Guest post by Dr. Pat Michaels – reposted (with permission) from World Climate Report
A new paper just published in Geophysical Research Letters by Roger Davies and Mathew Molloy of the University of Auckland finds that over the past decade the global average effective cloud height has declined and that “If sustained, such a decrease would indicate a significant measure of negative cloud feedback to global warming.”
Davies and Molloy are quick to point out that part of the decline from 2000 to 2010 in cloud height is due to the timing and variability of El Niño/La Niña events over the same period, however, there still seems to be evidence that at least part of the decline may remain even when El Niño/La Niña variability is accounted for.
Figure 1 (below) shows the history of the effective cloud height, as determined by Davies and Molloy from satellite observations, from March 2000 through February 2010.
Figure 1. Deseasonalized anomalies of global effective cloud-top height from the 10-year mean. Solid line: 12-month running mean of 10-day anomalies. Dotted line: linear regression. Gray error bars indicate the sampling error (±8 m) in the annual average (source: Davies and Molloy, 2012).
The dotted line is the linear trend through the data as determined by Davies and Molloy and has a value of -44 meters per decade (+/- 22m). However, clearly the trend is influenced by the large negative departure centered around the beginning of 2008 that was related to a moderate La Niña event in the Pacific Ocean. To avoid the influence of the this event, Davies and Molloy calculate the difference between the cloud heights during the first and last years of their record and still find a decline of 31 m/dec (+/- 11m). Although this latter technique doesn’t fully account for the El Niño/La Niña signal in the record, it does at least give some indication of the influence of the large negative departures in the latter half of the record, and indicates that the overall decline is not simply an artifact of a single event.
The average global cloud height is linked to the average global temperature—generally, the higher the average cloud height, the higher the average surface temperature, and vice versa. The tie-in is related to the height in the atmosphere from which clouds radiate long-wave radiation to space. The higher up they are, the cooler they are, and thus the less radiation they lose to space, which means the surface stays warmer.
Davies and Molloy calculate that on a decadal basis, the radiative forcing from increasing greenhouse gases is the same as that caused by either a decrease in the total global cloud amount of ~0.3% (which would allow more short wave radiation from the sun to hit the earth’s surface) or an increase in the global average cloud height of ~19 meters (about 62 feet). All to say, that clouds play a major role in the earth’s climate and that small changes in cloud characteristics can add to (via positive feedbacks) or offset (via negative feedbacks) the warming pressure put on the climate from increasing greenhouse gases. A point well-recognized by Davies and Molloy when they write “Changes in cloud properties in response to rising surface temperatures represent some of the strongest, yet least understood, feedback processes in the climate system. “
Davies and Molloy hoped to better our understanding of cloud behavior by quantifying changes in cloud heights as determined from data obtained from the Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) carried aboard the Terra satellite. The MISR data provides stereo imaging that can be used to determine the heights of clouds. The MISR data is not perfect, as it misses very thin clouds (like high level cirrus) and very homogeneous clouds (like some cirrus from thunderstorm anvils), but perhaps its biggest shortcoming is that the period of available data is still pretty short (i.e., only begins February 2000). Nevertheless, an investigation of what data is available from the MISR instrument can provide some insight as to the variability of cloud heights and their relationship to the earth’s climate.
Which was the main purpose of the work of Davies and Molloy.
In full recognition of the limitations of the data, here is how Davies and Molloy conclude their paper, in their own words:
Finally, we note that the climate data record of [effective cloud height] anomalies may ultimately indicate a measure of long-term cloud feedback that may be quite separate from the correlations discussed above [i.e., correlations with El Niña/La Niña]. Ten years is unfortunately too short a span for any definitive conclusion, as the linear trend in global cloud height of -44 +/- 22 m over the last decade is partly influenced by the La Niña event, and may prove ephemeral. The difference between the first and last year of the decade, not directly affected by the La Niña event, is -31 +/- 11 m. If sustained, such a decrease would indicate a significant measure of negative cloud feedback to global warming, as lower cloud heights reduce the effective altitude of emission of radiation to space with a corresponding cooling effect on equilibrium surface temperature. Given the precision of the MISR measurements, we look forward to the extension of this climate data record with great interest.
