Whoo boy… just a few days ago it was argued in a new peer reviewed paper published in Science that climate sensitivity might be lower than the IPCC stated in AR4. Now we have this damning admission from Dr. Tom Wigley of NCAR that it can’t be determined at all from the data we have. Of course they’d never tell anyone publicly such things.
Bold mine. From email 0303.txt
cc: Simon Tett <sfbtett@meto.xxx>
date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 12:30:43 -0600 (MDT)
from: Tom Wigley <wigley@meeker.xxxx>
subject: Re: PRESCIENT: Draft plan — updated
to: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@uea.xxx>
Keith and Simon (and no-one else),
Paleo data cannot inform us *directly* about how the climate sensitivity
(as climate sensitivity is defined). Note the stressed word. The whole
point here is that the text cannot afford to make statements that are
manifestly incorrect. This is *not* mere pedantry. If you can tell me
where or why the above statement is wrong, then please do so.
Quantifying climate sensitivity from real world data cannot even be done
using present-day data, including satellite data. If you think that one
could do better with paleo data, then you’re fooling yourself. This is
fine, but there is no need to try to fool others by making extravagant
claims.
Tom
On Fri, 30 Jun 2000, Keith Briffa wrote:
> Dear all ,
> I should first say that I have communicating directly with Simon on a
> few points, but realize that it is better to send these comments to
> everyone. My only feeling now is that we are tinkering too much at the
> margins and have passed the point of diminishing returns for this effort
> some time ago. As long as the plan does not give a false impression of
> exclusion to some of the community , it is time to get it out. The open
> meeting will provide an opportunity for soliciting the full range of
> potential proposals. The SSC will then have to decide on the balance of
> priorities. The plan expresses the rationale of the Thematic Programme well
> enough now.
> In the area of pedantry, however, I do not like the inclusion of the
> statement
> saying that palaeo -data are not likely to be able to inform us directly about
> climate sensitivity . This is a moot point , and even if true , is not needed.
> However, I do feel we need to put a limit on discussion and issue this call
> now.
> At 04:22 PM 6/30/00 +0100, Simon Tett wrote:
> >Dear All,
> > I got some more faxed comments from Tom and have incorporated
> > them into
> >the draft. I attach it for you all to look at.
> >Tom made two comments which I think need to be drawn to your attention.
> >
> >1) The current draft has a tone that suggests that model development and
> >simulations would not be funded by PRESCIENT. I don’t think that was our
> >intention so I’ve added some text which I hope reduces that danger. Some
> >of that added text is ugly! (it was friday after all!) Please let me
> >know what you think!
> >
> >2) Tom also made a comment about paleo-estimates of climate sensitivity
> >– the current text reflects (I hope) his faxed comment. However, I
> >don’t think I agree with it! Comments please.
> >
> >3) The draft contains various comments which I’d appreciate responses on
> >as well.
> >
> >Simon
>
> —
> Dr. Keith Briffa, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia,
> Norwich, NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom
> Phone: xxxx
>
>
**********************************************************
Tom M.L. Wigley
Senior Scientist
ACACIA Program Director
National Center for Atmospheric Research
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, CO 80307-3000
USA
Phone: xxxx
Fax: xxxx
E-mail: wigley@xxxx
Web: http://www.acacia.ucar.edu
**********************************************************
Just check the date that e-mail was sent: June 2000!
Yes, I had to look twice – because the Team knew then they couldn’t quantify climate sensitivity, but pressed on nevertheless, so that our politicians are now strangling our Economies in order to prevent temperatures from rising more than two centigrades.
What have they done since?
Obfuscate, deny, lie.
Have they advanced their ‘science’?
We all know the answer to that.
The diagram can not possibly be correct. Even the 0.6C must be too high. In order for there to be 0.6C due to CO2 then it must imply that nearly ALL of the temperature rise out of the LIA must be due to only CO2 and nothing else. I find that hard to believe.
Are they talking about funding from Prescient Weather Ltd?
Of course you can’t quantify climate sensitivity directly, without doubling CO2 and waiting to see what happens. This is neither news, a secret “admission”, nor “damning”. It just means that it must be quantified indirectly, using a physical calculation to relate what you observe, such as temperature data, to climate sensitivity. This is perfectly possible but obviously depends on the assumptions in your calculation as well as the data used (hence the different answers obtained by different studies).
Follow the Money…
When I read these posts, I’m just astonished. But big money can lead to big lies. Once you cross that boundary of coverups, collusion and coercion its hard to step back. I hope all the big players lose their jobs ending up teaching chemistry at a high school in Albuquerque NM.
AYZ,
Climate sensitivity to CO2 amounts to a WAG. The fact that carbon dioxide has risen by more than 40% while the global temperature has been flat for many years is strong evidence that temperature sensitivity to carbon dioxide has been vastly overestimated.
Maybe grant money expenditure is a more reliable indicator of what not to do ….
So far as I can tell, the only estimates of the climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 are based on the assumption that these estimates can be done by ONLY looking at radiation effects. Conduction, convection and the latent heat of water are ignored. Personally, I find this difficult to believe. However, I can find no justification for this assumption. Does anyone know where this has been justified?
We need to start referring to it as the huge mountain of evidence showing that AGW alarmism is a fraud when ever the occasion rises to insert the phrase natural-like into conversation.
@crosspatch says:
November 28, 2011 at 12:14 pm
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I made a similar observation a few days ago (may be a week ago) when commenting on the recent paper that suggests that sensitivity is likely to be less than the IPCC claim.
I suggested that if one compares the 1940 to 2000 temp rise which consists of natural variation PLUS CO2 with the 1900 to 1940 temp rise which consists SOLELY of natural variation (pre 1940 there was relatively little manmade CO2 emissions) then the difference in temperature rise gives some indication of CO2 sensitivity. On rough and ready ball park basis.
The difference between these two parts of 20th century warming is only about 0.1degC over a 60 year period in which CO2 went up from about 290 ppm to about 390ppm. This would suggest that a 33% rise in CO2 emissions creates about 0.1degC rise in temperature which would place atmospheric sensitivity to CO2 at no more than 0.3degC per doubling. In fact less if sensitivity is logarithmic.
Of course such a comparison is rather simplistic and it assumes that the natural variation forcing present berween 1900 to 1940 is still ongoing and ongoing at about the same amplitude. Of course there is no positive evidence of that, nor positive evidence to refute that. The null hypothesis would be to assume that the natural variation forcing is still ongoing during the 1940 to 2000 period so I consioder the ball park figure to carry some weight.
Given large enough error bars, anything can be explained.
AYZ says:
November 28, 2011 at 12:24 pm
This is perfectly possible but obviously depends on the assumptions in your calculation as well as the data used (hence the different answers obtained by different studies).
So there is no way of testing the various answers obtained by different studies to gauge their accuracy. In other words “Quantifying climate sensitivity from real world data cannot even be done“.
Thanks for playing.
We really should start referring to the growing mountain of evidence that Climate Change Alarmism is a fraud. Just slip it in there whenever the conversation turns in that direction.
