describe, and perhaps there is. I understand that part. What I don’t understand is why I should perform an experiment because you think there’s something to be learned from it.
Where I come from, we perform our own experiments, and report the results. But let me set that aside.
The first problem with your experimental design is that an unknown amount of energy is being lost through evaporation of the warm liquid. But let’s set that aside as well.
Let us also assume that the hand, the background, and the liquid are blackbodies.
OK, here we go, let’s use math to estimate the results of the experiment … what, you want me to actually perform the experiment before I do an estimate of the result I’d expect? Why would I do that? At that point my results would bias my math. I want a prediction, an estimate, to see if the experiment confirms it.
Now, the main problem with this experiment is that the background temperature (say 72°F) is not far from the temperature of the liquid and your hand. So in one case, you have liquid radiating at 98.6°F (525 w/m2), and receiving the same back from the hand.
In the other, the back radiation is less, say 72°F (432 w/m2). So I would expect the one with the hand to be warmer.
But the real question is, how much warmer? Depends on how much liquid is in the cup. If it’s a litre, it will take 4,186 joules to warm that by one degree. A watt is a joule second. We also need the surface area of the cup, call it a 3 cm radius, pi r squared is maybe 25 sq. cm.
OK, we have a difference of back radiation of 525 minus 432, call it a hundred watts per square metre. But we have only 25/10,000 of a square metre (25 sq cm). So that means that the difference is 100 * 25/ 10,000 = about a quarter of a watt difference in radiation loss from the surface of the liquid between hand and no hand conditions.
Now, you say this continues for “a few hours”, we’ll call it 3 hours. A joule is a watt second. One watt for one hour is 3,600 joules. One quarter of a watt (the difference of hand vs. no hand) for one hour is 600 joules. We need, 4,186 joules to change the water temperature by one degree C. So that means after about seven hours, all things being equal, the two cups would measure one degree apart.
So, my analysis says in three hours you’d see no difference, and after seven hours you might, and I emphasize might, be able to detect it. And that’s in a perfect world with no evaporation. With evaporation, all bets are off with that small a difference in radiation, a quarter of a watt.
Come back and let us know your results, my prediction is no measurable difference after three hours.
w.
Dumb question
How does rivers figure in all this?Rivers are always cold are they not?Is that because of their depth?
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.
Willis,
I look at the semantics of ‘warming’ vs. ‘reducing the rate of cooling’ in this way:
if the ocean is radiating 400 watts/square meter, and there were no CO2 or H2O above radiating back to the ocean (the DLR), it will cool at a certain rate – obviously faster than with CO2/H2O above it, radiating back, say, 300 watts/ square meter. But in both cases, the result is a cooling ocean.
Now if the CO2/H2O were radiating 400 watts/sq meter, then the ocean is neither heating nor cooling, it is staying the same – might one say the two are in equilibrium with each other?
Further, if the CO2/H2O were radiating MORE than 400 watts/sq meter, then that is when I would say the DLR is ‘warming’ the ocean.
That’s just how I look at. One object is warming another when the object doing the warming raises the temperature of the other object ABOVE the temperature state the other object is in.
Now even that could be argued semantically, because if I were out in the cold air, my hands were cold, and I put a pair of gloves on, my hands would become warmer. I might say, ‘my gloves are warming my hands – though I could also say, ” . . my hands are warming AS A RESULT of the gloves” (prevent them from losing heat in the cold air ). . .
So obviously this discussion over ‘warming’ vs’ reduced rate of cooling won’t end, but I still prefer ‘reduced rate of cooling.
I should mention that even with this discussion and my perspective, I agree with your arguments.
Sun Spot says:
August 15, 2011 at 5:05 pm
I couldn’t make any sense out of what he said. Too many posts, too little time, I moved on. You want to engage me, make it brief, clear, and interesting.
Also, put in a link or quote the subject. I had to go find his mystery text, why should I have to?
Sorry,
w.
Dave Springer,
“Absolutely. It’s called pyregeometer. Wanna buy one?”
And that is exactly the problem with Climate Science and the way the problem is stated. Stefan Boltzman does not compute 390 w/m2 from the AVERAGE surface of the earth unless it is to a vacum. What would happen to the surface of the ocean if we were able to remove the atmospheric pressure and radiation from above it?? I would love to see a video!!!
These things should be built in pairs to only measure up and down at the same time so Climate Scientists can’t play games!!! Even then we dont’t get the other directions!! 8>)
Smokey says:
August 15, 2011 at 5:36 pm
The claim seems to be (e.g. Tallbloke)
IR heats the top molecule. It passes some reduced amount of that heat to the molecule below. But what tallbloke forgets is that the top molecule can’t make the second molecule warmer than the top molecule, heat doesn’t flow from cooler to warmer.
Since the second molecule is not as warm as the top molecule, in contradiction to tallbloke’s claim, it doesn’t rise to the top. And the same for the layers further down. The heat is transmitted down and down, but each layer can’t heat the lower layer more than itself, heat won’t flow uphill. So the water, though warming, doesn’t “rise to the top” as claimed.
