Note: This was a poster, and adopted into a blog post by the author, Ned Nikolov, specifically for WUWT. My thanks to him for the extra effort in converting the poster to a more blog friendly format. – Anthony
Expanding the Concept of Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Using Thermodynamic Principles: Implications for Predicting Future Climate Change
Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. & Karl Zeller, Ph.D.
USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins CO, USA
Emails: ntconsulting@comcast.net kzeller@colostate.edu
Poster presented at the Open Science Conference of the World Climate Research Program,
24 October 2011, Denver CO, USA
http://www.wcrp-climate.org/conference2011/posters/C7/C7_Nikolov_M15A.pdf
Abstract
We present results from a new critical review of the atmospheric Greenhouse (GH) concept. Three main problems are identified with the current GH theory. It is demonstrated that thermodynamic principles based on the Gas Law need be invoked to fully explain the Natural Greenhouse Effect. We show via a novel analysis of planetary climates in the solar system that the physical nature of the so-called GH effect is a Pressure-induced Thermal Enhancement (PTE), which is independent of the atmospheric chemical composition. This finding leads to a new and very different paradigm of climate controls. Results from our research are combined with those from other studies to propose a new Unified Theory of Climate, which explains a number of phenomena that the current theory fails to explain. Implications of the new paradigm for predicting future climate trends are briefly discussed.
1. Introduction
Recent studies revealed that Global Climate Models (GCMs) have significantly overestimated the Planet’s warming since 1979 failing to predict the observed halt of global temperature rise over the past 13 years. (e.g. McKitrick et al. 2010). No consensus currently exists as to why the warming trend ceased in 1998 despite a continued increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Moreover, the CO2-temperature relationship shows large inconsistencies across time scales. In addition, GCM projections heavily depend on positive feedbacks, while satellite observations indicate that the climate system is likely governed by strong negative feedbacks (Lindzen & Choi 2009; Spencer & Braswell 2010). At the same time, there is a mounting political pressure for Cap-and-Trade legislation and a global carbon tax, while scientists and entrepreneurs propose geo-engineering solutions to cool the Planet that involve large-scale physical manipulation of the upper atmosphere. This unsettling situation calls for a thorough reexamination of the present climate-change paradigm; hence the reason for this study.
2. The Greenhouse Effect: Reexamining the Basics
Figure 1. The Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect as taught at universities around the World (diagram from the website of the Penn State University Department of Meteorology).
According to the current theory, the Greenhouse Effect (GHE) is a radiative phenomenon caused by heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere such as CO2 and water vapor that are assumed to reduce the rate of surface infrared cooling to Space by absorbing the outgoing long-wave (LW) emission and re-radiating part of it back, thus increasing the total energy flux toward the surface. This is thought to boost the Earth’s temperature by 18K – 33K compared to a gray body with no absorbent atmosphere such as the Moon; hence making our Planet habitable. Figure 1 illustrates this concept using a simple two-layer system known as the Idealized Greenhouse Model (IGM). In this popular example, S is the top-of-the atmosphere (TOA) solar irradiance (W m-2), A is the Earth shortwave albedo, Ts is the surface temperature (K), Te is the Earth’s effective emission temperature (K) often equated with the mean temperature of middle troposphere, ϵ is emissivity, and σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann (S-B) constant.
2.1. Main Issues with the Current GHE Concept:
A) Magnitude of the Natural Greenhouse Effect. GHE is often quantified as a difference between the actual mean global surface temperature (Ts = 287.6K) and the planet’s average gray-body (no-atmosphere) temperature (Tgb), i.e. GHE = Ts – Tgb. In the current theory, Tgb is equated with the effective emission temperature (Te) calculated straight from the S-B Law using Eq. (1):
where αp is the planetary albedo of Earth (≈0.3). However, this is conceptually incorrect! Due to Hölder’s inequality between non-linear integrals (Kuptsov 2001), Te is not physically compatible with a measurable true mean temperature of an airless planet. To be correct, Tgb must be computed via proper spherical integration of the planetary temperature field. This means calculating the temperature at every point on the Earth sphere first by taking the 4th root from the S-B relationship and then averaging the resulting temperature field across the planet surface, i.e.
where αgb is the Earth’s albedo without atmosphere (≈0.125), μ is the cosine of incident solar angle at any point, and cs= 13.25e-5 is a small constant ensuring that Tgb = 2.72K (the temperature of deep Space) when So = 0. Equation (2) assumes a spatially constant albedo (αgb), which is a reasonable approximation when trying to estimate an average planetary temperature.
Since in accordance with Hölder’s inequality Tgb ≪ Te (Tgb =154.3K ), GHE becomes much larger than presently estimated.
According to Eq. (2), our atmosphere boosts Earth’s surface temperature not by 18K—33K as currently assumed, but by 133K! This raises the question: Can a handful of trace gases which amount to less than 0.5% of atmospheric mass trap enough radiant heat to cause such a huge thermal enhancement at the surface? Thermodynamics tells us that this not possible.