Observations have consistently shown NOTHING can “trap” heat – Engineers have been searching for this holy grail and never found it.
Perfect insulation is simply a myth – everything, in the absence of an energy source is cooling down – always.
The best our atmosphere can do is reduce the heat build up during daylight hours through convection of warmed air and the oceans, and the atmosphere to a lesser extent, lose heat more slowly than would occur without them and before everything becomes very uncomfortable the Earth rotates and that big nuclear furnace commences heating again.
The climate scientists have gotten away with the myth that the Sun can’t heat the Earth and “greenhouse fases” somehow account for 33 degrees C.
Why isn’t this nonsense challenged – we know the sun heats the moon to 120 degrees C during the lunar day – NASA says so – although NASA’s involvement shakes my confidence a little. Some idiots say it is because the lunar day is longer than a day on Earth but this displays ignorance – a given radiative flux is associated with a MAXIMUM temperature as given by the Stefan-Boltzman equation.
Plug in 1368 W/sq m – the solar constant – into Stefan-Boltzman and the answer is ~ 120 degrees C.
How do they get away with this obfuscation of quoting averages when all that matters is maximum ?
How do they get away with the “Energy Budget” and the famous “Here we assume a “solar constant” of 1367 W m-2 (Hartmann 1994), and because the incoming solar radiation is one-quarter of this, that is, 342 W m-2, a planetary albedo of 31% is implied.”
It is this incoming solar radiation is a quarter rubbish that supports the whole of the rest of the gibberish.
Please someone – where did the other three quarters go ? It was there a millimeter above the atmosphere/space boundary – I know there is no distinct cut off.
And if the incoming solar radiation is a mere 342 W/sq m as these people claim then how come the IPCC use this in AR4 ?
“Between 1902 and 1957, Charles Abbot and a number of other scientists around the globe made thousands of measurements of TSI from mountain sites. Values ranged from 1,322 to 1,465 W m–2, which encompasses the current estimate of 1,365 W m–2.”
As these were terrestrial observations shouldn’t they have observed 342 w/sq m ?
Or did they remember to multiply by 4 ?
What a joke – “science” built on either stupidity or a lie – take your choice !
Not sure what “greenhouse fases” are.
crosspatch says:
November 28, 2011 at 12:14 pm
But isn’t that the real point of the diagram? Until recently, the warmist message was that the powerful greenhouse gas CO2 utterly dominated natural climate variability. On that basis then, the blue line in the diagram would show the upper bound of climate sensitivity to increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Now that nature is not cooperating, the warmists must embrace some natural climate variability as partially negating the effects of rising CO2 in order to save their “cause”.
All the data sets raise quality issues but we do have a century or so of (dubious quality) observational data from which a stab can be made. I would suggest that a review of this observational data suggests that atmospheric/climate sensitivity is probaly within the range of 0.6 degC to nil.
AYZ says: November 28, 2011 at 12:24 pm says
“Of course you can’t quantify climate sensitivity directly, without doubling CO2 and waiting to see what happens…”
I agree strictly speaking. However, as noted above we have a century and a half of observational data during which time CO2 levels have increased by about 1/3rd. Leaving aside the argument that the CO2 increase is a response to the observed temperature increase, and assuming that instead that CO2 is to some extent a temperature driver this amount of data does permit us to make an estimated guess at a ball park figure for CO2 sensitivity. Last week, I commented:
richard verney says:
November 25, 2011 at 2:04 am
Why must they always use models? Models are GIGO. We have observational data which would give us a better projection.
If one considers the HADCRUT3 data set (and we all know the issues with data sets such as this) for the period say 1900 to 1940 one observes warming of about about 0.4 deg. This is predominantly due to natural variation since there was relatively little increase in atmospheric CO2 during this period. If that is compared to the period 1940 to 2010, one observes a warming of about 0.5 deg. This period comprises of natural variation plus an increase in CO2 of about 1/3rd. Simplistically, this suggests that natural forcings are running at a rate of 0.4 deg C for 40 years, ie., 0.1deg C per decade.
If the natural variation drivers that were present during the period 1900 to 1940 are still operating during the period 1940 to 2010 and operating with the same force (admittedly we do not know whether this is so or whether those natural forcings are operating with more or less force), it suggests that the CO2 forcing component cannot be more than 0.1 deg C (ie., 0.5 degC – 0.4 degC) and arguably nil since during the 70 year period 1940 to 2010 temperatures rose by 0.5 deg C which is 0,07deg C per decade and this is less than the 0.1 deg C per decade of natural forcings which were operating during the 1900/1940 period.
Of course, one can take different periods and different data sets but all suggests that the response to an increase of say 33% in CO2 concentrations is modest. If the response to C02 .is logarithnic then a doubling in CO2 will result in less than 3 times the response to an the 1/3rd increase of CO2 seen these past 70 to 80 years.
Observational data during the instrument periiod suggests that the climate sensitivity to CO2 is small. This is, of course, one reason why model projections are running so warm when their projected results are viewed against current observational data.
I agree with what you say. The entire “thing” seems to be the need for some catastrophic consequence of CO2 emission, well, actually, conventional energy production. The rest of the exercise is then a 30 year period of flailing as they develop models and fit curves and select time series to justify shutting down conventional energy production in the Western economies. That seems to be the primary goal here. Anyone exposing all that curve fitting and various whittling of data sets to fit model projections is viciously attacked by being accused of launching a “vicious attack”! The projection is astounding!
Imagine I were stealing shovels from the garages of my neighbors. Now imagine the neighbors get together to have a conference about the missing shovels. Maybe they notice that I am one of the few not missing a shovel and Mr Smith across the street mentions that he has seen me in the neibors’ yards at various times. Thinking quickly, I mention that I have been very careful not to leave my garage open when Mr. Smith across the street is at home (implying that he is the thief and is trying to frame me) and that I have a cat that often goes missing that I must sometimes search for.
Now I have diverted attention away from myself and put Mr. Smith in a position of possibly having to prove he didn’t do something, which is impossible. You can’t prove something DIDN’T happen, you can only prove something that DID happen. In a similar fashion, Mann, Jones, Hansen, et al put the “skeptics” in a position of having to prove warming HASN’T happened, which can’t be done.
So when someone finds a flaw in their data and/or methods, they turn the tables and launch a vicious attack on the accuser including going over their heads to their superiors and to the institution itself accusing that person of having launched a “vicious attack” on the highly esteemed “climate science community” which these few seem to like to speak for in the royal fashion. Then rather than defend their own data and methods, they place the “accuser” on the defensive to defend theirs. And they get away with it every single time. Imagine Mann and Jones actually having to defend their conclusions! That would be heresy. The whole thing stinks.
Hey Rosco
Clouds reflect almost like a mirror. Ice relfects like a mirror. At low angles, water reflects. Ice high in the stratosphere reflects.
Does that get rid of energy in your budget?
It is also interesting that “thousands of measurements of TSI from mountain sites. Values ranged from 1,322 to 1,465 W m–2, which encompasses the current estimate of 1,365 W m–2.”