All of this, however, assumes a quiescent ocean, and as a long-time sailor, I can assure you that from the tropics to the Arctic, and I’ve sailed them, a quiescent ocean is the rare exception, not the rule. Generally, there is surface turbulence, the idea of an unchanging sheet of molecules at the top layer is an illusion.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
August 15, 2011 at 9:35 pm
“I have referred to generally accepted estimates of radiative loss from the surface (usually taken as ~ 390 w/m2), evaporative loss (~ 80 w/m2), convective loss (~ 20 w/m2) and sun hitting the surface (usually taken as 170 w/m2). ”
The same people who generally accept a 3C rise in global average temperature per CO2 doubling. Let’s look at an actual study of ocean heat budget (which I’ve posted before and you either ignored or forgot):
http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~carton/pdfs/foltzetal03.pdf
The math ain’t difficult Willis. The tropical Atlantic absorbs about 200Wm from the sun. What goes in must come out. 10Wm it loses by conduction. 50Wm it loses by radiation. The rest, 140Wm, is lost through latent heat of vaporization.
10/200 = 5% lost by conduction
50/200 = 25% lost by radiation
140/200 = 70% lost by evaporation
What part of that do you and Trenberth and the rest of the bandwagon science brigade not understand?
richard verney says:
August 15, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Agreed, note that I said “under a mm” because I didn’t want to get into a bunfight about exactly how much. As you point out, it is much less than a mm.
However, as a long time sailor and commercial fisherman, I can assure you that the idea that “nearly always”, “wind swept spume and spray” is common on the world’s oceans in the daytime, let alone at night, doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Spray, and also spume (whitecaps), only occurs in (and is used as an indicator of) higher wind speeds. The Beaufort scale doesn’t even mention spray until 20 knots of wind (10 m/sec), and then it’s only “some spray”.
Finally, on the occasions when they are happening, both spray and foam are only momentarily “divorced” from the ocean, they quickly remarry. Within seconds they will fall from the sky and mix back into the mass … ironically, mixing in the IR they absorbed moments ago, and providing yet another mechanism for that mixing …
The existence of spray and spume only serves to mix the DLR warmed water more forcefully, and in those conditions there will be high surface turbulence in any case, also mixing in the DLR warmed molecules of water.
w.
@Willis
Can you or someone please explain to me how an ocean that receives only 200Wm of incoming energy can possibly emit more than that? The figure of 390Wm lost by radiative transfer is physically impossible. That would require it be absorbing at least 390Wm which it absolutely does not do. Have you people never heard of the law of conservation of energy? Maybe it’s the thorium dissolved in the ocean that producing all the extra heat, huh? The sun gets focused into a laser beam by water amplification which heats the thorium which causes it to condense and give off more heat than it absorbs through some mechanism that left unexplained except to say it definitely isn’t fission.
God almighty the pseudoscience nonsense pecked out by pikers around here sure gets frustrating at times. It’s so thick in the OP you can cut it with a knife.
richard verney says:
August 15, 2011 at 7:12 pm
Enough with the stupid semantics. When you put on a jacket, you say “Boy, that jacket really warmed me up.” We know a jacket can’t warm you, it just slows the cooling. But that’s what we call it, because I’m warmer with the jacket than without it.
What I don’t understand is what slightest difference this makes. If the ocean is losing 400 w/m2, and it is gaining 170 w/m2, I don’t care in the slightest what you call that. What I want to know is, if DLR isn’t heating the ocean, what makes up the missing energy? Gamma rays? So enough with the semantics, and answer the question—what’s keeping the oceans liquid, call it what you want, if it’s not DLR?
w.
Good on you, Willis, for trying to do a little education here. You have great patience.
kuhnkat says:
August 15, 2011 at 9:09 pm
Please stop the condescending snarkiness, it just makes you look ugly.
I am listing individual energy flows, not net flows. If you want to use net flows that is up to you. But either one is a perfectly valid way to analyze the data, and you look like an idiot for abusing me for using a perfectly valid method.
I can hand you a hundred dollar bill, and at the same time you hand me four twenties. That’s one way to describe the transaction, the way I described it above, listing the individual flows. It is valid and true that I gave you a hundred dollars. It is also valid and true that you gave me eighty dollars.
You can also say that I gave you twenty dollars. That’s also a totally valid description of the exact same situation, measuring the net flows.
What you don’t get to do is abuse me because I don’t use net flows. Go away and think about your unpleasant tone, it’s not appreciated, and on the mathematics, you’re just plain wrong.
w.
PS—you say:
QUOTE MY WORDS, you unpleasant person, I made no such statement, that is a calumnious falsehood.
What happens to the DLR if the ocean doesn’t absorb it? Does it power Santa’s sled back to the North Pole? Go back to space? Why haven’t satellites definitively proved this? Quit wasting your time on BS folks. Willis, you have better things to do, right? I can understand, by the way, the reason for using gross over net. I wouldn’t say acceptable, I would say preferable.
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.
No mention of the Coriolis effect?
How does a rain drop freeze? Did someone figure that out yet?
If this is an exercise in determining if ~100 ppm of CO2 can account for the OHC increases seen for the last ~50 years, I beg the question to be asked what is the heat capacity of CO2 that allows for it to warm the oceans more so than the sun itself.
Just wondering.
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.