Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I’ve been reflecting over the last few days about how the climate system of the earth functions as a giant natural heat engine. A “heat engine”, whether natural or man-made, is a mechanism that converts heat into mechanical energy of some kind. In the case of the climate system, the heat of the sun is converted into the mechanical energy of the ocean and the atmosphere. The seawater and atmosphere are what are called the “working fluids” of the heat engine. The movement of the air and the seawater transports an almost unimaginably large amount of heat from the tropics to the poles. Now, none of the above are new ideas, or are original with me. I simply got to wondering about what the CERES data could show regarding the poleward transport of that energy by the climate heat engine. Figure 1 gives that result:
Figure 1. Exports of energy from the tropics, in W/m2, averaged over the exporting area. The figures show the net of the energy entering and leaving the TOA above each 1°x1° gridcell. It is calculated from the CERES data as solar minus upwelling radiation (longwave + shortwave). Of course, if more energy is constantly entering a TOA gridcell than is leaving it, that energy must be being exported horizontally. The average amount exported from between the two light blue bands is 44 W/m2 (amount exported / exporting area).
We can see some interesting aspects of the climate heat engine in this graph.
First, like all heat engines, the climate heat engine doesn’t work off of a temperature. It works off of a temperature difference. A heat engine needs both a hot end and a cold end. After the working fluid is heated at the hot end, and the engine has extracted work from incoming energy, the remaining heat must be rejected from the working fluid. To do this, the working fluid must be moved to some location where the temperature is lower than at the hot end of the engine.
As a result, there is a constant flow of energy across the blue line. In part this is because at the poles, so little energy is coming from the sun. Over Antarctica and the Arctic ocean, the sun is only providing about a quarter of the radiated longwave energy, only about 40 W/m2, with the remainder being energy exported from the tropics. The energy is transported by the two working fluids, seawater and air. In total, the CERES data shows that there is a constant energy flux across those blue lines of about six petawatts (6e+15 watts) flowing northwards, and six petawatts flowing southwards for a total of twelve petawatts. And how much energy is twelve petawatts when it’s at home?
Well … at present all of humanity consumes about fifteen terawatts (15e+12) on a global average basis. This means that the amount of energy constantly flowing from the equator to the poles is about eight-hundred times the total energy utilized by humans … as I said, it’s an almost unimaginable amount of energy. Not only that, but that 12 petawatts is only 10% of the 120 petawatts of solar energy that is constantly being absorbed by the climate system.
Next, over the land, the area which is importing energy is much closer to the equator than over the sea. I assume this is because of the huge heat capacity of the ocean, and its consequent ability to transport the heat further polewards.
Next, overall the ocean is receiving more energy than it radiates, so it is exporting energy … and the land is radiating more than it receives, so it is getting energy from the ocean. In part, this is because of the difference in solar heating. Figure 2, which looks much like Figure 1, shows the net amount of solar radiation absorbed by the climate system. I do love investigating this stuff, there’s so much to learn. For example, I was unaware that the land, on average, receives about 40 W/m2 less energy from the sun than does the ocean, as is shown in Figure 2.
(Daedalus, of course, would not let this opportunity pass without pointing out that this means we could easily control the planet’s temperature by the simple expedient of increasing the amount of land. For each square metre of land added, we get 40 W/m2 less absorbed energy over that square metre, which is about ten doublings of CO2. And the amount would be perhaps double that in tropical waters. So Daedalus calculates that if we make land by filling in shallow tropical oceans equal to say a mere 5% of the planet, it would avoid an amount of downwelling radiation equal to a doubling of CO2. The best part of Daedalus’s plan is his slogan, “We have to pave the planet to save the planet” … but I digress).
Figure 2. Net solar energy entering the climate system, in watts per square metre (W/m2). Annual averages.
You can see the wide range in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth, from a low of 48 W/m2 at the poles to a high of 365 W/m2 in parts of the tropics.
Now, I bring up these two Figures to highlight the concept of the climate system as a huge natural heat engine. As with all heat engines, energy enters at the hot end, in this case the tropics. It is converted into mechanical motion of seawater and air, which transports the excess heat to the poles where it is radiated to space.
Now, the way that we control the output of a heat engine is by using something called a “throttle”. A throttle controls the amount of energy entering a heat engine. A throttle is what is controlled by the gas pedal in a car. As the name suggests, a throttle restricts the energy entering the system. As a result, the throttle controls the operating parameters (temperature, work produced, etc.) of the heat engine.
So the question naturally arises … in the climate heat engine, what functions as the throttle? The answer, of course, is the clouds. They restrict the amount of energy entering the system. And where is the most advantageous place to throttle the heat engine shown in Figure 2? Well, you have to do it at the hot end where the energy enters the system. And you’d want to do it near the equator, where you can choke off the most energy.
In practice, a large amount of this throttling occurs at the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). As the name suggests, this is where the two separately circulating hemispheric air masses interact. On average this is north of the equator in the Pacific and Atlantic, and south of the equator in the Indian Ocean. The ITCZ is revealed most clearly by Figure 3, which shows how much sunlight the planet is reflecting.
Figure 3. Total reflected solar radiation. Areas of low reflection are shown in red, because the low reflection leads to increased solar heating. The average ITCZ can be seen as the yellow/green areas just above the Equator in the Atlantic and Pacific, and just below the Equator in the Indian Ocean.
In Figure 3, we can see how the ITCZ clouds are throttling the incoming solar energy. Were it not for the clouds, the tropical oceans in that area would reflect less than 80 W/m2 (as we see in the red areas outlined above and below the ITCZ) and the oceans would be much warmer. By throttling the incoming sunshine, areas near the Equator end up much cooler than they would be otherwise.
Now … all of the above has been done with averages. But the clouds don’t form based on average conditions. They form based only and solely on current conditions. And the nature of the tropical clouds is that generally, the clouds don’t form in the mornings, when the sea surface is cool from its nocturnal overturning.
