Guest post by Bob Fernley-Jones by Bob Fernley-Jones AKA Bob_FJ
CAUTION: This is written in Anglo-Oz English.
Here is the diagram as extracted from their 2009 paper, it being an update of that in the IPCC report of 2007 (& also 2001):
The unusual aspect of this diagram is that instead of directly showing radiative Heat Transfer from the surface, it gives their depiction of the greenhouse effect in terms of radiation flux or Electro-Magnetic Radiation, (AKA; EMR and a number of other descriptions of conflict between applied scientists and physicists). EMR is a form of energy that is sometimes confused with HEAT. It will be explained later, that the 396 W/m^2 surface radiation depicted above has very different behaviour to HEAT. Furthermore, temperature change in matter can only take place when there is a HEAT transfer, regardless of how much EMR is whizzing around in the atmosphere.
A more popular schematic from various divisions around NASA and Wikipedia etc, is next, and it avoids the issue above:
- Figure 2 NASA
Returning to the Trenberth et al paper, (link is in line 1 above), they give that the 396 W/m2 of EMR emitted from the surface in Fig.1 is calculated primarily by using the Stefan–Boltzmann law, and global year average conditions. Putting aside a few lesser but rather significant issues therein, it is useful to know that:
1) The Stefan-Boltzmann law (S-B) describes the total emission from a flat surface that is equally radiated in all directions, (is isotropic/hemispherical). Stefan found this via experimental measurement, and later his student Boltzmann derived it mathematically.
2) The validity of equally distributed hemispherical EMR is demonstrated quite well by observing the Sun. (with eye protection). It appears to be a flat disc of uniform brightness, but of course it is a sphere, and at its outer edge, the radiation towards Earth is tangential from its apparent surface, not vertical. It is not a perfect demonstration because of a phenomenon called limb darkening, due to the Sun not having a definable surface, but actually plasma with opacity effects. However, it is generally not apparent to the eye and the normally observed (shielded) eyeball observation is arguably adequate for purpose here.
3) Whilst reportedly the original Stefan lab test was for a small flat body radiating into a hemisphere, its conclusions can be extended to larger areas by simple addition of many small flat bodies of collectively flat configuration, because of the ability of EMR waves to pass through each other. This can be demonstrated by car driving at night, when approaching headlights do not change in brightness as a consequence of your own headlights opposing them. (not to be confused with any dazzling effects and fringe illumination)
4) My sketch below demonstrates how radiation is at its greatest concentration in the lateral directions. It applies to both the initial S-B hemispherical surface radiation and to subsequent spherical radiation from the atmosphere itself.
5) Expanding on the text in Figure 3: Air temperature decreases with altitude, (with lapse rate), but if we take any thin layer of air over a small region, and time interval, and with little turbulence, the temperature in the layer can be treated as constant. Yet, the most concentrated radiation within the layer is horizontal in all directions, but with a net heat transfer of zero. Where the radiation is not perfectly horizontal, adjacent layers will provide interception of it.
A more concise way of looking at it is with vectors, which put simply is a mathematical method for analysing parameters that 
possess directional information. Figure 4, takes a random ray of EMR (C) at a modestly shallow angle, and analyses its vertical and horizontal vector components. The length of each vector is proportional to the power of the ray, in that direction, such that A + B = C. Of course this figure is only in 2D, and there are countless multi-directional rays in 3D, with the majority approaching the horizontal, through 360 planar degrees, where the vertical components also approach zero.
6) Trenberth’s figure 1 gives that 65% of the HEAT loss from the surface is via thermals and evapo-transpiration. What is not elaborated is that as a consequence of this upward HEAT transfer, additional infrared radiation takes place in the air column by virtue of it being warmed. This initially starts as spherical emission and absorption, but as the air progressively thins upwards, absorption slows, and that radiation ultimately escapes directly to space. Thus, the infrared radiation observable from space has complex sources from various altitudes, but has no labels to say where it came from, making some of the attributions “difficult”.
DISCUSSION; So what to make of this?
The initial isotropic S-B surface emission, (Trenberth’s global 396 W/m2), would largely be absorbed by the greenhouse gases instantaneously near the surface. (ignoring some escaping directly to space through the so-called “atmospheric window”). However, a large proportion of the initial S-B 396 surface emission would be continuously lateral, at the Trenberth imposed constant conditions, without any heat transfer, and its horizontal vectors CANNOT be part of the alleged 396 vertical flux, because they are outside of the vertical field of view.
After the initial atmospheric absorptions, the S-B law, which applied initially to the surface, no longer applies to the air above. (although some clouds are sometimes considered to be not far-off from a black body). Most of the air’s initial absorption/emission is close to the surface, but the vertical distribution range is large, because of considerable variation in the photon free path lengths. These vary with many factors, a big one being the regional and more powerful GHG water vapour level range which varies globally between around ~0 to ~4%. (compared with CO2 at a somewhat constant ~0.04%). The total complexities in attempting to model/calculate what may be happening are huge and beyond the scope of this here, but the point is that every layer of air at ascending altitudes continuously possesses a great deal of lateral radiation that is partly driven by the S-B hemispherical 396, but cannot therefore be part of the vertical 396 claimed in Figure 1.
CONCLUSIONS:
The vertical radiative flux portrayed by Trenberth et al of 396 W/m^2 ascending from the surface to a high cloud level is not supported by first principle considerations. The S-B 396 W/m^2 is by definition isotropic as also is its ascending progeny, with always prevailing horizontal vector components that are not in the field of view of the vertical. The remaining vertical components of EMR from that source are thus less than 396 W/m^2.