So scientists made measurements of the solar “constant” that varied by almost 10% – seems a little higher than so called experts today acknowledge. If even half of the 10% variance is accurate that accounts for way more warming than observed.
70% of 1465 (~1025) W/sq m and Stefan-Boltzman gives ~ 94 degrees C as the maximum versus about 87.5 degrees C for 70 % of 1368 W/sq m .
The equipment these guys had was probably not as sophisticated as today but they weren’t corrupted by a crusade – in this case I’ll take their word for it and believe the so called “solar constant” isn’t !
After all our Sun is known as a “variable” star so why should anything be constant ?
re: Jaye Bass: I hope all the big players lose their jobs ending up teaching chemistry at a high school in Albuquerque NM.
What has Albuquerque ever done to you, Jaye?
Another theme you might notice with “The Cause” is that the slightest flaw even in how something is worded in a skeptical paper will apparently invalidate their entire work, while flaws in their own work are always “insignificant”.
Q: How do you know an IPCC scientist is lying?
A: He talks to the press.
If it can’t be accurately quantified, perhaps it’s worse than we thought!?
Rosco says:
November 28, 2011 at 1:23 pm
“It is also interesting that “thousands of measurements of TSI from mountain sites. ”
Any clouds?
Is there such a thing as funding sensitivity?
According to MODTRAN, doubling [CO2] only slightly widens its absorption bands.
At the same solar input, a temperature rise of only 0.66 deg C would compensate,
about half of that blue curve above. This is all that the radiation-laws want, not 3-5 degrees.
This is far less than the semiannual forcing by the Earth’s orbital eccentricity, e = 0.0167,
which causes a aphelion-to-perihelion delta T given by eccentricity * mean Temp,
0.167 * 288 = 4.8 deg C……….EIGHT TIMES AS MUCH!!!
So why doesn’t the dread positive feedback run off with this and boil us every January?
Oh, I see, this forcing is too short-term, so the Team can ignore it in the averaging.
Guess again.
During the much-touted last interglacial (Eemian),
warmer and higher sea level,
when eccentricity was 0.037 at 134 kya and 0.044 at 115 kya,
the semiannual forcing was about 12 deg C the entire time.
Perihelion was in late October at 134 kya,
and moved forward through nearly the whole year,
through northern winter to early September at 115 kya.
When the Team trots out their ‘Eemian horror story’,
they conveniently forget that it didn’t get really hot
when perihelion was in January as it is now,
but rather when perihelion had moved into summer,
the total opposite of our situation.
The summer heat probably drove more CO2 out of the Eemian oceans as well,
so the ‘climate sensitivity’ back then could have been higher than now.
A seafloor methane burp would be too short to even show up in the glacier bubbles.
Call us back when perihelion gets back to June, in 10,000 AD.
I’ll also bet that the extreme seasonality was the reason agriculture wasn’t tried back then.
Thus at the peak of the last interglacial we had July perihelion,
so that the 12 deg forcing led to more extreme seasonality.
Crosspatch
Warren Meyer’s diagram was only an illustration which assumed that all of the 20Century warming was due to CO2 and even then sensitivity was way below alarmist predictions.
Warren knows full well that many other factors are involved.
Prescient Weather LTD is owned by a John A. Dutton in State College, PA. Mr. Dutton is the only employee and is a professor Emeritus at Penn State in Meteorology. Mr. Dutton is also on the UCAR advisory committee for NCEP (UCACN).
Interesting web being woven here.
We will be well into the next glacial by then.
Want some fun? Get a load of 4991.txt and 4471.txt (in that order).
Some grad student has Jones a bit shaken!
@Cardin Drake
Would give them a chance at a career change…they could always “Break Bad”.
Thank you, Dr. Watkins. So, I take it, that would be a “all else being equal and given only a change in CO2” sort of scenario.
Roscoe,
Ground-level measurements, even on mountaintops, are affected by all sorts of factors, including; high-level haze, atmospheric pressure/turbulence (pushing the top of the atmosphere higher), aphelion/perihelion, and I’m sure others I wouldn’t know about.
And regarding aphelion/perihelion, anyone wanting to measure it’s effect on climate need only look south.
Hey Crosspatch, I think you found Harry in 4471. Ian Harris. He is referred to as such in 0320.txt:
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/0320.txt
We have a new version of this (CRU TS 3.0) that Ian Harris (Harry) is finishing off. It runs from 1900 to 2006.
In this same email, they admit Pielke Sr. has a point:
Arguably, anthropogenic forcings
over land are more spatially heterogeneous than over oceans (e.g., no
changes in land surface properties over oceans!).
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/0868.txt
Hi Phil
Sorry to miss you this morning.
Just to let you know that I’ve found several potentially-major
problems with the anomaly program anomdtb, which as far as I know was
used to produce CRU TS 2.1.
There is more, a good read.
AYZ “Of course you can’t quantify climate sensitivity directly, without doubling CO2 and waiting to see what happens” …. And that’s always assuming we could also hold all other things equal.
We don’t have laboratory conditions to isolate cause and effect. And we never will.
There are statistical methods which can tackle this type of problem, but they rely on some pretty strict conditions on the statistical properties of the signal and noise. Equally important, we need to know the values of the properties. These problems multiply if the statistical behavior of climate is time variant.
It’s a safe bet to say that climate data doesn’t fit the bill for those methods. Wigley has a point – sensitivity cannot be measured.
I would go further. Sensitivity lacks a sound theoretical basis in physics. Measurement issues are like counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.
It can’t be quantified because it doesn’t exist.
http://drtimball.com/2011/ipcc-climate-claims-falsified-by-2010-record-high-co2-levels/
@ crosspatch says:
November 28, 2011 at 2:49 pm
I wonder if Carlos Bustamante is related to Cruz Bustamante? Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Mainstream Dem challenger to Arnold Shwarzeneggar was moving to position himself as the anti-AGW candidate.
Lots to correct here.
first off lets start with harry
“We have a new version of this (CRU TS 3.0) that Ian Harris (Harry) is finishing off. It runs from 1900 to 2006.”
People often talk about the harry readme and assume that the mails are discussing Hadcrut
They dont.
harry read me has nothing to do with HADCRUT. It has to do with CRU TS
if you dont know what CRU TS is do some research. Its an entirely different dataset constructed an entirely different way for entirely different purposes.
harry and his his readme are a diversion from the main story. By focusing on harry you detract attention from the real story
The whole point here is that the text cannot afford to make statements that are manifestly incorrect
I think you would only say something like that when the rest of your text is shaded, distorted, selective, biased in subtle but academically defensible (and in-defensible) ways, and you just can’t afford to let a real black and white lie get out there to be attacked. Stick with the shades of grey type of lying, and if all of our judgments and errors tip the scale to the same side every time, close your eyes and think of the greater good. For The Cause.
