From AGU highlights, interesting, but readers should note that this is one point on Earth in Chile, not a summation of the atmospheric absorption, emission, and transmission of infrared radiation for the entire globe.
For first time, entire thermal infrared spectrum observed
The driving mechanism of the greenhouse effect, and the underpinning of modern anthropogenic warming, is the absorption, emission, and transmission of infrared radiation by atmospheric gases. The heat-trapping ability of a gas depends on its chemical composition, and each type of gas absorbs infrared radiation of different energies. The amount of infrared radiation that escapes into space depends on the net effect of the myriad gases in the atmosphere, with water vapor being the primary gaseous absorber of infrared radiation.
Water vapor absorbs a wide range of infrared radiation, masking the effects of other gases. In fact, in many spectral regions (or infrared radiation energy bands), water vapor is so strongly absorbing that it makes testing the accuracy of infrared radiation absorption parameterizations used in general circulation models difficult.
To surmount this obstacle, Turner et al. headed to a 5.3-kilometer (3.3 miles) altitude site in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, where the air is extremely dry. Using a broad suite of spectroscopic equipment, they produce the first ground-based measurement of the entire atmospheric infrared radiation absorption spectrum—from 3.3 to 1000 micrometers—including spectral regions that are usually obscured by strong water vapor absorption and emission. Though the data collected will likely be valuable for a broad range of uses, the authors use their measurements to verify the water vapor absorption parameterizations used in the current generation of climate models.
Source:
Geophysical Research Letters,doi:10.1029/2012GL051542, 2012
Title:
“Ground-based high spectral resolution observations of the entire terrestrial spectrum under extremely dry conditions”
Abtsract:
A field experiment was conducted in northern Chile at an altitude of 5.3 km to evaluate the accuracy of line-by-line radiative transfer models in regions of the spectrum that are typically opaque at sea level due to strong water vapor absorption. A suite of spectrally resolved radiance instruments collected simultaneous observations that, for the first time ever, spanned the entire terrestrial thermal spectrum (i.e., from 10 to 3000 cm−1, or 1000 to 3.3 μm). These radiance observations, together with collocated water vapor and temperature profiles, are used to provide an initial evaluation of the accuracy of water vapor absorption in the far-infrared of two line-by-line radiative transfer models. These initial results suggest that the more recent of the two models is more accurate in the strongly absorbing water vapor pure rotation band. This result supports the validity of the Turner et al. (2012) study that demonstrated that the use of the more recent water vapor absorption model in climate simulations resulted in significant radiative and dynamical changes in the simulation relative to the older water vapor model.
UPDATE: The full paper is here (thanks to Leif Svalgaard)
“JohnB says:
June 15, 2012 at 4:31 pm
therealnormanrogers says:
June 15, 2012 at 3:33 pm
What I don’t get … is where the energy is supposed to go AFTER it’s been absorbed by an atmospheric molecule.
…
So, how is this “global warming” supposed to work? How can CO2 make any difference?
I’m just asking.
—–
“It works, roughly, like this – and it’s a good job it does, or the earth would be a darn cold place…”
CO2 makes a difference because it is non-condensing. Water vapour OTOH condenses, as rain, so cannot build up the way CO2 can.”
Ya yes, CO2 does not condense and as water does. But what JohnB fails to mention water vapor is constantly being replaced. JohnB also fail to mention the short wave radiation from CO2 only accounts for .05C the the surface “temperature” which means the other GHG, water vapor being 93% of GHG’s, account for 32.05C of the “Green House Effect”. Since we are carbon based, the real “bogie men” are Corrupte Politicans and Business People who want to use CO2 as the ultimate controll mechenism over life as we know it.
LazyTeenager says:
June 15, 2012 at 4:31 pm
>>
It’s real easy to find areas of the world which are extremely dry David. Just go outside and look straight up.
At 10km high where the jumbos fly the temperature is -60C. Since water freezes at 0C there is no water vapour to speak if there.<<
Strange, I must have been lied to when I was told that we were flying at 34,000 feet up and looking out the window and UP as we flew around the storm and seeing the top of those cumulonimbus clouds passing by. No water up there….nope…none at all…nothing to see here…. and that folks…is why there's no snow on top of Mount Everest.at nearly 30,000 feet.
