Guest post by John Kehr
With two completed months of the year there is starting to be discussion of how 2013 is shaping up for the annual anomaly. Several comments around the web have caught my attention as they demonstrate a basic misunderstanding of how the Earth’s climate is behaving. This is one of those articles that may seem OCD, but this one misunderstanding is what allows warmists to get away with as much as they do when it comes to climate.
I am going to pick on Anthony Watts and Roy Spencer for this one. The article in question was the one where Roy Spencer provided an update of the UAH anomaly. Here is a screen shot of the article.
From March 4th, 2013
The title states that there was a big drop in surface temperature in the month of February from ~ 0.5 to 0.2 °C. This is correct for the anomaly, but it has nothing to do with the Earth’s temperature. The reality is the Earth warmed up, but the anomaly dropped.
Let me explain. January is the coldest month of the year for the planet as a whole. Depending on the source, the average temperature is between 12.0 and 12.5 °C for the month. February is on average 0.18 °C warmer than January, also source dependent. Here is what the basic generic behavior of the Earth is on an annual basis.
Illustration 1: Annual Temperature of the Earth and the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The average temperature of the Earth is different for each month of the year.
This is based on the average from the 1900-1990 data and I have used this extensively as the baseline behavior for the Earth today. Anomaly has no place on this chart because this shows the actual temperature of the Earth and each hemisphere. How the seasons affect the global average is readily apparent. To me it also shows how many factors can influence the global anomaly. January and February are perfect examples of this.
If I switch to Weatherbell I can show some cool graphics that they produce.
Here is January and February of 2013 from their site.
Notice that the Earth is about 0.25 °C warmer in February, but since it was closer to average the anomaly was much less. Climate scientists hate it when people show real temperature because it is impossible to see much warming when you look at the seasonal changes in the actual temperature.
Now for something interesting. In January the anomaly in the Arctic was well above average. By simple physics that meant the Arctic was losing energy to space at a much higher rate than average. Normally the Arctic is losing energy at a rate of 163 W/m^2. In January of 2013 it was losing energy at a rate of 173 W/m^2. That 6% increase in rate of energy loss meant that the Arctic ended up with a negative anomaly in February. The dramatic change in Arctic anomaly played a big role in the drop of the global anomaly in February.
The rate of energy loss is a self-correcting mechanism. Physics don’t allow it to operate in any other way. As a whole the Earth lost ~ 4 W/m^2 more than average over the entire surface in the month of January. Data for February is not yet available, but it will be close to average because the anomaly was closer to average. The higher rate of energy loss in January resulted in a more average February. That is how the climate operates.
Finally I have to get a dig in at CO2. In January of 2013 it was 395 ppm and in 1985 it was 50 points lower at 345 ppm. So despite the fact that CO2 was higher, the Earth was losing energy at a higher rate to space. CO2 was not blocking the energy from escaping despite all the claims that increased CO2 prevents heat from escaping the Earth. The Earth 30 years later was losing a significantly larger amount of energy to space than it was in the past.
Steven Mosher
5. Radiating from a colder height means the loss rate is lower.
granted the level is higher and colder — but — as we are higher the surface area to .radiate from is now a lot, lot wider.[possibly cubic surface area to the extra radius?]. Hence though it is colder and the energy per square metre is a lot less the actual energy emitted back at the higher, colder level from the wider but equivalent surface area must be exactly the same as the energy at the lower, warmer level . We have not created any new energy and the earth must radiate out the same amount of energy that came in whether from the surface, from 2 metres, a thousand metres or 20 kilometres n’est ce pas.
The heating up of the atmosphere is due to slowing of the escape of the heat to the final radiative point.
Anomalies should only be used if they are based on the whole dataset. Choosing Periods of the dataset is only used to Bias the Anomaly. Which is why the Warmists use the Coldest Recent Period to show plus anomalies, which are much more frightening.
Now here’s a question. If the silvering on a vacuum flask has no effect at all why do all manufacturers worldwide bother to go through this rather costly and unnecessary silvering process?
Hmmmmm I wonder.
Heat escapes from the flask by three means; conduction, convection and radiation. The vacuum stops conduction, putting a stopper on the flask prevents convection and the silvering limits radiation losses. That’s why we do it like that!
