I recently wrote three posts (first, second, and third), regarding climate sensitivity. I wanted to compare my results to another dataset. Continued digging has led me to the CERES monthly global albedo dataset from the Terra satellite. It’s an outstanding set, in that it contains downwelling solar (shortwave) radiation (DSR), upwelling solar radiation (USR), and most importantly for my purposes, upwelling longwave radiation (ULR). Upwelling solar radiation (USR) is the solar energy that is reflected by the earth rather than entering the climate system. It is in 1°x1° gridded format, so that each month’s data has almost 200,000 individual measurements, or over 64,000 measurements for each of those three separate phenomena. Unfortunately, it’s only just under five years of data, but there is lots of it and it is internally consistent. As climate datasets go, it is remarkable.
Now, my initial interest in the CERES dataset is in the response of the longwave radiation to the surface heating. I wanted to see what happens to the longwave coming up from the earth when the incoming energy is changing.
To do this, rather than look at the raw data, I need to look at the month-to-month change in the data. This is called the “first difference” of the data. It is the monthly change in the item of interest, with the “change” indicated by the Greek letter delta ( ∆ ).
When I look at a new dataset like this one, I want to see the big picture first. I’m a graphic artist, and I grasp the data graphically. So my first step was to graph the change in upwelling longwave radiation (∆ULR) against the change in net solar radiation (∆NSR). The net solar radiation (NSR) is downwelling solar minus upwelling solar (DSR – USR). It is the amount of solar energy that is actually entering the climate system.
Figure 1 shows the changes in longwave that accompany changes in net solar radiation.
Figure 1. Scatterplot of the change in upwelling longwave radiation (∆ ULR, vertical scale) with regards to the change in net solar radiation entering the system. Dotted line shows the linear trend. Colors indicate latitude, with red being the South Pole, yellow is the Equator, and blue is the North Pole. Data covers 90° N/S.
This illustrates why I use color in my graphs. I first did this scatterplot without the color, in black and white. I could see there was underlying structure, and I guessed it had to do with latitude, but I couldn’t tell if my guess were true. With the added color, it is easy to see that in the tropics the increase in upwelling longwave for a given change in solar energy is greater than at the poles. So my next move was to calculate the trend for each 1° band of latitude. Figure 2 shows that result, with colors indicating latitude to match with Figure 1.
Figure 2. Linear trend by latitude of the change in upwelling longwave with respect to a 1 W/m2 change in net solar radiation. “Net downwelling” is downwelling solar radiation DSR minus upwelling solar radiation USR. Colors are by latitude to match Figure 1. Values are area-adjusted, with the Equatorial values having an adjustment factor of 1.0.
Now, this is a very interesting result. Bear in mind that the sun is what is driving these changes. The way that I read this is that near the Equator, whenever the sun is stronger there is an increase in thunderstorms. The deep upwelling caused by the thunderstorms is moving huge amounts of energy through the core of the thunderstorms, slipping it past the majority of the CO2, to the upper atmosphere where it is much freer to radiate to space. This is one of the mechanisms that I discussed in my post “The Thermostat Hypothesis“. Note in Figure 2 that at the peak, which occurs in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) just north of the Equator, this upwelling radiation counteracts a full 60% of the incoming solar energy, and this is on average. This means that the peak response must be even larger.
Finally, I took a look at what I’d started out to investigate, which was the relationship between incoming energy and the surface temperature. I may be mistaken, but I think that this is the first observational analysis of the relationship between the actual top-of-atmosphere (TOA) imbalance (downwelling minus upwelling radiation, or DLR – USR -ULR) and the corresponding change in temperature.
As before, I have used a lagged calculation, to emulate the slow thermal response of the planet. This model has two variables, the climate sensitivity “lambda” and the time constant “tau”. The climate sensitivity is how much the temperature changes for a given change in TOA forcing. The time constant “tau” is a measure of how long it takes the system to adjust to a certain level.
Figure 3 shows the new results in graphic form:
Figure 3. Upper panel shows the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH) temperatures, and the calculation of those temperatures using the top of atmosphere (TOA) imbalance (downwelling – upwelling). Bottom panel shows the residuals from that calculation for the two hemispheres.
