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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G. Karst says:
This paper will be ignored because it is pseudoscientific nonsense that would never pass peer review in the scientific community. Its only purpose is to fool those who do not have the scientific background to recognize its glaring errors.
To counter Booth and Kilty’s simplistic views I offer my own simplistic reply: The part of the paper that has apparently been missed by these two was not that the pressure itself maintains the temperature, but that the pressure reduces the amount of energy required to maintain that temperature.
They also neglect surface area. A small cylinder filled with high pressure gas has an enormous surface area compared to the globe and is taking in very little energy.
It would also, I’d expect, be a lot easier to keep a pressurised container at a specific temperature with an external heater (surely if a gas bottle is the same as the earth, a two bar electric fire is the same as the sun?) than an equivalently sized empty container; the pressurised container would store a lot more heat within a given volume and would radiate for a much longer period.
Nick Stokes on Hansen’s paper and the graph.
I can see some exasperation re missing reference, but look, the derivative graph is done accepting the temperatures (they are not theirs and they may even be wrongly composed) but the point here is that they can do this calculation – somebody else’s graph would just give different wiggles but the calculation based on it could be made just the same. I’d rather you show us why we should reject the IGL as a pre-eminent explanation. Explain, for example, that their calculations, although almost exactly equal to the observed temps using IGL are wrong because …… Boy if IPCC contributors could calculate the temps on Mars, Venus, and even Earth using CO2 concentrations that came halfway close to IGL results, I would have been sold long ago. If you want to shoot these guys down, you are going to have to do it with the IGL. Figures used in the prevalent GHG theory haven’t yet been so convincing.
Kevin Kilty says:
December 29, 2011 at 8:45 am
“John Wilkes Booth says:
December 29, 2011 at 8:10 am
FYI …
Karl Zeller’s excuse is less clear:
PhD, Colorado State University, Fluid Mechanics & Wind Engineering (micrometeorological emphasis) 1990 …”
Gawd! Are you people dependent on authority? Stop with the fallacious arguments from authority and ad hominems.
Extremely interesting paper, which certainly appears to hold up on first reading!
It will be very interesting to follow the reaction of those who have hung their hat on other mechanisms for heating.
Thinking for a moment about the implications of this approach, and how they relate to significant global temperature shifts such as ice ages.
Can enough CO2 and other gases be absorbed in a cold sea to materially change the planetary atmospheric mass? Could an ice age be triggered simply by a periodic shutdown of volcanic out gassing, or perhaps by some external mechanism that strips off significant atmospheric mass such as changes in solar wind, UV ionization changing the size (volume) of the atmosphere and decomposing water vapor into oxygen and hydrogen with eventual loss of hydrogen to space.
Would a major asteroid or cometary impactor, “blow off” enough atmosphere to temporarily cool the earth by changing the atmospheric mass to a new lower value until volcanic activity had time (100,000 years or so) to replenish the blown off atmosphere?
Would the atmospheric mass periodically vary due to local changes in the interstellar environment as the earth moves through the galactic disk? Perhaps as it enters or leaves areas where higher or lower flux of small dust and micrometeorites changes the constant external contribution to atmospheric gasses as these particles vaporize as they enter the atmosphere?
All of the above?
Lots of secondary questions generated by this new approach.
Larry
[SNIP: Joel, that comment is not helpful. You can do better. -REP]
Joel Shore says:
December 29, 2011 at 9:30 am
“Just to comment on a few other things:
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).
Yes…This is taught throughout the world, but not as the most complete understanding of the greenhouse effect but rather as the simplest picture of the greenhouse effect. Hence, to criticize it as incomplete is silly…Everyone knows that it is incomplete. It is not meant to be the most complete or quantitatively-correct model. It is meant to be the simplest picture illustrating the basic effect.”
Ah, yet another who does not understand the differences between theories and models. I will give you the very basic difference: Theories describe reality but models reproduce reality. Are you talking about theories or models?
For thermodynamic purposes, yes. What’s it made out of?
I’ll mention once again that the “cooling effect” of GHGs continually gets ignored. It was ignored by Monckton as well in the previous article. About 1/3 of the energy in our atmosphere gets there by means other than surface radiation. For that energy the GHGs are the only means to radiate it to space. More CO2 will only enhance the “cooling effect”.