It is apparent that HEAT loss from the surface via convective/evaporative processes must add to the real vertical EMR loss from the surface, and as observed from space. It may be that there is a resultant of similar order to 396 W/m^2, but that is NOT the S-B radiative process described by Trenberth.
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ADDENDUM FOR AFICIONADOS
I Seek your advice
In figure 5 below, note that the NIMBUS 4 satellite data on the left must be for ALL sources of radiation as seen from space, in this case, at some point over the tropical Pacific. The total emissions, amount to the integrated area under the curve, which unfortunately is not given. However, for comparison purposes, a MODTRAN calculator, looking down from 100 Km gives some interesting information for the figure, which is further elaborated in the tables below. Unfortunately the calculator does not give global data or average cloud/sky conditions, so we have apples and pears to compare, not only with Nimbus, but also with Trenberth. However, they all seem to be of somewhat similar order, and see the additional tabulations.
| Compare MODTRAN & “Trenberth”, looking down from 2 altitudes, plus Surface Temperature | ||||
| Location | Kelvin | 10 metres | 100 Km. | (Centigrade) |
| Tropical Atmosphere | 300K | 419 W/m^2 | 288 W/m^2 | (27C) |
| Mid-latitude Summer | 294K | 391 W/m^2 | 280 W/m^2 | (21C) |
| Mid-latitude Winter | 272K | 291 W/m^2 | 228 W/m^2 | (-1C) |
| Sub-Arctic Winter | 257K | 235 W/m^2 | 196 W/m^2 | (-16C) |
| Trenberth Global | 288K ? | 396 W/m^2 | 239 W/m^2 | (15C ?) |
| Compare MODTRAN & “Trenberth”, looking UP from 4 altitudes: W/m^2 | ||||
| Location | From 10 m | From 2 Km | From 4Km | From 6Km |
| Tropical Atmosphere | 348 | 252 | 181 | 125 |
| Mid-latitude Summer | 310 | 232 | 168 | 118 |
| Mid-latitude Winter | 206 | 161 | 115 | 75 |
| Sub-Arctic Winter | 162 | 132 | 94 | 58 |
| Trenberth Global | 333 Shown as coming from high cloud area (= BS according to MODTRAN) | |||
Tim Folkerts @ur momisugly October 31, at 5:16 pm and Wayne@ur momisugly October 29, at 3:49 am
Tim, I don’t think you have adequately addressed the fact that radiation is isotropic, not just up and down. A very important aspect is that the horizontally opposed stuff amounts to nothing in terms of HEAT transfer or temperature, yet it is PART of the S-B vertical calculation, yet out of view of the vertical (=normal). If you think that it is too hard for Trenberth to draw multi directional arrows, what about a simple notation that the radiation is isotropic?
Meanwhile, please examine this following sketch, and advise if you see any conflicts with drawing capability and/or reality:
http://bobfjones.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/quick-sketch-for-trenberth-cartoon/
Windchaser says:
October 31, 2011 at 5:07 pm
Not true – 1 cm of water is about 99% transparent to deep-red visible light, and about 99.99% transparent to deep-blue visible light. Not purely transparent in either case. Absorption of visible light is mostly at the overtone frequencies of the stretch and/or bend frequencies… so the absorption is weaker, but definitely there.
Oh just brilliant, what a great sense of scale. So this 1% and .001% is heating the oceans of the Earth as the primary mechanism of this junk energy budget’s only shorwaves heat the land and oceans and thermal infrared, real effin heat energy, which we can really feel from the Sun direct to us, doesn’t have any role to play in heating land and oceans?!
What are those numbers saying anyway? That towards the longer wavelengths water sometimes accepts them? How does the electron transitions of visible blue sometimes get through the molecule of water’s standard rejection of it? Whatever the reason, this is so effin insignificant that for all practical bog standard physics water is 100% transparent to visible, it does not in any significant way change that because some exception may or may not be proved. Transparent means that water does not absorb visible. Transparent means that water is not being heated by visible. Transparent means that the junk energy budget you all think is so real physics, is based on junk science fiction. Real science understands this:
Get your head around that. It’s your generic idiotic twisting of physics properties and processes which not only gives those with real interest in physics a headache, but higher taxes and loss of our freedoms. Those we can feel, visible and UV and near IR we cannot feel, they are not hot, they are not thermal energies, they are not heat. They have for all practical physical purposes and sense no ability to raise the molecules of the matter of our bodies into the vibrational states which is heat, which thermal infrared, heat, from the Sun, does every day. They work on the electronic transitional level, appropriate to their puny, tiddly nature..
That shortwave only heats land and oceans is not proved. It is already falsified because in real physics the properties of these are already well known and used in countless applications because they are well known, the building blocks are not imaginary ‘shortwave heats water’ or ‘water is not transparent to visible it is absorbed’.
Show and tell.
Tell how much visible light is heating the atmosphere in all the reflection and scattering since that is done by electronic transitions of the electrons of the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen absorbing it. Go on, tell us, how much hotter are these getting? Why isn’t this in the your junk ‘energy budget’?
Until you can show some real physics logic in these base premises of that energy budget, you don’t have real world physics energy budget.
You have a science fiction world depicted, that’s all you have.
You’re all arguing about an imaginary world as if it is real.
How can so many people calling themselves Scientists not see that when it is pointed out to them?
This is your basic claim: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/greenhouseeffects1.jpg
Prove your base premises, prove that these shortwaves heat land and oceans and that thermal infrared the direct heat from the Sun doesn’t play any part in it. This is your generic claim. Prove it. It goes against everything that is known in real physics.
Damn well prove it.
Bob,
I am really not quite sure what your objection is. There certainly is energy moving horizontally back and forth thru the atmosphere. But the diagram is showing energy flows between 4 broad regions: the sun, the atmosphere (as a whole), the solid/liquid earth (as a whole), and outer space. It is not trying to describe the flows within the various parts. It would be like having a diagram showing foreign trade for a country, then complaining that trade between state/provinces within the country are not included.