According to the calculations of Davies and Molloy, the negative climate forcing from a decrease in the average global cloud amount during the past 10 years has more than offset the positive forcing from an increase in greenhouse gases from human activities. It is little wonder that the rate of global temperature rise during this period has been so paltry!
Davies and Molloy write that they “look forward to the extension of this climate data record with great interest.” We want to be the first to second that sentiment.
Reference:
Davies, R., and M. Molloy, 2012. Global cloud height fluctuations measured by MISR on Terra from 2000 to 2010. Geophysical Research Letters, 39, L03701, doi:10.1029/2011GL050506.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Bart, you’re about a year and a thousand hours of study behind me. I wrote stuff like this on my website a year ago: “It is re-emitted up into the atmosphere, and some of it is re-emitted back down, and then the surface re-emits it back up again, and so on. “
In fact the atmosphere is 3D and radiation “bounces” around being re-emitted millions, perhaps billions of times in random directions. But, whenever it encounters a warmer molecule than is represented by its own frequency it is scattered without being absorbed and without leaving any energy behind in any little “pool” near the surface or wherever. Even when it strikes a cooler molecule when heading toward space it usually gets re-emitted without causing warming of any other molecule. Even if does happen to warm some other molecule, that molecule will then have a greater propensity to emit radiation. The probability is that it will escape to space sooner or later, and in fact at least 99.5% of incident radiation does go back to space, sometimes 100.5%.
The main factors influencing climate are
(a) total solar insolation which can vary with solar distance plus
(b) to some extent, relative humidity and
(c) cloud levels and cover.
Of course there are many other natural variables, volcanoes etc. But carbon dioxide levels are not among the factors involved, other than a very slight cooling effect due to absorption of incoming IR radiation from the Sun. What the IPCC never mentions is that about half the Sun’s radiation is in the infra-red spectrum and there are pockets in the spectrum where CO2 and WV are absorbing and so reducing the warming effect of the Sun..
Now spend at least two hours reading that paper by the German physicists!
Doug,
Respectfully, you’re not getting it. No one is saying that the atmosphere is transferring heat from the atmosphere to the surface (on average). They are saying that the GHGs in the atmosphere prevent the surface from cooling as quickly as it OTW would do.
It may be obvious but it bears laying out in detail. Given intermittent periods of heating and cooling, a plate surrounded by an insulating material will, on average, be warmer than a plate surrounded by a non insulating material. When you talk about heat transfer from a colder object to a warmer one, you are talking a different language than the folks you are disagreeing with.
Cheers, 🙂
It seems some like shawnhet need to learn some basic facts of physics, rather than what they have been fed by climatologists…
It is physically impossible to slow the rate of anything cooling without adding thermal energy, and iIt is physically impossible to add thermal energy by conduction or spontaneous radiation from a cooler source.
The language I speak is that of physics, not that of the IPCC.
Go and read 100+ pages of the peer-reviewed published paper by those two German physicists which I linked above, but link again http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
There is absolutely nothing in that physics paper which contradicts anything I have written on my website http://climate-change-theory.com or in recent posts, even though I have just found the paper yesterday.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics does apply for radiation and you need to remember that radiation is not itself thermal energy. It is only converted to thermal energy when it strikes a target which is cooler than its source – which is why heat only transfers from hot to cold and not from a cold atmosphere to a warmer surface. The target detects the temperature of the emitter by way of its peak frequency which is proportional to its absolute temperature. Radiation which is neither reflected nor converted to thermal energy is merely scattered and thus has no more effect than that which is reflected.
So there is no heat transfer from the cooler atmosphere (as per Second Law) and without any heat transfer from the atmsophere, there can be no slowing of the cooling rate of the surface.
I will not be replying to anyone who does not show evidence of reading the above physics paper at least in part. I am happy to explain any part of it, but will be unavailable for the next 24 hours.
Strictly speaking I should have said it is impossible to slow the rate of cooling of anything in a vacuum without adding thermal energy. In practice, however, when the Earth is cooling at night the atmosphere at the surface is cooler and cooling faster than the surface, so no significant insulation is happening. Even more so, when calculating average rates of cooling over a 24 hour cycle it should be obvious that the rate of warming would also have to increase by whatever radiation process was slowing the cooling at night. It is perhaps easier to understand that this rate of warming requires addition of thermal energy, but it does also require addition of thermal energy to slow the rate of cooling once there is any significant difference in temperature at the interface.