In my previous analysis, I calculated that climate sensitivity and the time constant for the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere were slightly different. Here are my previous results:
SH NH lambda 0.05 0.10°C per W/m2 tau 2.4 1.9 months RMS residual error 0.17 0.26 °C
Using this entirely new dataset, and including the upwelling longwave to give the full TOA imbalance, I now get the following results:
SH NH lambda 0.05 0.13°C per W/m2 tau 2.5 2.2 months RMS residual error 0.18 0.17 °C
(Due to the short length of the data, there is no statistically significant trend in either the actual or calculated datasets.)
These are very encouraging results, because they are very close to my prior calculations, despite using an entirely different albedo dataset. This indicates that we are looking at a real phenomenon, rather than the first result being specific to a certain dataset.
Now, is it possible that there is a second much longer time constant at work in the system? In theory, yes, but a couple of things militate against it. First, I have found no way to add a longer time constant to make it a “two-box” model without the sensitivity being only about a tenth of that shown above, and believe me, I’ve tried a host of possible ways. If someone can do it, more power to you, please show me how.
Second, I looked at what is happening when we remove the monthly average values (climatology) from both the TOA variations and the temperatures. Once I remove the monthly average values from both datasets, there is no relationship between the two remaining datasets, lagged or not.
However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, meaning that there may well be a second, longer time constant with a larger sensitivity going on in the system. However, before you claim that such a constant exists, please do the work to come up with a way to calculate such a constant (and associated sensitivity), and show us the actual results. It’s easy to say “There must be a longer time delay”, but I haven’t found any way to include one that works mathematically. I can put in a longer time constant, but it ends up with a sensitivity for the second time lag of only about a tenth of what I calculate for a single-box model … which doesn’t help.
All the best, and if you disagree with something I’ve written, please QUOTE MY WORDS that you disagree with. That way we can avoid misunderstandings.
w.
DATA: The Excel worksheet containing the hemispheric monthly averages and my calculations is here. The 1° x 1° gridded data is here as an R “save” file. WARNING: 70 Mbyte file!. The R data is contained in four 180 row x 360 column by 58 layer arrays. They start at 89.5N and -179.5W, with the first month being January 2001. There is an array for the albedo, for the upwelling and downwelling solar, and for the upwelling longwave. In addition, there are four corresponding 180 row x 360 column by 57 layer arrays, which contain the first differences of the actual data.
Willis, as always very interesting to follow your analysis. I also like your hypothesis about the tropical thermostat. However, I think your one compartment model is incomplete without a coupling to the deeper ocean. From your comments it appears to me that you have just tried to add in parallel another capacitor with a different time constant and a different sensitivity. this is not realistic since the incoming radiation is all absorbed in the surface layer of the ocean. Instead a second capacitor corresponding to the deeper ocean should be added with a heat transfer rate from the first proportional to the temperature difference. Evidence for the presence of two time constants has for example been found in the autocorrelation of temperatures (Stephen Schwartz homepage, Nicola Scafetta J. Geophys. Res. 113, D15104 (2008)). These data can be reproduced very well with such a two-compartment model.
For a physicist it is natural to think of the analogous electrical circuit, a first capacitor with capacitance C1 and Resistance R1 coupled through a resistance R2 to a capacitance C2. the forcing is then a current I to the first capacitor. In equilibrium for constant I the voltage V on both capacitors (analogue of deltaT) is V=IR1, so the analogue of the sensitivity lambda is the resistance R1. However, for a rapidly oscillating current (rapid relative to the time constant R2C2) the voltage on the second capacitor remains nearly constant and the system responds as a single capacitor with resistance equal to a parallel coupling of R1 and R2, i.e., a smaller resistance (or sensitivity).
I am not quite sure how you did the latest analysis with the CERES data. Did you now use the TOA imbalance as the forcing instead of only the short wave part? If so this is inconsistent with the earlier analysis based on only short wave data. The long wave radiation should be the lambda term in the equation – or part of it. In fact, from the CERES data it should be possible to derive the relative magnitude of the energy fluxes to space (LW) and the heat transfer to deeper layers in the two-compartment model.
Phil. says:
June 13, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Myrrh says:
June 13, 2012 at 4:57 am
Nylo says:
June 13, 2012 at 2:27 am
Dear Myrrh,
Please put your hand in front of a working blue laser for a few minutes, and then tell me that shortwave cannot heat. That’s absolutely ridiculous.