The 330 W/m^s IS the total IR from the atmosphere as a whole to the surface (appropriately averaged over time and space). Whatever other IR is flying around being emitted and absorbed within the atmosphere is not important (for this diagram anyway). This 330 W/m^2 does not need to be further divided into up and down and left and right components.
mkelly says:
October 31, 2011 at 9:16 am
The term (Tg/Ts)^0.65 can be found in McAdams – ‘Heat Transmission’ (Radiation from Nonluminous Gases). For water vapour it is (Tg/Ts)^0.45
The terms are also found in Perry – ‘Chemical Engineer’s Handbook’ (Heat Transmission by Radiation) 5th Ed.
kuhnkat says:
October 31, 2011 at 11:13 am
I calculated CO2/H2O separately ie for dry air and air without CO2 to show the huge difference between the two absorbers. Pc for CO2 is so low that it takes 30 times the traverse compared with H2O which has a much larger Pw. In furnace calculations when dealing with the CO2/H2O system I calculate a combined emissivity; this could be done for atmospheric calculations in which water vapour would dominate etc. In furnace calcs the two are roughly equal.
Robert, thanks for adding some great real-world experience to the discussion.
Myrrh expounds: “Prove your base premises, prove that these shortwaves heat land and oceans and that thermal infrared the direct heat from the Sun doesn’t play any part in it. ”
Of course no one can prove that, because no one believes it! Anyone with an ounce of understanding knows that BOTH help heat the earth.
* “Shortwave EMR” [Which I will define as “Near IR” (0.7 um – 4 um) + Visible (0.4 um – 0.7 um) + ultraviolet (less than 0.4 um)] from the sun DOES plays a role in heating the earth.
* “Longwave EMR” [which I will define as greater than 4 um] from the sun DOES play a part in heating the earth.
“Thermal IR” is ill-defined, so you would have to give your definition. One standard definition is any IR beyond 3 um. This definition basically equates “thermal IR” with “Longwave EMR”. This definition means that only a few % of the sun’s EMR is “thermal IR” so only a few % of the energy warming the earth is due to “thermal IR”
I suppose you could make your own definition of “thermal IR” like “any IR generated from thermal energy” in which case all of the sun’s IR would be “thermal IR” and would account for ~ 50% of the sun’s EMR. This definition certainly increases the importance of “thermal IR”, but still leaves ~ 50% of the absorbed energy coming from visible and UV.
————————————————
“Tell how much visible light is heating the atmosphere in all the reflection and scattering … Why isn’t this in the your junk ‘energy budget’?”
[sigh] If you look, it IS there. The incoming 342 W/m^2 includes 67 W/m^2 “Absorbed by Atmosphere”. Now, this includes all wavelengths, so I can’t tell you off-hand how much of that is attributed to absorption of IR vs visible vs UV. It is all wrapped up into the one factor — 67 W/m^2 of absorbed energy from sunlight heating the atmosphere.
————————————————
And that is enough interaction with Myrrh for me for the next few months. The rest of you are free to keep up the discussion if you wish.
Myrrh continues:
What are those numbers saying anyway?
Well, that 1 cm of pure liquid water will absorb about 1% of the deep-red and 0.01% of the deep-blue visible light that passes through it (i.e., 99% and 99.99% transmitted). The effect is multiplicative, i.e., 2 cm of water would absorb about 1 – 0.99*0.99 of the deep-red visible, and 1 meter of water would absorb about [1 – (0.99)^100]. It would certainly be transparent enough for many real applications.
Using these numbers, it takes about 70 meters of water to absorb 50% of the deep-blue visible, or about 70 cm for deep-red. That’s hardly insignificant when you’re talking about how oceans absorb light.. and the oceans aren’t pure water anyway.
How does the electron transitions of visible blue sometimes get through the molecule of water’s standard rejection of it?
Water absorbs at overtone frequencies of its IR stretching/bending frequencies. As is normal, it absorbs much more weakly at overtone frequencies than at the prime frequencies.
Transparent means that the junk energy budget you all think is so real physics, is based on junk science fiction. Real science understands this:
http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Herschel/SEMNGHFTFQG_0.html
…
That’s a press release; it’s not meant to be a rigorous description of the physics of water (just like the cartoon is not meant to be a rigorous/exhaustive description of how IR transmits in the atmosphere). The point of that release was the story – that they’d missed the jets of water until now, because this telescope is much more sensitive to the IR (where water absorbs strongly) than other telescopes, which see in visible (where water absorbs weakly). You’ll need much more sensitivity to see water vapor in the visible range.
We can see visible light with our eyes, but astronomers have found many stars that we can’t pick out with our eyes .. not because the stars don’t transmit in the visible range, but because they transmit much more *weakly* in the visible range than in, say, radio waves.
Or, putting it another way – can you pick out Jupiter’s moons with your bare eyes? No? Does that mean that they give off / reflect any visible light, or just that your eyes aren’t sensitive enough to see them?
Prove your base premises, prove that these shortwaves heat land and oceans and that thermal infrared the direct heat from the Sun doesn’t play any part in it. This is your generic claim. Prove it. It goes against everything that is known in real physics.
Nope.. it’s not our claim. Like Tim said, they both play a part.
Robert,
thank you. Yes, at much higher temps CO2 actually does a bit.
Bullshit chaps, the ‘greenhouse claim’ is on the basic premise that shortwaves (UV/Visible/NearIR aka Solar) directly heat the land and oceans converting to heat which radiates out the said thermal infrared, shorwave in, longwave out. The claim is the the real heat from the Sun, the Sun’s thermal energy, doesn’t reach us and plays no part in heating land and oceans. The claim is that visible light is thermal, because you have subsituted the properties of Light with the properties of thermal infrared.
