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)
“Water vapor absorbs a wide range of infrared radiation, masking the effects of other gases.”
I’m not certain that ‘masking’ is the proper word to describe the effect of water vapor on other HGH gases. ‘Masking’ implies that these ‘other’ gases still have some effect in the presence of large amounts of water vapor, we just can’t see it. I think it is more accurate to describe it as ‘eliminates the effects’ since water vapor ‘absorbs’ all the IR there is to absorb.
JohnB said:
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″.
The question of “how much” accurately includes positive, negative, and no effect to describe what is known. Since the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is a mere trace that is orders of magnitude smaller in proportion to the aggregate atmosphere than the resolution that can be obtained in any temperature measurment as used by carbophobic minions to claim a CO2 influence, and there hasn’t ever been proof that the miniscule effect that CO2 might have is warming, cooling, or not affecting the temperature of the planet, your assesment of the skeptic belief as ABC seems inaccurate. A more correct acronym might be EBC. That which affects Earth’s climate is , everything but CO2.
OK, a serious question, if I am being stupid I’m sure someone will point it out. If the effect of water is negligible in their measurements, is it not the case that a reading of the IR spectrum when the sun is high, preferably overhead will differ from one taken when the sun is lower by the extra absorbtion resulting from a longer trip through the same atmosphere? Given the differences, would it not be possible to calculate the effect of a different amount of GHG? Won’t that tell us how saturated the CO2 is, and how much extra absorbtion it is capable of?
Anopheles, the sun puts out very little at longer wavelengths than about 4 microns because it is so hot (the tail of the Boltzman distribution goes to essentially zero. So for most of that spectrum whether the sun is out or not is irrelevant. You can get an idea of that from this article at the Science of Doom. Pay particular attention to the paragraphs toward the end
“The last important point to consider is that sometimes people get confused about the relative magnitude of solar and terrestrial radiation – for example, with the first graph in the post the solar radiation is much higher than the terrestrial radiation. But this is because the solar radiation in that example is the value close to the surface of the sun. But the earth only receives about one two-billionth of the solar radiation due to its distance from the sun.
Overall, and on average, the solar energy into the atmosphere is of a similar magnitude to the terrestrial radiation out of the atmosphere. (Otherwise the earth would heat up or cool down very quickly).”
The answer to Blue John is in essence the same, there is very little energy in the microwave emission from the earth (essentially a 300 K black body). You can use the black body calculator at Spectralcalc for this, but roughly speaking there is about a billion times more emission at 12 microns (near the peak absorption of CO2), than there is where your microwave oven emits (30 cm or 1 GHz).
NOTE: Eli Rabett is actually Joshua Halpern of Howard University
I’ve said it before, you could directly measure the IR “backradiation” by point your instruments directly upward at the poles or at night in other areas; the poles would be very dry too. One could profile the humidity by balloon at the same time if not in a very dry place. Indeed, with a series of observations at one place, you could trace backradiation wrt humidity. These are very simple expirements.
Myrrh says on June 16, 2012 at 12:40 am:
“———
AGW doesn’t have convection. Why not? Because they have no atmosphere —— —- —. Think of it as a fantasy fisics like a science fiction variation and it’ll keep you grounded“
============
Very well said Myrrh and there’s more. – AGW enthusiasts (this includes the so called “Lukewarmers”) also like to work with averages – which is why they think it is only just and proper to divide the so called “Solar Constant” (SC) at the top of the Atmosphere, say 1368 Watts per square meter, or metre (1368 W/m²/4). This kind of averaging is another fine mess they are getting themselves into (a mess which is “seemingly” accepted by most skeptics).
It does however ignore the fact that the globe is in as much darkness as in insolation. The darkness which we call “Night” is of very great importance when we try to understand how the Earth retains its heat.
As you say; “AGW doesn’t have convection” – so let’s use the newfangled word “Evapotranspiration” which they do have – on occasions. However whatever we call it, convection does not happen at night. –Naturally that is – it is also greatly reduced on an overcast day. If it was not so, morning mist and fog would be unknown happenings.