==========
What’s ridiculous is the mindless unthinking regurgitation of AGWScience Fiction memes from their meme producing department. The Sun is not a laser, duh.
But maybe you can’t see it because you’ve been blinded by all that blue light in the sky?
Which, by the way, is visible light refracted/reflected by being bounced around by electrons of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen – electronic transition level which is the electrons absorbing visible light.
What is truly ridiculous Myrrh is your continuing to regurgitate the same rubbish when the correct physics has been explained to you many times! By the way your ‘explanation’ of Rayleigh scattering is also wrong, there is no ‘electronic transition’ involved and no ‘electrons absorbing visible light’.
It’s the mechanism behind Raleigh scattering, well after his time, his calculations hold good; same size dependence.
Look up electronic transition in wiki page I’ve given before on translucency, read it. Scattering is from the the electron of the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen absorbing visible light and being taken to higher energy state, which they naturally want to get out of to get back to ground state and in doing so, dropping back to ground state, they emit a photon of light, of the same energy level they absorbed it. These are called elastic because there is no change in the photon/wave length/particle of light, as Raleigh found, (compare Raman scattering).
http://www.physics.isu.edu/weather/kmdbbd/152ems.pdf
“Why Atoms Produce Light
• As light travels through any dense medium it is scattered
• Scattering occurs as the electrons in atoms absorb light, jumping to a higher energy
level, and emit light when they fall back to a lower energy level
• The less dense the medium the more the light is scattered in all directions”
http://www.education.com/science-fair/article/demonstrate-scattering-light/
“How Does Scattering Work?
Scattering is different from refraction. Refracted light is deflected in only one direction. Scattering means the light is deflected in all directions. Scattering happens when light energy is absorbed by a particle or a molecule and causes the electrons to be more energized. When the electrons release this extra energy it is in the form of light energy. The released light energy is scattered. Selective scattering occurs when certain particles are more effective at scattering a particular wavelength of light. If particles are small, short-wavelength light is scattered more than long-wavelength light.
What Does This Have to Do with Demonstrating the Scattering of Light?
Some particles and molecules found in the atmosphere have the ability to scatter sunlight. Air molecules, like oxygen and nitrogen, for example, are small in size and thus more effective at scattering shorter wavelengths of light than are large molecules. The shortest wavelengths of visible light are the colors blue and violet. The scattering of sunlight by air molecules is responsible for producing blue skies. The diagram shows the scattering of blue light in all directions by oxygen molecules.”
So, how much is this heating the atmosphere with all that absorption going on..??
mkelly says:
June 13, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Myrrh says:
June 13, 2012 at 3:05 am
When you’re standing in the Sun and feeling the heat it is longwave, thermal infrared, you’re feeling.
Myrrh, I recently watched an episode of “The Universe” and a lady astrophysicist explained just what you said to the viewing public. So you’ve got at least one person on your side about what it is we feel as warmth from the sun.
=====
Thanks.. 🙂 As NASA used to teach. It’s still standard physics in the real world where such knowledge is kept going – our applied scientists in thermodynamics have to understand it, but, the education of the masses has been deliberately dumbed down to sell AGW. The way they have done this with light and heat is a study in itself, but it begins by stripping electromagnetic waves of their properties and so the processes these particular properties can or cannot effect and then claiming all these create heat when absorbed. Although of course George doesn’t explain the mechanism of how we create heat out of visible light, or how visible light from the Sun heats water.. They never do.
If one actually does know the difference between heat and light, the difference between thermo and photo, one can pick up on the memes produced to create this fictional fisics, and, what is avoided in the telling of their fisics. They are indoctrinated with the meme that “absorption means heat is created”. They use this absorption=heat a lot such as in the ocean “absorbing” light and so heating it, blue light travelling further means the oceans are being heated deeper down”.. So to keep this meme going they avoid putting Raleigh scattering with the later understanding of the mechanism – so effectively denying that the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen absorb visible light.. 🙂 They pick and mix from real world physics. It’s an oddly fascinating world, Lewis Carroll would have had a field day here.