Tucker says:
November 28, 2011 at 2:23 pm
With regard to Prescient- John Dutton was also the cochair of the NOAA Scientific Advisory Board’s Climate Partnership task force. Not weaving anything here– just wondering what was meant by “The current draft has a tone that suggests that model development and
simulations would not be funded by PRESCIENT.”
Interstellar Bill says:
November 28, 2011 at 2:02 pm
“During the much-touted last interglacial (Eemian),”
You’re on it Bill. I have been waiting some time to see how this get handled, if it ever does.
The many issues related to the last 10 or so percent of the Holocene and how the “data” has been bludgeoned to death, while important to this miniscule moment in time, become mere pixie dust compared to what HAS normally happened right at the ends of the other extreme interglacials. Some of the best evidence has been gleaned from many corners of the world for MIS-5e, the best preserved since it is the most recent, and the Bahamas for MIS-11. Realistically MIS-5e scored at least a +6M highstand during the second close-spaced thermal at the end-Eemian, MIS-11 may have hit +21.3M at its end!
Which makes the entire debate sound like “two fleas arguing over who owns the dog they are riding on” to quote Crocodile Dundee.
Good data, feel free to focus your efforts on the end extreme interglacials. I for one would be very interested in your data and opinions.
William
Wigley could have said that “Quantifying climate sensitivity from real world data cannot EVER be done.” The impossibility of quantifying the climate sensitivity follows from the fact that its numerical value is a ratio in which the numerator is the change in the equilibrium temperature from a specified change in the CO2 concentration. The equilibrium temperature is not an observable feature of the real world and it follows that claims regarding the numerical value of the climate sensitivity are insusceptible to refutation by instrument readings, thus lying outside science.
>> Rosco says:
November 28, 2011 at 1:03 pm
Please someone – where did the other three quarters go ? It was there a millimeter above the atmosphere/space boundary – I know there is no distinct cut off. <<
I would guess it's because the sun shines on circular area pi R squared but the surface of the Earth is 4 pi R squared. (approximating the Earth as being a sphere)
Rosco;
Please someone – where did the other three quarters go ?
About 30% reflects back into space.
1340 x 0.7 = 938
Of what is left, divide by two because half the planet is in the dark and the other half facing the sun.
938 x 0.5 = 469
Of that, it is only 469 in the tropics where the sun shines nearly perpendicular. as you get to higher latitudes it is at an increasingly sharp angle until it gets to close to 0 w/mw at the poles. So, divide by 2 again (roughly)
469 x 0.5 = 234.5
0 w/m2 not w/mw
no idea what a w/mw is, but as long as we have zero of them, shouldn’t make a big difference.
That same extreme minimization of the significance of their flubs (and knavishness) carries over to events in the public sphere too, like Himalaya-gate and Climategate.
DirkH says:
November 28, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Q: How do you know an IPCC scientist is lying?
A: He talks to the press.
===================
a. His lips are moving.
Rosco says: November 28, 2011 at 1:03 pm
It is this incoming solar radiation is a quarter rubbish that supports the whole of the rest of the gibberish.
Please someone – where did the other three quarters go?
Precisely.
“science” built on either stupidity or a lie – take your choice !
More like: Kindergarten Science built on stupidity and lies.
Rosco says: November 28, 2011 at 1:23 pm
The equipment these guys had was probably not as sophisticated as today but they weren’t corrupted by a crusade – in this case I’ll take their word for it and believe the so called “solar constant” isn’t !
Totally agree.
After all our Sun is known as a “variable” star so why should anything be constant ?
Elementary, My Dear Watson.
Kindergarten Science diagram of a sunny day on Fantasy Island with 342 W/m2 incoming solar radiation.
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/images/earth_rad_budget_kiehl_trenberth_1997_big.gif
Unfortunately, there is no Climate Science diagram of a sunny day on Planet Earth with 1,365 W/m2 incoming solar radiation.
Just been looking through email #2972.
I see the WWF wanted to push the “dangerous warming of 2C” aspect.
Must be me, i dont see the problem.
Theyre stating that ecosystems and flora and fauna cant possibly adapt to rapid changes in climate, yet the obvious evidence these clowns seem to miss (along with the idiots in the government and MSM) is that large variations in temperatures are very easily accomodated by all life and that is the way it has to be to survive.
After all, the temperature in summer can be as high as 30 degrees C and yet a couple of months later it can be -20c and yet life adapts and flourishes between even these two extremes of 50C!
Maybe someone should point that out to these fools worrying about 2 degrees C!
The AGWScienceFiction department pulled a clever stunt with temps, the ‘greenhouse gases warm the Earth by 33°C’ is actually from the temp the Earth would be without any atmosphere. This is a deliberate confusion and I haven’t found it easy to explain the sleight of hand, I hope someone else can improve on it.
The Earth without any atmosphere would be around -18°C.
That is without any oxygen and nitrogen, without the whole of the fluid gaseous atmosphere above us. More like the Moon.
This comparison therefore actually includes oxygen and nitrogen in as greenhouse gases, the whole atmosphere our real greenhouse which has windows.. So, without our greenhouse, all gases in our atmosphere, the temp would be -18%deg;C, with our greenhouse gases, all our atmosphere including oxygen and nitrogen the temp is around 15°C.
What they have excluded in their meme is that figure is achieved by the greenhouse gas water vapour cooling the Earth. Without the Water Cycle, but with the other greenhouse gases oxygen and nitrogen etc. in place, the Earth would be 67°C.
In other words, the main greenhouse gas water vapour cools the Earth to bring it down to 15°C.
The sleight of hand is AGW including oxygen and nitrogen as greenhouse gases in total warming the Earth from -18°C to 15°C, and excluding the Water Cycle completely so the role of the greenhouse gas water vapour cooling from 67%deg;C is not taken into account.
And, not saying that it doesn’t exist, but I have not seen that explained in the arguments from antis which try and introduce ‘negative feedback’ from the water vapour, they also miss out the actual cooling of the Earth from the Water Cycle.
From 67%deg;C to 15°C – that’s a lot of cooling.
The mnemonic should really be, if excluding nitrogen and oxygen, that ‘greenhouse gases’ cool the Earth by 52°C.
In other words, ‘greenhouse gases’, which is predominantly water vapour, (overriding carbon dioxide, methane), COOL the Earth, they do not warm it.
Viv Evans says
Just check the date that e-mail was sent: June 2000!
Yes, I had to look twice – because the Team knew then they couldn’t quantify climate sensitivity,
————-
No they didn’t know that at all. If you read properly twice you will realize that there was a disagreement between researchers over this issue, without any indication that the matter was resolved. And report text was apparently modified to reflect that fact.
I used Warren Meyer’s presentation to do one myself, that talks around the picture at the top of this post, the issue of sensitivity. See slides + commentary 13-6 and 60-61 in particular.
What Tom Wigley is really saying is that whenever climate scientists try to estimate CO2 sensitivity from the historical climate (on any timescale), you can be sure they played around with the parametres as much as possible (and ignored as much real data as possible, including the CO2 estimates themselves if you can imagine) in order to reach their inevitable conclusion of 3.0C per doubling.