By the way I cannot believe it is the heat from Carbon-dioxide and Water-vapor that burns away the fog and morning mist.
And – since you mention Fourier, these AGW jokers accept, or used to accept, that Fourier is the “Father of the Greenhouse Theory” which only goes to show that they have never bothered to read – or have not understood a word of what he wrote.
And there is still more, – much more —
Yes, I was trying to be funny, but only by regurgitating common, ubiquitous statements from climate “science” literature. Truly, some of the themes embraced by climatologists are not just wrong, they are ludicrous and FAIL when exposed to the most basic, fundamental engineering analysis.
In an optically dense medium, the radiation can travel only a short distance before being absorbed. Consider the situation in which this radiation penetration distance is small compared to the distance over which significant temperature changes occur. Then a local intensity will be the result of radiation coming only from nearby locations where the temperature is close to that of the location under consideration. Radiation emitted by locations where the temperature is appreciably different will be greatly attenuated before reaching the location being considered.
For these conditions it will be shown that it is possible to transform the integral-type equations that result from the radiative energy balance into a diffusion equation like that for heat conduction. The energy transfer depends only on the conditions in the immediate vicinity of the position being considered and can be described in terms of the gradient of the conditions at that position. The use of the diffusion approximation leads to a very great simplification in treating radiation transfer.
Thermal Radiation Heat Transfer, Second Edition, Siegel and Howell p. 497
It takes great mental gymnastics to extract GHE heating (33C!) from a dissipative, diffusive process. It’s non-physical. It’s nonsense.
@bwdave,
This is why the “mere trace” argument is bogus. CO2 absorbs and re-emits according to its partial pressure (i.e. how much CO2 there is in a given volume), not its proportion of the atmosphere. Pretty much all of the rest of the atmosphere is transparent to IR at the wavelengths that CO2 absorbs and re-emits, so in calculating the greenhouse effect of CO2, the rest of the atmosphere is irrelevant (until we look at feedbacks, of course, when water vapour and clouds become significant).
MikeB says:
June 16, 2012 at 2:29 am
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.>>>>
I for one have learned a lot from LazyTeenager. Checking his claims to find that they are out of context misleading assertions for example. I’ve also noticed the practice of TTT (Tag Team Trolling) where one troll says something misleading and another troll jumps in to say the first one is right, but without offering any actual evidence or reasoning to support that position. This is the first instance I recall though of TTTT (Triple Tag Team Trolling).
JohnB says:
June 16, 2012 at 1:44 am
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″.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well yes John, obviously this one thread on this one issue with just 80 comments in it, many from the same commenters, represents the mainstream views of millions of skeptics.
davidmhoffer says:
June 16, 2012 at 6:37 am
JohnB says:
June 16, 2012 at 1:44 am
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″.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well yes John, obviously this one thread on this one issue with just 80 comments in it, many from the same commenters, represents the mainstream views of millions of skeptics.
—————-
My whole point is that there is no “mainstream view of millions of skeptics”, just a tacit agreement that any noticeable effects, or the lack of them, are caused by ABC. “It’s the Sun”, “it’s volcanoes”, “it’s cosmic rays”, “climate has varied before and that wasn’t CO2”, “there is insufficient evidence for warming, and anyway I’ve seen a photo of a submarine that may or may not have been taken somewhere near the North Pole and that’s good enough for me”, “climate is cyclical”, “climate is chaotic”, “it’s not warming”, “OK, it’s warming but it’s not CO2”, “OK, it may be CO2, but it’s not bad”, “there’s a magical thermostat (but of course it’s the AGWers who believe in Gaia)”, “CO2 can’t warm the oceans”, “it’s UHI”, “I hate Al Gore”, “I hate the UN”, whatever…
JohnB, thanks for the list. When you stop blaming all climate changes on Co2 you will be on your way to having a mind interested in science, not propaganda.