“therealnormanrogers says:
June 15, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Hi JohnB,
My undergraduate education was in Physics (waaay before grade inflation) and I did take a course in Thermodynamics — and it doesn’t work as you suggest.
The first law (of thermodynamics) is that heat always travels in one direction — from hot to cold(er). It’s not like gas pressure or a chemical reaction which can (and does) go in both directions (unless there’s a precipitate). You can’t make a surface warmer by “reflecting” back heat that it’s radiating.”
No, that’s the second law.
This is handy, it shows the overlaps of the various components,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Atmospheric_Transmission.png
Can see how H2O does absorb completely in the high infrared with CO2 kicking in as that starts to fall. Then at 4um there’s another more minor CO2 band which sits isolated, though that isn’t matched by equivalent upgoing/outgoing thermal – and the other is already fully absorbed by water and doesn’t match outgoing. So it’s really only the additional fill-in which CO2 adds to H2O’s falling absorption which is relevant.
DavidA says:
June 15, 2012 at 9:30 pm
That is handy, thank you.
I notice that oxygen seems to have a significant effect. That stuff measures in the 100’s of thousands of parts per million! I must write to my MP about it immediately and see what they are doing about it!
/sarc
I am a skeptic because IPCC’s projections don’t agree with observation as shown =>http://bit.ly/HnYPQf
There is no motivation in this. That is what the comparison of IPCC’s projection with the observed data shows.
Here are some excellent passages I read about a SCIENTIST:
“As he formulates his final theory, the scientist subjects it to intensive criticism. Seeking to make it as useful as possible, he asks himself: Is this proposed law universal throughout the extent of space and the passage of time? Does it lead anywhere? Does it predict one state of affairs as arising out of another? Can it be transposed from one frame of reference to another and still remain valid? And finally, because of his innate passion for orderliness, his aesthetic appreciation of things which are meet and fitting, he asks: Is this theory as elegant as possible? Could I formulate it more succinctly?
Now comes the moment of verification and truth: testing the theory back against protocol experience to establish its validity. If it is not a trivial theory, it suggests the existence of unknown facts which can be verified by further experiment. An expedition may go to Africa to watch an eclipse and find out if starlight really does bend relatively as it passes the edge of the sun. After a Maxwell and his theory of electro-magnetism come a Hertz looking for radio waves and a Marconi building a radio set. If the theoretical predictions do not fit in with observable facts, then the theorist has to forget his disappointment and start all over again. This is the stern discipline which keeps science sound and rigorously honest.
If a theory survives all tests and is accepted into the canon of scientific law, it becomes a fact in its own right and a foundation for higher spires of thought. Abstract though it may be, a theory which has been proved can suggest new hi-fl sets or hybrid cattle just as surely as do experiments with electricity or stock-breeding. It serves as a starting point for new theories just as surely as any experience on the plane of protocols. Galileo’s formula for the increasing speed at which a body falls freely near the surface of the earth became a single example of Newton’s law of gravitation. Newton’s law, in turn, became a single special case in Einstein’s theory that gravitation is a manifestation of the geometry of space and time. At this moment some child in a hamlet somewhere may be preparing himself for the work of constructing a “unified field theory” of both atom and cosmos, in which Einstein’s sweeping concepts of relativity will appear as mere details.”
The Scientist
Life Science Library
By Henry Margenau, David Bergamini
And the Editors of LIFE
1966
Most FTIR, and IR equipment outputs spectra with the larger wave numbers on the left. The Aldrich IR spectra library and reference book are published with the larger wave numbers on the left.
It would have been politically incorrect if they had pointed out the 546, 2340, and the 2345 wave number adsorption peaks of CO2 in the transmission spectra. Try and find them.
Whenever data is presented in an unusual manner I become very suspicious.
If this new data is incorporated into Hansen’s climate model, will the model reflect the measured “global temperature” history given the measured rate of atmospheric CO2 increase?
I doubt it. Given what I have read about paleoclimate, water plays the most important role in climate modulation. It has thermo functions in all 3 states transfering heat by conduction and convection as well as radiation. If the role of water was well understood and made the focus of climate models, I suspect that they would track the measured data reasonably well. But then there would be no cause for alarm and we could get back to more rational thinking.
“Why should I give information to you when all you want to do is find something wrong with it?” (P.Jones)
Extracts of “CARGO CULT SCIENCE” by Richard Feynman: Adapted from the Caltech commencement address given in 1974.