Doug Cotton says:
It is physically impossible to slow the rate of anything cooling without adding thermal energy, and iIt is physically impossible to add thermal energy by conduction or spontaneous radiation from a cooler source.
The language I speak is that of physics, not that of the IPCC.
The language you speak is neither that of physics nor that of the IPCC.
You don’t understand the difference between radiative physics and kinetic physics.
Doug Cotton says:
February 11, 2012 at 3:54 am
“The probability is that it will escape to space sooner or later…”
That is the whole point. If it is later rather than sooner, more energy will be deposited before equilibrium is established.
Doug Cotton says:
February 11, 2012 at 5:23 am
“It is physically impossible to slow the rate of anything cooling without adding thermal energy…”
So, Thermos bottles are one big fraud.
The blankets on your bed are just for show (Yes, there is a heat source: you. But, the Earth-Atmosphere system has a heat source, too: the Sun.)
“…and it is physically impossible to add thermal energy by conduction or spontaneous radiation from a cooler source.”
Nobody is talking about adding anything. Just like a river with a dam. No water is “added” that isn’t already coming in, yet the water pools up.
“”””” Stephen Wilde says:
February 9, 2012 at 12:53 pm
“a decrease in the average global cloud amount during the past 10 years”
Is that a typo ?
Average cloud height has declined or so they say but according to other sources cloud amounts have increased over the past ten years. “””””
Tut tut Stephen; the higher you go, the less atmospheric mass there is, the less moisture there is, the less clouds there is. It follows logically, that exactly the opposite happens the lower you go, lower = more clouds.
Quite Easily Done !
“”””” Bart says:
February 9, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Doug Cotton says:
February 9, 2012 at 6:39 pm
“The atmosphere may well retain extra thermal energy, but temperatures underneath can only rise if there is an actual transfer of thermal energy downwards.”
There is a continual transfer of thermal energy downwards. It comes from the Sun “””””
Sorry Bart,and Doug,
But there is no medium to conduct or convect thermal energy from the sun to earth; well not enough to write home about; so we get ZERO thermal energy from the sun.
What we get from the sun is Electromagnetic radiation energy, that theoretically, if perhaps not practically, can be all converted to electricity here on earth. Well large amounts of it are converted to biotic materials and organisms.
We MAKE ALL OF OUR HEAT right here on earth, by simply wasting MOST of the good radiant EM energy the sun sends us.
“”””” DesertYote says:
February 9, 2012 at 3:24 pm
10 years is not enough time to indicate anything at all. “””””
Well ten years is ample time to observe whatever happens in ten years. I agree that five years is not enough time to observe what happens in ten years, but ten years is plenty of time to do it.
As it turns out, I will be in Auckland in about 4 weeks, and plan on visiting the Physics Dept at the UofA.
I’m hoping I can catch up with Professor Davies, and talk with him about this. The Physics Dept seems to be 10 times bigger than when I was there, so it is likely to be, not so easy to catch up with him; but maybe I’ll get lucky.
“Doug Cotton says:
February 11, 2012 at 5:23 am
It seems some like shawnhet need to learn some basic facts of physics, rather than what they have been fed by climatologists…
It is physically impossible to slow the rate of anything cooling without adding thermal energy, and it is physically impossible to add thermal energy by conduction or spontaneous radiation from a cooler source.”
This has already been responded to a couple of times but since it is addressed to me, I will respond briefly. To me, this statement is obviously wrong and one doesn’t even need to know any physics to show it. It’s about -20C outside where I am and I can assure you that I can *feel* a difference when I walk out in a T-shirt as compared to my winter coat. Now, I’m sure that you know this. I’m also sure (unfortunately) that given enough effort you can *torture* the English language so that it seems that the above statement is not wrong so I won’t go further on this point.
IAC, regardless of what you finally decide on whether or not something can cooled slower, hopefully you have learned enough to stop making the straw man argument that the GHE is about sucking heat from the colder air into the warmer surface. This is not how the GHE is hypothesized to work.
Cheers, 🙂
Robert Brown,
“The authors do not address, for example, what the effect of water vapor above the cloud tops might do to the outgoing radiation from the cloud tops.”