Instead, the clouds form after the ocean has warmed up to some critical temperature. Once it passes that point, and generally over a period of less than an hour, a fully-developed cumulus cloud layer emerges. The emergence is threshold based. The important thing to note about this process is that the critical threshold at which the clouds form is based on temperature and the physics of air, wind and water. The threshold is not based on CO2. It is not a function of instantaneous forcing. The threshold is based on temperature and pressure and the physics of the immediate situation.
This means that the tropical clouds emerge earlier when the morning is warmer than usual. And when the morning is cooler, the cumulus emerge later or not at all. So if on average there is a bit more forcing, from solar cycles or changes in CO2 or excess water vapor in the air, the clouds form earlier, and the excess forcing is neatly counteracted.
Now, if my hypothesis is correct, then we should be able to find evidence for this dependence of the tropical clouds on the temperature. If the situation is in fact as I’ve stated above, where the tropical clouds act as a throttle because they increase when the temperatures go up, then evidence would be found in the correlation of surface temperature with albedo. Figure 4 shows that relationship.
Figure 4. Correlation of surface temperature and albedo, calculated on a 1°x1° gridcell basis. Blue and green areas are where albedo and temperature are negatively correlated. Red and orange show positive correlation, where increasing albedo is associated with increasing temperature.
Over the extratropical land, because of the association of ice and snow (high albedo) and low temperatures, the correlation between temperature and albedo is negative. However, remember that little of the suns energy is going there.
In the tropics where the majority of energy enters the system, on the other hand, warmer surface temperatures lead to more clouds, so the correlation is positive, and strongly positive in some areas.
Now, consider what happens when increasing clouds cause a reduction in temperature, and increasing temperatures cause an increase in clouds. At some point, the two lines will cross, and the temperature will oscillate around that set point. When the surface is cooler than that temperature, clouds will form later, and there will be less clouds, sun will pour in uninterrupted, and the surface will warm up.
And when the surface is warmer than that temperature, clouds will form earlier, there will be more clouds, and higher albedo, and more reflection, and the surface will cool down.
Net result? A very effective thermostat. This thermostat works in conjunction with other longer-term thermostatic phenomena to maintain the amazing thermal stability of the planet. People agonize about a change of six-tenths of a degree last century … but consider the following:
• The climate system is only running at about 70% throttle.
• The average temperature of the system is ~ 286K.
• The throttle of the climate system is controlled by nothing more solid than clouds, which are changing constantly.
• The global average surface temperature is maintained at a level significantly warmer than what would be predicted for a planet without an atmosphere containing water vapor, CO2, and other greenhouse gases.
Despite all of that, over the previous century the total variation in temperature was ≈ ± 0.3K. This is a variation of less than a tenth of one percent.
For a system as large, complex, ephemeral, and possibly unstable as the climate, I see this as clear evidence for the existence of a thermostatic system of some sort controlling the temperature. Perhaps the system doesn’t work as I have posited above … but it is clear to me that there must be some kind of system keeping the temperature variations within a tenth of a percent over a century.
Regards to all,
w.
PS—The instability of a modeled climate system without some thermostatic mechanism is well illustrated by the thousands of runs of the ClimatePredictionNet climate model:
Note how many of the runs end up in unrealistically high or low temperatures, due to the lack of any thermostatic control mechanisms.
Kristian says:
December 24, 2013 at 12:58 am
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I suspect you may be closer to understanding than most.
“I agree with you that the prime task of the so-called GHGs is to cool the atmosphere (and hence, the Earth system) to space. I’m simply not so sure how essential to atmospheric circulation they are …”
They are essential as they allow energy loss, buoyancy loss and subsidence for air masses at altitude. Without this full tropospheric convective circulation would stall in the Hadley, Ferrel and polar cells. Rising air masses can no longer over turn previously risen air masses.
If convective circulation stalls and the atmosphere trends isothermal, bad things would happen. As you point out there is no upper limit to how far the atmosphere can expand. Imagine an atmosphere with a temperature of just 15C at 15 Km. Much of our atmosphere would expand past the protection of the geomagnetic field and be swept away into space by solar wind. Breathing privileges would be revoked.
Some want to keep pushing the AGW inanity to save their own hides, but all the good little boys and girls in Africa are hoping for coal in their stocking this Christmas.
-Gbaikie
I’m curious about your comment that an atmosphere cannot lose heat except by radiative gasses at high altitude.-
I intended to say the opposite.
I would say not much heat is radiated from all gases in Earth’s atmosphere.
Or say it this way, Earth atmosphere has mass of 5.1 x 10^18 kg.
If one assume each kg has average velocity of about 300 m/s
In terms joules of energy it is 1/2 mass time velocity squared. Or
2.295 x 10^23 joules of energy. Of such energy a small percent is
converted in thermal energy each day, and even much smaller percentage
is radiated directly into space.
So radiant energy from the sun does not directly heat gases in atmosphere in any significant amount. What heating of gases which is mainly done is sun heating the surface and ocean
which in turn heats the gases in atmosphere, nor does the gases heated indirectly from the Sun directly radiant any significant amount of energy into space
Of course all of sunlight energy which reaches earth surface by passing thru the Earth’s atmosphere.And 360 watts per square meter of the 1360 watts per square meter, in clear skies does not directly reach the surface.
And it commonly known that portions UV spectrum is stopped from directly reaching the surface. And so this related to “scare” of disappearing ozone.
And H20 stops a lot of the spectrum from directly reaching the surface. And some of the “missing” 360 watts missing at noon on clear day is reflected- btw more is reflected before reaching surface when sun is lower towards horizon.
So Ozone as far as I know is absorbing the UV rather than merely re-radiating the UV.
And one also has chemical bonds of various compounds absorbing sunlight- O2 needs energy to become O3, etc. But I am not saying this is significant amount energy involved.
But anyhow the sunlight splits O2 to get of reactive two O’s which bind to O2 to make Ozone- which constantly being created and destroyed.
So the Ozone absorbs some of spectrum of UV- which considered harmful to humans- and related to increase in skin Cancer. And this Ozone is considered a greenhouse gases.
