From The Hockey Shtick, word of a new paper that supports Miskolczi’s theory of saturated greenhouse effect. We’ve seen this before, in the form of this graph.
In 2006, Willis Eschenbach posted this graph on Climate Audit showing the logarithmic net downward IR forcing effect of carbon dioxide relative to atmospheric concentration:
The flatter portion of the graph gradually smooths out, as the effect of CO2 forcing becomes saturated with increased concentration. And this graphic of his shows carbon dioxide’s contribution to the whole greenhouse effect:
What’s more, in this new paper there appears to be some evidence for a negative climate feedback, in the form of slightly lowered relative humidity trend, which makes climate sensitivity lower. Relative humidity (RH) is the ratio of the actual amount of water vapor in the air to the amount it could hold when saturated expressed as a percentage OR the ratio of the actual vapor pressure to the saturation vapor pressure expressed as a percentage. The amount of water vapor the air can hold increases with temperature. Relative humidity therefore decreases with increasing temperature if the actual amount of water vapor stays the same. While the study found a slight increase in specific humidity (the mass of water vapor per unit mass of air), relative humidity (near the surface, 2 meter measurement) decreased by 0.5% per decade, resulting in an overall slightly drier atmosphere.
If a positive water vapor feedback response existed in the climate system, you’d expect both the specific and relative humidity to increase with time. It didn’t. This ends up putting the kibosh on the idea of tipping points, and a lack of positive water vapor feedback pretty much takes all the scare out of CO2 induced climate change.
Of note is the issue with station inhomogeneity which apparently had been masking the signal in earlier studies. This study looked at stations individually to determining where such inhomogeneity existed. Here’s an example in figure 3 of their paper:
From THS:
A paper published today in the Journal of Climate finds that relative humidity has been decreasing 0.5% per decade across North America during the 62 year period of observations from 1948-2010.
Computer models of AGW show positive feedback from water vapor by incorrectly assuming that relative humidity remains constant with warming while specific humidity increases. The Miskolczi theory of a ‘saturated greenhouse effect’ instead predicts relative humidity will decrease to offset an increase in specific humidity, as has just been demonstrated by observations in this paper. The consequence of the Miskolczi theory is that additions of ‘greenhouse gases’ such as CO2 to the atmosphere will not lead to an increase in the ‘greenhouse effect’ or increase in global temperature.
Journal of Climate 2012 ; e-View
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00003.1
Surface Water Vapor Pressure and Temperature Trends in North America during 1948-2010
V. Isaac and W. A. van Wijngaarden*
Physics Dept., Petrie Bldg., York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON Canada, M3J 1P3; e-mail: wlaser@yorku.ca
Abstract
Over 1/4 billion hourly values of temperature and relative humidity observed at 309 stations located across North America during 1948-2010 were studied. The water vapor pressure was determined and seasonal averages were computed. Data were first examined for inhomogeneities using a statistical test to determine whether the data was fit better to a straight line or a straight line plus an abrupt step which may arise from changes in instruments and/or procedure. Trends were then found for data not having discontinuities. Statistically significant warming trends affecting the Midwestern U.S., Canadian prairies and the western Arctic are evident in winter and to a lesser extent in spring while statistically significant increases in water vapor pressure occur primarily in summer for some stations in the eastern half of the U.S. The temperature (water vapor pressure) trends averaged over all stations were 0.30 (0.07), 0.24 (0.06), 0.13 (0.11), 0.11 (0.07) C/decade (hPa/decade) in the winter, spring, summer and autumn seasons, respectively. The averages of these seasonal trends are 0.20 C/decade and 0.07 hPa/decade which correspond to a specific humidity increase of 0.04 g/kg per decade and a relative humidity reduction of 0.5%/decade.
The full paper from the Journal of Climate can be viewed at this link.
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I just want to tell Willis that we experienced his thunderstorm theory of cooling today. It wasn’t a particularly hot day, but the clouds were building and towering magnificently. As I took the washing off the line I was hit by a squall. Moments later the rain came.
My daughter lives maybe two kilometres from me as the crow flies. She recorded 60 milimetres of rain plus heavy hail (pea sized). From the same storm I recorded 17 milimetres with a bit of hail. And yes, Anthony, we had both emptied our rain gauges in the morning.
So I had to provide cardigans for the family, even though February is generally the hottest month of the year in the you-beaut-land-of-Oz. The storm-deposited ice really cooled things down.