And I have seen exactly this in every paper/study/simulation I have ever delved into – hundreds of them that is – I don’t know how they can sleep at night – other than they know a big research grant is coming their way soon after because the fake study.
(really good stuff there Lucy).
I don’t know how they can sleep at night
Vampires don’t sleep at night 🙂
Rosco says:
November 28, 2011 at 1:03 pm
…..The climate scientists have gotten away with the myth that the Sun can’t heat the Earth and “greenhouse gases” somehow account for 33 degrees C.
….Plug in 1368 W/sq m – the solar constant – into Stefan-Boltzman and the answer is ~ 120 degrees C.
How do they get away with this obfuscation of quoting averages when all that matters is maximum ?
How do they get away with the “Energy Budget” and the famous “Here we assume a “solar constant” of 1367 W m-2 (Hartmann 1994), and because the incoming solar radiation is one-quarter of this, that is, 342 W m-2, a planetary albedo of 31% is implied.”
It is this incoming solar radiation is a quarter rubbish that supports the whole of the rest of the gibberish….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That has always had me puzzled too.
Here is a chart from NASA for solar panels
Las Vegas has a yearly avg of 5.3 kWh/m 2/day and a monthly high of 7.69 kWh/m 2/day in June. Phoenix a high of 7.7 kWh/m 2/day.
Gee, Phoenix AZ had a June 2011 high of 129.9 °F and a monthly avg of 101.3 °F
Las Vegas NV had a June 2011 high of 112.0 °F and a monthly avg of 82.6 °F
120 °C = 250 °F
54.4 °C = 129.9 °F = 327.5K
38.5°C = 101.3 °F = 311.6K
129.9 °F==> 327.5K^4 x Stefan-Boltzman constant = 1.15039032 × 10^10 X 5.67 x 10^-8 = 6.5205 kWh/m 2/day a wee bit lower than the 7.7 kWh/m 2/day average they measured for Phoenix AZ in June.
Looks like CO2 is causing COOLING of the day time temperature…. /sarc>
Rosco says:
November 28, 2011 at 1:23 pm
It is also interesting that “thousands of measurements of TSI from mountain sites. Values ranged from 1,322 to 1,465 W m–2, which encompasses the current estimate of 1,365 W m–2.”…..
______________
Rosco, do you have any links or paper titles for that info???
Cardin Drake says:
November 28, 2011 at 1:26 pm
re: Jaye Bass: I hope all the big players lose their jobs ending up teaching chemistry at a high school in Albuquerque NM.
What has Albuquerque ever done to you, Jaye?
_______________________________
I was voting for the inner city in NYC, Hansen would not even have to move.
LazyTeenager– I for one appreciate your polite response to Lucy S. But you are attempting to whitewash the scandal that is CAGW. I choose my words carefully — it is a scandal. Wigley’s 11 year old email — and many like it in CGII email dump- reveals that honest scientists who agree with the theory of CAGW refuse to go along with outlandish oversold PR claims about flooding, droughts, hurricanes etc etc, because there is not enough data to support it, and certain proxy data is dubious and other spurious. I guess you can call Wigley a data skeptic. That is where the scandalous charlatans step in, the Manns the Hansens to Joneses– they are MANUFACTURING the proxy data to run through the models they themselves write to support their CAGW PR claims. It is scientific fraud. Using ‘models’ as ‘science’ is mistaken but I don’t consider it fraud– manufacturing data like brisstlecone proxy is the fraud, because it is the basis for the ‘models’ to churn out their ‘results’. It’s the opposite of science. So why do Mann, Hansen, Jones et al take the risk of scientific fraud– 1. they are dogmantic true believers, and 2. the MONEY — the tax and grant money that pays them and their staff has to keep rolling in.
NK says: November 29, 2011 at 10:00 am
Mindful manufacturing, manipilation and mendacity means maladjusted Machiavellian and mercencary motives.
Personally, I would not confuse them with someone who gives a damn.
“It is this incoming solar radiation is a quarter rubbish that supports the whole of the rest of the gibberish. Please someone – where did the other three quarters go ?
I think others, Tom_R and davidmhoffer have already answered this. The 1367 W/sq.m is the radiation intercepted by the Earth’s disc. The area of this disc is r2 …. where r is the radius of the Earth. But the Earth is a sphere, not a disc, so its surface area is 4r2 , i.e. four times larger. So we divide 1367 by 4 to get 342 W falling on each square metre of the Earth’s surface. So 342 W/sq.m is the correct figure.
If we discount the amount reflected we are left with something between 235 to 240 W/sq.m . If we ‘plug’ that into the Stefan Boltzman equation as you say then we get a temperature of 255K ( -18 Deg. Celcius), which is the temperature our planet would be without the geenhouse effect.
If you, or anyone else, really want to understand the Earth’s energy budget then I would recommend this site
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/02/06/the-earths-energy-budget-part-one/
…and if anyone wants to understand the ‘principle’ of the greenhouse effect, I would recommend the 2009 post by Willis Eschenbach
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
However, don’t worry, Myrrh (at 3.05AM) has an even better post to destroy the credibility of sceptics.
And what Gail Combs is attempting to show apart from confusing KWhours with KW and performing calculations out by a factor of 100 , I don’t know.
Well we have apparently credible data taken on top of an active volcano since 1957/58 IGY showing CO2 (in that spot) going from about 315 to today’s about 391, which my Terraflop computer says is not yet 1/3rd of one doubling, and during that time frame, the actual Terraflop computed apparent Temperature has gone up and down, and all over the place.
So that warren Meyer graph alleging a logarithmic relationship seems to me to be an extrapolation exercise in futility.
I am sure that the mathematical cognoscenti, can find the necessary parameters to fit that data to the function: y = a.exp(-b/x^2) With at least as good a correlation coefficient, as the unproven but widely assumed log function.
Going from 280 ppm to 560 ppm is one doubling; so is going from 1 ppm to 2 ppm; so is going from one CO2 molecule in 22.4 litres of STP air to 2 CO2 molecu;es of CO2. Now THAT is a log function.
T versus CO2 is NOT a log function.
Hello Myrrh,
this so-called effective temperature of 255 K for an earth in the absence of its atmosphere is a nonsense quantity. It is based on an planetary albedo of 30 %, but this is the planetary albedo for the earth-atmosphere system. It is also based on the assumption that the surface temperature is uniformly distributed, an assumption that is even not fulfilled in case of the real earth-atmosphere system. The planetary emissivity is not equal to unity. Note that the difference between the globally averaged near-surface temperature of 288 K and the effective temperature of 255 K of 33 K serves to quantify the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Unfortunately, the effective temperature and the globally averaged surface temperature are not comparable because these two temperatures have different meaning. From a physical point of view both temperatures are bloodless quantities.