And come to think of it- don’t know why it is actually called a greenhouse gas.
So anyways, wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight
But despite Ozone absorbing a very energetic radiant energy, I would say the Ozone gas is not becoming warmer- or this gas molecule is not caused to increase it’s velocity.
And even if this somehow could happen, it would be traveling in random direction and any considered possible addition to it’s vector, does not mean it’s speed is increased- if anything, chances favor a decrease in it’s speed.
And also it seems to me a huge source of loss of energy in this universe.
Or doesn’t make any sense, as we are here.
-As it happens we have interesting discussions about the sun and Jupiter going on here, both of which it turns out emit more heat than they receive. Much of the sun’s energy comes from fusion and “primordial” energy at the core. Leif Svalgaard tells us that it takes around 200, 000 years, if I remember rightly, for a photon bearing fusion or primordial energy from the core to be emitted at the sun’s surface.-
Of course the Sun generates energy by fusing hydrogen, and other elements. The physics
to prove the sun receives more than makes [in terms of a significant amount] is way beyond my understanding of being able to confirm or argue.
But Jupiter seems more obvious.
Earth is still cooling from it’s formation. The geothermal energy from the Earth is due to radioactive decay, the tidal energy of the Moon and Sun [I suppose], and original heat from
Earth formation. I don’t know if we know enough to say how about [with any certainty] of Earth geothermal is from the energy of it’s formation. But main point, I doubt anyone claim this number is zero. I what say that if this number could be known with any precision, one could confirm or disprove theory of our Moon being formed from large impact. cf:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis
So It safe to say some to Earth geothermal energy is it’s formation.
One can also say very minor mass compared to Earth [or Jupiter]
is Earth oceans and it’s known that earth ocean retain heat on scale of thousands
of years.
Which leads to comparison of Earth mass vs Jupiter:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/
Earth mass is 5.97 x 10^24kg
Jupiter mass is 1.898 x 10^27kg
So Jupiter is 317 times more massive.
So could just generally assume Jupiter will take 300 times longer to cool
as compared to Earth, even if it didn’t have a vast atmosphere.
I guess after Universe ends, Jupiter is still cooling from it’s formation.
Though by that time, Jupiter core could be cooler than Earth’s core- maybe.
“The core temperature may be about 24,000 degrees Celsius (43,000 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s hotter than the surface of the sun!”
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/what-is-jupiter-58_prt.htm
Yes hotter- 4 times hotter. But Earth core is also hotter than surface of Sun:
“A team of scientists has measured the melting point of iron at high precision in a laboratory, and then drew from that result to calculate the temperature at the boundary of Earth’s inner and outer core — now estimated at 6,000 C (about 10,800 F). That’s as hot as the surface of the sun.”
http://www.livescience.com/29054-earth-core-hotter.html
Bob Weber says:
“Piers doesn’t predict temperatures per se. So technically you’re right, but what about someone like me who needs to know whether its going to rain or snow at any temperature so I can get my outside work done in time?”
He does forecast temperatures relative to normals for the UK, page 5: http://www.weatheraction.com/resource/data/wact1/docs/BI%201303MARCH%2030d%20FullDetail%20SLAT8c%20prod25Feb.pdf
and as you can see he failed on the desperately cold weather in the second half of March 2013. His Nov 2011 to March 2012 forecasts were a disaster, months of cold were forecast when it was mild, and then he missed the late Jan to mid Feb severe cold blast altogether. His video forecast for very cold Nov/Dec 2011 has since be taken down. For Jan to Nov this year, leaving aside absolute temperature and just looking at whether it was above or below normals for the UK daily, I would say 5 out of the 11 months forecast could be said to be useful. July was forecast to be cool and wet. It’s no better than chance, and failed to capture the largest temperature anomalies.
“Ulric your last point needs clarification. He does forecast specific solar activity levels like the space weather prediction center. Its not hard to plot the motion of an active region as the sun rotates. When active region 1934 reaches geoeffective position on the right-hand side of the solar disk, expect something to happen here if the solar wind from that region builds up with protons and electrons during Dec29-Jan2.”
He may well associate that with weather events, but has little to do with temperature forecasts, and if the temperature forecast is wrong, the weather effects often will be too. 1934 is a sunspot region not a coronal hole, *if* it gave a CME there would be a blast of solar wind, but would be more effective Earth facing than on the right-hand side.
Konrad said:
“They (GHGs) are essential as they allow energy loss, buoyancy loss and subsidence for air masses at altitude. Without this full tropospheric convective circulation would stall in the Hadley, Ferrel and polar cells. Rising air masses can no longer over turn previously risen air masses.”
All that is needed to provoke and sustain a circulation is:
i) Uneven surface heating resulting in uneven conduction to the mass of the atmosphere so that some parcels of air in contact with the surface are warmer, less dense and more buoyant than others and:
ii) A reducing temperature with height which is a consequence of the lapse rate. The lapse rate is a result of increasing distance from the heat source which is the solar irradiated surface.Since the lapse rate exists with or without GHGs it must follow that GHGs are not necessary for cooling with height.
GHGs are not essential for a full convective circulation.
joeldshore said:
“Or, to put it another way: Yes, convection & evaporation reduce the amount of energy that the Earth’s surface radiates. However, they do this by causing the Earth’s surface to be at a lower temperature than it would be without these processes (&, by the S-B Equation, if the Earth’s surface is cooler, it radiates less). They don’t do this by causing the Earth to radiate less at a given temperature.”
Right.
The surface clearly conducts upward and evaporation takes energy upward so on your account why is the surface not COOLER than as predicted by S-B.?
You have a logical impasse.
The truth is that one cannot apply S-B at a surface beneath the mass of an atmosphere because that mass conducts and if water is present it evaporates and that upsets the S-B prediction which only applies in the absence of an atmosphere with mass.
Instead, one must define the ‘surface’ for S-B purposes as Leif did. One looks at the point higher up in the atmosphere where the temperature is as it should be to satisfy the S-B prediction.