You can fiddle with yourselves as much as your like around this, but since that is the claim that is what you have to deal with. That’s what the AGW claim is based on, that is what is now being taught in schools. That visible light heats matter. It’s pathetic nonsense, as are your arguments about ‘the energy budget’ here and elsewhere because that is the basic premise you work to, garbage in garbage out.
kuhnkat says: October 31, 2011 at 8:54 pm
“good job side stepping the issue of the surface irradiating itself SLOWING THE COOLING and invalidating the correctness of SB!! 8>) “
Every surface is rough at some level. The heating element of an electric stove would look rough under an electron microscope — does this invalidate the SB law for the heating element? Does the “surface irradiating itself” slow the cooling of the heating element when you shut off the power? The answer is “no” — in fact the rough surface will radiate MORE efficiently and cool MORE quickly (see the link earlier for emissivity of rough vs smooth metals).
If you are looking at distances on the same scale as the surface roughness, then yes, it will have local effects on EMR levels. Once you are on scales significantly larger than the roughness of the surface, then the roughness effects will become less and less noticeable. So if I am standing in a ditch, I will get extra IR from the ground. If I am standing on a pillar, I will get less IR from the ground. If I am 100 meters above the ditch or the pillar, I can pretty safely ignore the topography and treat the ground as “flat”.
The key is finding the solid angle subtended by the various surfaces. Once you are even slightly above the level of the roughness, you will have very close to 2 pi steradians of sky above you and 2 pi steradians of ground below you and the exact roughness of the ground will have little affect.
Myrrh says: November 1, 2011 at 11:56 am
Bullshit chaps, the ‘greenhouse claim’ is on the basic premise that shortwaves (UV/Visible/NearIR aka Solar) directly heat the land and oceans converting to heat which radiates out the said thermal infrared, shorwave in, longwave out. The claim is the the real heat from the Sun, the Sun’s thermal energy, doesn’t reach us and plays no part in heating land and oceans.
I shouldn’t bother …
Myrrh, what you call ” shortwaves (UV/Visible/NearIR aka Solar) ” is “the Sun’s thermal energy” reaching earth. Tells us, please, what percent of the energy in the sun’s EMR is not these shortwaves? How does the sun’s thermal energy reach us if not thru shortwave EMR — what other mechanism is there?
So the claim is actually the opposite of what you understand — the claim is that the much of the “real heat from the sun” (most of the Visible/NearIR; some of the UV/Mid IR) does reach us and does play a major part in heating the land and ocean.
Tim Folkerts,
Saying that a geometry where the surface being evaluated irradiates itself “invalidates the correctness” of the SB equations is probably poorly stated . I believe it makes the calculation less accurate just as not being in equilibrium would give a less accurate computation.
So, considering the actual earth isn’t particularly smooth and that plenty of roughness causes it to be irradiating itself and it is never in equilibrium, has any work been done to determine the amount of variance that this would cause? Any papers you could link?
Correction when I said in furnace calcs CO2/H2O are roughly equal, I should have said they both make strong contributions as opposed to the atmospheric case where CO2 is very weak when compared with water vapour.
Natural gas combustion typically gives 13.4% H2O and 6.7% CO2 and consequently H2O makes the greater contribution to their combined emissivity and absorptivity.
Tim Folkerts says:
November 1, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Myrrh says: November 1, 2011 at 11:56 am
Bullshit chaps, the ‘greenhouse claim’ is on the basic premise that shortwaves (UV/Visible/NearIR aka Solar) directly heat the land and oceans converting to heat which radiates out the said thermal infrared, shorwave in, longwave out. The claim is the the real heat from the Sun, the Sun’s thermal energy, doesn’t reach us and plays no part in heating land and oceans.
I shouldn’t bother …
Myrrh, what you call ” shortwaves (UV/Visible/NearIR aka Solar) ” is “the Sun’s thermal energy” reaching earth. Tells us, please, what percent of the energy in the sun’s EMR is not these shortwaves? How does the sun’s thermal energy reach us if not thru shortwave EMR — what other mechanism is there?
So the claim is actually the opposite of what you understand — the claim is that the much of the “real heat from the sun” (most of the Visible/NearIR; some of the UV/Mid IR) does reach us and does play a major part in heating the land and ocean.
🙂 These are Light energies, they’re not thermal. They’re not Heat from the Sun, they are incapable of heating the Earth’s land and oceans.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
They are not the heat we feel from the Sun, this is thermal infrared, it is actually capable of heating the Earth’s land and oceans, it is actually capable of heating water.
Visible light, a Light energy in trad physics, doesn’t heat water.
These shortwaves are Light energies, not Heat energies. They are not thermal. They don’t do heat..
The ‘energy budget’ you are all arguing about is based on fictional physics. You are not arguing about the real physics of this world.
Is that clearer?
Okay.. let’s back up.
To a physicist/materials scientist, no type of EMR is “thermal energy”. Thermal energy is the kinetic energy of a system’s atoms and molecules.. and since light has no kinetic energy or atoms, it has no thermal energy.
In other words, all light has energy, but no light has/is thermal energy. Sometimes thermal energy is *converted* to light, and this is called the “thermal radiation” or the blackbody radiation, but it’s not thermal energy after it’s converted, any more than coal’s chemical energy is the same thing as electricity.