Let us consider the moon that nearly fulfills the instance of an earth in the absence of its atmosphere. Using the planetary albedo of 12 % and an planetary emissivity equal to unity, one obtains an effective temperature for the moon of about 270 K. Remote sensing observations performed by Monstein (2001) suggest a mean disk temperature of 213 K. Model results by Vasavada et al. (1999) suggest a mean temperature at the equator of about 223 K for one rotation, i.e., the mean temperature of the moon for one rotation is lower than this mean temperature. The model of Vasavada et al. also includes a soil model. This is important because in case of a pure local radiative equilibrium any local surface temperature would be equal to zero (or 2.7 K, the temperature of the space) on the dark side of the moon. In such a case the mean temperature at the equator for one rotation would be 165 K or so. Our own preliminary estimates for the global surface temperature of the moon are of about 200 K +/- 10 K (Kramm & Dlugi, 2011, in preparation). All these results suggest that in case of the moon the mean surface temperature is much smaller than the moon’s effective surface temperature. Consequently, there is neither empirical nor theoretical evidence that this effective temperature of 270 K is reasonable.
Also in case of the earth in the absence of its atmosphere its mean surface temperature would be much smaller than the effective temperature of 255 K. This means that the 33 K are an inappropriate quantity. The quantification of so-called the atmospheric greenhouse effect by 33 K is, therefore, for the birds. Remember that Gerlich & Tscheuschner (2009) estimated the mean surface temperature of the earth in the absence of its atmosphere and found a value of 144 K for the case of a local radiative equilibrium. If the soil effect would be inserted, as requested by Gerlich & Tscheuschner, the mean surface temperature would be 200 to 210 K or so.
Bomber_the_Cat says: November 29, 2011 at 11:55 am
The 1367 W/sq.m is the radiation intercepted by the Earth’s disc.
Precisely.
When the sun is at right angles to the Earth’s surface the incoming solar radiation is 1,367 W/sq.m
When the sun is below the horizon the incoming radiation is 0 W/sq.m
Therefore, incoming solar radiation varies between 0 and 1,367 W/sq.m
The settled science energy budget [below] shows a moment in time for a location when the incoming solar radiation is 342 W/sq.m: http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/images/earth_rad_budget_kiehl_trenberth_1997_big.gif
The settled science energy budget does not account for incoming solar radiation varying between 0 and 1,367 W/sq over time..
Saying that 342 W/sq.m is the correct figure is obfuscation.
Saying that 342 W/sq.m is the correct figure is hiding behind misleading averages.
Saying that 342 W/sq.m is the correct figure is Kindergarten Science.
The so-called climate feedback equation that is based on the global energy balance model of Schneider and Mass (1975) reads (e.g., Manabe & Stouffer, 2007):
R dT_s/dt = Q – lambda T_s
Herein, R is the thermal inertia coefficient, T_s is the global surface temperature, Q is the radiative forcing, t is time, and lambda is the feedback parameter. The reciprocal of lambda is the so-called climate sensitivity parameter. The steady-state solutions of this equation for the disturbed case (Q + RF, where RF is the net radiative forcing) and the undisturbed case (Q) will provide
Delta T_S = RF/lambda
if Q, lambda, and RF are considered as constant with time. Sometimes the climate sensitivity is defined with respect to a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.
Unfortunately, the climate feedback equation has to be discarded because of physical reasons. These reasons are two-fold.
First, this equation suggest a planetary radiative equilibrium for the earth’s surface in case of its steady state solution, but this kind of radiative equilibrium does not exist for the real earth-atmosphere system. There is, if at all, only a global energy balance for the earth’s surface that also contains the fluxes of sensible and latent heat, and the sum of these two fluxes is much larger than the net infrared radiation flux (e.g., Trenberth et al., 2009).
Second, the globally averaged surface temperature cannot be related to a global energy balance because none of these governing fluxes (solar radiation, net infrared radiation, sensible and latent heat) can be related to this mean global surface temperature. From a physical point of view, this global surface temperature is a bloodless quantity. It plays only a role in Schellnhuber’s two-Kelvin-goal and in different definitions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
Gerhard Kramm says:
November 29, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Hello Myrrh,
Hello Gerhard, thank you for your post. I’m not a scientist and having just about got used to using Centigrade your use of Kelvin sends me to look up each figure as I just don’t use it often enough to remember and so have no ‘feel’ for it. But also, this is an argument about the figures used by AGWSF in describing the amount of ‘warming produced by greenhouse gases’, and they give these in centigrade as this is for ‘public education’. Please would you use C or also gave it when giving K. Ta.
this so-called effective temperature of 255 K [-18.2°C] for an earth in the absence of its atmosphere is a nonsense quantity. It is based on an planetary albedo of 30 %, but this is the planetary albedo for the earth-atmosphere system. It is also based on the assumption that the surface temperature is uniformly distributed, an assumption that is even not fulfilled in case of the real earth-atmosphere system. The planetary emissivity is not equal to unity. Note that the difference between the globally averaged near-surface temperature of 288 K [14.9°C] and the effective temperature of 255 K [-18.2°C of 33 K [-240°C] serves to quantify the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Unfortunately, the effective temperature and the globally averaged surface temperature are not comparable because these two temperatures have different meaning. From a physical point of view both temperatures are bloodless quantities.
I’m sorry, I can’t follow that. The -18°C [255 K] “based on an planetary albedo of 30 %, but this is the planetary albedo for the earth-atmosphere system.”.
Yes – that’s why I gave it. It’s the ‘standard’ figure used for Earth without an atmosphere and the figure used by AGW to give the difference in its claim that ‘greenhouse gases warm the Earth from that temperature which it would be without them.’
It is also based on the assumption that the surface temperature is uniformly distributed, an assumption that is even not fulfilled in case of the real earth-atmosphere system.
OK, but that’s a different argument to the one I’m making, interesting though it is.
The planetary emissivity is not equal to unity.
I don’t understand what that means.
Note that the difference between the globally averaged near-surface temperature of 288 K [14.9°C] and the effective temperature of 255 K [-18.2°C of 33 K [-240°C] serves to quantify the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
As you can see, your own confusion with K’s and C’s has jumbled this.. It should be ‘the effective temperature of 255 K [-18.2°C of 33°C [306 K] serves to quantify the atmospheric greenhouse effect.’
Which is what I said, – without any atmosphere the temperature is around -18°C [255 K], with our atmosphere the temperature is around 15°C [288 K], the difference between the two of 33°C [306 K] is that claimed by AGWSF to be the result of ‘greenhouse gases keeping the Earth warmer than it would be without them’.
My point is that this is a clever sleight of hand, a deliberate manipulation of the mind. Because, the figure they give of the difference is based on NO atmosphere at all, therefore, the difference actually includes oxygen and nitrogen as ‘greenhouse’ gases.
They claim that oxygen and nitrogen are not ‘greenhouse gases’. They attribute this difference only to their ‘greenhouse’ gases of water vapour, carbon dioxide. They are telling a big fib here.
To get to Earth’s effective temperature of 15°C [288 K] requires ALL the atmospheric gases. Therefore, all the atmospheric gases are greenhouse gases.