——————————————————————————-
True Robert, yet they also do not addrsss what effects the same w/v does to incoming solar radiation where ground level (air Mass once) spectrum readings show the amounts of that energy taken out by primarily O2, O3, and H2O, in the case of H2O which absorbs in the visible and near IR perhaps 20% of the total incoming solar energy is captured by water VAPOR (clear sky) clouds are an additional loss over and above that.
It’s a mystery to me how anyone can claim that the atmosphere has a cooling effect on the surface, when the fact is, the higher we go in the atmosphere the cooler we find the surface. –AGF
Think of a large rock in the sunshine as being the earth’s surface. It is being heated by the sun but as it get’s hotter than the air – the air scrubs heat (conduction to air, then air convects away) from the rock. The more wind, the more scrubbing ==> the rock T, is reduced. GK
Let’s call the top of Everest your rock. –AGF
So I have a confirmed meeting with Professor Roger Davies at the UofA Physics Dept, to talk about the ramifications of his new paper . Matthew Molloy is currently offsite, so I won’t get to neet him, but I can get to talk with Prof Davies about a number of climate issues besides his new cloud falling discovery. I plan to get some definitive answers from somebody there on the thermal radiation from ordinary atmospheric gases. My prof went through the derivation of Planck’s formula for BB radiation, and nowhere was it necessary to talk about atomic structure or energy levels; the physical origin of the BB radiation is not even a part of the derivation which is purely classical physics; statistical mechanics, and the equipartition principle applied to the equipartition of mean energy to each emission frequency subject to the Planck restriction that E = h. f which requires fewer possible energy values for higher frequencies, thus escaping the ultra-violet catastrophe of Raleigh-Jeans.
I’ll file some sort of report on what extra I can discover from Prof Davies about the cloud height issue.
That would be confounding. Do you have a link for the reference? I’d be most interested in seeing that. If this can be stated with reasonable confidence, then we have a huge problem. Because sea-level rise hasn’t just slowed, it has been reversing itself. In spite of the Himalayas remaining the same, we’re told that much melt is occurring on Greenland and Antarctic is supposedly shedding ice.
Scientific American no less:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-water-vapor-in-the-stratosphere-slowing-global-warming
or
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100131145840.htm
This summarizes the following article in Science:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1219.abstract
I’d say it can be stated with quite a bit of confidence. One of a whole lot of things that are interesting about this paper is that it makes a mockery out of the “settled science” assertion of the Warmists, who failed to predict this.
Another is that I don’t believe that anybody knows why atmospheric water vapor is increasing or decreasing. Even warm-biased Science magazine has published the article with a statement that the observed 10% modulation of water vapor might have been responsible for 35% of the supposed temperature anomaly.
Interesting hypothesis: a less active sun permits more GCRs to penetrate. This has a quadruple effect on the climate — radiation cascades nucleate clouds at lower saturations, much as do aerosols. The clouds have a high albedo (net cooling). The clouds form at lower altitudes, so that outgoing cloudtop radiation in the water window is warmer than it would be otherwise (weaker GHE). When clouds form lower, less water vapor is left over for transport to the stratosphere, which then becomes more transparent to outgoing GHGs radiating at the top of the troposphere, which in turn lowers the optical depth and raises the temperature where the Greenhouse cooling occurs, which in turn further lowers the tropopause (shifts the entire lapse rate downwards) as the atmosphere underneath is less buoyant.
A change in the mean albedo of the Earth of 0.01 implies a change in mean temperature of around a degree K. From the links above, the 10% variation in stratospheric H_2O may be responsible for anywhere from 0.1 to 0.2 of the temperature anomaly over the last 30 years (although resolving that is nearly impossible, given all of the factors). The lowering of clouds and the troposphere may have a bigger effect in the long run than either of the above. Even solar irradiance itself drops some with lower magnetic activity.
What we could see is that solar modulation of climate is by far and away the largest factor, literally dwarfing the other factors. Since the twentieth century contained a 9000 year Grand Solar Maximum, it could well be that almost all of the heating observed in the latter part of the twentieth century can be attributed directly to the Sun, with only a few tenths of a degree attributable to increased CO_2. If one looks at the speed with which the climate has changed in the past in response to solar state and the magnitude of the variations, this becomes a rather plausible possibility.
