Open Thread Weekend

Lars P. says:
March 31, 2012 at 4:46 am
Lars, I am not interested in the problems they have with modeling the climate. (I just wonder that they call model runs an “experiment” – even Judith Curry does that…)
My problem is more basic: how do they think the greenhouse effect works.
My understanding is: from the viewpoint of the CO2 molecule in the atmosphere
1. the sun is always brighter than the earth at the absorption/emmision wavelenghts
2. more than 50% of CO2 molecules are bathed in sunlight, less than 50% are in earth’s shadow
3. Almost all CO2 molecules see more sky than earth.
As gases absorb and emit at the same wavelength, the sun (mostly) and the earth (a little) heat up the CO2. By absorbing incoming heat the CO2 shields the earth from the sun’s heat more than it is heating the earth through reemission or back radiation. Because on average most of the reemission of the heated CO2 moelcules goes to space not to earth. Thus CO2 can slow the heating and cooling of the earth but not make it warmer.
What am I missing?

At least some climate scientists are looking for the real causes.
“The strong sensitivity of the Earth’s radiation balance to variations in the lower stratospheric ozone—reported previously—is analysed here by the use of non-linear statistical methods. Our non-linear model of the land air temperature (T)—driven by the measured Arosa total ozone (TOZ)—explains 75% of total variability of Earth’s T variations during the period 1926–2011.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682612000867

Bair polaire
The hot Sun does not emit much long wave IR radiation, but the cold surface of the earth does. C02 mainly only absorbs in the long wave IR
Please go back and look at my earlier reply to you about Spencers plate.

ottot says:
March 31, 2012 at 2:53 am
“Came across an article today which shocked me:
Climate-change scepticism must be ‘treated’, says enviro-sociologist
“Scepticism regarding the need for immediate and massive action against carbon emissions is a sickness of societies and individuals which needs to be “treated”, according to an Oregon-based professor of “sociology and environmental studies”. ”
Well ottot nothing new under the sun, but agree, it is shocking to see how crank these people are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy
This is in my view the top crank of the year 2012 in the global warming hysteria so far.

Hi Bair Polaire,
I think you misunderstood my comment about sceptics looking foolish. My fault for not expressing myself clearly, mea culpa. I think many sceptics are very good; Richard Lindzen is exceptional. I am sceptic myself (but not up his standard). But all the sceptics who are credible have one thing in common – they understand that the greenhouse effect is real. Unfortunately, there are some in the sky dragon club, who dispute basic physics; I was referring to those.
To understand how greenhouse gases make the surface of the Earth 33 K warmer than it would otherwise be you need to accept some established physics. You have no doubt heard the arguments before but basically it goes like this. The Earth emits infrared radiation, this is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and they. in turn. radiate back to Earth. This ‘back-radiation’ represents an additional heating flux at the surface. That is to say, without the green house gases it wouldn’t be there. Does this not sound as if the Earth’s outgoing radiation is being counted twice? Is energy being created out of nothing? It certainly sounds like it. How is this possible? Some of the best explanations (in my opinion) can be found from previous articles posted on this site
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/20/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-a-physical-analogy/
Is it really true that the Sun’s radiation around 10 micron is dimmer than the Earth’s radiation? Absolutely! I agree that the graph I referenced can be confusing. It confused someone else. The solar radiation has been factored down by one million to fit it on the graph, but this is the solar radiation at the Sun surface, not when it reaches Earth. I can tell this from the y-axis scale which is consistent with a peak radiation of about 8 * 10^7 W/sq.m/micron ( I can also tell that what he calls radiation flux is not in terms of per steradian). At 10 micron the value is 13,234 W/sq.m/micron – at the Sun surface. To get the 10 micron level at Earth orbit we must multiply this be 0.45 * 10^-9 which gives 6*10^-6 W/sq.m/micron. The corresponding figure for the Earth’s outgoing radiation at 10 micron is 25 W/sq.m/micron, 4 million times higher. There can be no doubt, therefore, that when we see radiation above 4 microns it is from something at ambient temperature. Likewise, when we detect radiation shorter than 2 microns it is from the Sun ( or a rocket motor or a furnace etc.).
You are correct to say that most back-radiation comes from clouds, water vapour etc. The only point I was making was some of it is clearly from CO2 as well. I have no figures to hand, it varies from place to place and season to season.

Andrew Judd says:
March 31, 2012 at 9:30 am
“Please go back and look at my earlier reply to you about Spencers plate:
“Spencers plate gets colder than the local air temperature when the plate, which is painted with a good emitting paint, can cool to the colder higher atmosphere by radiating thru the warmer but not very intensely emitting local air, even though the local air is heating the plate while it cools towards the colder higher atmosphere .
Once the cloud comes over the plate no longer cools as rapidly and because it is heated by the local air it warms up.
Cold cannot heat hot.”
Roy Spencer, The Box, measuring back radiation
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/08/help-back-radiation-has-invaded-my-backyard/
This is exactly how I would interpret Spencer’s diagram. I think his explanation is wrong or easily misunderstood.
As you say: cold can not heat hot – but a colder object can slow down heat loss of a warmer object.
(And I don’t agree with DirkH that Spencer’s measurement shows that a colder body can heat up a warmer body. If this were the case it would be a well documented effect, not a single temperature reading in one guy’s backyard.)
In other words: Cold CO2 in the stratosphere can not make the earth warmer, it can just slow down the cooling a little bit. And this effect should be greatest in cold winter nights at high latitudes.
Kelvin Vaughan doubts that this effect has been observed:
Kelvin Vaughan says:
March 31, 2012 at 4:17 am
“Have you seen any proof that the planet is cooling slower at night, because all the CET data I have looked at seems to show that there is no comparable rise in night temperatures?
The minimum seems to vary between 40% and 50% of the maximum with 2010 having the greatest cooling of 40.2%.”
Any claims to the contrary?