Sunshine is up. Your side refuses to acknowledge it.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/uk-sunshine-hours-versus-tmax/
“My whole point is that there is no “mainstream view of millions of skeptics”, just a tacit agreement that any noticeable effects, or the lack of them, are caused by ABC. ”
Bull! IMO, within the mainstream of skeptics there is a tacit agreement that the warmists have overstated their case, and it takes persistent effort(skepticism) to ferret out reality from fiction. Steve McIntyre is the ideal, as he up front concedes the likelyhood of some warming, but through skeptical checking refuses to accept bad science or statistics trotted out by the “Team” to support alarmism.
PS JohnB, bright sunshine is not mentioned in AR4. Will it be mentioned in AR5? Will it be graphed? Will papers written about changes in bright sunshine be mentioned and discussed?
Your AGW church tends to deny the existence of gods other than the CO2 god.
“JohnB says:
June 16, 2012 at 6:58 am”
Really, I mean really, is ~3% of the ~390ppm/v CO2 *the* DRIVER of climate change? C’mon, there is no EVIDENCE to support that claim, none, none what so ever.
I am having trouble reconciling “radiance” in the graphs (watts/m2), with the Wiki satement that over a third of the energy transfer from the sun is in the IR region. When I eyball the radiance curve, and integrate(sum the area under the curve), I don’t see anywhere near 1/3 of the energy coming from the IR region.
“Infrared (IR) light is electromagnetic radiation with longer wavelengths than those of visible light, extending from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 0.74 micrometres (µm) to 300 µm. This range of wavelengths corresponds to a frequency range of approximately 1 to 400 THz,[1] and includes most of the thermal radiation emitted by objects near room temperature. Infrared light is emitted or absorbed by molecules when they change their rotational-vibrational movements.
Much of the energy from the Sun arrives on Earth in the form of infrared radiation. Sunlight at zenith provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level. Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared radiation, 445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation.[2] The balance between absorbed and emitted infrared radiation has a critical effect on the Earth’s climate.
From Girma’s post above:
“Now comes the moment of verification and truth: testing the theory back against protocol experience to establish its validity. ”
This is , of course the “test your hypothesis” step in the Scientific Method.
The. “Tropospheric warm zone” was predicted by the AGW models. Empirical weather balloon measurements did not detect this warm zone.
The Scientific Method dictates that the hypothesis be re-worked and re-tested (the models embody the AGW hypothesis). The IPCC sanctioned AGW “team” have not taken this necessary step. This failure to adhere to proper scientific steps PROVES the “team” has abandoned all science.
What’s left? politics.
Politicians lie when it suits them.
sunshinehours1 says:
June 16, 2012 at 7:48 am
JohnB, thanks for the list. When you stop blaming all climate changes on Co2 you will be on your way to having a mind interested in science, not propaganda.
Sunshine is up. Your side refuses to acknowledge it.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/uk-sunshine-hours-versus-tmax/
——————
The only “side” I have is reality. If you are seriously proposing that warming is caused by “bright sunshine”, you need to;
a) Show correlation over more than the UK
b) Show correlation over more than 60 years
c) Propose a physical mechanism for why there should be a trend in bright sunshine
d) Show that bright sunshine is not just an effect of some other cause (like being an effect of warming rather than a cause)
e) Show why everything else known about climate is wrong
If you want to be the next Gallileo, it’s not enough just to be unpopular, you also have to be right!
Patrick Davis says:
June 16, 2012 at 8:02 am
“JohnB says:
June 16, 2012 at 6:58 am”
Really, I mean really, is ~3% of the ~390ppm/v CO2 *the* DRIVER of climate change? C’mon, there is no EVIDENCE to support that claim, none, none what so ever.
———————–
There is a mountain of evidence. It is summarised in the IPCC reports and a thousand other places. The problem is, you just don’t want to hear it.
John B says:
“There is a mountain of evidence. It is summarised in the IPCC reports and a thousand other places. The problem is, you just don’t want to hear it.”