B) Role of Convection. The conceptual model in Fig. 1 can be mathematically described by the following simultaneous Equations (3),
where νa is the atmospheric fraction of the total shortwave radiation absorption. Figure 2 depicts the solution to Eq. (3) for temperatures over a range of atmospheric emissivities (ϵ) assuming So = 1366 W m-2 and νa =0.326 (Trenberth et al. 2009). An increase in atmospheric emissivity does indeed cause a warming at the surface as stated by the current theory. However, Eq. (3) is physically incomplete, because it does not account for convection, which occurs simultaneously with radiative transfer. Adding a convective term to Eq. (3) (such as a sensible heat flux) yields the system:
where gbH is the aerodynamic conductance to turbulent heat exchange. Equation (4) dramatically alters the solution to Eq. (3) by collapsing the difference between Ts, Ta and Te and virtually erasing the GHE (Fig. 3). This is because convective cooling is many orders of magnitude more efficient that radiative cooling. These results do not change when using multi-layer models. In radiative transfer models, Ts increases with ϵ not as a result of heat trapping by greenhouse gases, but due to the lack of convective cooling, thus requiring a larger thermal gradient to export the necessary amount of heat. Modern GCMs do not solve simultaneously radiative transfer and convection. This decoupling of heat transports is the core reason for the projected surface warming by GCMs in response to rising atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations. Hence, the predicted CO2-driven global temperature change is a model artifact!
Figure 2. Solution to the two-layer model in Eq. (3) for Ts and Ta as a function of atmospheric emissivity assuming a non-convective atmosphere. Also shown is the predicted down-welling LW flux(Ld). Note that Ld ≤ 239 W m-2.
Figure 3. Solution to the two-layer model in Eq. (4) for Ts and Ta as a function of atmospheric emissivity assuming a convective atmosphere (gbH = 0.075 m/s). Also shown is the predicted down-welling LW flux (Ld). Note that Ld ≤ 239 W m-2.
Figure 4. According to observations, the Earth-Atmosphere System absorbs on average a net solar flux of 239 W m-2, while the lower troposphere alone emits 343 W m-2 thermal radiation toward the surface.
C) Extra Kinetic Energy in the Troposphere.
Observations show that the lower troposphere emits 44% more radiation toward the surface than the total solar flux absorbed by the entire Earth-Atmosphere System (Pavlakis et al. 2003) (Fig. 4). Radiative transfer alone cannot explain this effect (e.g. Figs. 2 & 3) given the negligible heat storage capacity of air, no matter how detailed the model is. Thus, empirical evidence indicates that the lower atmosphere contains more kinetic energy than provided by the Sun. Understanding the origin of this extra energy is a key to the GHE.
3. The Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement
Previous studies have noted that the term Greenhouse Effect is a misnomer when applied to the atmosphere, since real greenhouses retain heat through an entirely different mechanism compared to the free atmosphere, i.e. by physically trapping air mass and restricting convective heat exchange. Hence, we propose a new term instead, Near-surface Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement (ATE) defined as a non-dimensional ratio (NTE) of the planet actual mean surface air temperature (Ts, K) to the average temperature of a Standard Planetary Gray Body (SPGB) with no atmosphere (Tgb, K) receiving the same solar irradiance, i.e. NTE = Ts /Tgb. This new definition emphasizes the essence of GHE, which is the temperature boost at the surface due to the presence of an atmosphere. We employ Eq. (2) to estimate Tgb assuming an albedo αgb = 0.12 and a surface emissivity ϵ = 0.955 for the SPGB based on data for Moon, Mercury, and the Earth surface. Using So = 1362 W m-2 (Kopp & Lean 2011) in Eq. (2) yields Tgb = 154.3K and NTE = 287.6/154.3 = 1.863 for Earth. This prompts the question: What mechanism enables our atmosphere to boost the planet surface temperature some 86% above that of a SPGB? To answer it we turn on to the classical Thermodynamics.
3.1. Climate Implications of the Ideal Gas Law
The average thermodynamic state of a planet’s atmosphere can be accurately described by the Ideal Gas Law (IGL):
PV = nRT (5)
where P is pressure (Pa), V is the gas volume (m3), n is the gas amount (mole), R = 8.314 J K-1 mol-1is the universal gas constant, and T is the gas temperature (K). Equation (5) has three features that are chiefly important to our discussion: a) the product P×V defines the internal kinetic energy of a gas (measured in Jules) that produces its temperature; b) the linear relationship in Eq. (5) guarantees that a mean global temperature can be accurately estimated from planetary averages of surface pressure and air volume (or density). This is in stark contrast to the non-linear relationship between temperature and radiant fluxes (Eq. 1) governed by Hölder’s inequality of integrals; c) on a planetary scale, pressure in the lower troposphere is effectively independent of other variables in Eq. (5) and is only a function of gravity (g), total atmospheric mass (Mat), and the planet surface area (As), i.e. Ps = g Mat/As. Hence, the near-surface atmospheric dynamics can safely be assumed to be governed (over non-geological time scales) by nearly isobaric processes on average, i.e. operating under constant pressure. This isobaric nature of tropospheric thermodynamics implies that the average atmospheric volume varies in a fixed proportion to changes in the mean surface air temperature following the Charles/Gay-Lussac Law, i.e. Ts/V = const. This can be written in terms of the average air density ρ (kg m-3) as
ρTs = const. = Ps M / R (6)
where Ps is the mean surface air pressure (Pa) and M is the molecular mass of air (kg mol-1). Eq. (6) reveals an important characteristic of the average thermodynamic process at the surface, namely that a variation of global pressure due to either increase or decrease of total atmospheric mass will alter both temperature and atmospheric density. What is presently unknown is the differential effect of a global pressure change on each variable. We offer a solution to this in & 3.3. Equations (5) and (6) imply that pressure directly controls the kinetic energy and temperature of the atmosphere. Under equal solar insolation, a higher surface pressure (due to a larger atmospheric mass) would produce a warmer troposphere, while a lower pressure would result in a cooler troposphere. At the limit, a zero pressure (due to the complete absence of an atmosphere) would yield the planet’s gray-body temperature.