Bair Polair
It is easier to focus on water and water vapour rather than C02. The effect is fairly enormous. The surface is strongly heating the atmosphere with radiation and convection. If there was no returning energy via atmospheric emission to slow down the heat loss rate it would be enormously colder particularly at night, but even so on hot clear sky humid days as well as cloudy days big difference will be observed between dry and humid weatheri.
For example an observer reported to John Tyndall on the 2nd of June 1845 it was -11.6C at sunrise and 19.6C at 4pm in central australia where the air was particularly dry. Tyndall reported many other similar extreme temperature ranges around asia and Africa where the air was dry and much smaller ranges where the air was humid. Tyndall discovered that particularly water had an enormous ability to absorb radiating energy.
C02 is permanently present in the atmosphere but not significant at lower altitudes where water dominates. C02 must make a difference but how much is debateable because of the dominance of water.

I’ve advanced the following seminal work to the next level of detail:
Le Mouël, J.-L.; Blanter, E.; Shnirman, M.; & Courtillot, V. (2010). Solar forcing of the semi-annual variation of length-of-day. Geophysical Research Letters 37, L15307. doi:10.1029/2010GL043185.
Under appropriate analysis such as tuned multi-parameter complex wavelet transform the semi-annual variations in earth rotation as indicated by length of day (LOD) records [ ftp://ftp.iers.org/products/eop/long-term/c04_08/iau2000/eopc04_08_IAU2000.62-now ] show decadal-timescale coherence with neutron count rate records [ ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/COSMIC_RAYS/STATION_DATA/ ] when phase-averaged over interannual variations [ http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/image10.png ].
The semi-annual variations in LOD are due to hemispheric winter westerly winds [ http://i52.tinypic.com/nlo3dw.png , http://i54.tinypic.com/29vlc0x.png , & http://i51.tinypic.com/34xouhx.png (these climatology animations won’t run on all web browsers – Mozilla Firefox works)] and correspond with semi-annual variations in atmospheric angular momentum (AAM) [ ftp://ftp.iers.org/products/geofluids/atmosphere/aam/GGFC2010/AER/ ].
The natural next level of analysis arising from awareness of the decadal-timescale amplitude coherence [ http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/vaughn1.png ] led me to this [ http://i43.tinypic.com/o52jbd.png ] result which I have neither seen published nor discussed anywhere.
These results are of definitive importance for characterizing the nature of solar-terrestrial climate relations.
The Solar Cycle’s Footprint on Terrestrial Climate
http://i43.tinypic.com/o52jbd.png
http://www.billhowell.ca/Paul%20L%20Vaughan/Vaughan%20120324%20The%20Solar%20Cycle%27s%20Footprint%20on%20Terrestrial%20Climate.PDF
http://www.billhowell.ca/Climate%20and%20sun/Vaughan%20120324%20The%20Solar%20Cycle%27s%20Footprint%20on%20Terrestrial%20Climate.PDF
(There’s a whole other layer which I won’t attempt to discuss now.)
———
Also — a new exploratory article:
Solar-Terrestrial Resonance, Climate Shifts, & the Chandler Wobble Phase Reversal
http://www.billhowell.ca/Paul%20L%20Vaughan/Vaughan%20120324%20Solar-Terrestrial%20Resonance,%20Climate%20Shifts,%20&%20the%20Chandler%20Wobble%20Phase%20Reversal.pdf
(This is the tip of an iceberg. More details will be forthcoming in the weeks & months ahead.)
———
Regards.

Bob Diaz says:
March 31, 2012 at 10:43 am
“Climate Change Skepticism a Sickness That Must be “Treated,” Says Professor”
Projection. What she means is she needs treatment. She has a delusion; she is the one with ‘aberrant sociological behavior’.

Bomber_the_Cat says:
March 31, 2012 at 10:44 am
“The Earth emits infrared radiation, this is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and they. in turn. radiate back to Earth. This ‘back-radiation’ represents an additional heating flux at the surface.”
No problem with that. But as long as the greenhouse gases are colder than the surface (mostly they are), they can’t heat the earth, they just can slow down the cooling.
When is this reduced cooling effect greatest? On a hot summer day at noon in the tropics when a lot of radiation and back radiation is taking place? Or on a cold winter night at high latitudes, when the surface is almost as cold as the stratospheric CO2? I would assume the latter because the difference in temperatures is smaller, and therefore the energy flux is more equal in both directions.
“Is it really true that the Sun’s radiation around 10 micron is dimmer than the Earth’s radiation? Absolutely! … The corresponding figure for the Earth’s outgoing radiation at 10 micron is 25 W/sq.m/micron, 4 million times higher.”
This I didn’t know. But I doubt it: Isn’t the black body emission always greater at all wavelengths when the temperature goes up? The sun is definitely hotter than the earth. Of course the surface area of the sun as seen from the stratosphere is much smaller than the surface of the earth. But is the sun really 4 million times smaller? I think with 4 million suns you can cover a lot of sky… The sun covers two degrees of the sky so half the sky is just 90 suns across. With less than 10.000 suns more than half of the sky is covered.