If I observed that Newtons apple stopped falling and started to rise, the skeptic in me would say: “but the real world does not support Newtons theory”. So.. when I saw the temperature failing to climb as predicted over the last 15 years, despite ever faster rising CO2, the skeptic in me said: “but the real world does operate the way AGW theory is formulated”. Then when I watched a video of a U of Chicago professor giving a lecture on radiative physics, I started to laugh.. he was defining a static system, and the worlds atmosphere/climate/ocean is anything but static. I wondered why do students not stand up and yell “bullshite!” Are they not able to think for themselves? I used to challenge my Professors in my day, maybe it was just in the 60s that we did that.
JohnB:
“a) Show correlation over more than the UK
b) Show correlation over more than 60 years”
I don’t have to. That would be the IPCC’s job. They used the money to squander fabricating hockey sticks.
I don’t have to prove it was bright sunshine, all I have to to do to demolish the IPCC’s carbon cult is prove that they never considered it.
As for b) …. isn’t 60 years the period in discussion?
a)
Arkansas:
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/arkansas-noaa-temperatures-versus-some-old-sunshine-data/
BC and Alberta
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/sunshine-and-temperature-in-alberta-canada/
Spain
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/ebro-observatory-spain-and-bright-sunshine/
Netherlands:
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/more-sunshine-in-the-netherlands/
Ed_B says:
June 16, 2012 at 8:06 am
“I am having trouble reconciling “radiance” in the graphs (watts/m2), with the Wiki satement that over a third of the energy transfer from the sun is in the IR region. When I eyball the radiance curve, and integrate(sum the area under the curve), I don’t see anywhere near 1/3 of the energy coming from the IR region.”
Which graphs are you referring to Ed? If you mean the ones in the paper above by Turner et al, then ALL the radiation there is in the IR region. Furthermore, it is not from the Sun, it is a direct measurement of radiation coming back from the atmosphere (i.e. the supposedly non-existent back-radiation).
Although the Sun does emit in the near-infrared, it does not emit any significant IR above 4 microns. So, when we detect radiation on Earth longer than 4 microns, it is definitely NOT from the Sun. Greenhouse gases absorb radiation above the 4 micron threshold, whilst allowing short wave radiation from the Sun to reach the surface relatively un-attenuated. This is the basis of the greenhouse effect.
JohnB says:
“There is a mountain of evidence. It is summarised in the IPCC reports and a thousand other places. The problem is, you just don’t want to hear it.”
JohnB, I want to hear your “mountain” of evidence.
Post your evidence right here. Keep in mind that evidence is testable, reproducible raw data, per the scientific method. Understand that computer models are not “evidence”. And that the UN/IPCC’s NGO-written ‘reports’ are not “evidence”. And that your baseless opinion is certainly not “evidence”. It is no more “evidence” than a witch doctor’s claim that his chants and juju cures disease.
So post your testable, measureable, reproducible evidence, according to the scientific method, showing that the human produced ≈3% of total annual CO2 emissions is the driver of climate change.
YOU made the claim. Let’s see you back up your conjecture with real evidence, instead of your incessant, baseless opinion.
Ed_B says:
June 16, 2012 at 8:55 am
If I observed that Newtons apple stopped falling and started to rise, the skeptic in me would say: “but the real world does not support Newtons theory”. So.. when I saw the temperature failing to climb as predicted over the last 15 years, despite ever faster rising CO2, the skeptic in me said: “but the real world does operate the way AGW theory is formulated”.
…
——————
On the other hand, you might look for someone pulling the apple up on a string, i.e. look for an explanation that does not overturn everything we know about physics. Similarly, maybe you should look for an explanation of “no warming for 15 years”, that fits in with what we know. Like, simply, that it is not true (see ocean heat content).
At least you, Ed, sound like you will happily accept reality when 2012 or maybe 2013 registers as the “hottest year on record” and puts to bed this “no warming in years” nonsense.
@Smokey
IPCC reports summarise peer-reviewed science. If you won’t accept peer-reviewed science as evidence then you are right, I have no other evidence.