The mass of an atmosphere pushes the point of radiative equilibrium up and away from the solid surface and the more mass there is the higher that point goes for a given strength of gravitational field.
Radiative characteristics interfere with the lapse rate but the system adjusts for that by changing the circulation pattern and adjusting the heights accordingly.
Applying purely radiative physics to a surface beneath an atmosphere is wrong because it takes no account of the ability of the mass of the atmosphere to acquire energy by conduction and store it for as long as the sun shines, constantly recycling that energy between surface and air (convective uplift) and air and surface (convective descent)
Ulric please see spaceweather.com today if you have the time. Their opening paragraph below depicts where AR1928, on the western limb, is well-connected to Earth:
CHANCE OF FLARES: Big sunspot AR1928 is crackling with M-class solar flares. Magnetic fields spiraling away from the sunspot’s location on the sun’s western limb are well-connected to Earth, raising the possibility of a radiation storm around our planet if the flares intensify. NOAA forecasters estimate a 60% chance of M-class flares and a 10% chance of X-class flares on Dec. 23rd.
Is everyone here going to start abusing NOAA now if they end up on the 40% of their M-class forecast or on the 90% side of the their X-class forecast? Please note I didn’t call AR1934 a coronal hole.
” Konrad says:
December 24, 2013 at 1:10 am
gbaikie says:
December 23, 2013 at 11:48 pm
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Both myself (a sceptic who claims radiative gases cool the atmosphere) and Trick, (an AGW believer who claims radiative gases warm the atmosphere) took issue with your post. There may be something in that.”
Could be something.
You both seems to think that CO2 which is a very low concentration can have some significant effect.
To try summarize, I suppose Trick thinks the doubling of .04% of the atmosphere would add about 1 C or more to global temperatures. And as guess, Trick thinks such warming increase another greenhouse gas, namely, water vapor, which might cause addition 1 or more degrees to global temperature. Or at least that seem to be general concept that AGWers believe.
Konrad on other hand, thinks CO2 cool the atmosphere.
But I could not begin to guess how much you think the atmosphere is cooled by the CO2.
Personally I don’t think there is much difference if you replaced Mars atmosphere of CO2
with the same amount of Nitrogen.
And there is a lot CO2 on Mars as compared to amount of C02 in Earth’s atmosphere.
Mars is quite a small planet and has about 25 trillion tonnes in it’s atmosphere, compared
Earth having couple trillion.
So anyhow I don’t understand what Konrad thinks the result of CO2 cooling the atmosphere has.
And gets me wondering does major greenhouse gas, water vapor, also cause atmosphere to cool. Obviously, I must then ask is there runaway cooling affect from the these greenhouse gases?
On the issue of the radiative cooling or heating of GHG’s a simple physical example shows what they do. It is exactly the same process you see in selective coatings in solar heating panels, heat sinks and other objects (skin of SR-71).
The primary reason the SR-71 was painted black was to lower the skin surface temperature due to its higher emissivity at operating temperature.
Place a black metal object and a bright shinny chrome plated object in direct sunlight (picture a black chrome plated wrench, and a shiny bright chrome plated wrench).
The black chrome wrench will heat up much quicker than the bright chrome plated wrench, but the final equilibrium temperature of the bright chrome plated wrench will end up being higher, because it cannot as effectively loose thermal energy by emission.
This is why they have spent tons of money researching selective coatings for solar heating panels, to maximize absorption of energy at the visible light frequencies where the most energy exists in the solar spectrum and minimizing the radiant heat loss at the IR frequencies from the hot panel.
CO2 and water vapor would act in exactly the same way. They facilitate loss of energy from the earth atmospheric system by IR radiation to space near the top of the atmosphere and absorb IR from the surface near the ground, where they help heat up the air, causing it to rise by convection to high altitude.
Think of IR absorbing/emitting GHG’s as buckets in a bucket brigade, moving water from a lake to a burning building. The more buckets you have in the bucket brigade the faster you can transport the water, and the faster you will drain the lake.
It really is no more complicated than that.
Even if you had some magical mythical atmospheric gas that absolutely could not radiate any energy in the IR band you would still lose energy to space eventually as it would eventually heat up enough to radiate in the visible wave bands or radio wave bands or simply boil off into space as its thermal kinetic energy exceeded the binding force of gravity. To paraphrase Prof. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) from Jurassic park, nature will find a way to lose that energy it absorbs from the central star no matter what atmosphere you put around the planet.
Likewise you can’t have your cake and eat it too, the only way convective overturning can operate continuously is like all heat engines you must have a heat sink for it to operate. If you raise the heat sink of a sterling engine to the same temperature as the hot side, the engine will stop — period. The convective column must lose energy at the top to space in order for it to cool, contract and increase density and then fall back to earth regaining gravitational potential energy, and warming and compressing (creating the lapse rate).
Without loss of energy at the top of the convective column it would gradually stall just like the sterling engine does. In order for work to be performed you must move energy, whether it is an electrical current in a motor or heat the principle is the same. When the voltage on the output side of a circuit reaches the same as the voltage on the input side, current stops and so does all electrical work that circuit can perform. Apply 12v to both terminals of an automotive light bulb and see how much light it gives off, or how much heat it generates.
The same thing would happen to our magical mystical atmosphere. It would gradually heat up through out its height, reaching a uniform temperature (or very nearly uniform since it is still gaining heat by conduction from the ground), and eventually either the ground would get hot enough to become incandescent or the gas would and it would start to lose energy in some other frequency than the prohibited IR.
On the question of Jupiter, it is still the largest gravitational vacuum cleaner in the solar system outside the sun, it gains a lot of energy every day due to infalling dust, micrometeors and trace gasses it sweeps up as it orbits the sun. Does anyone include that energy gain into those calculations? The sun is not its only source of energy. I imagine the rocky contents of comment Shoemaker–Levy 9 are still falling toward the center of Jupiter through the lighter gasses of its outer shell. It input a huge amount of energy on impact but still has energy to release as it’s constituent atoms fall through the thick atmosphere of the gas giant atmosphere.