Choosing the right baseline period for anomalies is important:
CRU uses the period 1961-90 as a baseline normal and in an e-mail to Dr Phil Jones and others in 2005, Dr David Parker of the Met Office Hadley Centre explained the preference for the period.
“There is a preference in the atmospheric observations chapter of IPCC AR4 to stay with the 1961-1990 normals. This is partly because a change of normals confuses users, e.g. anomalies will seem less positive than before if we change to newer normals, so the impression of global warming will be muted.
When he wrote about 173 January 2013 rate, I assumed 163 was the normal rate for January. Clarification is welcomed.
The silver lining prevents heat loss by radiation. This is basic engineering. The difference between engineering and science is that engineering is not at all speculative. When you run the equations for a system’s energy balance, they work and you can confirm that they work. Generally, arguing with basic engineering principles is a losing proposition.
Hmmm – not sure if your statement is quite correct or relevant here.
Someone might correct me on this but I think the IPCC and MODTRAN calculations use an ‘instantaneous’ CO2 increase with no change in temperature to calculate the energy imbalance. So if the 1975 CO2 concentrations were suddenly increased to the 2012 levels then, using your MODTRAN figures, OLR would be reduced by 0.83 w/m2. BUT, there has been a temperature change. In fact a temperature change must take place so that the incoming/outgoing energy balance can be re-established.
The earth’s surface receives an average of about 235 w/m2 from the sun. In order to maintain a broadly stable temperature it needs to get rid of 235 w/m2 via OLR. If OLR falls (while incoming solar energy remains constant) the earth and it’s atmosphere must heat up. This will drive an increase in OLR (S-B Law). It should increase until outgoing energy balances incoming energy. Note there is always some variation in solar/LW energy so some rebalancing is constantly taking place so energy balance refers to the long term average.
Steven Mosher says:
March 6, 2013 at 10:05 pm
“Slowing the cooling, is referred to as warming.”
That is akin to politicians saying that reducing a budget increase is a spending cut.
@the author
oh my. these are the kind of posts that give skeptics a bad name. CO2 and other greenhouse gases are most certainly “blocking” energy from radiating into space. i believe your error is that you have lumped all radiation from Earth to space into a single, homogeneous wavelength. i am not saying that is the *cause* of the warming we have seen over recent history but to argue that it doesnt happen at some scale, as you point out, you should ignore at oyur own peril. how ironic.
@ur momisugly Hmmmmm
you are incorrect. the insulation you speak of blocks CONDUCTIVE heat transfer, which, admittedly is a majority of the heat transfer in the case of a thermos. the silver lining blocks RADIATION heat transfer, which is the relevant mode in the case of the Earth to space, hence his comparison.
@ur momisugly Hmmmmmm
if “heat cant travel in a vacuum”, how does the suns energy reach Earth?
John Finn says:
March 7, 2013 at 4:58 am
Further to my earlier post. While a ‘lack of falling OLR’ doesn’t invalidate the CO2 effect, it might raise questions about the claimed lag in temperature rise.
Basically this could provide a reasonable argument for low(er) climate sensitivity.
hmmmmm. The thermos function only limits conduction and convection at exterior. Silver would help reduce radiation.
@Steven Mosher: “Think of C02 and other greenhouse gases as a leaky radiation screen. eventually the radiation escapes, but at a slower rate than it would otherwise.” The keyword here is “otherwise”. Another way of putting it is, “all other things being equal”.
The complicating factor here is that in a highly dynamic system, “all other things being equal” simply doesn’t happen. The fact that all other things are not equal doesn’t prove or guarantee that the other things that change will cancel out effects of increased CO2. But the naive assumption that because CO2 has a certain property means that introducing it into a complex system will result in that exact effect on the entire system.
You can obviously duck the issue by asking me to prove what else changes and how it might counteract CO2’s more-heat-in-a-box effect. Obviously I cannot prove it. Climate Scientists have left enormous areas of effect (sun, clouds, soot) barely touched after decades of infatuation with CO2, so how exactly could I possibly step into cash-and-attention-starved areas of Climate Science and do what the establishment with its enormous resources has not done?
That, of course, doesn’t prove my point. You can’t duck my point by throwing the burden on me, but neither can I duck the issue by insisting that because things are unknown or because things are not equal, the results I prefer must be true. But the bottom line is this “More CO2 means heat retained longer than otherwise” needs to acknowledge that the “otherwise” is a huge assumption that’s obviously risky when speaking of an entire planet.