If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.
The idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
We have learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right.
Nature’s phenomena will agree or they will disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work.
And it’s this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe WRONG, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen AS WELL.
Couldn’t see the 10 micron window. Nearest is 14.3 microns. This will warm a black body surface to a peak temperature of about -70C (202.7K). Any longer wavelength radiation will have even less warming effect. What was the point of this exercise?
Even in the Atacama, wouldn’t there still be quite a lot of water (measured in PPM) relative to CO2?
LazyTeenager said to DirkH:
Perhaps LT should spend some time examining the actual behavior of the gasses, liquids and solids that comprise Earth’s atmosphere, instead of spewing stupidity like a ruptured comic book; to put it metaphorically.
Y’all will continue to talk past each other until you take on board that to promote the AGW claim they re-wrote physics.
AGW doesn’t have convection. Why not? Because they have no atmosphere around their Earth. They have only the empty space of the container in an imaginary lab with imaginary gas molecules zipping around it, that is, their molecules are ideal gas. First get to grips with this, that their molecules don’t exist in the real world and then you’ll be able to work out where the dumb ideas are coming from.
Likewise thermal infrared, they don’t have it direct from the Sun. In the real world the invisible thermal infrared is the heat you feel from the Sun, it has they power to warm you up and to heat up land and oceans. AGWScience Fiction has replaced that with the claim that it is shortwave, Light, which heats up matter – this is so stupid only by constant repetition and brainwashing education is it possible to think this is reality. There is a great difference between the straight line trajectory of thermal energy of the Sun directly impacting Earth and heating it and secondary effect entropic heat unable to do effective work.
Visible light cannot heat matter. All electromagnetic energy is not the same. The opposite are memes produced by the meme producing department of AGW Science Fiction inc. created by tweaking real world physics. It has created a generation which has no idea how the world works, that’s how it can continue to make idiotic claims such as “carbon dioxide traps heat” and “visible light heats oceans” and “the atmosphere is empty space”.
They have no sound in their atmosphere because their atmosphere isn’t an ocean of real gas with volume, weight, attraction, subject to gravity.
Scuse the typos and missing edits as this post only survives in test, here’s a look at the background of the meme that the atmosphere is empty space with ideal gas zipping around it:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/test-2/#comment-1007003
Their fake fisics is full of these memes, none of which explain the real atmosphere or the real properties and processes as is still available in traditional physics teaching, and they create them by tweaking real physics – in their empty space ideal gas scenario it is done by excluding van der Waals in the history of our understanding in physics. Simple trick, just as they only refer to Arrhenius’s first paper, not his own correction later, nor the debunking of it by Wood, nor the fact that he got the wrong end of the stick and misunderstood Fourier.
Every bit of the their fisics is made up of like memes created out of the imagination, and, they have no internal coherence with their examples and so called experiments full of logical disjuncts and mixing and cherry picking out of context laws and explanation from real physics, so don’t bother trying to argue physics against fisics without first establishing how they created their fictional meme, because they won’t understand you. Because they’re describing a completely imagined world. Think of it as a fantasy fisics like a science fiction variation and it’ll keep you grounded..
“””””…..ChE says:
June 15, 2012 at 8:56 pm
“therealnormanrogers says:
June 15, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Hi JohnB,
My undergraduate education was in Physics (waaay before grade inflation) and I did take a course in Thermodynamics — and it doesn’t work as you suggest.
The first law (of thermodynamics) is that heat always travels in one direction — from hot to cold(er). It’s not like gas pressure or a chemical reaction which can (and does) go in both directions (unless there’s a precipitate). You can’t make a surface warmer by “reflecting” back heat that it’s radiating.”
No, that’s the second law. “””””
Well that is not correct either. “Heat” if such a “thing” rather than a process exists, DOES travel in Both directions; from hot to cold and verse vicea. It is the direction of THE NET FLOW, that is from hot to cold. The Clausius form of the second law states that it applies to cyclic machines; not uni-directional ones (if such things can exist. If there is ONLY a one way path; how could the source possibly know that the sink is actually hotter.
We teach so much incorrect rubbish in Physics classes, it is downright embarrassing.