Bob Weber says:
“CHANCE OF FLARES: Big sunspot AR1928 is crackling with M-class solar flares. Magnetic fields spiraling away from the sunspot’s location on the sun’s western limb are well-connected to Earth..”
It doesn’t look like it’s connected: http://gong.nso.edu/data/magmap/mod7_movie.html
Bob Weber says:
“Piers says on his blog today that when the sun’s active region 1934 reaches geoeffective position Dec 29-Jan2, during a new moon, we will have R4 and R5+ conditions leading to some serious weather.”
He actually said: “Extra active region 1934 (and nearby ones) will be ~Earth-Facing in WeatherAction R4 and R5+ periods 29Dec-Jan2.”.
I think by then then it will have gone further on, here it is on the 23rd:
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2013/23dec13/hmi3796.gif?PHPSESSID=4kulmnu5quea89diuhvvq36f54
And I don’t see the validity of connecting a weather impact period with any solar correlation on the same day, whether that’s Piers’ Earth facing sunspot, or your flares on the west limb, as the weather systems take a number of days to develop and travel. I mean what exactly happened to his “Trafalgar Storm” that didn’t happen on the 21-32 October when all those X-flares suddenly kicked off? http://www.weatheraction.com/resource/data/wact1/docs/BI%201310OCT%2030d_as45d_relOct1.pdf
Larry Ledwick said:
“The convective column must lose energy at the top to space in order for it to cool, contract and increase density and then fall back to earth regaining gravitational potential energy, and warming and compressing (creating the lapse rate).”
That is a variant of the proposition that cooling can only occur with height if radiative gases are present.
In fact cooling with height occurs because the higher one goes the further away from the surface heat source are atmospheric molecules. The further one travels from any heat source the cooler one will become.
As height increases kinetic energy (registering on thermometers as heat) becomes gravitational potential energy (which does not register as heat) and so temperature does decline with height without any need for radiative gases.
As I tried to explain the conductive energy exchange between surface and air which causes convective uplift is reversed at the surface during convective descent for a net zero effect (as Willis has accepted) and so there is no loss of energy within the convective adiabatic cycle. Indeed there can be no net gain or loss over time if an atmosphere is to be retained.
The cooling with height involves no loss of energy. Instead it involves an exchange of kinetic energy for gravitational potential energy.
That gives cooling with height for a radiatively inert atmosphere and no need for radiation to space from the top of the atmospheric column.
Radiation to space effectively occurs at whatever height within the column that the temperature is right for outgoing radiation to match incoming radiation, as Leif pointed out.
As long as one has uneven surface heating and cooling with height a convective overturning circulation cannot be prevented.
GHGs not needed.
This needs some clarification:
“Radiation to space effectively occurs at whatever height within the column that the temperature is right for outgoing radiation to match incoming radiation, as Leif pointed out.”
Since there are no gases that are completely radiatively inert the height is that at which interference to the radiative flux from conduction / convection upward is balanced by conduction / convection downward.
More radiative gases simply increase the effective radiating height but the temperature at that height remains what it needs to be to satisfy S-B.
It is not a ‘colder height’ as proposed by AGW theory.
If an atmosphere were to be completely radiatively inert then all energy in and out would have to be dealt with at the surface itself, no energy would be left over for the conduction / convection process and the atmosphere could not lift off the ground in the first place.
One would simply be dealing with a planet without an atmosphere.
Since ALL mass has SOME radiative capability that never happens. Once an atmosphere of any composition forms then energy is lost from the radiative flux to the conductive / convection process, the surface becomes warmer than the S-B prediction and the effective radiating height lifts off the surface with the atmospheric gases.
It appears that radiative capability is needed after all.
So, to that extent I amend my assertion that radiative capability is not needed. Instead I assert that the enhanced radiative capabilities of GHGs are not needed because even the limited radiative capability of Argon, Oxygen and Nitrogen is enough to get the conduction / convection process started so as to create an atmosphere and lift the effective radiating height off the surface.
Does that now square the circle ?
My previous post might appear to some to suggest that having accepted that some radiative capability of gases is needed to get the atmosphere off the surface in the first place then the radiative greenhouse theory must also be correct.
However, although it might only require a miniscule radiative capability to cause the initial uplift the fact is that once uplift has started it is the amount of mass that lifts off the surface that determines how much conduction and convection can then occur.
Therefore once uplift has begun any thermal effect from additional radiative capability fades into insignificance compared to the amount of energy that gets tied up in conduction and convection.
Furthermore the conduction / convection heat engine is infinitely variable and can easily adjust the effective radiating height to ensure system stability even in the face of increased radiative capability.
The radiative greenhouse effect is like a pilot light and the heat engine of conduction and convection takes over after ignition leaving the mass related greenhouse effect in absolute control.
Adding more radiative gases to our atmosphere is no more significant than increasing the power of the starter motor to a Saturn 5 rocket engine.
gbaikie
Thanks for your detailed explanation.
Ulric Lyons says:
December 23, 2013 at 1:58 am
Thanks, Ulric, for a good question. It would speed up when it has more incoming energy and the losses equal the inputs. This appears to be the case, for example, over the “Pacific Warm Pool”, which never gets over about 30°C or so. The excess energy at that point doesn’t warm the surface at all, but goes instead to increased horizontal transport.
Also, consider what happens in the tropics on a daily basis. Once the cumulus clouds set in, the temperature can even drop, despite a continuing increase in incoming energy, because of the increases in reflection and the horizontal transport of energy.
w.
Stephen Wilde, you are incorrect. Unless energy is radiated away at altitude there is no loss of energy. Yes, the air will be cooler, but (and this is key) it will not become more dense. It is the density differences that drive the convection, not the temperature differences. I think this is where you are getting confused.