The Ozone layer has openings both in the Arctic and Antarctic even though it is reported as a “uniform number”. What about CO2? Is it “uniform” between the Equator and the Poles?? Does it have “openings” at the Poles??
This could have a substantial effect on the “LW heat release/trapping”.
To enhance Leif’s point, since the Earth is closest to the Sun in January and apogee (farthest away) is in July, it can’t be right that the Earth is coolest in January, regardless of the temperature record. This is a model anyone can understand.
Can’t be right? So all of the instruments we use to measure this are wrong, because your mental model trumps a mere thing like data?
Perhaps — and I’m just throwing this out there, understand — it matters which hemisphere is pointing towards the Sun when perihelion occurs. Perhaps global atmospheric circulation patterns matter. Possibly the state of ocean currents in the world’s oceans have some effect. It’s conceivable that the patterns of humidity and cloud formation and the albedo of the particular surfaces facing the sun and turned away from the Sun in January and their mean height above the ground and what’s going on in deserts vs tropical rain forests vs the central pacific all make a difference. Perhaps even seasonal variations in things like aerosols, particulates, greenhouse gases, and what’s going on in farmers’ fields and surface ocean water as far as plankton and algae blooms have some effect. Perhaps there are non-Markovian lags of 3 to six months built into the system, so that heat absorbed by the ocean during winter’s solar maximum (which thereby fails to heat the surface and LTT atmosphere) tends to be released when it upwells six months later
But no, no, it’s just perihelion and aphelion, where the annual variation in insolation. Granted that they are substantial, causing insolation to vary by as much as 7% maximum to minimum (on a base of 1367 W/m^2 TOA). Granted that because they are substantial — a whopping 50 W/m^2 at TOA from the average, an overall six month variation of 100 W/m^2, an easy two orders of magnitude larger than variation in GHG forcing — and yet the annual average coldest temperature occurs when the direct solar forcing is the highest, it suggests that the nonlinearities and co-factors sketched out above are actually more important than “just” the solar not-so-constant in determining global average temperature.
Secondly, I quite agree that the Earth is radiating heat away into space as well as it ever did, and all can test this hypothesis using your old automobile. Just leave it parked out on the street on a night when the temperature goes some degrees below zero. In the morning you will find that the windshield has frozen over, but the side windows still have only liquid water. This is because the ground is heating the side windows with infrared (IR) radiation, but the windshield is pointing to the sky and does not receive IR, either from the ground nor from the so-called “forcing” in the sky. It radiates its heat into sky & space and freezes. There is no useful “forcing”. So the Earth is radiating its heat into space just the same as it ever did. After the 200th such lesson, I keep my car under cover overnight now.
Clearly your car is a sensitive instrument, sir. I wonder why we even bother making actual measurements all over the world. Think of the money we would save if we just examined cars and metal barbecue grills in people’s back yards to conclude that there is no average variation in the Poynting vector near the surface or at TOA that can, or cannot, be attributed to GHGs. I’m certain that you have never observed that on cloudy nights the likelihood of frost on your car is substantially reduced. Somehow there is so-called “forcing” from those (literally) ice-cold clouds far overhead that affects the cooling rate way down at the level of the nice warm ground. And all without violating any of the laws of thermodynamics!
With all that said, also bear in mind that I am a skeptic, and at this point am largely convinced that the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypotheses are probably incorrect. That does not mean that the GHE is not real — it can be directly measured in TOA and BOA spectroscopy so it can hardly not be real — but it means that it is saturated and at this point that nonlinearities in the system feedbacks are much more important determinants of mean temperature, the same nonlinearities that happily make perihelion the coldest month of the year in spite of the Earth in general receiving almost 100 W/m^2 more radiation in January than it does in July. Either way, lacking any convincing theory that can explain the details of the climate record from the last (say) million years in a quantitative and predictive way, we are stuck empirically resolving a signal (if any) from a non-intuitive annual counteroscillation driven by forcing variations two orders of magnitude larger than the supposed atmospheric composition variation at baseline, which is itself somewhat dubious as it is functional on things like stratospheric water vapor content, soot/particulate content, aerosol content, and possibly even subtle variations induced by other solar factors distinct from “just” instantaneous insolation.