However, at the same time as lying about this difference being attributable only to water/carbon dioxide type gases, they miss out the actual dynamics of the process which our atmosphere uniquely (afawk) gives us – through the Water Cycle. Water vapour is the major ‘greenhouse’ gas. If it is taken out of our atmosphere, but leaving the rest in place, we would have a temperature of 67°C [340 K].
What I am saying is that these ‘AGW greenhouse gases’ cool the Earth. Without the Water Cycle taking heat away from the Earth in water vapour rising and condensing out into rain in the colder higher atmosphere, thereby giving up its heat, the Earth would be HOTTER than it is now. Hotter by 52°C [325 K]. Think deserts.
Let us consider the moon that nearly fulfills the instance of an earth in the absence of its atmosphere. Using the planetary albedo of 12 % and an planetary emissivity equal to unity, one obtains an effective temperature for the moon of about 270 K [-3.15°C]. Remote sensing observations performed by Monstein (2001) suggest a mean disk temperature of 213 K [-60.2°C]. Model results by Vasavada et al. (1999) suggest a mean temperature at the equator of about 223 K [-50.2°C] for one rotation, i.e., the mean temperature of the moon for one rotation is lower than this mean temperature. The model of Vasavada et al. also includes a soil model. This is important because in case of a pure local radiative equilibrium any local surface temperature would be equal to zero (or 2.7 K [-270°C], the temperature of the space) on the dark side of the moon. In such a case the mean temperature at the equator for one rotation would be 165 K [-108°C] or so. Our own preliminary estimates for the global surface temperature of the moon are of about 200 K +/- 10 K [-73.2°C +/- -263°C] (Kramm & Dlugi, 2011, in preparation). All these results suggest that in case of the moon the mean surface temperature is much smaller than the moon’s effective surface temperature. Consequently, there is neither empirical nor theoretical evidence that this effective temperature of 270 K [-3.15°C] is reasonable.
As before, I find it interesting that you have a different figure from the ‘standard’, though I can’t follow your reasoning I’m sure others here can, but I wonder if this is anything to do with the ‘flat earth Boltzmann’ calculations which NASA had to jettison to get as accurate estimates as it could for the Moon landings, in other words they worked on a three dimensional model.
Also in case of the earth in the absence of its atmosphere its mean surface temperature would be much smaller than the effective temperature of 255 K. This means that the 33 K are an inappropriate quantity. The quantification of so-called the atmospheric greenhouse effect by 33 K is, therefore, for the birds. Remember that Gerlich & Tscheuschner (2009) estimated the mean surface temperature of the earth in the absence of its atmosphere and found a value of 144 K for the case of a local radiative equilibrium. If the soil effect would be inserted, as requested by Gerlich & Tscheuschner, the mean surface temperature would be 200 to 210 K or so.
I’m not going to tackle this one, putting in celsius, because you’ve used 33 K and not 33°C again here, but, assuming you actually meant 33°C, [306 K], what do you reckon the temperature of Earth without an atmosphere would be if you calculate it as you have the Moon?
There are big differences between the Moon and Earth, the first one being the much greater size of Earth and this shows all of itself to the Sun in very quick changes, night and day, so for example such things as soil heating and degrees of retaining heat will be much better for the Earth. And, I’m assuming here that you’re taking out the water from the Earth as well as atmosphere, but maybe you’re not. In that case, if the Earth with water but without the atmosphere you’d have to factor in that water is this amazing thing with a huge capacity to store energy, so ‘without an atmosphere’ must be noted as being before and after the oceans boil dry.. 🙂
I’ll try and find the only reference I’ve seen to how the Earth’s temperature with and without atmosphere and plus or minus water cycle was calculated (as I’ve given above), but if you, or any reading this, know of such, please post. As far as I’m aware this has empirical background, geologists and such use these figures.
P.S. for anyone wanting conversion gizmo, http://www.trueknowledge.com/q/52_celsius_in_kelvin will take you to the box I used, either ‘in’ or ‘to’, 32 fahrenheit to kelvin http://www.trueknowledge.com/q/32_fahrenheit_to_kelvin
“”””” Myrrh says:
November 29, 2011 at 3:05 am
The AGWScienceFiction department pulled a clever stunt with temps, the ‘greenhouse gases warm the Earth by 33°C’ is actually from the temp the Earth would be without any atmosphere. This is a deliberate confusion and I haven’t found it easy to explain the sleight of hand, I hope someone else can improve on it. “””””
Well you have a right to be confused Myrrh. It is hard to find papers or citations, where they cross all the eys and dot all the tees.. For starters, that 255K number that then presumes 33 deg C “greenhouse warming, is NOT the “no atmosphere” calculate black body equilibrium Temperature at all. To get that number, they actually assume some earth albedo number of around 30%, and there is no way you can get a 30% albedo without any atmosphere, because clouds are the biggest single component of albedo. So you are right to call it sleight of hand. They can’t take away the atmosphere, and then insist on normal 60% cloud cover albedo.
I believe the claim is that the 255 K is what you get with 30% albedo (from who the hell knows where) but sans greenhouse gases. one can be forgiven for being torn apart over whether H2O is or is not a necessary but not GHG component of the atmosphere. Bottom line is they claim the whole 33 degrees is due to CO2. So without CO2 we would be a frozen ice ball. O yeah, and that frozen ice ball, would presumably have no water vapor so no clouds, so no 30% albedo, so no CO2 needed.
Sometime this year, or maybe last year, NASA did announce that their latest recommended value for TSI is actually 1362 W/m^2. I had been using 1366, and yearsago the go to number was 1353, which is in a lot of text books. Mox nix anyhow, but 342 it certainly isn’t.
At sea level you can hard boil an egg in about 4 minutes. That doesn’t mean that at 28,000 feet you can boil it n 16 or even 32 minutes. Well you sure as hell can boil it, you just can’t cook it.
I’m quite confident, that with zero CO2 in the atmosphere, we would be comfortably living with a slightly different cloud cover.
Hello Myrrh,
The size of the planet plays no role in this thought model of the earth having no atmosphere. The effective temperature, T_e, that is based on a planetary radiative equilibrium is given by
T_e = {(1 – a_E) S/(4 eps_E sigma)}^0.25
where a_E is the planetary albedo, S = 1361 W/m^2 is the solar constant (value according to SOURCE/TIM launched in 2003), eps_E is the planetary emissivity, and sigma is Stefan’s constant. For a_E = 0.3 and eps_E = 1, one obtains
T_e = 254.6 K
If we use a_E = a_M = 0.12, we will obtain
269.6 K
where a_M is the albedo of the moon.
The numbers are not given for in radiatively inactive atmosphere because in such an atmosphere we would have still heat conduction close to the earth’s surface by molecular and turbulent processes, and, then, convection.
The assumption of a uniformly distributed temperature is indispensable because the power law of Stefan and Boltzmann must not be applied to mean temperatures.
Freezing point (0 deg. C) corresponds to 273.15 K. Customarily, in thermodynamics the Kelvin scale is used.
According to Trenberth et al. (2009) the albedo of the earth’s surface is of about 7 %, but for the entire earth-atmosphere system 30 %.