Another question: It took decades for stratospheric water vapor to build up and peak in the 80’s and 90’s. It’s dropped 10% in around a decade since. Is it finished dropping? Since we don’t know why it went up we can hardly predict when it is finished going down. Since we have no good measurements that stretch further back than the satellite era, we literally have no data from a non-active sun and cannot computer the relaxation time of the system in any reliable way. If the solar hypothesis above is correct, we may not be particularly close to finished — stratospheric H2O could drop another 20-30% as the anemic sun limps through the rest of this cycle and into the next, probably even less active one. This in turn could drop global temperatures buy — how much? 1-2K from albedo, 0.3-0.4K from extending radiative cooling of CO_2, farther down into the troposphere, 0.5K-0.1K from the shrinking of the thermosphere itself due to cooling and alteration of the lapse rate. — we could see global temperature drops from 1 to as many as 3 or 4 degrees Kelvin — back to levels not seen for 160 years.
Perhaps not quite a new “LIA”, but a new Dalton minimum, complete with radically lowered temperatures.
Settled science, yeah, sure.
rgb
IAC, regardless of what you finally decide on whether or not something can cooled slower, hopefully you have learned enough to stop making the straw man argument that the GHE is about sucking heat from the colder air into the warmer surface. This is not how the GHE is hypothesized to work.
Hear, hear!
rgb
The Second Law of Thermodynamics does apply for radiation and you need to remember that radiation is not itself thermal energy. It is only converted to thermal energy when it strikes a target which is cooler than its source – which is why heat only transfers from hot to cold and not from a cold atmosphere to a warmer surface. The target detects the temperature of the emitter by way of its peak frequency which is proportional to its absolute temperature. Radiation which is neither reflected nor converted to thermal energy is merely scattered and thus has no more effect than that which is reflected.
So there is no heat transfer from the cooler atmosphere (as per Second Law) and without any heat transfer from the atmsophere, there can be no slowing of the cooling rate of the surface.
I’ve been whacked for this myself, so permit me to whack you, because here it matters. You mean to say no net heat transfer. Net heat. Otherwise your statements are laughably wrong. You are also making a straight up error regarding “targets detecting temperature of emitters”. Piffle. A photon does not come with a label for the process that created it, and even blackbody radiation viewed as a semiclassical continuum, once emitted, just becomes “radiation”.
Finally, you are horribly misrepresenting the nature of the GHE. Forget about upwelling and downwelling radiation. I agree that the way that is described is a nightmarish mess — it is filled with incorrect heuristics and oversimplifications. But the GHE does not rely in any intrinsic way on that. All you need to know to understand the GHE is what the top of atmosphere radiation spectrum looks like.
Here is the GHE in a nutshell:
To the extent that the Earth’s outgoing radiation budget comes from greenhouse gases in the cool upper atmosphere — in e.g. the CO_2 band at 150-200K — it must come from warmer sources in the non-CO_2 band(s) in order for the total outflow to equal the average inflow and maintain roughly constant temperatures.
Honey Badger just don’t care how the heat redistribution happens to manage this. Make up any story you like about upwelling or downwelling radiation, conduction, convection, storage in the ocean, or invisible fairies moving it around. At the end of the day, the non-CO_2 radiators have to be hotter to compensate for the colder CO_2 radiators in order to get just as much energy out of the Earth, on average, per day, month, year, whatever.
It’s really that simple. If you have a hose and put your finger over the end to slow the flow over one part of the end, it has to speed up elsewhere to maintain the same flow and the pressure inside the hose has to go up to provide the force that speeds it up. The exact same thing describes the GHE. The Sun is the input of the hose, the upper atmosphere CO_2 is the finger, and it gets warmer on the surface to provide the additional pressure in the non-obstructed channels.
rgb
“””””
Doug Cotton says:
February 11, 2012 at 5:23 am
The Second Law of Thermodynamics does apply for radiation and you need to remember that radiation is not itself thermal energy. It is only converted to thermal energy when it strikes a target which is cooler than its source – which is why heat only transfers from hot to cold and not from a cold atmosphere to a warmer surface. The target detects the temperature of the emitter by way of its peak frequency which is proportional to its absolute temperature. Radiation which is neither reflected nor converted to thermal energy is merely scattered and thus has no more effect than that which is reflected. “””””
So Doug, this is some new Physics which was previously unknown to me.