I wrote something a couple of days ago to Gail in another discussion which didn’t appear and after around 12 hours I gave up waiting for it and posted a link to it in Test which I had fortuitously made because it’s a long post, it’s on the background of the “well-mixed” meme we had been discussing and refers back to that discussion in part – if you’re interested the test piece, with typos and missing some edits I did, is here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/test-2/#comment-1007003 answering Gail’s post here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/02/what-can-we-learn-from-the-mauna-loa-co2-curve-2/#comment-1006248 Oops, reminds me, I haven’t replied to Ferdinand yet..
Back to this, I’ve been trying to find out how much heat from the Sun we get on Earth, I’ve found this figure 1.4kW/msquared
Willis Eschenbach
We’re talking cross pruposes here.
The linest is not fitting a regression line unless the input arrays have more than one data pair. Your finding the experimental derivative of each point. That is not the same as finding a trend (you need more than one point: at least three covering the spread)!
You say:
“In this case I’m using the Excel function LINEST to compute the slope of the linear trend. If I calculate”
This will only statisfy your assumtion s(y,x) = 1/s(x,y) if your using a perfect trend or single pairs (single point).
This is VERY, VERY bad statistics.
Try just dividing y/x for each data pair and you’ll get the same result as linest.
If this is what you’re doing why on Earth are you doing it? You’d be much better doing smooth.
p.s. Phil – http://www.chemie.unibas.ch/~team2004/StephanSteinmann/trash/PC-Praktikum/Raman.pdf
More on the subject, and this:
“As Figure 2 shows, the absorption of a photon from the light source corresponds to a transition to a “virtual state”, as it is often called. [9] The “virtual state” has not to be an allowed energy state according to the time-independent Schrödinger equation. By relaxing from the virtual state, the molecule sends out a photon. In elastic (= Rayleigh) scattering, this photon has the same energy than the incoming one. In Raman scattering in contrary, the photon has an energy which is different by the amount of the energy between two vibrational levels of the molecule.”
Willis
I’ve had a look and can see why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Are you finding the “experimental derivative” for each observation? And then producing your latitude profiles based on an average of these for each latitude bin?
I hope you don’t think I’m being busy here, but it seems you have done some really good work here but are falling at the last hurdle. Can I suggest that you plot all the data pairs along your latitude profile (as two different series) so that we can see the data clouds themselves for each varaible. It might be an idea to make a number of fits to these perhaps using a b-spline/polynomial. Once you’re happy with the fit, detrend the data (residual = observed – predicted), and then do a simple single plot between both detrended series. This will give you a cross-plot of residuals that you will then be able to parameterise irrespective of latitude. You can then add back in the trend to get the proper change in “forcings” with latitude. But DO NOT quote certainties or RMS as you’vre removed some of the uncertainty during detrending. The effective result should be similar but would be the result of a more statitsicially valid approach. Anyways, best of luck.
It’s models all the way down…. Lol….
Gail Combs says: June 13, 2012 at 11:25 am
I am no mathematician but if I recall correctly from my first year calculus class, you can use a straight line to approximate a curve if the distance between the two points on the curve is short.
— — —
You are correct Gail. Circles are mathematical fictions. I have studied a lot of Calculus, but have taken a 6 month break before resuming my studies again on my way to my goal of being a mathematician and am currently studying The Finite Element Method (FEM) for numerical computer calculations. Computers don’t do the continuum very well, what with their finite limitations. I have learned in my FEM studies that all continuum objects, whether they be circles or other curves are essentially approximated with straight lines, also known as lines without curves, also known as linear lines. 🙂
Now, George E. Smith says you can’t approximate a curve with a straight line. However, in the real world that is our only option. For example, what is the circumference of a 1 inch circle? The answer has always got to be approximated, because there is no known last digit for the value of Pi.
Another one of my goals is to be able to create my own climate models. I want to investigate the climate models that the AGW proponents are producing, and to be better at it than Andrew Weaver.
AJ says: “Then we could look at the 100,000 glacial cycle. Any detectable lag would refute your one-box model. According to Roe in his “In defence of Milankovitch” paper, the best fit is with a zero lag (again *not inconsistent*):”
Obviously you don’t understand the equations, because Roe’s work implies that, at least for Milankovitch forcing, the necessary tau is enormous. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be the case that the forcing is about proportional to the derivative of ice volume.