For example we teach that “light” is “reversible”. Well at a fundamental level; “light” is generated ONLY by the human eye, in response to EM radiation in the 400-800 nm wavelength range. I have never heard of EM radiation being emitted from the human eye, in response to some mental immage conjured up in the brain.
But “light”, as we use the term colloqially in the branch of physics known as optics; is taught as reversible. you can interchange object and image; source and sink, and the system behaves exactly the same.
NO IT DOESN’T; not even in the most trivial optical system containing no more than a single optical interface.
What IS reversible, is the direction of the completely fictitious rays of GEOMETRICAL OPTICS, which is simply applied geometry. It is a simple mathematical MODEL, that real electromagnetic radiation does NOT adhere to; only approximately.
The EM radiation energy of real optical systems is NOT reversible. If a “light” beam impinges on a plane refracting surface between two media with different refractive index, two daughter beams are generated; a reflected beam obeying the reflection law of GEOMETRICAL OPTICS, and a refracted beam obeying the refraction law (Snell’s law) of GEOMETRICAL OPTICS.
So if I reverse the reflected and the refracted beam, I will get the original incident beam back, going in the opposite direction; right ?
No I won’t, I instead get two new beams, one obeying the law of reflection and the other obeying Snell’s law from GEOMETRICAL OPTICS.
The exact same problem occurs in a transmission line, when a signal arrives at a place where the characteristic impedance changes; you get a transmitted signal, and a reflection off the impedance discontinuity, and you can never recover the original signal.
In both the optical interface, and the transmission line discontinuity case, it is simply Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism in operation in a different frequency range.
From that formalism we get “mu nought”, the permeability of free space, and “epsilon nought” the permittivity of free space.
mu nought times epsilon nought has the dimensions sec^2/metre^2, the square root of which is 1/c; the velocity of EM radiation waves. And mu nought / epsilon nought has the dimensions of Volts^2 /Amps^2; the square root of which is Ohms, and the value is 120 pi Ohms = 377 Ohms; the characteristic impedance of free space, as a transmission medium for EM radiation waves.
If you paint your aeroplane with 377 Ohm paint, it will vanish, because it will generate no reflection of any EM radiation.
People need to get this “heat flow” thing out of their heads. It requires a physical material medium for “heat” to propagate; which is why none of it can get here from the sun; and that medium provides a heat transport process that works in any direction. But the net transport of energy in the form of heat only works from a hotter source to a colder sink.
You cannot illuminate a region with EM energy, say in the light wavelength range, in such a way that a person whose eye, is placed there to receive that EM energy, cannot see the source of that illuminating energy. That is the classic GLARE problem of illumination engineering.
LazyTeenager says:
June 15, 2012 at 4:51 pm
And when a doctor tells you you’re gonna die when you go out in the sun it’s just a metaphor because what he really wants to say is that sunlight might increase your risk of developing skin cancer in a few decades by a tiny amount.
Go defend them all you want. Why do they never confront a skeptic scientist in a debate?
Maybe I’m missing something, but from a scientific method point of view I fail to see how the experiment outlined in the article establishes anything. I have read the abstract and the paper presented and, for one thing, from the information I have read there is so much of the methodology missing that I would be unable to duplicate the experiment they describe. Which way were the meters pointed – were they measuring incoming IR from space or were they measuring outgoing IR from the earth’s surface? What were the meters used? What was the ambient temperature and humidity at the time the readings were taken? At what time of day were the readings taken? What was the air pressure at the altitude where the readings were taken? What were the partial pressures of the gases present? There is so much data which is missing which makes it impossible to confirm whether their spectral data was reproducible or not.
I point out that IR telescopes, in particular, are located in such places as the high Andes in the Atacama desert so that they can avoid the fact that the earth’s atmosphere absorbs incoming IR radiation and makes IR readings from outer space highly unreliable. The Hubble Telescope was designed to take advantage of the fact that the atmosphere was avoided and it has been making IR observations from outer space for decades. As far as IR radiation from the earth goes, other satellites have also been making IR readings of the earth’s surface for decades. Anyone who has access to the data from those satellite readings should be able to easily deduce the absorption spectra of Water Vapour and use it to make the corrections to the absorption models that they talk about. To me, this experiment and it’s purpose is redundant to information and data that is already easily available and serves as an example of a group of people who were trying to justify scientific junkets to countries such as Chile.