However, on a rotating planet other forces will come into play. First, there will be *some* radiation of any atmosphere above absolute zero. Second, there are coriolis forces that move any atmosphere. Finally, the difference in energy between the day and night sides of the planet will create winds. The last is most important. Due to surface radiation on the night side the air above it will cool due to conduction. This air will become more dense and start moving towards the day side creating convection. The end result should be something like a continual flow shifted by the coriolis effect. I suspect this could be modeled fairly easily.
Given this flow of energy a certain delay in outgoing energy should occur and we should see some kind of lapse rate. I have no idea just how much this would affect the average temperature of the surface.
Willis Eschenbach says:
December 24, 2013 at 11:45 am
It also can speed up without heating up for the same reason that when you turn up the stove under boiling water, it speeds up without heating up. This is because the situation in both cases is strongly constrained by the phase changes of water … and as boiling water shows, during phase changes, things can easily speed up without heating up.
w.
Konrad says, December 24, 2013 at 4:16 am:
“They [the so-called GHGs] are essential as they allow energy loss, buoyancy loss and subsidence for air masses at altitude.”
I think you misunderstand the basic adiabatic process here, Konrad. A rising parcel of air does not lose its buoyancy from radiating its energy to space. That is not a prerequisite. It loses its buoyancy from transferring its conductively absorbed energy from the surface to the rest of the atmosphere by doing work on it, expanding into it. When all the excess energy picked up from the surface is thusly tranferred, the parcel of air stops rising. But heated and less dense air continuously comes up from below, ‘forever’ warmer and warmer, less and less dense, so because of this the first air parcel will be pushed up and to the sides and eventually it will descend. Circulation persists.
You can only make an air column with a natural, gravity-induced pressure/density/temperature gradient isothermal that is not free to expand.
Richard M says, December 24, 2013 at 11:47 am:
“Unless energy is radiated away at altitude there is no loss of energy.”
A rising parcel of air loses its energy by doing work on the surrounding air masses.
“Yes, the air will be cooler, but (and this is key) it will not become more dense. It is the density differences that drive the convection, not the temperature differences. I think this is where you are getting confused.”
Richard, it is denser than the next heated air coming up from below. That’s all that matters.
Bob Weber says:
December 23, 2013 at 8:05 am
Ah, well, another random individual who thinks that personal insults will win the day for him … but then, Bob thinks Piers Corbin is actually making falsifiable forecasts, so given his level of willful blindness I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
Bob, the problem with Piers’ “forecasts”, as I’ve pointed out many times, is that they are so vague as to be unfalsifiable. As a result, he claims success at every turn. I’ve shown how he claimed success on a fifty/fifty forecast of a typhoon when the typhoon DIDN’T occur …
Most of us here are not impressed by that kind of false claims of success in the slightest. For us, if you forecast “sunny” in Colorado and forest fires in Arizona, then you can’t claim success if there is a forest fire in Colorado and none in Arizona.
But Piers Corbyn made both of those egregious claims of success, and others. He forecast damaging hailstorms around the Great Lakes, and then claimed success from a hailstorm in Oregon, for goodness sakes. He forecast all kinds of dire weather for the Olympics, thunderstorms and hail and flooding … and then he claimed success because there was a brief sprinkle of rain.
Now, it seems that those kinds of claims of success impress you mightily … and that’s fine.
However, I doubt you’ll get much traction trying to sell that kind of wide-eyed adulation of Piers’ so-called “forecasts” around here. We require our forecasts to be falsifiable, and our claims of success to be both verifiable and verified.
So … let me request that you let this topic go, or take it elsewhere to a Piers Corbyn thread. Look, I don’t think that Piers is a bad guy. He’s just practiced claiming success for so long that he believes it himself. I’ve just investigated too many of his claims of success and found them, not only groundless, but hilariously false. Forecast a 50% chance of typhoons, and then claim success when there is no typhoon? If you don’t see the humor in Piers doing that, Bob, you’ve lost your funny bone …
w.
James at 48 says:
December 23, 2013 at 9:41 am
Indeed they are. And not only that, they are what might be called “intelligent” heat sinks, in that they only form as and when they are needed to remove excess heat from the surface, and vanish when the job is done.
Computer engineers would pay big bucks if they could have this kind of “on the fly, lasts only as needed, forms only over the local hot spots” kind of cooling for their circuit boards … see my post called “The Details Are In The Devil” for more on this question.
w.
Stephen Wilde says:
December 23, 2013 at 11:45 am
Since the planet is superconducting to heat (or heated evenly by a million suns) there is no day-night swing in temperature.
As a result, the atmosphere will be isothermal, and there will be no uplift. The atmosphere will take up the surface temperature throughout, and after that … nothing. No conduction to the air, no uplift, no descent.
As has been pointed out, IF there are GHGs, then the atmosphere cools from aloft, by radiation. THEN, because the atmosphere would be heated from the bottom and cooled from the top, you get uplift and descent and the like, and you are in a whole different situation.
But with an argon atmosphere, it doesn’t radiate or absorb, so it doesn’t cool from the top, so it becomes isothermal, and there is neither uplift, descent, nor thermal exchange with the surface.
The key is that with an argon atmosphere, the only thing radiating is the surface. Period. On earth, the surface can radiate more than the system receives from the sun, because some of the radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere. Thus, the surface radiation is more than the TOA upwelling radiation.
But with an argon atmosphere, the surface radiation IS the TOA radiation. Nothing stands in its way
As a result, with a non-GHG atmosphere there is no atmospheric process that can warm the surface. Why not? Because if the surface is warmed by any such process, then it will be EMITTING MORE ENERGY TO SPACE THAN IT IS RECEIVING. And that would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Again, let me recommend you to my post “A Matter of Some Gravity” where I discuss this in more detail.
w.
Ulric the first quote you attributed to me above was from Spaceweather.com Dec23. Their words.
I agree, it takes time for solar particles to reach earth, and they don’t always “connect”, and when a teleconnection is made it still takes time for earth weather to develop. Also, an active region can either increase or decrease in intensity as the sun rotates, and it is hard to tell FOR SURE what the sun is going to do. I think we’re on the same page for that.