Globally, RH has been dropping at 0.2%/decade
as I said before
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
I have known about logarithmic saturation of greenhouse effect since the end of 1990s, when information about it was widely publicized by Steven Milloy’s site, JunkScience.com, and other skeptic sites. At that time I didn’t even know about the existence of WUWT.
WUWT is an excellent source of information, better than JunkScience, in my opinion, and it is good to find out that scientific papers supporting this fact are being published.
But why is it necessary to emphasize Mr. Eschenbach’s copying and posting of the graph in 2006? He didn’t develop the theory, he didn’t develop the graph, he was not the first (or the second, or the hundredth) to bring attention to it. Since when it’s always “Willis this and Willis that”? Makes me feel queasy.
Folks, I think this article may be the most important yet for reasons explained below..
It is well known that the moist adiabatic lapse rate (when relative humidity is high) is only about two-thirds of the dry adiabatic lapse rate, and so the rate of convection increases when the relative humidity decreases.
The following quote from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate explains how this is the result of the release of latent heat in precipitation.
“The reason for the difference between the dry and moist adiabatic lapse rate values is that latent heat is released when water condenses, thus decreasing the rate of temperature drop as altitude increases. This heat release process is an important source of energy in the development of thunderstorms. An unsaturated parcel of air of given temperature, altitude and moisture content below that of the corresponding dewpoint cools at the dry adiabatic lapse rate as altitude increases until the dewpoint line for the given moisture content is intersected…”
But all this might appear to be just the opposite of what the article is saying has happened if one assumes that a faster adiabatic lapse rate should lead to cooling.
But does it? Does it allow thermal energy to escape more quickly because the temperature gradient is steeper? Does the release of less latent heat mean less warming of the atmosphere? It appears not.
I suggest (backed up by the data in this article) that the opposite is indeed the case, with lower relative humidity leading to warming.
This is what Anthony is saying and it is very significant. We see negative feedback, not positive feedback as the IPCC would like to see.
So, why is it so?
My hypothesis is this:
(1), As you will know from my posts and my ‘Radiation’ page, I agree with Prof Claes Johnson that there can be no transfer of thermal energy by radiation from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface. So backradiation from water vapour is a non-event.
(2) Water vapour and trace gases are the only ones doing the radiating and all radiating from the atmosphere helps to rid the Earth system of thermal energy. (None of it is absorbed by the surface, so it all goes to space.) The reduction in the quantity of water vapour has been very small, so that is far outweighed by the additional radiation due to the higher temperatures at any given level which result from lower lapse rates.
(3) So, the lower the relative humidity, the higher the lapse rate and the lower the rate of radiation, this leading to net warming of the atmosphere. If we can assume that the temperature gradient pivots around an average value (determined by SBL) somewhere in the atmosphere, then that could also lead to higher surface temperatures.
So, in conclusion, I still say there is no greenhouse effect due to either backradiation or trapping of thermal energy by carbon dioxide. Only water vapour can have an effect due to its unique phase change which releases latent heat. It’s effect is seen through a variation in the lapse rate, (due to release of latent heat) which in turn affects the rate of radiation and thus the climate.
Whatever is affecting relative humidity may well operate in natural cycles for reasons not yet fully understood. I doubt that mankind can control the process in any way.
Mods
For some reason I can’t post a reply on the Clive Best thread. It comes up as ‘error on page.’
Would you be so kind as to remove the following information in its entirety and place it in that thread? Thanks a lot;
“Clive
Most interesting article, thank you. For those that prefer real temperatures rather than anomalies, clicking on my name will take you to my site where I collect (mostly) pre 1860 temperature data sets from around the world expressed in real terms.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Anomalies do help to better compare temperature changes between the various data sets so form a worthwhile function. However they have had the side effect of becoming the basis for a meaningless (in my view) single ‘global’ temperature.
A global temperature has a number of problems, not the least of which is that it disguises regional nuances. Around one third of global stations have been cooling for some time as we observed in this linked article. Intriguingly, separating out the individual stations from the composite of stations used to create an ‘average global temperature’ yields some surprising results. It appears that warming is by no means global as there are many hundreds of locations around the world that have exhibited a cooling trend for at least 30 years-a statistically meaningful period in climate terms.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/04/in-search-of-cooling-trends/
These general figures were confirmed by the recent BEST temperature reconstruction which reckoned that 30% of all the stations they surveyed were cooling. Many of the rest (but by no means all) are in urban areas, which many of us believe do not reflect the full amount of localised warming caused by buildings/roads etc. Add in that many stations are not where they started out and have migrated to often warmer climes such as the local airport, and that many stations have become replaced by others or been deleted, and we start to see an immensely complex picture emerging where we are not comparing like with like.