Radiation only converts to thermal energy when it strikes a target that is cooler than the source.
So precisely WHAT does radiation convert to when it strikes a target, that is NOT cooler than the source ?
If I have a 250 feV photon, with a wavelength of 5,000 km, emitted from a 60 Hz power transmission line, which is at say 300 Kelvins (about 27 deg C) and it strikes the radiator of my car which is starting to cool down from around 350 K, what will happen to that photon ?
What if that 250 feV photon came from the sun at 6,000 K; what happens if that one hits my radiator ?
How about if the photon is 1 MeV instead of 250 feV ?
How do you tell what the source Temperature was, if all you know about the photon is its energy ?
Any object at any Temperature above zero Kelvins, is capable of emitting both a 250 feV photon, and a 1MeV photon at the same time; how do you tell what Temperature the source was ?
Looked at “YOUR” website Doug; and I noticed that all of “YOUR” climate research is copyrighted; well that’s what it says at the bottom of your site.
Some of “YOUR” research results look remarkably like ones already well known from other authors.
So what, if any of that stuff on your site is your own work that you are entitled to protect.
I presume that you have authorization from the authors of the other stuff to use their materials without attribution.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics does apply for radiation and you need to remember that radiation is not itself thermal energy. It is only converted to thermal energy when it strikes a target which is cooler than its source
, 
— (simple x-polarized plane wave). This plane wave can be produced an infinity of ways, by sources at any temperature you like. It can be — and will be — absorbed to some degree by any ordinary matter. How much is absorbed depends on many things, and temperature is certainly one of them — absorption by a plasma, a solid metal/conductor, a solid insulator, a liquid (conductor or non-conductor) and a gas will all usually be quite different and functions of the wavelength (associated with something called “dispersion”). You might want to actually take a course in electrodynamics where you learn about things like Kramers-Kronig relations:
Absolute piffle. On both counts. The second law applies just fine to radiation, in contexts where thermodynamics makes sense. Blackbody radiation is thermal energy — just not thermal energy that happens to be in matter at the time. You can integrate over it, sum over its density of states, do statistical mechanics with it. In fact, it was one of the earliest places statistical mechanics was done, and doing it correctly led to the discovery of the photon and quantum mechanics.
As for radiation not being absorbed by a target that is “cooler than its source” — you have to be kidding me, right? Electromagnetic energy does not come labelled with the temperature of its source. The “temperature” of a laser can be thought of as being anything from ambient to (in the relevant energy levels)negative — lasers operate with an inversion, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature#Lasers
Are you suggesting that laser light is never absorbed by any target, because every single bit of matter in the Universe is “hotter” than the source?
Here’s a hint for you. z-directed monochromatic electromagnetic radiation is, classically (which is more than adequate for this discussion) e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramers%E2%80%93Kronig_relations#Electron_spectroscopy
and the complex part of the dielectric constant for ordinary dispersive matter before making absurd statements. I, on the other hand, have taught such courses at the graduate level for years and have written a textbook on classical electrodynamics to support this activity:
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Class/Electrodynamics.php
You are welcome to use this text to learn, although you might find it easier to start with e.g. Griffiths first instead. In the meantime, permit me to make a categorical professional pronouncement:
Ordinary matter can and does absorb electromagnetic energy from sources that are hotter, colder, and at the same temperature as the absorbing matter (where absorbed energy is almost always mostly or partly converted to “thermal energy”, although most thermodynamics textbooks shy away from such terminology because how much actually gets so converted depends, does it not, on how much work the absorbing system does in the process). Come to think of it, you could probably stand a refresher in thermodynamics as well.
rgb
You, sir, are simply wrong.
rgb
Doug Cotton says:
February 11, 2012 at 5:53 am
Strictly speaking I should have said it is impossible to slow the rate of cooling of anything in a vacuum without adding thermal energy. In practice, however, when the Earth is cooling at night the atmosphere at the surface is cooler and cooling faster than the surface, so no significant insulation is happening.
In practice the surface is frequently cooling faster than the atmosphere at night, causing an inversion!
Yet another area of physics that you’re wrong about.
Australian Gov Radio (ABC) spins this into a story about the sky falling in. The story is introduced thus:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-25/clouds-falling-according-to-nasa-research/3852450