If we consider this thought model of an earth in the absence of its atmosphere we cannot use 30 %. If no atmosphere would exist, back scattering of solar radiation by atmospheric molecules, cloud droplets and ice crystals as well es aerosol particles would not be possible.
In case of an earth in the absence of its atmosphere We cannot assume that oceans exist. But this is unimportant because the planetary albedo of the moon is somewhat larger that 7 %.
The amount of 33 K is the difference between the globally averaged near-surface temperature (288 K) and the effective temperature (255K).
Helle Bomber_the_Cat.
you stated:
“I think others, Tom_R and davidmhoffer have already answered this. The 1367 W/sq.m is the radiation intercepted by the Earth’s disc. The area of this disc is r2 …. where r is the radius of the Earth. But the Earth is a sphere, not a disc, so its surface area is 4r2 , i.e. four times larger. So we divide 1367 by 4 to get 342 W falling on each square metre of the Earth’s surface. So 342 W/sq.m is the correct figure.”
For the purpose of clarification: this S = 1367 W/m^2 (now 1361 W/m^2) is the solar irradiance at the top of the atmosphere for the mean distance of r_0 = 149.6 million km between the sun’s center and the earth’s orbit (strictly spoken of the barycenter of the earth-moon system). Since the actual distance varies from r = 147.1 million km (perihelion around January 4) to r = 152.1 million km (aphelion, around July 5), the solar irradiance, F, varies from 1407 W/m^2 at perihelion to 1316 W/m^2 at aphelion, if S =1361 W/m^2 is considered. The numbers are base on the formula
F = (r_0/r)^2 S
However, any surface element of the sphere related to the top of the atmosphere (TOA) obtains
dE = (r_TOA)^2 F cos (Theta) dOmega
where Theta is the solar zenith angle, dOmega is the differential solid angle, and r_(TOA) is the radius of the sphere. By integrating this equation one obtains
E = pi (r_TOA)^2 (r_0/r)^2 S
or, approximately,
E = pi (r_TOA)^2 S
Bomber the cat
342w/m^2?
Well I assume if you consider Earth presents a disc to the Sun that may be correct but it doesn’t!
It presents a hemisphere.
I see no corrections for atmospheric attenuation or the increased effective albedo at the peripheries of the hemisphere either.
It’s all a fiction!
DaveE.
Yep, I picked up Tom’s comment early in my reading, noted the date and hoped they’d grown up a bit since then. They haven’t; and I suspect that his words were prescient, the more so as time goes by with no breakthroughs to bolster the man-made global warming science.
I’m Australian, Tom was Australian, but are hetrogenized.
The Moon
According to Wikipedia the Maximum Surface Temperature at the Lunar equator is 116.85 C [390K]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon
Set Tmax_m = 116.85 C
The Earth
According to Wikipedia the Maximum Surface Temperature on Earth is 57.8 C [331K]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
Set Tmax_e = 57.80 C
The Maths
Tdif = Tmax_m – Tmax_e = 116.85 – 57.80 C = 59.05 C
The Difference
The maximum temperature on Earth is 59.05 C cooler than the maximum temperature on the Moon.
Explaining the Difference
1) The atmosphere of the Earth facilitates cooling via a phenomenon known as The Weather which is primarily driven by density differences in temperature and moisture. The Weather not only cools the surface of the Earth but it also reduces the level of incoming solar radiation at the surface [mainly via a phenomenon known as clouds] and it additionally reduces heating by reflecting incoming solar radiation [mainly via the phenomenon known as clouds and accumulated snow]. The Weather is a complex phenomenon that is not fully understood and is difficult to predict [especially in mid-latitudes].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather
2) Approximately 71% of the Earth surface is covered by Water [in the form of rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans] and the Earth’s atmosphere typically contains between 1% and 4% water vapour near the surface. The presence of Water on [and above] the Earth`s surface significantly alters the thermodynamic properties of the Earth [when compared to the Moon]. The Water Cycle [hydrologic cycle] involves the exchange of heat energy [which leads to temperature changes and The Weather] and is the major cooling agent for the Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle
3) The Weather causes water to be precipitated onto the land surface of the Earth and the distribution of precipitation determines the distribution of plant life that covers approximately 9.4% of the Earth’s surface. Plant life also contributes to the cooling of the Earth surface temperature by absorbing and reflecting incoming solar radiation and by contributing to the Water Cycle through transpiration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forests
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpiration
4) The Axial Tilt of the Earth [currently about 23.5 degrees] varies over time and is an important factor governing the intensity of solar radiation received by any single location on the Earth’s surface. The Axial Tilt influences the density differences in temperature and moisture around the globe and determines the Weather phenomenon know as Seasons.
The Axial Tilt effects upon temperature are not fully understood or quantified.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
5) The Lunar day [27.321582 days] is longer than an Earth day [0.99726968 days].
The shorter day on Earth limits the duration of direct surface heating via solar radiation.
A longer Earth day would facilitate increased maximum surface temperatures where there is a lack of surface water i.e. hot deserts.
A longer Earth night would facilitate greater nigh time cooling and more extreme minimum temperatures
The Length of Day effects upon temperature are not fully understood or quantified.
6) The orbit of the Moon [around the Earth] takes it closer to the Sun than the Earth.
However, the Moon is only closer to the Sun by 0.0027 AU [406,700 km] and any difference in incoming solar radiation is insignificant.
Conclusions
Our understanding of how the Earth is cooled [primarily by The Weather in our atmosphere] is not fully understood or quantified.
However, it is evident that the Settled Science hypothesis that the CO2 greenhouse gas is heating the Earth [and thus preventing a Snowball Earth via CO2 induced Global Warming] is clearly incorrect and unsupportable.
Additionally, it should be noted that the historic records indicate that only Cooling and Ice Ages are recurrent features of the Earth’s climate [not CO2 driven Global Warming].
Evidently, the CO2 rise stopped the post-LIA 0.6K/century warming trend in its tracks. So the sensitivity must be negative.
George E. Smith – I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to replying to you, I was looking for the info I had on it and then rather a lot began happening.. I hope you see this post because on http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/02/hurricanes-and-global-warming-opinion-by-chris-landsea/#comment-817272 I’m posting the info I eventually found again.
Gerhard – and if you’re still reading this. Re the link I’ve given above, I don’t see albedo mentioned in calculating these figures, and I’m still trying to get a grasp of what you’re actually saying, but, something posted here http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html I found interesting.
The temperature of Venus at same pressure as Earth he’s calculated to be 66°C, and attributed the difference to Earth’s 15°C from the nearer distance of Venus from the Sun, but, it is remarkably similar to Earth’s temperature with an atmosphere, but without the Water Cycle taking away the heat from the Surface – 67°C.
Maybe the 1°C difference between Venus and Earth with atmospheres could be something to do with their relative distance from the Sun, but it seems to me the temps on Venus without the dynamic cooling of 52°C our Water Cycle gives us, is too similar to be a co-incidence, maybe it’s all down to pressure of atmosphere. So how does that fit in with the Moon?