So, thermal energy can be converted to light via blackbody radiation (amongst other ways), and vice versa – materials have distinct frequencies at which they can absorb EMR directly as kinetic energy. These are frequencies correlating to the natural resonances of parts of the atoms/molecules/material. For instance, in water, we have frequencies for twisting, bending, and stretching the O-H and H-O-H bonds, as well as other frequencies for intramolecular interactions, like the hydrogen bond (the bond between one water’s O and another water’s H).. and so on.
Water will also absorb at linear combinations of these frequencies, at the “overtones”, which are similar to harmonics on a guitar. Higher multiples of the native frequencies.
Now, very nearly 100% of the Sun’s light is from its “thermal energy”, i.e., the Sun’s light is just its blackbody radiation. Because the Sun is much hotter than the Earth, it emits blackbody radiation much more strongly in the visible range than the Earth.
Okay, you say
“[Visible/UV light] are Light energies, they’re not thermal. They’re not Heat from the Sun, they are incapable of heating the Earth’s land and oceans.”
Oh dear.
Okay, first – if I give you a bit of light at a specific frequency, you have no way of telling whether it’s “thermal radiation”, coming from blackbody radiation, or whether it was emitted via some other process. There’s no such thing as this “thermal” and “light” energies for EMR, as all light has “light energy”.
Visible light carries energy, as does every other kind of light. When visible light goes into the ocean, and doesn’t come back out – which we know it doesn’t, as you can see that the oceans look darker than deserts from orbit – what happens to the energy in the visible light? It is absorbed, and converted to heat (well, some small portion of it is converted to chemical energy via photosynthesis, but mostly heat).
Definitions:
– Thermal energy: the kinetic energy of the constituent parts of a system. Vibrational, translational, phonon, etc.
– Heat: the transfer of thermal energy between two systems, whether directly or indirectly.
– EMR: electromagnetic radiation, or light.
– Thermal radiation: blackbody radiation, a type of EMR.
Myrrh says “”These shortwaves are Light energies, not Heat energies. They are not thermal.””
Just answer two simple questions:
1) What percent of the energy in the sun’s EMR is NOT these shortwaves (UV/visible/near IR = wavelengths shorter than 4 um)?
2) How do you define “heat energies” — preferably with a specific mathematical expression.
Tim Folkerts @ur momisugly November 1, at 5:52 am and Wayne@ur momisugly October 29, at 3:49 am
Tim, well at least this is on-topic! You wrote in part:
”…The 330 W/m^s IS the total IR from the atmosphere as a whole to the surface (appropriately averaged over time and space). Whatever other IR is flying around being emitted and absorbed within the atmosphere is not important (for this diagram anyway). This 330 W/m^2 does not need to be further divided into up and down and left and right components”.
Starting at the basics:
1) The 396 is derived from an S-B calculation and is isotropic into a non transparent atmosphere (equal in all directions hemispherically)
2) The horizontal components are always there, and are not additional EMR energy, and therefore are not part of the vertical flux as claimed by Trenberth
3) The backradiation is claimed to be 333, presumably as a progeny of the 396, and of course, it too must be isotropic, but this time it must originate from the atmosphere so is spherical. It too must have continuous horizontal components which are not part of the vertical flux. There is nominally the same flux upward as there is down. Which is the puzzle raised by Wayne….
4) I guess the solution to the puzzle in 3) is that the 333 is there only for schematic purposes; that it is really part of the 395 and its progeny.
5) There must be significant additional backradiation that is not shown, which arises from the warming of the atmosphere from the 65% of total heat loss from the surface in thermals and evapotranspiration. However, I guess this may be rather high-up to be significant at a few metres from the surface
Repeating; the problem is that Trenberth assumes the isotropic radiation is pure vertical flux, when it is not. Please look again at my crude sketch, and explain if you see anything faulty in it.
http://bobfjones.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/quick-sketch-for-trenberth-cartoon/
Bob says:
The horizontal components are always there, and are not additional EMR energy, and therefore are not part of the vertical flux as claimed by Trenberth
You are thinking about this incorrectly. A decent analogy is sprinklers on the roof of a large warehouse. If the sprinklers spray out 390 kg/s/m^2, then 390 kg/s/m^2 will land on the floor each second. It matters not one bit that the water drops may have some horizontal component when they are sprayed out. The horizontal component of the motion of the drop does not reduce the mass of water landing on the ground by some sort of cos(theta) factor.
The same goes for photons. The 390 W/m^2 of photons leaving the surface with any upward component will carry 390 W/m^2 upward.
(this analogy would be “upside down” and the atmosphere would be transparent. Also, we need to ignore the effects of gravity on the water drop. The analogy could be made better, but that would come at the expense of simplicity.)
“The backradiation is claimed to be 333, presumably as a progeny of the 396”
No it is the progeny of ALL the energy into the atmosphere — the 396 from the ground and the 80 from evaporation and the 20 from thermals and the 70 directly from the sun. Once the atmosphere absorbs the energy, it is all just energy, with no tags saying where it came from.
The IR sideways that you talk about does help spread the energy around within the atmosphere, equilibrating the temperature to some extent.
“Please look again at my crude sketch, and explain if you see anything faulty in it.”
I don’t find any fault per se. But as I said before, it is adding more details than the image is intended to portray.
Using the import/export analogy again, this is sort of like drawing arrows from Australia to other countries to show the amount of exports — then continuing the arrows within the countries, letting them taper off to show how far into the countries those goods go. It could be done; it could be interesting; but it doesn’t directly relate to the amount of exports.
Windchaser says:
November 1, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Okay.. let’s back up.
To a physicist/materials scientist, no type of EMR is “thermal energy”. Thermal energy is the kinetic energy of a system’s atoms and molecules.. and since light has no kinetic energy or atoms, it has no thermal energy.
? Maybe not those physicists/materials scientist, do you mean applied scientist here?, who have been AGWSFmeme educated..