In addition, it works spatially in 3 dimensions rather than the 2 dimensions for radiation. It could very well be that this “cooling effect” completely cancels the “warming effect” known more commonly as the GHE. It must reduce it to some degree.
Add in convection, albedo, etc and I think we can get a better picture of the entire process.
For those interested in what temperature is here’s a primer from Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature
Pretty good for Wiki.
For those who are complaining that this article could not be published in a peer reviewed journal, your claim is trivially true. What this article contains is a brief introduction to a new theory. No journal publishes brief introductions to a new theory.
Joel Shore: “Yes…This is taught throughout the world, but not as the most complete understanding of the greenhouse effect but rather as the simplest picture of the greenhouse effect.”
This is a nonsense objection on your part. N&Z are not critizising it’s simplicity. They are critizising the fact that it is wrong because what is left out is more important than what is included.
“It is correct that the inclusion of convection reduces the greenhouse effect over what it calculated in the absence of convection; however, it does not reduce it to the extent that these authors claim (because the authors incorrectly assume convection try to relax the atmosphere to a completely isothermal temperature profile with altitude)…”
This is dumb. Go out and feel the wind on your face. And look at the strength of the jet stream. Convection is highly active all the time. And then remember that a doubling of CO2 in a test tube only produced 1C with zero convection.
Don Monfort says:
December 29, 2011 at 9:22 am
“Slow down. Read Leornard Weinstein’s post. Jeff L, and even Joel Shore. The celebration is premature, again.”
Yeah. It is a bit early to declare the article “true” and a bit early to declare it “false.” What might be more interesting and useful at this point is a look at its new approach to the problem. Drawing out differences between this approach and the “radiation only” approach of the Warmists could be very useful. The approach in this article describes some natural processes in the atmosphere other than processes of radiation. Warmists studiously ignore all such natural processes by treating them as epiphenomena of radiation changes. (By the way, any article on climate that studiously ignores all natural processes other than radiation changes should never have been published in a peer reviewed journal of science. And all of them should be withdrawn at this time.)
Theo, you mis-understand the point JWB and I were making. In fact we are arguing against the authority of credentials, just as you suggest we should. The fact that Zeller and Nikolov both have Ph.D.s should have no bearing on how anyone should view this paper, but it should have imparted them with some caution about this publication. That they made a mess of their application of the gas law stands on its own. I have a number of advanced degrees, but I rarely weigh in on most subjects because I don’t know enough to make a reasonable contribution. I know well, from decades of university teaching, that engineering students can wiggle through to a Ph.D. being very deficient in understanding some fundamental subjects. As long as they remain in a very narrow discipline this deficiency causes no trouble and isn’t even visible. Wind Engineering is a pretty narrow specialty. Take as an example a Ph.D. in Transportation. It is a civil engineering degree, but it focusses narrowly and doesn’t put much if any emphasis on thermodynamics, or fluids, or any of a range of other engineering and scientific topics, even at the introductory level. The letters behind a person’s name have meaning only when you look at specialty, research background, specific education, informal education, and a lot of other information. Neither JWB nor I were making any fallacious argument–please point out specifics if you disagree.
Kevin Kilty says:
December 29, 2011 at 8:52 am
Jimmy Haigh says:
December 29, 2011 at 8:38 am
John Wilkes Booth says:
December 29, 2011 at 8:10 am
What are your credentials? Who are you to criticise this work? I would look you up but somehow I don’t think it’s your real name…
“Real name or not, credentials or none, Booth is dead right with regard to this paper. The application of the gas law here is horrid.”
Booth got sent back to his grave but now I know why I was spinning in mine.
You don’t have to be theoetical physicist like me to understand the ideal gas law but evidently you have to be more than a US federal government forestry scientist. LOL
Perdón, pero…
Cómo puede variar la “densidad” de la atmósfera, y la “presión”, si no hay variación en la gravedad?
[TRANSLATION: How can you change the “density” of the atmosphere, and “pressure” if there is no variation in gravity? -REP]
ChE says:
December 29, 2011 at 9:50 am
“[DirkH:]Air is a diatomic gas?
For thermodynamic purposes, yes. What’s it made out of?”
Up to 4 % water?