Remember, the model is:
tau times dT/dt + T = lambda F(t)
For very large tau:
tau times dT/dt ~ lambda F(t)
Which is what Roe found.
That being said, there is no way the response time to summer insolation near the Arctic circle is the same as that for a uniform forcing across the entire Earth.
“Myrrh says:
June 14, 2012 at 3:38 am
mkelly says:
June 13, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Myrrh says:
June 13, 2012 at 3:05 am ”
1. Heat is a process. Heat is not a wavelength.
2. Any wavelength of EM radiation (ultraviolet/visible light/infrared) that is absorbed increases the energy of the absorbing object.
3. The object radiates energy according the Wein/Planck law based on its characteristic temperature and spectral emissivity.
4. If the net incoming radiation (assuming zero conductance/convection/evaporation) exceeds the net outgoing (Wein/Planck) radiation the object gains energy (it heats up).
5. Short wavelength radiation has more energy than long wavelength radiation (each photon delivers more energy). A single light photon has more (or much more) than 10 times the energy of a deep infrared photon. There are a lot more upwelling radiation photons than downwelling.
6. A common example of a “hot” object is a piece of steel that is glowing cherry red. The steel is emitting hundreds or thousands of times more infrared photons than visible photons. A light bulb (3000 degrees Kelvin) only emits about 10% of its energy as visible light.
7. At normal earth temperatures (below 800 degrees Kelvin) there is only infrared (and longer) radiation
After all that I researched the difference between infrared and visible light (to find the source of the confusion). The human body (or a sack of water) is opaque to infrared and relatively transparent to visible light. All the infrared is absorbed at the outer layer of skin. Most of the light is absorbed by your blood. Further – far infrared (thermal radiation) directly causes your skin nerves to fire – causing the sensation of heat. A pit viper detects thermal radiation with skin lined pits. Light, near infrared, and microwaves don’t trigger the nerves.
I used to live near Kincheloe Air Force when they did a 10X radar power upgrade. One of the techs was using the radar microwave radiation to keep warm and didn’t understand the effect of the upgrade – and didn’t feel the problem coming. So much for the “only thermal radiation heats” theory.
Poriwoggu says:
June 14, 2012 at 8:28 am
“Myrrh says:
June 14, 2012 at 3:38 am
mkelly says:
June 13, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Myrrh says:
June 13, 2012 at 3:05 am ”
1. Heat is a process. Heat is not a wavelength.
2. Any wavelength of EM radiation (ultraviolet/visible light/infrared) that is absorbed increases the energy of the absorbing object.
3. The object radiates energy according the Wein/Planck law based on its characteristic temperature and spectral emissivity.
4. If the net incoming radiation (assuming zero conductance/convection/evaporation) exceeds the net outgoing (Wein/Planck) radiation the object gains energy (it heats up).
5. Short wavelength radiation has more energy than long wavelength radiation (each photon delivers more energy). A single light photon has more (or much more) than 10 times the energy of a deep infrared photon. There are a lot more upwelling radiation photons than downwelling.
6. A common example of a “hot” object is a piece of steel that is glowing cherry red. The steel is emitting hundreds or thousands of times more infrared photons than visible photons. A light bulb (3000 degrees Kelvin) only emits about 10% of its energy as visible light.
7. At normal earth temperatures (below 800 degrees Kelvin) there is only infrared (and longer) radiation
After all that I researched the difference between infrared and visible light (to find the source of the confusion). The human body (or a sack of water) is opaque to infrared and relatively transparent to visible light. All the infrared is absorbed at the outer layer of skin. Most of the light is absorbed by your blood. Further – far infrared (thermal radiation) directly causes your skin nerves to fire – causing the sensation of heat. A pit viper detects thermal radiation with skin lined pits. Light, near infrared, and microwaves don’t trigger the nerves.
I used to live near Kincheloe Air Force when they did a 10X radar power upgrade. One of the techs was using the radar microwave radiation to keep warm and didn’t understand the effect of the upgrade – and didn’t feel the problem coming. So much for the “only thermal radiation heats” theory.
====
I had begun to suspect… sooo, you really don’t cast shadows..? How long have you been here? Can we have our real text books back please?