There is a further complication with lack of historic context. For reasons best known to themselves GISS began their global temperatures at 1880 and as such do not differentiate themselves enough to Hadley which began thirty years earlier. I suspect this date was chosen as this was when many of the US stations started to be established, but as regards a global reach a start date around 1910 or so would bring in more global stations and have the advantage of greater consistency, as by that time the Stephenson screen was in almost universal use.
The start date of 1880 does not allow the context of the warmer period immediately preceding it, which means the subsequent decline and upward hockey stick effect is accentuated (the hockey stick commenced with instrumental readings from 1900) . I wrote about the 1880 start date here; where I link three long temperature records along the Hudson river in the USA.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/triplets-on-the-hudson-river/#comment-13064
I think the most we can say with certainty is that we have warmed a little since the depths of the Little Ice age, which would surely come as a relief to most of us, but instead seems to be the source of much angst afflicting most of the Western World, who apparently have stopped learning history and are confused by statistics and context.
I hope you will be continuing your work and develop your ideas.
Tonyb “
If you click to print the document at the link Anthony has to view it, you can download it as a PDF.
The ‘Journal of Climate’ published this blasphemy?
Off with the editor’s head! (As well as Miskolczi’s!)
But seriously, it appears the tide has turned.
This is an important paper because it used a large number of actual measurements from stations rather than a gridded dataset (which are subject to various processing biases etc.)
While specific humidity was increasing, it is about 15% of the value that the theory and the climate models are based on.
The theory is that specific humidity should increase by 7.0% per 1.0C increase in temperatures and across North America, there is an average of 18 g/kg or 18 kg/m2 of water vapour in the air. So we should expect to see specific humidity increase by about 1.5 g/kg for the 1.2C these stations increased over the last 6 decades.
It only increased at about 0.24 g/kg over the 6 decades, or 1.0% per 1.0C, mostly flat . Which is also what the other long-term dataset NCEP reanalysis shows the global water vapour changing by over the same period. Almost no positive feedback from water vapour going back 6 decades.
“If a positive water vapor feedback response existed in the climate system, you’d expect both the specific and relative humidity to increase with time. It didn’t. This ends up putting the kibosh on the idea of tipping points, and a lack of positive water vapor feedback pretty much takes all the scare out of CO2 induced climate change.”
Actually, I think you’d expect the relative humidity to stay constant.
That sudden and dramatic drop in relative humidity in 1970 is fascinating. I wonder if it is world wide?
Since 1970, relative humidity seems to be gradually increasing. But that would be cherry picking…
[Reply: Relative humidity has been decreasing. ~dbs, mod.]
If a positive water vapor feedback response existed in the climate system, you’d expect both the specific and relative humidity to increase with time.
——–
And why would you, or anyone else for that matter, expect relative humidity to increase with time. Even accepting that warming is happening it is not a forgone conclusion.
I have no reason to expect that as I tend to think the cause and effect relationships around this are complex.
My naive expectation is that relative humidity is about cloud formation and has no effect whatsoever on increased greenhouse effect due to water vapour.
At the same time reduced humidity means less cloud and reduced albedo leading to more surface insolation. Naively this means more heating. But clouds can warm or cool depending on altitude and type thus complicating the interpretation.
From The Hockey Shtick, word of a new paper that supports Miskolczi’s theory of saturated greenhouse effect. We’ve seen this before, in the form of this graph.
————-
The MODTRAN graph is classic green house gas theory and the saturation effect is well understood in that framework. It has nothing to do with Miskolczi’s hypothesis which is poorly supported.
Computer models of AGW show positive feedback from water vapor by incorrectly assuming that relative humidity remains constant with warming while specif
——–
I find the claim that it is assumed that relative humidity is constant very hard to credit.
My first expectation would be that relative humidity would be calculated via the physics from first principles. My second expectation would be that if it isn’t then there would be experimental/observation evidence that thus is in fact the case.
“assumption” is not plausible for a key fact like this.
Statistically significant warming trends affecting the Midwestern U.S., Canadian prairies and the western Arctic are evident in winter and to a lesser extent in spring
———–
This claim of a warming trend is curious since it is generally accepted, especially here, that across the continental USA there has been minimal warming trend.
Someone please inform me. I always hear about a constant rise of temperature for a doubling of CO2, but isnt temperature related to the natural logarithm of the CO2 concentration? If so, should it not be a constant rise for a increase in CO2 of e, or put another way a constant temperature rise for each 2.718 times increase in CO2? 2.718 is a far cry from 2 (Ie 35 % error)
Enquiring minds want to know?