The Earth’s climate system is empirically incredibly stable, except where it is not. Where it is not, its instability is as irresistible as an angry rhinoceros — get out of the way because you aren’t going to stop its charge. Where it is, the effects of human activity are light as a feather compared to other factors driving the system. We somehow pretend that we understand the nonlinear system well enough to predict its specific course of the climate in the absence of that feather, to know where the rhino would go if its ass was not being tickled. I respectfully doubt this. The best we can say about the rhino is not where it is going but where it has been, the range over which it has wandered over the last million years.
During that time, it has spent some 80 to 90% of its time as a wooly rhino, an ice rhino, trampling down biological activity all over the globe between a thick layer of ice and killing cold, maintaining global average temperatures some 6 to 10 K lower than they are today, restricting the temperate zone in which life thrives to a comparatively narrow band near the equator. It has spent perhaps 10% of its time as a laid back tropical rhino, basking in the sun of a temperate interglacial Earth with temperatures close to what they are now — in some interglacials a bit warmer, in some a bit cooler. A few percent of the time it has spent relatively rapidly shedding its wooly fur and donning its summer skin bouncing wildly among the temperatures in between these extremes, first up to end the Wisconsin glaciation, then down into the Younger Dryas, then back up into the Holocene proper. Over the last 12,000 years, its has spent some 8000 of them as warm or warmer than it is right now, and actually hit the coldest spot in the entire stretch some three hundred and fifty years ago, when global temperatures fell so much that for a while it looked like the rhino might be growing wooly fur once again.
It has spent zero time as Hansen’s imaginary Fire Rhino, the rhino that strips the globe of its icecaps altogether, boils the oceans, extends the temperate zone to the poles, whatever other wild-eyed claims are made for a rhino that hasn’t been observed since the continents shifted some five million years to kick the Earth into a sustained Ice Age. Because, note well, we are probably near the end of the friendly, laid back tropical rhino, sipping its planter’s punch on the veranda of porches open to air as gentle and warm as a mother’s kiss. We don’t know how to predict even in the most general of terms the day the rhino will start once again to grow fur and trample the world’s breadbaskets beneath its icy feet, any more than we can explain any aspect of why it almost grew fur 400 years ago, and then shed it again.
The climate rhino, you see, is a whimsical, contrary beast. When driven by an extra 100 W/m^2, it responds by getting colder. When insolation drops, it decides to warm things up. When we expect the stratosphere to get wetter, it dries it out. It resists being driven by the elliptical orbit club, but turns towards the gentle touch of the polar reversals of the Sun. It confounds us wherever we look, spooking at the batting of the wings of the fabled Brazilian Butterfly while turning a cynical eye on the pernicious effects of global atmospheric oscillations.
Climate scientists today pretend that we can steer this rhino with a feather, and predict where he will go. Humans who should know better — who should know better on the basis of mere common sense and a glance at the past data — “confidently” predict that the world’s oceans will be five meters higher by the year 2100 as the rhino has become the dreaded and so-far completely mythical Fire Rhino. They do this even as the actual rise in the oceans as the rhino splashes around swimming in the tropical surf are almost two orders of magnitude less, sustained for over 130 years, almost perfectly paralleling the post-LIA rise in temperature over that time. They do it even though at the same time the rhino’s buttocks are tickled with a GHG feather, his nose is being tickled by soot and his eyes are being irritated by aerosols and his skin is being pushed around by global winds and his legs being tugged by ocean currents and somewhere in the rhino’s mechanical mind there is a memory of how warm or cold it was last century, ready at any time to surface to the forefront of whatever it is that makes a climate rhino tick, to make it once again grow wooly fur or breathe fire or maybe, just maybe, continue to loll in the nice comfortable lagoon he now lives in, sipping his Mai Tai and permitting the balmy breezes of not-too-hot and not-too-cold to continue to blow across the planet for a few centuries, or decades, or even just years more.
Do not presume to claim to know the Rhino. He does as he pleases, and laughs at the tickling of a feather just as his thick skin ignores being counterbeaten by a club.