Andrew says:
June 14, 2012 at 5:56 am
Perhaps you are right, but I will stand by my remarks. In a one-box model, the larger the tau, the lower the rate of exponential decay, and the longer the lag. Vice versaly, for a really low tau, your exponential decay is very rapid and there is next to no delay.
Maybe your tau is the inverse of mine?
cd_uk: s1 = cov(X,Y)/var(X)
s2 = cov(X,Y)/var(Y)
That is correct. s1 and s2 are not each others’ inverses.
Joe Born provides some data and the results of fitting them: But here’s what I thought I found in the pairs that follow: y = 0.36x + 4.0 and y = 1.5x – 0.5.
In his examples, first the left column is Y and the right Column is X, then the roles are reversed. Clearly, 0.36 =/= 1/1.5. This is an example of the problem that Deming addressed when he developed “Deming Regression”.
Anyone in doubt on this point can rework Joe Born’s example, but any regression example will do.
“The inverse of the least-squares estimated function is not the least-squares estimate of the inverted function.”
Andrew,
My model is described here:
http://www.math.montana.edu/frankw/ccp/cases/newton/overview.htm
Specifically under “Symbolic Solutions of Some Differential Equations”:
“where tan(phase shift) = -2pi*freq/k”
First I let tau=1/k, period = 1/freq, and phase shift = -2pi*lag/period giving:
tan(2pi*lag/period) = 2pi*tau/period
tau = period*tan(2pi*lag/period)/2pi
or
lag = period*atan(2pi*tau/period)/2pi
My model ignores lambda as I don’t need it to calculate the rate of exponential decay. All I need is the period of the cyclical forcing and the observed lag in the response. Given Willis’s average tau=2.35, I can calculate an expected lag in the annual cycle of 1.7 months. This seems a little short to me. Maybe I’ll do a lag analysis using the same dataset as Willis. The different models might result in an apples to oranges comparison, whereas I assumed exponential decay is exponential decay.
Myrrh says:
June 14, 2012 at 3:38 am
I’ve been trying to find out how much heat from the Sun we get on Earth, I’ve found this figure 1.4kW/msquared
Most of that is visible light…
Poriwoggu says:
June 14, 2012 at 8:28 am
I used to live near Kincheloe Air Force when they did a 10X radar power upgrade. One of the techs was using the radar microwave radiation to keep warm and didn’t understand the effect of the upgrade – and didn’t feel the problem coming. So much for the “only thermal radiation heats” theory.
I still live near what was Kincheloe AFB. But to the point, microwaves cause water molecules to move producing friction which is the heat you get when warming a cup of soup in the radar range. The army has a new crowd dispersal gun using microwaves that cause you feel like your burning so you run away. Microwaves cannot heat the metal in your car, the container you micowave in (or they’d melt), etc.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 14, 2012 at 1:15 pm
Myrrh says:
June 14, 2012 at 3:38 am
I’ve been trying to find out how much heat from the Sun we get on Earth, I’ve found this figure 1.4kW/msquared
Most of that is visible light…
=========
I found it on a thermodynamics page, it said it was the radiated heat from the Sun to Earth.
Leif – all the heat from the Sun is thermal infrared, that is the Sun’s thermal energy on the move to us, radiated out from the Sun to us, it is invisible. I simply don’t see how logically only 1% of the energy from the Sun to Earth is thermal infrared, a simple incandescent bulb gives off around 5% visible to 95% heat, and heat radiated is thermal infrared, even if I didn’t have to do a double take when I first understood what the claim was – that shortwave heats land and oceans – it just doesn’t seem sensible.
And quite honestly, I think when PhD’s who pride themselves on their great learning and experience tell me that the heat I feel from an incandescent bulb is the visible light because the meme is “shortwave in longwave out” and tell me that carbon dioxide is an ideal gas which diffuses rapidly into the atmosphere to mix thoroughly, then, I require something better than “Most of that is visible light…”, when from our previous discussions I have no reason to think that you know what you’re talking about here either.
“mkelly says:
June 14, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Poriwoggu says:”
Well, microwave and radio wave radiation can’t penetrate a metal object or a metal mesh smaller than the wavelength.
The Arecibo Radio Observatory originally used fine chicken wire as its antenna, so the grass would grow and the hillside wouldn’t erode. They upgraded to perforated panels for better performance (the holes are probably 1/2 inch).