The consequence of the Miskolczi theory is that additions of ‘greenhouse gases’ such as CO2 to the atmosphere will not lead to an increase in the ‘greenhouse effect’ or increase in global temperature.
———
If the M. Hypothesis is mediated by temperature, would another consequence be that changes in solar insolation would also not produce a change in global temperature?
What are you going to do next, Anthony, now that AWG is disposed of? Can I suggest statistical mis-analysis as a subject that is in dire need of going under the microscope?
All of this continues to be done in the (unrecognized) context of a general, and very basic, scientific incompetence, on the part of all concerned. Climate science is founded upon false theory, whose unwarranted acceptance into science has mis-educated at least one whole generation of scientists. Not only is there no greenhouse effect at all, of increasing atmospheric temperature with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, but the radiative transfer theory, which theoretically implies the greenhouse effect, is also clearly false (very obviously, showing that there is no carbon dioxide “greenhouse” warming negates the theory that predicts such warming). The radiative theory is not only wrong to assume the Earth’s surface to be a blackbody, but wrong to assume each differential layer of the atmosphere radiates thermally as a “graybody” (as local emissivity times Planck/blackbody distribution function). These false assumptions necessarily make the calculated radiation the EFFECT of a strict, set temperature distribution (which is physically provided by the hydrostatic lapse rate structure of the atmosphere, as given in the empirical Standard Atmosphere), not the CAUSE of temperature variations. Basically, the radiative transfer theory of the atmosphere does not address the thermodynamics of the atmosphere, but, it appears to me, is just a “light extinction model” (which merely tracks the light removed from, and added to, a highly directional beam of light in traversing a nearly-transparent medium, and does not provide any real insight into the thermodynamic effect of the light, and indeed naively fails to distinguish between a directed beam and omnidirectional thermal radiation). So the naive use of that theory (as shown in the “modtrans results” graphs presented in the article here) is worthless. Everyone needs to re-educate themselves on the fundamental warming of the atmosphere, responsible for the temperature-versus-pressure structure of the Standard Atmosphere (which, note, is a fundamentally stable thermodynamic state, not subject to “runaway climate” at all). Climate science cannot go forward without the fundamental correction provided by the Venus/Earth comparison I have done, and which should have been done, and generally accepted, 20 years ago–if there had been any competent scientists to do it.
How is RH measured? Could the errors caused by site changes and UHI contribute to the RH apparently decreasing when it actually remains constant but at a lower temperature?
I have said it before and I say it again:
Me and my green friends want 1200 ppm to be comfortable.
Burn, baby, burn.
Here’s the Team Approved(TM) version of Fig 3.
http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/9610/isaacwijngaardenfig3tea.png
[that image is blocked . . kbmod]
“The consequence of the Miskolczi theory is that additions of ‘greenhouse gases’ such as CO2 to the atmosphere will not lead to an increase in the ‘greenhouse effect’ or increase in global temperature.”
That would actually fit quite wonderfully to Beenstock & Reingewertz’ econometric analysis of the possible causation of temperature by CO2 concentrations (which they were able to rule out). Oh, and it should make lukewarmers rethink their position…
LazyTeenager says:
February 8, 2012 at 5:04 am
“If the M. Hypothesis is mediated by temperature, would another consequence be that changes in solar insolation would also not produce a change in global temperature?”
Miskolczi postulates a constant overall transparency of the atmosphere; in other words, increases in CO2 should be offset (with a time lag) by decreases in H2O, the other important greenhouse gas.
He does not postulate a constant temperature. Also, he does not talk about the level of cloudiness.
LazyTeenager says:
February 8, 2012 at 4:57 am
“My first expectation would be that relative humidity would be calculated via the physics from first principles. ”
You really swallowed that Gavin Schmidt line hook, line and sinker, did ya? Google “Convection Parameterization” for some interesting insights into the world of climate and weather models.
Here is a RH% graph at different atmospheric levels, 1948-2008.
http://i38.tinypic.com/30bedtg.jpg
Of course there is no “tipping point” induced by CO2–otherwise, the earth’s atmosphere would be filled with most of the ocean’s H2O in response to our ancient world when the CO2 content was 10 times what we currently have. That’s why “climate scientists” have to ignore climate change in the past.
One would think “Epic Fail” Michael Mann, supposedly a “geologist”, would know that. But then, telling the truth in “climate science” doesn’t garner copious grants and favoritism from the UN, now does it?