A good recent example of a likely “successful” teleconnection: there was significant solar activity in the last week of October; protons elevated on Oct 28, spiking later, which was the buildup to Typhoon Haiyan, which ran from Nov 3-11, peaking Nov 7. Just a coincidence eh? We’ll see.
Did you break out laughing yet? Don’t think for one minute I would say something like this without good reason or backup.
There are so many examples of this solar action driven delayed earth weather phenomenon that I’m not going to spend time here today on that, because I’m currently preparing something for early Jan that should at least open some minds a crack. If I am right could you acknowledge that, and if I am proven wrong I’ll admit it.
If you have questions of Piers call him, write him a note. Be nice about it. If you want older forecasts based on his older methods ask for them. He has moved on with new learnings and improved his methods as always. If a particular claim doesn’t work out, I know he can explain why he was wrong if you give him a chance.
Despite asking, I still haven’t been given a name by anyone here of a better long-range weather forecaster. Is there a problem with finding a brave enough soul who has the skill to make good 30-45 day forecasts? I don’t mean “Caleb Weatherbee” either, even though whoever that is has made a similar winter outlook for 2013/14 as did Piers.
Piers’ forecasts generally work out for the purposes I and his other customers need them for, and I know no one is going to be right all the time when it comes to these issues because of the chaos in the system and of course timing. Expecting perfection from anyone in forecasting is totally completely unreasonable. Back to your regularly scheduled program…
Merry Christmas all.
Stephen Wilde says:
December 23, 2013 at 1:49 pm
lsvalgaard said:
“The amount of atmosphere [i.e. the pressure] will determine how much warmer.”
Yes, exactly.
And the amount of atmosphere is mass not radiative characteristics.
If the atmosphere is non radiative you still have energy transferring to and fro between surface and atmosphere (and atmosphere to surface) via conduction and that makes the surface warmer just as radiation from the atmosphere would.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Stephen: I seem to differ from both you and Leif. Though (I think) I agree with you more.
Agreed – movement would still occur exactly as it does on present earth.
The mass of an atmosphere does not heat it. Or more correctly it doesn’t retain the heat as the compression is a one time process, once done it compresses no further and the heat produced will eventually reach equilibrium with the radiation budget.
“But since the vast bulk of energy transfer between surface and atmosphere is due to atmospheric mass leading to conduction and convection (both uplift and descent in equal amounts) the trivial contribution from radiative characteristics matters hardly at all and our contribution even less.”
Are you not missing the back-radiation further caused by this convection/conduction transport?and the back-radiation absorbed by GHG’s from SW? The whole atmosphere warms due GHG’s and acts to shift the LR equilibrium point (at which the temp is –18C or ~7km at present) – to a higher level. Meaning the whole atmosphere warms at (more/less) the same amount surface to Tropopause.
“and he said:
“At some level in the atmosphere the temperature will have decreased to the value that corresponds to the energy from the star and there the temperature will be as S-B dictates”
Correct and the effect of radiative gases is to change that height by expanding or contracting the entire atmosphere thereby altering the global air circulation by a miniscule amount depending on their net thermal effect (which is still disputed by many).”
True, but the effect is not equal around the globe. So we do end up with significant changes. There is more warming at the NP (I won’t bring in Antarctica – that is special) and so atmospheric thicknesses are higher (reduced thermal winds), so reducing jet strength and latitudinal stability (greater meridional extension to Rossby waves). This is altering the climate by taking Polar air further south and tropical air further north.
“That change in height and the associated circulation change is INSTEAD OF most if not all of any surface temperature change that might otherwise occur.
Willis is on the right track by referring to changes in the speed of energy throughput but needs to think through the logical implications of that concept.”
I think not. The LR shifts to a warmer slope all the way through the depth of the atmosphere – so a surface temp change is mirrored right to the Trop.
“The idea that the change in radiating height is to a colder location must be wrong. Instead, the temperature of the radiating height must stay the same but at a new height.”
This I believe is correct.
“In the end the thermostat is that constantly varying height as the power and vigour of the convective circulation ebbs and flows in response to internal system forcing elements.”
There can be no “thermostat” (unless you want to invoke albedo in another epoch) other than radiative ones and the effective radiating height (at BB temp of –18C) cannot be altered (on an averaged global scale) by mechanical motion. It is a fundamental of the GHG content of the atmosphere, which does not alter by mechanical movement of air : It’s well mixed – but has more effect at the poles and over desert areas (where little convection).
AND:
“If an atmosphere were to be completely radiatively inert then all energy in and out would have to be dealt with at the surface itself, no energy would be left over for the conduction / convection process and the atmosphere could not lift off the ground in the first place.”
I don’t agree with this Stephen:
A COMPLETELY inert atmosphere would have fixed surface temp of the planet (say –18C), by vibrational contact and must lapse to 3K from there. Therefore there would be convection. There would still be differential surface heating and spin so the rest of the planets motion would follow.
“Therefore once uplift has begun any thermal effect from additional radiative capability fades into insignificance compared to the amount of energy that gets tied up in conduction and convection.”
I’m sorry, no, heat moved by mechanical means still has to radiate to space – it is not subtracted from the radiative balance. Radiative loss comes from both direct emission and transmission from moving air. It will all leave via TOA which is where the balance point needs to be calculated from.
“Furthermore the conduction / convection heat engine is infinitely variable and can easily adjust the effective radiating height to ensure system stability even in the face of increased radiative capability.”
I don’t see why you connect the two. We have established that a non-radiative atmosphere will develop atmospheric motion and therefore move heat mechanically. All GHG’s do is to cause the whole atmosphere to heat – the LR is the same just shifted to the warmer. So convection is unaffected. The radiating height reaches equilibrium at around 7km (height of -18C isotherm) but the point at which GHG’s cause cooling is in the Stratosphere.
“The radiative greenhouse effect is like a pilot light and the heat engine of conduction and convection takes over after ignition leaving the mass related greenhouse effect in absolute control.