To absorb these wavelengths efficiently the antenna has to be a conductor that has an effective length that is a multiple of the wavelength (1/2 wavelength and 1/4 wavelength count).
Further discussion would get into Maxwell’s equations, tensor calculus, and antenna theory (and possibly a discussion of wave guides, strip lines and microstrip lines).
The sun does emit Wein-Planck radiation in the microwave and radio frequencies but it is such a small percentage of the radiation that it gets ignored.
Well now, I had a thought about this after posting to Leif and and spending some more time looking at what the thermodynamic world was saying – I think this figure is allthermal infrared, is all the direct heat from the Sun.
Because, a) I’d noticed before that older generation scientists assumed that was what Trenberth was saying, not that “shortwave in longwave out” AGW meme, and thinking that they’d be shocked if they realised what was actually being said in that now ubiquitous 97KT and kin cartoon energy budget (one has to go to the written spiel to find that the claim is shortwave (Light) heats the Earth, and not the standard classic physics that it’s thermal infrared, Heat, that heats the Earth and
b) this figure with little variation is that used in thermodynamics when calculating how heat from Sun will affect building materials and such.
I think that this is yet another example of the AGWScience Fiction tweaking with properties and processes from real physics to give the impression that the claims in that cartoon scenario are real, and not the junk science it is.
Like the sleight of hand of taking out the Water Cycle completely to create the meme that there’s this thing called the “Greenhouse Effect”; that “greenhouse gases aka carbon dioxide raise the temperature of the Earth by 33°C to bring it from -18°C to 15°C, by the magic trick of taking out the middle processes which is that without water the temperature of the Earth would be 67°C, that is, there is no Greenhouse Effect direct from -18°C to 15°C, only the claim that there is, because the main greenhouse gas water vapour cools the Earth by 52°C, think deserts. How many are going to notice?
The category and therefore science discipline split into Thermodynamics, which means the power of heat, (the power to do work) and Optics, is well established in real world physics – but thermodynamics is by far the bigger and better established and most used in applied science. I’ve often seen the figure 1.67kW/msquared for total, so maybe the difference is what would fall into the category Light, mainly visible.
Clearly there’s something amiss with that figure claimed for “shortwave in longwave out”, no applied scientist in productive work in the field of Thermodynamics would ever think that the direct Heat from the Sun didn’t reach Earth, and would be a total nincompoop and not in the business at all if he thought that Light from the Sun was capable of doing the physical work of direct heat from Sun, which is thermal infrared – the third way that heat is transfered; by conduction, convection and by radiation.
Real science, knows the difference between Heat and Light, it’s standard real world physics. It’s only the strange critter called “climate science” which didn’t exist as a discipline until the selling of the AGW meme that teaches light and not heat has the power to do work.
Problem solved, Willis. Just another example of the fake fisics specially created to confuse the masses – but this has the effect of changing basic science education for the oiks which is much more insiduous and more difficult to show to be fake fisics than the breaking of the Hockey Stick or showing up all the temperature adjustments of records and UHI effects, which are easier for the non-scientist to grasp and see as a con.
AJ says: “In a one-box model, the larger the tau, the lower the rate of exponential decay, and the longer the lag.”
When describing the relationship between the variable (Climate) and the forcing (insolation) a lack of lag between those two would indicate relatively short tau. Except that is not what Roe found. Roe found that the relationship without lag was with the derivative of the climate. This requires a very large tau. Why? because the forcing (times lambda) is the sum of the derivative of the climate variable times tau and the climate variable itself. A very large tau means that the contribution of the undifferentiated term is relatively small, so there should then be a direct relationship between the forcing and the derivative of the climate variable. Which is, again, what Roe found.
The model I’m discussing is essentially functionally equivalent to Newton’s law of cooling, in fact it’s essentially equivalent to an Linear Time Invariant system of first order. You are calculating the expected lag between the forcing as a single wave and the response. That works for the seasonal cycle, I guess, where there is a single sine wave and the response is itself a single sine wave (more or less). But it doesn’t work for Milankovitch. In Roe’s figure one, you can see the climate variable of interest, ice volume, the forcing thought to be causing it. No simple lag is going to make those two look alike, though the best fit was achieved at approximately 7 thousand years. But taking the derivative of the ice volume makes the two line up right.