“””””………LazyTeenager says:
June 15, 2012 at 4:44 pm
George E. Smith says
So please don’t insult us by claiming you made a COMPLETE earth infra-red spectrum, that only goes from 3.3 microns to 100,000 microns. “””””……….For first time, entire thermal infrared spectrum observed………”””””
———–
George, They don’t have to insult you, you insult yourself.
The IR spectral region is broad. So they explicitly narrow it by referring to the thermal IR spectrum. That means the frequency range defined by the black body radiation of the earth.
So enlighten us all Lazy T. The earth surface mean Temperature is reported to be about 59 deg F, 288 Kelvins.
So to your explanation…..”””””…..So they explicitly narrow it by referring to the thermal IR spectrum. That means the frequency range defined by the black body radiation of the earth……..””””
What is the lowest frequency and the highest frequency contained in the “complete thermal radiation spectrum” of a 288 Kelvin Black Body emitter. And why not give us a peer reviewed reference source for you numbers; and don’t bother feeding us any wiki rubbish.
And lazy, you need to stop exporting your very limited knowledge as being the confusion of others.
So put up or shut up. What are the frequency range extreme limits of a 288 Kelvin black body radiation spectrum ?
“”””” LazyTeenager says:
June 15, 2012 at 4:31 pm
At 10km high where the jumbos fly the temperature is -60C. Since water freezes at 0C there is no water vapour to speak if there……”””””
And the Temperature at Vostok Station in Antarctica gets down to almost -90 deg C, so ovviously there is no water vapor to precipitate there either.
and
What if they tried this out in the Congo forest? 😉 The above says it all really.
I’m going to link to this thread the next time some skeptic says something like “no skeptic denies the grreenhouse effect or that CO2 warms the planet, the question is just ‘how much?'”. In reality you will find different skeptics believe a whole range of things, many of which are mutually exclusive. I like to sum up skeptic belief as ABC – “Anything But CO2”.
Paul Westhaver, to get something of an idea of what you are interested in (the broadening effects of pressure and temperature), go to Spectralcalc. and then select gas call. On the gas cell page set the waveband to be between 2030 and 2050 cm-1. This should bring up a few lines in one of the water vapor bands when you calculate it. Now go to the gas cell tab at the top of the card and play with the temperature (mostly affects Doppler broadening) and the pressure (mostly affects pressure broadening). That should give you some feeling for what is happening.
FWIW, Eli did a series of posts along this line using Spectralcalc about five years ago
NOTE: Eli Rabett is actually Joshua Halpern of Howard University
I must agree with JohnB. It is really sad that so many ‘sceptic’ commentators don’t seem to even understand the basics. Information is widely available on the internet for those who truly seek it. Failing that, they they could learn a lot from Lazy Teenager who hasn’t put afoot wrong yet. There is no excuse for some of these uninformed comments.
It gives scepticism a bad name.
BigWaveDave says:
June 16, 2012 at 12:39 am
…instead of spewing stupidity like a ruptured comic book…
I’m definitely stealing that one.
The study in this topic prompts concerns about its methodology. The study was supposedly performed slightly above the planetary boundary layer seen at sea lavel by the Pacific Ocean coastline. This raises the question about the effects of the gases in that planetary boundary level above sea level and below the altitude of the Atacama test site?
We are told the Atacama test site located above the coastal planetary boundary layer was extremely dry, but is there information about measurements and observations of water vapor and humidity in continuous observations from AGL (Above Ground Level) from Atacama to the upper boundaries of the Earth’s atmosphere? If so, what were the temporal variations in water vapor, humidity, cloud formation, and contrail formations at the various altitudes AGL in the diurnal and seasonal cycles?
If the above values are unobserved, how can this study purport to have observed the true values for infrared transmission to outer space, especially when they attempt to report such radiatoin as discrete frequencies for infrared energies?
Readers find the fololowing Website and paper of interest with respect to this topic:
http://nmepscor.org/content/stable-isotope-tracers-water-vapor-sources-atacama-desert-northern-chile-pilot-study-chajnan
They seem to have missed the microwave part of the spectrum and there is a lot of that radiating away from the atmosphere. I know from observation that microwaves heat water very well, or my microwave oven works by magic. Mind you that does not mean that the radiated microwaves add to global warming.