Thermal energy is thermal infrared. That’s what we know is heat on the move because we can feel it, from the Sun, from a stove producing no visible light and so on, it is heat, thermal energy radiated out, the thermal energy of the Sun radiating out to us is the invisible thermal infrared.
In other words, all light has energy, but no light has/is thermal energy.
Agreed, light has not/is not thermal energy, that’s why it is called Light. Longwave infrared however is thermal energy. that is why it is called Heat.
Sometimes thermal energy is *converted* to light, and this is called the “thermal radiation” or the blackbody radiation, but it’s not thermal energy after it’s converted, any more than coal’s chemical energy is the same thing as electricity.
Thermal energy in the Sun creates visible. Quite, it’s not thermal energy after it’s been converted to light, thus light isn’t thermal energy. However, the thermal energy in the Sun which has created the light, the heat of the Sun, is also being radiated out. That is thermal infrared.
I really don’t know know what you mean by equating ‘blackbody’ with ‘thermal energy’, but I have found it extremely tedius to keep seeing the meme repeated that ‘everything radiates out thermal energy above zero K’ which does make it appear that thermal energy is being downplayed, I’m thinking of the contexts I see this. So, let’s just forgo delving into blackbodies and concentrate on the problem here, that you generic call light from the Sun thermal which is not its property. You generic have downplayed the real thermal energy from the Sun to us which really is the Sun’s thermal energy we feel to the extent that you claim it doesn’t even reach us. This is not a description of the physics of Light and Heat in this world. Light in this world, is not thermal. We can feel heat from the Sun in this world.
You’re living in a science fiction world.
This has been so brainwashed into what appears the majority, that they now think light is heat, that light is thermal. Other brainwashing memes are as you’ve given before, that ‘light is higher energy therefore they are powerful and can move atoms’ when in my world they work on an electronic transition scale and don’t move atoms. You equate ‘higher energy’ with ‘more power’, but in your world you have no sense of scale, these a piddly little energies, they can just about manage to interact with some electrons, but not visible light in water because the water molecules don’t let them in, for all practical real world physics, 100% of the time.., while the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen do, visible light excites their electrons they absorb it, and then it gets spat right back out, irritating little git that it is.., this is known as reflection/scattering. Blue visible is more highly strung than than the longer colours and so smaller, this highly energetic tiny thing gets bounced around all over the sky just by the electrons of the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen like a ball in a pinball machine.. It doesn’t have any ‘power’. It’s a wimp.
This AGWSF meme that ‘all electromagnetic energy is the same’, has confused you. You fail to appreciate the differences in properties between these, the differences such as size, and size matters. A highly energetic teeny little energy that is flicked all over the sky by electrons is not powerful. To call it powerful is ludicrous. Thermal infrared is around the size of a pinhead, now that’s powerful when it bumps into molecules. And that’s exactly why the more powerful heat energy moves the whole atom and molecule into vibration, which is what heats matter up.
So, thermal energy can be converted to light via blackbody radiation (amongst other ways),
Via? You said blackbody was thermal. So you’re still saying what I’m saying, let’s leave out this blackbody silliness, is that thermal energy creates light. There are other ways of creating it, as we now have begun exploring and utilising, LED’s and such, but we’re talking about the Sun, the thermonuclear creator of it.
and vice versa – materials have distinct frequencies at which they can absorb EMR directly as kinetic energy.
No not quite, they do not so much absorb EMR directly as kinetic energy, they absorb kinetic energy which is part of the EMR range of energies. Matter doesn’t create kinetic energy out of ‘passing EMR’ just because it can absorb heat. EMR is divided into many distinct groups, kinetic energy, heat, can be absorbed, a radio wave could be passing straight through at the same time without stopping. Because how matter absorbs energies also depends on the kind of energy it is.
These are frequencies correlating to the natural resonances of parts of the atoms/molecules/material. For instance, in water, we have frequencies for twisting, bending, and stretching the O-H and H-O-H bonds, as well as other frequencies for intramolecular interactions, like the hydrogen bond (the bond between one water’s O and another water’s H).. and so on.
Right.., and water and thermal infrared like to party. Visible is transmitted through without being absorbed.
Water will also absorb at linear combinations of these frequencies, at the “overtones”, which are similar to harmonics on a guitar. Higher multiples of the native frequencies.
Interesting as that is, water is transparent to visible light, visible light is transmitted through without being absorbed. Deal with it. The claim in this science fiction world’s energy budget is that visible light is absorbed by the oceans and heats it up. Visible light does not heat me up. I don’t care if that’s your world, imagined or even real, some alien world intersecting mine, I do care that you are pretending that it is this world around me, where the physics is well known and understood. That water is transparent to visible light is bog standard traditional science in my world. I gave an example from my real world science:
Will you kindly spend a little time taking that in?
Water is transparent to visible light in my world.
It is a well known physical fact, because it is a physical fact that is well known to real scientists in my world, who use this information successfully in their work because they know the differences between the different properties of EMR. EMR is not ‘all the same’.
Stop claiming you speak for my world.
Now, very nearly 100% of the Sun’s light is from its “thermal energy”, i.e., the Sun’s light is just its blackbody radiation. Because the Sun is much hotter than the Earth, it emits blackbody radiation much more strongly in the visible range than the Earth.
Visible light created by the Sun’s thermal energy I would have said 100%, is there something else creating visible light in the Sun? Not all the radiation from the Sun is thermal, visible light is not thermal, but being created by the Sun’s thermal energy.
Sure, the Sun is hotter than the Earth and emitting more visible…
Oh dear.
Okay, first – if I give you a bit of light at a specific frequency, you have no way of telling whether it’s “thermal radiation”, coming from blackbody radiation, or whether it was emitted via some other process. There’s no such thing as this “thermal” and “light” energies for EMR, as all light has “light energy”.