The thermal effect of pressure is vividly demonstrated on a cosmic scale by the process of star formation, where gravity-induced rise of gas pressure boosts the temperature of an interstellar cloud to the threshold of nuclear fusion. At a planetary level, the effect is manifest in Chinook winds, where adiabatically heated downslope airflow raises the local temperature by 20C-30C in a matter of hours. This leads to a logical question: Could air pressure be responsible for the observed thermal enhancement at the Earth surface presently known as a ‘Natural Greenhouse Effect’? To answer this we must analyze the relationship between NTEfactor and key atmospheric variables including pressure over a wide range of planetary climates. Fortunately, our solar system offers a suitable spectrum of celestial bodies for such analysis.
3.2. Interplanetary Data Set
We based our selection of celestial bodies for the ATE analysis on three criteria: 1) presence of a solid planetary surface with at least traces of atmosphere; 2) availability of reliable data on surface temperature, total pressure, atmospheric composition etc. preferably from direct measurements; and 3) representation of a wide range of atmospheric masses and compositions. This approach resulted in choosing of four planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and four natural satellites – Moon of Earth, Europa of Jupiter, Titan of Saturn, and Triton of Neptune. Each celestial body was described by 14 parameters listed in Table 1.
For planets with tangible atmospheres, i.e. Venus, Earth and Mars, the temperatures calculated from IGL agreed rather well with observations. Note that, for extremely low pressures such as on Mercury and Moon, the Gas Law produces Ts ≈ 0.0. The SPGB temperatures for each celestial body were estimated from Eq. (2) using published data on solar irradiance and assuming αgb = 0.12 and ϵ = 0.955. For Mars, global means of surface temperature and air pressure were calculated from remote sensing data retrieved via the method of radio occultation by the Radio Science Team (RST) at Stanford University using observations by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft from 1999 to 2005. Since the MGS RST analysis has a wide spatial coverage, the new means represent current average conditions on the Red Planet much more accurately than older data based on Viking’s spot observations from 1970s.
Table 1. Planetary data used to analyze the physical nature of the Atmospheric Near-Surface Thermal Enhancement (NTE). Information was gathered from multiple sources using cross-referencing. The bottom three rows of data were estimated in this study using equations discussed in the text.
3.3. Physical Nature of ATE / GHE
Our analysis of interplanetary data in Table 1 found no meaningful relationships between ATE (NTE) and variables such as total absorbed solar radiation by planets or the amount of greenhouse gases in their atmospheres. However, we discovered that NTE was strongly related to total surface pressure through a nearly perfect regression fit via the following nonlinear function:
where Ps is in Pa. Figure 5 displays Eq. (7) graphically. The tight relationship signals a causal effect of pressure on NTE, which is theoretically supported by the IGL (see & 3.1). Also, the Ps–NTE curve in Fig. 5 strikingly resembles the response of the temperature/potential temp. (T/θ) ratio to altitudinal changes of pressure described by the well-known Poisson formula derived from IGL (Fig. 6). Such a similarity in responses suggests that both NTE and θ embody the effect of pressure-controlled adiabatic heating on air, even though the two mechanisms are not identical. This leads to a fundamental conclusion that the ‘Natural Greenhouse Effect’ is in fact a Pressure-induced Thermal Enhancement (PTE) in nature.
NTE should not be confused with an actual energy, however, since it only defines the relative (fractional) increase of a planet’s surface temperature above that of a SPGB. Pressure by itself is not a source of energy! Instead, it enhances (amplifies) the energy supplied by an external source such as the Sun through density-dependent rates of molecular collision. This relative enhancement only manifests as an actual energy in the presence of external heating. Thus, Earth and Titan have similar NTE values, yet their absolute surface temperatures are very different due to vastly dissimilar solar insolation. While pressure (P) controls the magnitude of the enhancement factor, solar heating determines the average atmospheric volume (V), and the product P×V defines the total kinetic energy and temperature of the atmosphere. Therefore, for particular solar insolation, the NTE factor gives rise to extra kinetic energy in the lower atmosphere beyond the amount supplied by the Sun. This additional energy is responsible for keeping the Earth surface 133K warmer than it would be in the absence of atmosphere, and is the source for the observed 44% extra down-welling LW flux in the lower troposphere (see &2.1 C). Hence, the atmosphere does not act as a ‘blanket’ reducing the surface infrared cooling to space as maintained by the current GH theory, but is in and of itself a source of extra energy through pressure. This makes the GH effect a thermodynamic phenomenon, not a radiative one as presently assumed!
Equation (7) allows us to derive a simple yet robust formula for predicting a planet’s mean surface temperature as a function of only two variables – TOA solar irradiance and mean atmospheric surface pressure, i.e.
Figure 5. Atmospheric near-surface Thermal Enhancement (NTE) as a function of mean total surface pressure (Ps) for 8 celestial bodies listed in Table 1. See Eq. (7) for the exact mathematical formula.
Figure 6. Temperature/potential temperature ratio as a function of atmospheric pressure according to the Poisson formula based on the Gas Law (Po = 100 kPa.). Note the striking similarity in shape with the curve in Fig. 5.
where NTE(Ps) is defined by Eq. (7). Equation (8) almost completely explains the variation of Ts among analyzed celestial bodies, thus providing a needed function to parse the effect of a global pressure change on the dependent variables ρ and Tsin Eq. (6). Together Equations (6) and (8) imply that the chemical composition of an atmosphere affects average air density through the molecular mass of air, but has no impact on the mean surface temperature.