Joel Shore says:
December 29, 2011 at 9:30 am
Just to comment on a few other things: simplistic Penn State graph, Holders inequality, affect of convection… pulling a few barnacles off a humpback whale doesn’t hurt the whale that much. How about chopping up the blubber of the calculations based on IGL for the planetary bodies and their comparison with the measured temps? When something like this work comes along, you can sure tell who have serious dogs in the fight (those with the biggest dogs didn’t show up). Nick Stokes also attacked a few bumps on the beast, too.
Please go back up this thread and read the detailed objections, along with a few compliments, that I made regarding this contribution. It could not be published in the peer-reviewed literature because of the serious mistakes it makes. Now, could these authors publish this in book form on their own? Of course they could, and then their work would have to stand the test of time. My guess is it would be a short test.
So far, 130 odd comments in (putting aside JWB’s pointless ad hominems and those who say it is wrong without explaining why), the criticisms of this paper appear to be two.
One person is in a flap because he can not find the source of a graph referred to (granted the reference should be there) and then sets up the classic red-herring that it does not appear to match a graph that depicts something different from some another paper. So far, so trivial.
The second criticism is one I would very much like to hear the authors’ remarks on. There has been some concern expressed in these comments over the -133°K atmospheric boost shown by Eq. (2) in this presentation. As far as I can tell this is entirely reasonable given the difference between Earth and Moon surface temperatures if you also consider the cooling effect of the Earthly water cycle. How would the authors address the concerns expressed?
PS just to put in my penny’s worth – if we are looking for a Unified Theory I am prompted to wonder about the effect of adiabatic magnetism.
Which leaves 96+% made out of what?
This is really fascinating to me as it appears to make a lot of sense, if the author’s claims can be verified. I haven’t retained enough of the math I used to somewhat understand to know if the authors’ equations make any sense and would love for some of the more knowledgeable WUWT readers to verify the math.
Assuming (I know) that the math is correct, I don’t understand some of the objections raised here. Nick Stokes claims that a lot is deduced from figure 8. As far as I can tell, the only thing deduced is figure 9 where I believe they are saying that their theory says that historical temperatures would imply specific pressures and proceed to give an example. Objecting to the inputs doesn’t change anything.
Also, a lot of grumbling about whether the GHE adds 33 or 133 degrees C. The authors claim that their way of looking at GB temperatures (I’m looking at their Table 1) would give both the earth and moon a mean surface temperature of 154.3 degrees, which makes sense given the same location relative to the sun. They also say that the airless moon has a measured temperature of 154.3 degrees. If this is all true (which I don’t claim to know), then that’s seems to say their equations are pretty good. It also means that the earth’s measured temperature is 133 degrees higher than their claimed GB temperature and that they can account for that. They then proceed to do just that.
This is really one of the few things I’ve seen that actually makes sense. That doesn’t mean it’s correct, of course. Any insights are welcome.
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GeologyJim says:
December 29, 2011 at 8:54 am
Question: How has Venus managed to hold its thick atmosphere against the solar-wind flux? Is it just the greater molecular weight of CO2 compared to N2, O2, and such?
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Not sure, but that would be my guess. H2O is easy to dissociate by UV (& then lost to space) compared to CO2, so water is lost first. O2 & N2 are next easiest, so Venus (& Mars), without magnetic fields, end up w/mostly CO2, which is heavier & relatively resistant to dissociation & loss to space. A planetary scientist (or Leif Sv) would know.
AFA this post is concerned, I’m reading & thinking. Time must pass to properly grok. Some flaws are obvious. Certainly Joel Shore is agitated.
You are arguing exactly the reverse of what I said. Please read back up this thread to where I state that pressure results from gas at some level having to support the weight of gas above. It is basic statics, mkelly. Thus temperature has no bearing on pressure in the case of a star or on a planetary atmosphere–gravity is the principal agent. The temperature rise is from gravitational work. Once that work stops; once the star or atmosphere reaches an equilibrium size, then the temperature is determined entirely by energy in versus out. It is basic thermodynamics, mkelly. In the case of the Cummins diesel, the work done on the cylinder charge by the piston is what increases pressure and temperature–work is the causative agent. I never stated that temperature increases then pressure increases. Those are your words, do not try to put them in my mouth.
What I welcome most about this paper, notwithstanding that it may or may not be proved to be correct, is the fact that, at last, Science is attempting to go back to Square One and take a refreshing look at the ‘Greenhouse Effect’, its cause and its internal workings.
Refreshing and welcome indeed.
ps, Does this mean that the science is more or less settled? 🙂