Until the day he doesn’t.
rgb
Mosh said:
3. Add more GHGs to the atmosphere and you raise the ERL
4. When the ERL is raised, earth radiates from a higher colder place.
5. Radiating from a colder height means the loss rate is lower.
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…seems if you take water vapor with you up there – higher – the loss rate at the boundary would be faster
Is this a pretty typical phenomon? Does heat build in certain areas and the ocean during most of the year, move to the arctic in winter and vent quickly in a month or two?
Does this become common in different ocean and atmosphereic circulation regimes (like when the PDO and AMO are both in negative phases)? I can imaging that heat could build to the point where it’s transered to KE in oceans and atmospher (and things like UV can change patterns in the atmosphere as temperature differences transfer heat and windspeed causes evaptoration) allowing heat to be changed to KE and then transfer from ocean to atmosphere in both sensible and latent heat. Condensation and the outward movement of the heat allows it to escape to space.
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commieBob says:
March 7, 2013 at 4:44 am
The silver lining prevents heat loss by radiation. This is basic engineering.
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Exactly. Heat loss in the thermos is both by convection/conduction and radiation. The vacuum to reduce the first, and the aluminum lining to reduce the second.
@ur momisugly Mosher Carbon Cult
The “silver lining” in the thermos is thousands of molecules thick and the mass of that layer inhibits IR penetration or transfer. A free roaming three atom gas molecule has no such support network. The OLR absorption lasts for a vibrational billionth of a second per CO2 molecule….is transfered to the adjoining N2O2 gas molecules, which each vibrate for 4 billionths of a second. This converted IR is then KE and travels vertically away from the planet as convective waves. The absorbed OLR photon is emitted as a longer wave length, lower energy IR photon that is incapable of “warming” the still warmer Earth surface, as this energy flow obeys the Laws of Thermodynamics. The “silver lining” to science on this planet is that Truth is self evident….and ignorance is self destructive. Carbon Dioxide molecules merely vibrate as the OLR passes at 186,000 mps. A tuning fork in a concert hall will vibrate to the music….but it does not AMPLIFY the music.
“ignorance is self destructive”? indeed. you are certainly exhibiting on your supposed understanding of electromagnetic radiation.
consider this: how does all of the energy from the sun get to the Earth? by convective waves through outer space? please.
Stop picking on warmists for failing to provide empirical data to prove the ‘physics’ of CO2 causing catastrophic AGW and ‘climate change’. There is no such data. There is only theory, so they recite the theory… over… and over.. and over again. Like a medieval monk reciting the Apostolic Creed.
Steven Mosher writes “It’s physics says co2 causes warming.”
Steven is completely predictable. He writes this sort of stuff, rountinely, and is, of course, absolutely correct. But he ALWAYS fails to make the crucially correct statement, which logic dictates must follow his conlusions. We have absolutely no idea HOW MUCH adding more warming is caused by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. And he will NEVER admit that no-one has, as yet, MEASURED the rise in global temperatures caused by adding CO2 to the atmosphere from current levels
Steven Mosher says:
March 6, 2013 at 10:05 pm
“Slowing the cooling, is referred to as warming.”
What non-scientfic nonsense. “Slowing the cooling” and “warming” are two entirely different things. In Science precise language it used, such an inprecise conflation of two different concepts is the hallmark of politics, not science. Right up there with “reducing the projected increase in the budget” being described as a “cut in spending”
Climate is the accumulation of energy in the oceans in summer . If a hemisphere loses more energy in winter than it is capable of absorbing in summer temperatures will go down.The Northern Hemisphere has less ocean than the Southern Hemisphere so it has less capacity to store energy. If the Sun is the main energy source less Solar irradiance will have a much faster effect on the N H. The question is how long it takes to empty the ocean battery.If I want to know the climate future I have to know the oceans energy input , output balance. At the moment it looks like the input is less than the output on a moment that the sun is closer to the Earth.
@John kehr
Mr. Kehr, I find it interesting you said that climate scientists hate when real temperature values are posted. I have frequently asked Lucia to post GAT and post CAT (current average temperature) so we can compare. I’ve also asked her to post the running average of atmospheric co2 versus the current average. She will not do either of these things and in fact deletes the comments. The obvious reason she will not post it, nor will any other warmists is because it destroys the narrative. Earth is well below GAT and well below average atmospheric co2 and frankly I think it amounts to lying by refusing to post it.