4. Implications of the new ATE Concept
The implications of the above findings are numerous and paradigm-altering. These are but a few examples:
Figure 7. Dynamics of global temperature and 12-month forward shifted cloud cover types from satellite observations. Cloud changes precede temperature variations by 6 to 24 months and appear to have been controlling the latter during the past 30 years (Nikolov & Zeller, manuscript).
A) Global surface temperature is independent of the down-welling LW flux known as greenhouse or back radiation, because both quantities derive from the same pool of atmospheric kinetic energy maintained by solar heating and air pressure. Variations in the downward LW flux (caused by an increase of tropospheric emissivity, for example) are completely counterbalanced (offset) by changes in the rate of surface convective cooling, for this is how the system conserves its internal energy.
B) Modifying chemical composition of the atmosphere cannot alter the system’s total kinetic energy, hence the size of ATE (GHE). This is supported by IGL and the fact that planets of vastly different atmospheric composition follow the same Ps–NTE relationship in Fig. 5. The lack of impact by the atmospheric composition on surface temperature is explained via the compensating effect of convective cooling on back-radiation discussed above.
C) Equation (8) suggests that the planet’s albedo is largely a product of climate rather than a driver of it. This is because the bulk of the albedo is a function of the kinetic energy supplied by the Sun and the atmospheric pressure. However, independent small changes in albedo are possible and do occur owning to 1%-3% secular variations in cloud cover, which are most likely driven by solar magnetic activity. These cloud-cover changes cause ±0.7C semi-periodic fluctuations in global temperature on a decadal to centennial time scale as indicated by recent satellite observations (see Fig. 7) and climate reconstructions for the past 10,000 years.
Figure 8. Dynamics of global surface temperature during the Cenozoic Era reconstructed from 18O proxies in marine sediments (Hansen et al. 2008).
Figure 9. Dynamics of mean surface atmospheric pressure during the Cenozoic Era reconstructed from the temperature record in Fig. 8 by inverting Eq. (8).
D) Large climatic shifts evident in the paleo-record such as the 16C directional cooling of the Globe during the past 51 million years (Fig. 8) can now be explained via changes in atmospheric mass and surface pressure caused by geologic variations in Earth’s tectonic activity. Thus, we hypothesize that the observed mega-cooling of Earth since the early Eocene was due to a 53% net loss of atmosphere to Space brought about by a reduction in mantle degasing as a result of a slowdown in continental drifts and ocean floor spreading. Figure 9 depicts reconstructed dynamics of the mean surface pressure for the past 65.5M years based on Eq. (8) and the temperature record in Fig. 8.
5. Unified Theory of Climate
The above findings can help rectify physical inconsistencies in the current GH concept and assist in the development of a Unified Theory of Climate (UTC) based on a deeper and more robust understanding of various climate forcings and the time scales of their operation. Figure 10 outlines a hierarchy of climate forcings as part of a proposed UTC that is consistent with results from our research as well as other studies published over the past 15 years. A proposed key new driver of climate is the variation of total atmospheric mass and surface pressure over geological time scales (i.e. tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of years). According to our new theory, the climate change over the past 100-300 years is due to variations of global cloud albedo that are not related to GHE/ATE. This is principally different from the present GH concept, which attempts to explain climate changes over a broad range of time scales (i.e. from decades to tens of millions of years) with the same forcing attributed to variations in atmospheric CO2 and other heat-absorbing trace gases (e.g. Lacis et al. 2010).
Earth’s climate is currently in one of the warmest periods of the Holocene (past 10K years). It is unlikely that the Planet will become any warmer over the next 100 years, because the cloud cover appears to have reached a minimum for the present levels of solar irradiance and atmospheric pressure, and the solar magnetic activity began declining, which may lead to more clouds and a higher planetary albedo. At this point, only a sizable increase of the total atmospheric mass can bring about a significant and sustained warming. However, human-induced gaseous emissions are extremely unlikely to produce such a mass increase.
Figure 10. Global climate forcings and their time scales of operation according to the hereto proposed Unified Theory of Climate (UTC). Arrows indicate process interactions.
6. References
Kopp, G. and J. L. Lean (2011). A new, lower value of total solar irradiance: Evidence and climate significance, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L01706, doi:10.1029/2010GL045777.
Kuptsov, L. P. (2001) Hölder inequality, in Hazewinkel, Michiel, Encyclopedia of Mathematics, Springer, ISBN 978-1556080104.
Lacis, A. A., G. A. Schmidt, D. Rind, and R. A. Ruedy (2010). Atmospheric CO2: Principal control knob governing earth’s temperature. Science 330:356-359.
Lindzen, R. S. and Y.-S. Choi (2009). On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L16705, doi:10.1029/2009GL039628.
McKitrick, R. R. et al. (2010). Panel and Multivariate Methods for Tests of Trend Equivalence in Climate Data Series. Atmospheric Science Letters, Vol. 11, Issue 4, pages 270–277.
Nikolov, N and K. F. Zeller (manuscript). Observational evidence for the role of planetary cloud-cover dynamics as the dominant forcing of global temperature changes since 1982.
Pavlakis, K. G., D. Hatzidimitriou, C. Matsoukas, E. Drakakis, N. Hatzianastassiou, and I. Vardavas (2003). Ten-year global distribution of down-welling long-wave radiation. Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 3, 5099-5137.
Spencer, R. W. and W. D. Braswell (2010). On the diagnosis of radiative feedback in the presence of unknown radiative forcing, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D16109, doi:10.1029/2009JD013371
Trenberth, K.E., J.T. Fasullo, and J. Kiehl (2009). Earth’s global energy budget. BAMS, March:311-323
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This post is also available as a PDF document here:
Unified_Theory_Of_Climate_Poster_Nikolov_Zeller
UPDATE: This thread is closed – see the newest one “A matter of some Gravity” where the discussion continues.