“Myrrh says:
June 15, 2012 at 12:31 am
Well now, I had a thought about this after posting to Leif and and spending some more time looking at what the thermodynamic world was saying – I think this figure is allthermal infrared, is all the direct heat from the Sun.”
Saw your previous email.
1. The figure for solar radiation (insolation) at 93 million miles from the sun (earth orbit) is 1366.5 +/- 1 W/m2. The Soho satellite monitors it from the sun end and the Sorce satellite monitors it from earth orbit.
2. About 70% makes it through the atmosphere (mostly the ultraviolet is removed). So at the equator the energy is about 1000-1100 W/m2. The energy at other points is cosign of latitude. IE the north pole is cos (90) = 0.
I am trying to do a write-up to describe photon interaction since these discussions contain a number of misconceptions.
For example:
A white car with black upholstery will get up to 160°F in the sun with the windows shut. The “heat” isn’t coming from infrared – glass is opaque to infrared – infrared photodetectors use plastic or fuzed quartz domes because of this. The heat isn’t coming from the car metal – the hood will be cooler than the interior.
As to thermodynamics… This whole discussion gives me heartburn. The radiation balance issue really only makes sense above the stratosphere. Over 2/3 of the energy in the tropics is lost through evaporation not radiation. The semi-tropical deserts emit much more radiation. Equatorial energy is released in the upper troposphere/stratosphere by condensation. Since water is opaque to infrared more CO2 causes more ocean evaporation which reduces the effect of CO2 (50% negative feedback). Radiation is a bit player in the tropics. Evaporation is king.
Andrew,
My understanding of Roe is that the specific summertime insolation correlates best with the rate of change in ice volume. I’m assuming that the rate of change in ice volume is a proxy for the specific temperature. Essentially that there is zero lag between summertime insolation and temperature. As per Newton’s Model, this implies a low tau. You make a good point that this isn’t a single sine wave, but rather the combination of three(?) long cycles. My intuition tells me that if tau is sufficiently high then there should still be a detectable non-zero lag. If tau were “enormous” then there wouldn’t be an amplitude in the signal, which I think is obviously wrong as evidenced by the glacial cycles themselves.
Perhaps my hunch is wrong when applied to Milankovitch cycles, but I don’t think so. In a one-box model the lag will approach tau as the period grows relatively longer. For example, when the period is 20 times tau, the lag is about 97% of tau. Given Willis’s tau=2.35 months, then the lag on each individual solar cycle will be essentially that, 2.35 months. Given the resolution limitations in ice-cores, however, a lag of 100 years (i.e. tau=100yrs) might not be detectable. So there are limitations in using this observation. I simply said the zero-lag in Roe’s paper is *not inconsistent* with Willis’s tau.
All said, I’m still not a big fan of one-box models simply because there are alot of smart people who say otherwise. I just couldn’t refute Willis’s model and tau using simple cyclical analysis. Perhaps a fast/slow response model always looks like a fast one-box model from a lag perspective? I was assuming that the *apparent* tau would grow with the period length.
Myrrh, no offense meant, but do you even understand what a photon is? My superficial overview of your comments gives me the impression you should start your studies there. Heat is energy. A photon is a packet of energy. A gamma photon is essentially the same thing as a photon emitted from a campfire that you feel as heat on you face. The only real difference is that the gamma photon carries MUCH more energy in its packet. UV and visible light fall in between.
Andrew,
To backup my assumption that the rate of change in ice volume is a proxy for specific temperature, I offer the following:
“Physical Basis for the Temperature-Based Melt-Index Method”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0450(2001)040%3C0753%3APBFTTB%3E2.0.CO%3B2
219 Citations. From the abstract:
“The simulation capacity of the temperature-based melt-index method, however, is too good to be called crude and inferior. The author investigated physical processes that make the air temperature so effective a parameter for melt rate. Air temperature has a more profound influence on melt than previously has been acknowledged.”
Nowhere in the abstract does it mention the rate of change in temperature, where as melt rate is used 7 times.
rgb;
This wording seems wrong, reversed:
There is lots LESS area at the poles, as you confirm by saying there are more tropical square meters. The rest of your comment “is consistent with” LESS, not MORE.