Adding more radiative gases to our atmosphere is no more significant than increasing the power of the starter motor to a Saturn 5 rocket engine.”
You seem to think, by talking of the “heat engine” that it is “weather” that drives long-term climate. Do you?
Adding more GHG’s further shifts the LR to the warm and adds to the warming of earth, whilst leaving most of it’s physical mechanics unaltered.
Yes you are correct that decompressional cooling due to the increase in altitude trades temperature/pressure for gravitational potential energy. Thus the rising parcel of air will cool as it rises, but its total energy will remain constant!.
It will continue to rise only as long as the air parcel is less dense that other parcels at that altitude. This is the basis for the initiation of vertical convection. However if you cap off that rising column of air so that it cannot continue to rise (thermopause) and it also cannot radiate away excess energy, you create the same thing as an inversion, where vertical convection ceases and the entire layer below that cap begins to stabilize at a near uniform temperature and the driving force for the convection disappears. The lower parcels of air are at essentially the same temperature but higher pressure (more dense) than the parcels above them they are no longer buoyant and simply hang there only mixing and moving due to random turbulence and any other forced disturbance. Take away a momentary disturbance and they return to their original altitude because that is where they are neutrally buoyant.
I agree with you regarding the trade of gravitational potential energy for thermal and pressure energy that is required by conservation of energy laws. You cannot get work (raising the altitude of a parcel) without inputting some energy to drive that motion. The only way to get that heat flow to maintain persistent convection like you have in a long lived thunderstorm, is to have both a constant source of heat at the bottom of the convection column and a constant loss of “heat energy” (note I did not say temperature!) at the top. This creates a heat engine which converts heat energy to kinetic energy of convection.
At the top of the convection column where buoyancy no longer drives vertical motion the kinetic energy of motion is converted back to heat increasing the total thermal, pressure and gravitational potential energy of the parcel. If it cannot cool it will never fall down to lower altitudes because it will always be warmer than the below it. It is briefly pushed up above its equilibrium altitude by inertia but then falls back to its neutral buoyancy altitude. (over shooting top on a thunder storm) Only when it cools through radiant heat loss to space will it get dense enough to fall back down to lower altitudes. Without radiant heat loss to space that rising air would turn into the stopper in a bottle and block all vertical convection below.
As a storm chaser you see this every day when following thunder storm development. If the towering cumulus is capped off ( for example a pilius cloud) that breaks the chain and blocks buoyant rise of the air column and the storm immediately dies. It cannot rise because it is no longer less dense than the air just above it in the pilius cap and it cannot effectively radiate energy away to space because the pilius cap (heated by latent heat of freezing) is warmer than it is. It still has heat input at the bottom from warm moist air, but it loses its heat sink as soon as the cap form. That turns off the convective motion like flipping a switch and a cloud that moments before was rising at 100 mph suddenly goes dormant, fuzzes out and falls apart.
Likewise if the incoming energy at the bottom is cut off the storm dies. This typically happens when cold outflow from another storm or the flanking down draft cuts under the bottom of the storm and cuts off the flow of energy from the warm moist air.
Convention cannot occur with out heat flow! When the column of air becomes isothermal for its altitude and neutrally buoyant, convection stops and so does heat flow.
Cooling due to adiabatic decompression is a function of the gravity field and the trade off of gravitational potential energy for temperature/pressure potential energy. The sum of those two must always be equal at all altitudes to avoid problems with conservation of energy for a stationary parcel of air. Once convection begins you add a third term for kinetic energy of motion. Again the sum of those 3 must be constant or you are either creating or dissipating energy. The only way you can dissipate energy at high altitude is radiation to space once kinetic energy from motion goes to zero.
It is a dirt simple conservation of energy problem.
If you believe in the laws of gravity and the ideal gas law, ( PV=nRT ), and conservation of energy laws you absolutely must have a pressure gradient and temperature lapse rate in a column of gas in a gravity field, to preserve conservation of energy as a parcel of air rises and falls in the gravity field. A pressure gradient with altitude and a temperature gradient with altitude which freely trade potential energy to maintain conservation of kinetic and potential energy.
lsvalgaard says:
December 23, 2013 at 5:10 pm
From the start I specified a planet with an argon atmosphere. I also specified there were no GHGs. Here’s my opening salvo:
Thanks, Leif. How you got from me saying “a planet with a GHG-free atmosphere, say an argon atmosphere” to you saying you thought “we were somehow talking about real planets with H2O, CO2, CH4, NH3, O3, etc” is not entirely clear, but heck, life isn’t all that clear even on a good day.
However, now that you do know that my thought experiment regards a planet with an argon atmosphere, which has an emissivity in the relevant shortwave and longwave bands ≈ 0 … how say you? Can pressure alone raise the surface temperature of such a planet above its calculated S-B temperature? I say no. A few folks say yes. I call them “pressure-heads”, but I probably shouldn’t.
However, ever since the time that claim that pressure alone can cause a persistent temperature differential was so ably deconstructed by Dr. Robert Brown in his post here on WUWT, and I had offered my own less impressive efforts in my post Perpetuum Mobile, it seems to me that not seeing the light has got to be willful blindness on some level.
But “pressure-heads” is likely too harsh, I have to learn to be more Canadian, Steven McIntyre is my guru in these matters, so I now abjure and forever foreswear the use of the term, and I will call them something else. Maybe perpetual emotioneers, I don’t know …
Because if pressure alone could cause a temperature increase, all we’d have to do is build tall, extremely well-insulated hollow cylinders filled with air. According to the perpetual emotioneers’ theory, the pressure alone would make the air inside the bottom of the cylinder warmer than the air at the top. If so, we could use that temperature difference to drive a heat engine, and get work out of it forever … perpetual motion, in other words.
My best regards to you, Leif, and my thanks for your many contributions to this site. I’m always glad to see you show up, particularly after someone comments something like “waiting for Leif in 5 … 4 … 3 …” on some solar related thread. Always welcome.
w.