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At this point, it’s really just a “mopping up” operation. We now clearly understand in gory detail why Nikolov and Zeller’s work is fatally flawed. There is essentially no aspect of their paper that survives once one considers all of the serious errors that have been found and they and others have no intelligible answer to these errors that have been pointed out. Anyone who continues to believe their work at this point is simply discrediting themselves.
It is time to jump from the sinking ship, folks!
“Yes, I’m aware that Einstein was a doctoral student at that time”
Then you know how silly it is to speak of him as just a lowly patent clerk as if he had no other relevant background.
“And I already got my PhD in biophysics 15 years ago!”
Yes, I read your biographical information and how you received your PhD in Forest Ecology in 1997. Your research has been in weather and forest fires mostly. You are stepping well outside of your field in your attempt to overthrow atmospheric science.
“Again, read the papers I sent you earlier, and use you brain to figure out the Moon’s temperature from the official peer-reviewed research.”
Use your own and ask yourself why all of those people who actually spend their time studying the Moon for a living come up with a completely different number than you. Did you even bother to ask a relevant scientist why their number is so different? Or would that have been beneath you?
BTW, in your online manifesto with Zeller, you claim that over the last 50 million years or so the atmosphere has lost 53% of its mass, and this is the main reason that temps have fallen. Do you have anything besides your equations to back this up? Are you aware of the implications such a change in atmospheric mass (and pressure) would have on the biosphere? Where is your physical evidence this happened?
Terry Oldberg says:
It is you who are misrepresenting things and evading the facts. I never said that such a mechanism violates energy conservation. However, the lapse rate does not alone determine the surface temperature. If the height at which the temperature is equal to 255 K goes up, the surface temperature goes up even while the lapse rate remains the same. Read this again until you understand it: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/#comment-853955 It is the mechanism of the greenhouse effect that has been worked out by people with far more knowledge in the field than you or I and for which there is clear evidence for.
JOEL SHORE
1. Do not draw the conversation into snarky witticisms. You are poorly equipped to compete with me in that regard. My mother taught me not to fight an unarmed man, but I think she will make an exception in this case. I suggest you stick to science.
2. There is no need to demonstrate a mechanism by which the average surface temperature of earth could exceed the black body temperature of earth. All that is required to support N&Z’s hypothesis is to demonstrate that there is a mechanism by which the average surface temperature of a planet could be increased by the presence of a non radiative atmosphere WITHOUT changing the EFFECTIVE black body temperature odf the planet. Not only I have I done so, but I have done so in language that should be comprehensible to anyone who passed high school algebra.
3. Your suggestion to Ned Nikolov that he should give his head a shake because the consensus amongst climate scientists is in disagreement with him is spurious. The fact that his writings have sparked spirited and intense debate in this and other forums amongst highly qualified scientists with PhD’s in a variety of directly and indirectly related fields while all we hear from the climate “scientists” is the sweetness and harmony of consensus should give you pause.
4. Your contention that Ned Nikolov’s background in forestry somehow undermines his credibility is egregious. If you cannot discredit him through science alone, then it matters not if his education ended with a hundred PhD’s or if he quit school in grade 2.
5. If you continue to contend that Ned Nikolov’s background in forestry discredits his opinion on climate issues, then I ask that you stick to your position and publicly ask Mssrs Briffa, Mann and Jones to withdraw their work on global temparature reconstructions from tree ring data on the basis that they have no background in forestry.
Regards,
dmh
Terry Oldberg: To be more specific about where I am disagreeing with you, I think it is here:
I don’t see any reason why the convection increases in such a way that it exactly cancels out the increase in the back radiation when that increase in back radiation comes about from the process of an increase in greenhouse gases. To be clear, it may be true that if you look immediately after a delta-function increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, then this is true. (It is not obvious to me that it definitely so at the moment…but it is at least conceivable.) However, the important thing about such an increase in greenhouse gases is not the increase in back-radiation but the change in the top-of-the-atmosphere energy budget, i.e., the fact that the earth-atmosphere system is now absorbing more energy from the sun as it is emitting. The ONLY way this can be remedied is by the system to heat up until that radiative balance is restored and the way it heats up is, as your assumption notes, by keeping the lapse rate approximately constant. And, as I discussed above, this results in a higher surface temperature in the final state (balance restored), because the altitude at which the average temperature is 255 K will be higher up in the atmosphere than it was before.
The most important thing for anyone to understand about energy balance is that it is the top-of-the-atmosphere energy balance that is fundamentally the most important. It is much easier to figure out what happens with that and then work down to the surface than it is to figure out the surface on its own. This is because the surface energy balance is complicated, since it involves conduction and convection (including evaporation) as well as radiation. The top-of-the-atmosphere balance involves radiation only.
My nomination for this week’s textbook example of psychological projection, written by Joel Shore:
Joel Shore’s own ‘ideology’ is CO2=CAGW, and he’s still ‘flailing around horribly’ trying to find that mysterious heat hidden somewhere in Trenberth’s pipeline.☺
Despite what Joel Shore claims, this debate is about science, not ‘ideology’.
davidmhoffer says:
This statement is really egregious! N&Z have added 100 K to what every actual climate scientist agrees is the greenhouse effect of 33 K (and have called it by the name “surface temperature enhancement”). Now, you want us to be impressed because they can subtract that 100 K away without invoking the greenhouse effect!?! That truly has to be one of the most absurb statements that I have seen on this subject…and that is saying something!