Oh dear, it’s that old all EMR is the same. We can measure the amount of thermal infrared coming from a body, we can tell if it’s thermal or light, because we know the difference between the two, that’s irrelevant to the process which produced it. Just because you can’t tell the process which produced this “bit of light at a specific frequency” doesn’t mean we can’t tell what that is produced, by it’s frequency we know what it is. Your conclusion does not having any logical connection to the spiel which came before it. We know there are such things as thermal and light energies for EMR, but “no such thing .., as all light has light energy”? What’s that supposed to mean when it’s at home?
Visible light carries energy, as does every other kind of light.
Hmm, I’d have put it, that visible light is energy in the form of visible light. It’s the electromagnetic waves which are carrying the energy. There are three ways of transferring energy, conduction, convection and radiation.
Heat travels from the Sun, the Sun’s thermal energy radiating out to us, is heat energy carried by radiation. It’s radiation that transports it. So what have you, generic, done here? Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation. So, you’ve just called all of these ‘light’?
When visible light goes into the ocean, and doesn’t come back out – which we know it doesn’t, as you can see that the oceans look darker than deserts from orbit – what happens to the energy in the visible light? It is absorbed, and converted to heat (well, some small portion of it is converted to chemical energy via photosynthesis, but mostly heat).
Well actually, light can come back out, it can be refracted and reflected all ways, including back up, depends what it reflects back from. But what happens to the energy is that it is not absorbed by the water. Visible light energy does not heat water. Water is transparent to visible light. If the visible is being absorbed it is in photosynthesis, pigmentation, fluroescence and so on, converting to heat is just not what visible does directly because it works on a minute scale in electronic transitions. You can claim it does, just as you claim that visible is thermal, just as you claim that ‘because it disappears in water must mean that water absorbs it and since absorption means creating heat therefore visible heats water’, but they are simply statements that bear not the slightest semblance to reality. Because: Water is a transparent medium for visible light. That is simply a physical fact here, at whatever depth. Go down in a submarine into the deepest trench and shine a light, you’ll be able to see through the water, it doesn’t absorb your light. That’s why they didn’t spot this huge mass of water around Saturn before, because the water was transparent to visible.
This is far too much like the memes about CO2 and temp rises, ‘because we can’t think of anything else it could be so it must be’ – ?? Think harder.
It is a fact that water is transparent to visible light. This means that water does not absorb it. This means that visible light cannot be heating it. Adjust the rest of what you think to that, to that physical fact.
Definitions:
– Thermal energy: the kinetic energy of the constituent parts of a system. Vibrational, translational, phonon, etc.
– Heat: the transfer of thermal energy between two systems, whether directly or indirectly.
– EMR: electromagnetic radiation, or light.
– Thermal radiation: blackbody radiation, a type of EMR.
And Tim’s post which touches on this, I think what you really need to get to grips with is what heat is. Heat is thermal energy. Heat is used by some to mean specifically that thermal energy on the move, but they do so knowing that it is the same thermal energy. You can’t just pick and choose what you want from the way traditional science uses these terms, and then claim that any other use of it is wrong.. No wonder you’re all so confused.
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Tim Folkerts says:
November 1, 2011 at 2:31 pm
Myrrh says “”These shortwaves are Light energies, not Heat energies. They are not thermal.””
Just answer two simple questions:
1) What percent of the energy in the sun’s EMR is NOT these shortwaves (UV/visible/near IR = wavelengths shorter than 4 um)?
2) How do you define “heat energies” — preferably with a specific mathematical expression.
1. Right now I don’t bloody well care. And, I wouldn’t take any figures for them as fact because of the amount of corruption of basic science has taken place by those promoting AGW. What I am interesting in, is in getting a proper energy budget for this world, the one I’m in, where shortwaves are not the heating mechanism of all the land and oceans of Earth. To that end, I’m interested in getting these crook premises sorted out which are the basic building blocks of the science fiction energy budget you’re touting.
2. If you can’t make sense of it in English then you have no effin idea what you’re talking about in the maths language, Tim. So far, you make not one iota of sense in English. Your basic premises are junk, just what do you think your maths is worth when you don’t even understand the difference between light and heat or that water doesn’t absorb visible light? Stop playing your how educated you are card, it really doesn’t impress me..
…what has happened to the 95% thermal infrared being radiated out from an incandescent bulb if the 5% visible is the thermal felt as heat..? Gets trapped behind the glass does it? Runaway greenhouse in every bulb?
I posted a wodge on heat here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/18/replicating-al-gores-climate-101-video-experiment-shows-that-his-high-school-physics-could-never-work-as-advertised/#comment-784290
I think you could both do with going back to basics as traditionally still taught in these descriptions, heat is thermal energy, thermal energy from the Sun on the move is heat, this is the invisible thermal infrared package of the electromagnetic spectrum, i.e. thermal infrared is heat. It’s heat that has the power to move atoms and molecules into vibration, which is heat, kinetic energy.
Bob Fernley-Jones says:
“1) The 396 is derived from an S-B calculation and is isotropic into a non transparent atmosphere (equal in all directions hemispherically)
2) The horizontal components are always there, and are not additional EMR energy, and therefore are not part of the vertical flux as claimed by Trenberth
3) The backradiation is claimed to be 333, presumably as a progeny of the 396, and of course, it too must be isotropic, but this time it must originate from the atmosphere so is spherical. It too must have continuous horizontal components which are not part of the vertical flux. There is nominally the same flux upward as there is down. Which is the puzzle raised by Wayne….
4) I guess the solution to the puzzle in 3) is that the 333 is there only for schematic purposes; that it is really part of the 395 and its progeny.