As for the rest of his post: I am not the one who brought up (or even mentioned, as far as I remember) what field he is working in. And, I am not saying that he is wrong on the basis of what his background is; I am saying he is wrong because I have laid out in gory detail repeatedly exactly what the issues are that utterly destroy his “theory”.
However, I am also appealing in general here for a little more humility: We could spend a lot less time having to explain to people why their misconceptions are wrong if people would actually accept the basic premise that they are unlikely to be so totally freakin’ brilliant that they can march into a field, having apparently not even read or absorbed information in the most basic elementary textbooks, and instantly come up with a “theory” that displaces a century of work in the field! For heaven’s sake, every second person on this site seems to think he is the next incarnation of Einstein or Galileo or something! (I exaggerate, but only slightly!) If everyone had a little more humility and understanding that they (and those who happen to agree with them) are not the only intelligent lifeforms in the universe, we wouldn’t have to put up with a constant barrage of nonsense.
By the way, David, I should add that the question is what you mean by “support their hypothesis”. You have reduced their hypothesis to a form that nobody would disagree with. If the question is whether thicker atmospheres can lead to a higher average surface temperature than thinner atmospheres by virtue of an evening out of the temperature distribution, then the answer is YES and this is not in any way a new idea. (It is in fact completely bizarre that you keep trumpeting the fact that you have shown this as if there was anybody here arguing against N&Z who did not already know that!)
However, if the question is whether their idea can explain any of the 33 K radiative greenhouse effect that conventional climate scientist say exists on Earth, the answer is NO.
Joel,
You just self destructed. See a doctor 🙂
Joe Born says:
January 5, 2012 at 5:44 am
Here’s why I think many of us have difficulty. Thinking of the earth, we tend naturally to integrate with respect to latitude and longitude. Testimony to that is that you and I both used that approach in computing Equation 2 numerically. But Ned didn’t, so he lost me right off.
What he did if I understand it is move the sun to Polaris’s position so that it shines directly on the North Pole. Then he translated the measure of latitude so that the North Pole’s latitude is zero and the South Pole’s is 180, and mu is the cosine of the resultant latitude. Another way of looking at it is that, for a point on the surface of a unity-radius sphere, mu is the distance along the axis in the direction of the sun from the sphere’s center to the plane perpendicular thereto that contains that point. Theta is longitude, or angular position around the circle in which the plane intersects the sphere. So Ned integrates along the axis and around the circle of intersection. mu < 0 implies nighttime, so integration limits for mu can be 0 and 1 if we want to ignore (de minimis) night-time background radiation. Fair enough, although it took me awhile to recognize what his coordinate system was.
Indeed, that’s why I asked about the missing factor of two, but when I first asked I got an incorrect answer that said that a negative zenith angle meant that that was the dark side which of course it doesn’t. When I persisted I got a more accurate description of what Ned is doing and of course it isn’t “calculating the temperature at every point on the Earth sphere first by taking the 4th root from the S-B relationship and then averaging the resulting temperature field across the planet surface”. What Ned does is integrate and average the sunlit side temperature assuming a Lambertian profile (not a bad approximation for an atmosphere-less planet as shown by the Moon) to obtain the Grey-body temperature of the sunlit side and then divide it by 2 (more on this later). The Tgb for the sunlit side is thus 308.6K, which seems a reasonable value for the Moon, (assuming a uniform temperature gives ~269K by my back of the envelope calculation). This is not the global grey body temperature though because no account has been made of the dark side of the planet. Ned’s way of dealing with this is to model the dark side as instantly dropping to absolute zero at sunset and remaining there until sunrise (thus introducing the spurious division by 2)! As the Moon data indicates this is a very poor choice. So Ned’s “According to Eq. (2), our atmosphere boosts Earth’s surface temperature not by 18K—33K as currently assumed, but by 133K!” is based on this non-physical model. By his own statements regarding the Moon, which has a 27.5 Earth-day night, the average temperature on the dark side must be about 90K which combined with this integration for the sunlit side would give a global value of ~200K, not 154K.
So the 133K warming is clearly nonsense because of this unrealistic model since it’s obviously conceptually incorrect, and from Hölder’s inequality you’d expect it to be worse value since it introduces a larger inhomogeneity in the temperature!
As to his use of the Gas Laws to determine the near surface temperature is nothing new, it’s a standard problem in High school classes. However, you have to have measurements of the average gas density near the surface which is no easier to do than to determine the average temperature near the surface. For example at the NP-39 Arctic research base the Temperature is 240K and Pressure is 1013 whereas in Boa Vista, Brazil it’s about 310K at the same pressure. The issues of the use of curve fitting have been addressed by others, there’s no predictive value to it.
Ned, your “observed” number for Mercury’s mean surface temp is also way, way off as well. You state that the mean surface temperature for Mercury is 248K, which is 40 degrees colder than the Earth’s. The actual observed number (as opposed to your invention) is 440K. You have an “observed” mean surface temperature for Mars (182K) that is lower than the *minimum* temperature in its diurnal range of 184K-222K. The actual mean surface temperature for Mars is about 210K.
Between that and your claim that the Earth lost over 50% of it’s atmosphere during the last 50 million years, is there any surprise that the scientific world isn’t paying much attention to your manifesto?
Joel Shore (Jan. 5, 2012 at 9:58 am):
I gather that you stipulate to the fact of energy conservation under maintenance of the lapse rate at the adiabatic lapse rate via convection. Thank you.