5) There must be significant additional backradiation that is not shown, which arises from the warming of the atmosphere from the 65% of total heat loss from the surface in thermals and evapotranspiration. However, I guess this may be rather high-up to be significant at a few metres from the surface”
The fundamental confusion lies with Trenberth’s designation of the 333 W/m^2 as all ‘back radiation’ when it is really the total downward LW flux received at the surface. If you read the tables in paper from which this diagram comes, it states this quite clearly.
Downward LW received at the surface has three potential sources, and only a portion of it is ‘back radiation’ as defined as that which last originated from the surface LW flux of 396 W/m^2. Another source is post albedo solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere and emitted down to the surface in the form of LW. This however is not ‘back radiation’, but ‘forward radiation’ from the Sun yet to reach the surface (key distinction). The other source is the non-radiative or kinetic energy fluxes from the surface (latent heat of water in particular) which also radiates in the LW infrared, some of which back in the direction of the surface.
If you add up the numbers, what Trenberth does is take 78 W/m^2 designated as ‘absorbed by the atmosphere’ from the Sun and the 97 W/m^2 of non-radiative flux (latent heat and thermals) and lumps them in the return path of 333 W/m^2. By deduction, only 157 W/m^2 is ‘back radiation’ as defined as that which last originated from surface emitted of 396 W/m^2. He has the atmosphere emitting 169 to space and 70 W/m^2 is passing straight from the surface to space (40 W/m^2 through the clear sky and 30 W/m^2 through the clouds). 169 + 70 = 239 leaving at the TOA. 161 directly from the Sun + 78 indirectly from the Sun + 157 from ‘back radiation’ = 396 W/m^2, which is the net energy flux entering the surface (396 – 169 – 70 = 157).
Because he returns all of the entire non-radiative flux from the surface of 97 W/m^2 back to the surface as part of the 333 W/m^2, it’s a net zero flux (78 + 97 + 157 = 332). Trenberth has an extra watt in there to make it look there is an energy imbalance causing global warming.
Via? You said blackbody was thermal. So you’re still saying what I’m saying, let’s leave out this blackbody silliness, is that thermal energy creates light. There are other ways of creating it, as we now have begun exploring and utilising, LED’s and such, but we’re talking about the Sun, the thermonuclear creator of it.
Okay.. one comment, and then I’m done.
You’re confusing thermal energy (i.e., kinetic energy of atoms and molecules) with thermal radiation (light that is given off as blackbody radiation, i.e., light that is produced from thermal energy). Thermal radiation for a body like the Sun (at, what, 7000 Kelvin?) is a mix of UV, visible, and IR light. Thermal radiation for the Earth is only IR, since the Earth is cooler.
“Thermal radiation” is just a tag we put on some light, to say how this light was created. It doesn’t say anything about the frequency of the light or about its spectra. “Thermal radiation” could be radio waves, IR, visible, UV, whatever, depending on how hot or cold the body emitting it is.
I showed you links (and there are plenty more to find, from respectable journals) showing that water does absorb visible light, although not so strongly that you’d see it from looking at a glass of water. These frequencies exist, and can be found on any chart of the absorbance of water.
You keep saying that water doesn’t absorb visible light. Would you mind providing a link to a scientific article showing zero absorbance in the visible range? I betcha you can’t. =p
Even if you have a light+material combo that don’t interact thermally (in the range where, for that material, light can be directly converted to kinetic energy), light may still interact with the electrons of the material, and then be converted to heat. Look at phosphors, for example – the reason we have trouble getting high efficiencies using these as light sources is because the excited electrons (which are supposed to be giving off light) keep dissipating their energy as thermal energy instead. They relax in the wrong way. It’s caused by phonon scattering, mostly.
Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation. So, you’ve just called all of these ‘light’?
Yep. That’s it. “Light” is just a shorthand way of saying “electromagnetic radiation”.
Tim Folkerts @ur momisugly November 1, at 6:35 pm & RW @ur momisugly November 1, at 7:26 pm
Tim, you wrote in part:
Sorry Tim, but that is a VERY poor analogy because the water sprays would interfere with each other thus disrupting their initial kinetic energy and converting the lateral spray to chaotic cumulative downward deflections, aided by the entirely foreign force of gravity such that it all ends up on the floor. It is an entirely different situation to isotropic IR radiation because light waves pass through each other. (well, until their quanta are absorbed). (see point 3) in the article).
AND, with my bold added:
Tim Folkerts @ur momisugly November 1, at 6:35 pm & RW @ur momisugly November 1, at 7:26 pm
Tim, you wrote in part:
Sorry Tim, but that is a VERY poor analogy because the water sprays would interfere with each other thus disrupting their initial kinetic energy and converting the lateral spray to chaotic cumulative downward deflections, aided by the entirely foreign force of gravity such that it all ends up on the floor. It is an entirely different situation to isotropic IR radiation because light waves pass through each other. (until their quanta are absorbed). (see point 3) in the article).
AND, with my bold added:
ERH; the atmosphere is NOT transparent. I don’t know why you repeatedly obfuscate as to how it could be in a transparent atmosphere!
AND:
Yes OK, I was fooled by Trenberth’s term; Backradiation, and its apparent diagrammatic linking with the 396. I see that RW has clarified this very well, and please see my separate response to RW.
Meanwhile, you also wrote:
QUE? It is a consequence of the temperature and emissivity within the layers. Dost though have thine cart before thine horse?
And, I might get back to you later on the sketch.
Tim Folkerts,
love the way you and Fred over at Judith’s lapse into near incomprehensibel jargon that only vaguely touches on the issue brough up when you don;t want to constructively engage.
Have a good day!!