Terry: I have explained the physics to you as best I can; What part are you having a hard time understanding?
Fellows,
About the Moon temperature issue – I would like to put this discussion to rest by sharing with you the following information I just got from two key people on the NASA’s Diviner project.
I talked to the Co-Principle Investigator, Dr. Carlton Allen (at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston TX) and the person in charge of the moon temperature data, Dr. Matthew Siegler at UCLA. Dr. Siegler told me that the Diviner webpage containing the temperature table which Robert Murphy refers to (see http://www.diviner.ucla.edu/science.shtml) has actually been put together by undergraduate students, and not by him. When I pointed out the discrepancy between the numbers shown in the table and the actual data reported in the papers, he acknowledged that the values in the tables are inaccurate for what they claim to be. He also agrees that both modeled and observed moon temperature series indicate that the mean diurnal temperature is about 210K at the lunar equator and about 110K at the lunar poles. He apologized for the misleading information on the Webpage and promised to ask the people maintaining the page to correct it. We will probably see an an update in a few days …
Now, please, lets continue with the science discussion and drop the personal attacks and insinuations. Thank you!
Joel Shore says:
January 5, 2012 at 11:09 am
By the way, David, I should add that the question is what you mean by “support their hypothesis”. You have reduced their hypothesis to a form that nobody would disagree with.>>>
Fantastic! We have a consensus then!
Joel Shore says:
January 5, 2012 at 11:09 am
If the question is whether thicker atmospheres can lead to a higher average surface temperature than thinner atmospheres by virtue of an evening out of the temperature distribution, then the answer is YES and this is not in any way a new idea.>>>>
Glad to see you admitting that despite having contradicted it at every turn when the discussion intitially started. Good to see that you recognize that your original position was false, though that also makes your statement that it isn’t a new idea false since it seems to be one for you.
Joel Shore says:
January 5, 2012 at 11:09 am
(It is in fact completely bizarre that you keep trumpeting the fact that you have shown this as if there was anybody here arguing against N&Z who did not already know that!)
Again, glad to see you stipulating to my position after denigrating it ad naseum earlier.
Joel Shore says:
January 5, 2012 at 11:09 am
However, if the question is whether their idea can explain any of the 33 K radiative greenhouse effect that conventional climate scientist say exists on Earth, the answer is NO.>>>
Aw, Joel, you ruined it. You’ve agreed to my position, agreed to my explanation, and my explanation makes it pretty clear that 133K is far more accurate than 33K. If you cannot dispute the algebra, and in fact endorse it, then you must also endorse the 133K! You cannot say that the algebra I’ve presented is RIGHT but that the number calculated by the algebra is WRONG!
Well, I guess you can, you just did.
Terry Oldberg says:
I don’t know what this even means. Your jargon is frankly incomprehensible. Read what I wrote to you in detail explaining the physics, e.g. here and earlier: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-theory-of-climate/#comment-854225 It is not useful to try to summarize everything in a single jargon-filled sentence that could be interpreted about 10 different ways.
davidmhoffer says:
I missed the part where you demonstrated that 133 K is far more accurate than 33 K. I don’t even know what such a sentence means. More accurate for what? As an estimate of the radiative greenhouse effect, 33 K is certainly more accurate. As an estimate of the total effect in going from an airless planet to our current one, then 133 K is probably more accurate, but it also convolves the radiative greenhouse effect with the effect of making the surface temperature more uniform (because of the presence of significant heat storage and horizontal heat transport).
So, what exactly do you think N&Z have shown and how does it relate to their purported claim “that the physical nature of the so-called GH effect is a Pressure-induced Thermal Enhancement (PTE), which is independent of the atmospheric chemical composition”? In fact, the entire 33 K effect that most climate scientists talk about is due to atmospheric chemical composition because it is due to the radiative greenhouse effect. Yes, the other 100 K that N&Z talk about is not due to this, but nobody claimed that the radiative greenhouse effect raises the temperature by 133 K; we claimed it raises the temperature by 33 K.
Reply to Robert Murphy (January 5, 2012 at 12:24 pm)
Robert,
I address the Mercury and Mars temperature issues in my official reply. But here is the situation in a nutshell. The Mercury temperature of 440K reported by NASA is an estimate using the S-B equation, and not based on actual observations. As such, it suffers from the same problem as the 250K estimate for the Moon temperature – an incorrect application of the S-B law! So we used our Eq. 2 to estimate Mercury’s termperature.
The derivation of Mars temperature is briefly discussed in Section 3.2 of our paper (have you read it?). We used spatial data for surface temperature and pressure derived by researchers at Stanford University using satellite observations by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft from 1999 to 2005. The 210K value for Mars mean global temperature is erroneous, since it is based on measurements made at only 2 locations at LOW latitudes by the Viking probes in the 1970s.
About past atmospheric pressures – yes, there is a very good indirect evidence that, 50-60M years ago, pressure was much higher than today. That evidence is in the equable climate conditions that existed in that era. ‘Equable climate’ means that the temperature gradient between equator and the poles was nearly non-existent. This is inferred from the fossil record, which shows that tropical ecosystems thrived around and beyond the polar circle. So, not only was the mean global temperature 12-16K higher than today, but the Earth was also uniformly warm. That’s why they call it ‘hothouse climate’. Current climate models cannot reproduce these equable conditions using present atmos. pressure, and this is one of the main conundrums in paleo-climatology today. The ONLY way that such an uniform climate could have existed is if the atmospheric mass and pressure were much higher than today. Higher pressure means higher air density, which means more efficient meridional (poleward) heat transport. Paleo-climatologists all agree that these ‘hothouse’ equable climates require a VERY efficient meridional heat transport, but they have not found a mechanism for it yet, because no one has thought to look at pressure! Since the poleward heat transport is due 80% to atmospheric currents and 20% to ocean currents, it’s obvious that a higher atmospheric density will significantly increase this transport … Also, Venus is a present-day example of how high atmospheric pressure brings about high average temperature and a uniform climate. The surface of Venus is at 738K throughout the whole planet including the nighttime hemisphere despite the extremely slow axial rotation (one Venusian day lasts some 227 Earth days). The Moon surface cools 250K shortly as the Sun goes down, while Venus’ nighttime hemisphere stays led-melting hot for many months without any sunlight. That’s because high pressure (and the resulting high air density) transports heat from the sunlit to the shaded portion of the planet… I hope this helps evolve your thinking …
@joel Shore, passim:
Scattered throughout your comments, you keep repeating the statement that the tropopause rises and the lapse rate then determines the temperature of the surface of the Earth. Why do you do that? In fact, it is the heating from below, combined with the lapse rate, that causes the temperature in the troposphere to (ordinarily) decrease with altitude. Cause and effect…
By the way, in your “item (3)” earlier, was that just a “major blink”, or the preparatory stage of incipient back-pedalling? ☺
/dr.bill
Joel Shore,
C’mon buddy, think it through!
If you agree that 133K is about right for combined GH effect due to GHG’s + conductance +convection, then it ought to be obvious to you what happens when you alter the ratio of GHG’s to the rest of the atmosphere!
The whole system works in a giant feedback loop because it has no choice but to act in any other manner.
Start with a zero GHG atmosphere in equilibrium.
Add some GHG’s.
They absorb some amount of upward bound LW that would otherwise have escaped.
Consequence => atmosphere is now warmer than it was before. Warmer atmosphere = reduced temperature differential compared to the surface = LESS CONDUCTION!
Atmosphere re-radiates a portion of the absorbed LW back toward earth where it is absorbed by earth surface. This raises earth surface temperature = MORE CONDUCTION,
but since the atmosphere is in general warmer than it was before = LESS CONVECTION!
…and round round we go.
Intercepting outbound LW by GHG’s alters the amount of energy that is moved to the atmosphere through conductive processes and also alters the manner in which energy is distributed via conduction to night side and higher latitudes. The more GHG feedback there is, the less conduction/convection there is.
Do they exactly cancel out?
I don’t have a clue!
But given the accuracy of N&Z’s results, it is pretty clear that if the GHG number currently is 33K and it adds to the 100K from conduction/convection for a total of 133K, then there is every reason to expect that without GHG’s, there would be more conduction/convection arriving at about 133K.
Ned,
Excellent replies to Mr. Murphy. Thank you.
davidmhoffer says:
No, David. You are still missing the important point: It is impossible for the Earth to be at a temperature of 288 K and be emitting 240 W/m^2 unless there are GHGs, so, no, there is absolutely no way to go up from N&Z’s T_sb to our actual Earth without GHGs. This rise of 100 K that you are talking about is really sort of a figment of the imagination. It just doesn’t make much sense to talk about an average temperature when the temperature distribution is that extreme. As you have noted, it is much better to average T^4 over the Earth. If you average T^4 over the earth and then take the 4th root, you get a temperature of 255 K, independent of the temperature distribution.
You have everything exactly backwards: You have correctly concluded that averaging T^4 is better than averaging T and yet you are going with N&Z, who have defined the temperature by averaging T…and doing so for a temperature distribution that is extremely broad and is only a good approximation to reality in the case of a planet with no atmosphere.
dr bill says:
It is not back-pedalling at all. I have always maintained that the fact that N&Z get a good fit to the data arises for various reasons but in no way advances their bogus claim that somehow the atmospheric greenhouse effect is not responsible for the 33 K warming that we attribute to it on Earth. Item (3) represented a breakthrough in understanding another one of the reasons why they get a decent fit (although with 5 parameters, it is not clear how much explaining needs to be done) despite the fact that they are completely off-base in their conclusion that they can explain any of the 33 K radiative greenhouse effect by other means!
“I address the Mercury and Mars temperature issues in my official reply. But here is the situation in a nutshell.”
Look, Mercury is not cooler than the Earth. The Moon is not cooler than Mars. You made up numbers, called them “observed” numbers in your manifesto, and then patted yourself on the back saying how strong your claims are because your “observed” numbers match your equations. Well, duh! They came from your equations, not from observations.
“About past atmospheric pressures – yes, there is a very good indirect evidence that, 50-60M years ago, pressure was much higher than today. That evidence is in the equable climate conditions that existed in that era.”
That’s nuts. What do you think would happen to life on Earth as a result of this reduction by 53% of the Earth’s atmosphere? Did you think of that? You don’t just get to arbitrarily claim a 53% reduction of the Earth’s atmosphere because people are having trouble modelling the Eocene equable climate. What’s next? Why not change the gravitational constant of the universe while you’re at it.
I said:
Sorry…This is a little unclear. What I mean is that it is impossible for the Earth’s surface to be at a temperature of 288 K and for the Earth + atmosphere to be emitting only 240 W/m^2 as seen from space unless there are GHGs.
The basic point is this: You have assumed that because you can raise the average temperature by 100 K without GHGs, why can’t you raise it another 33 K without GHGs? And, the answer is that you raised this average temperature will keeping the surface emission constant at 240 W/m^2. However, there is no way to go beyond 255 K surface temperature and still emit 240 W/m^2.