Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The CERES data has its problems, because the three datasets (incoming solar, outgoing longwave, and reflected shortwave) don’t add up to anything near zero. So the keepers of the keys adjusted them to an artificial imbalance of +0.85 W/m2 (warming). Despite that lack of accuracy, however, the CERES data is very precise and sensitive.
As an example of what that sensitivity can reveal about the climate system, consider Figure 1, which shows the upwelling (outgoing) longwave (LW) and reflected solar shortwave (SW), month by month, for 13 years (N=156). Since these are individual CERES datasets, their trends and values should be valid.
Figure 1. Upwelling longwave (shades of blue) and upwelling reflected shortwave (shades of red) for the globe as well as the two hemispheres separately. Cyclical seasonal variations have been removed.
Now, there are several very curious aspects to this figure. The first and most surprising issue is that the hemispheric values for shortwave, and also the hemispheric values for longwave, are nearly identical from hemisphere to hemisphere. Why should that be so? There is much more ocean in the southern hemisphere, for example. There is solid land at the South Pole rather than ocean. In addition, the underlying surface albedos of the two hemispheres are quite different, by about 4 watts per square metre. Also, the southern hemisphere gets more sunlight than the northern hemisphere, because the earth’s orbit is elliptical.
So given all these differences … why should the longwave and shortwave in the two hemispheres be the same?
The next thing of interest is the stability of the system. The trends in all six of the measurements are so tiny I’ve expressed them in W/m2 per century so that their small size can be appreciated … if the trends continue, in a century they may change by a watt or two. Note that despite the small spread of the measurements, none of the trends are significant.
The next thing of interest is that in addition to the values being similar in both hemispheres, the trends are also quite similar. All of the trends are very slightly negative.
Finally, despite the great difference in the size of the LW and SW signals (240 vs 100 W/m2, Figure 1), the size of the variations in the two signals are quite similar. Here is a boxplot of the three pairwise comparisons—the anomaly variations in global, and northern and southern hemisphere.
Figure 2. Boxplots of the variations in the longwave and reflected shortwave shown in Figure 1, for the globe (left panel), the northern hemisphere (center panel) and the southern hemisphere (right panel).
Since these are boxplots, we know that half of the data lies inside the colored boxes. This means that half of the time, the longwave and the shortwave are within ± one-half watt of the seasonal value. Plus or minus one-half watt half the time, and within a watt and a half for 95% of the time, for a total of 156 months … this to me is amazing stability.
Given the myriad differences between the northern and southern hemispheres, my explanation of this amazing stability is that a) the temperature of the planet is regulated by a variety of threshold-based processes, and b) the set-point of that regulation is controlled by globally consistent values for the physics of wind, water, and cloud formation.
Now, there certainly may be some other explanation for this amazing stability and symmetry of the climate despite the large differences in the geometry and composition of the two hemispheres. That’s my explanation. If you have a better one … bring it on.
Best regards to all,
w.
NOTE ON DATA AND CODE: I’ve turned over a new leaf, and I’ve cleaned up my R computer code. I’ve put all the relevant functions into one file, called “CERES Functions.R”. That file of functions, plus the data, plus the code for this post, are all that are required to duplicate the figures above. I just checked, it’s all turnkey.
DATA: CERES 13 year (220 Mbytes, has all the CERES data in R format.)
FUNCTIONS: CERES Functions.R (Has all the functions used to analyze the data.)
CODE FOR THIS POST: Amazing Stability CERES (Has the code to create the figures and calculations used above.)
Trick says:
January 9, 2014 at 6:20 am
————————————–
Still trying?
But still no empirical experiment that other readers can replicate demonstrating LWIR slowing the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool? Didn’t think so.
Nice diversion though –
“Please provide a lab experiment that measures the atm. lapse rate, both dry and moist. If cannot, then can’t back them up.”
-and I will bite because it just gives another opportunity to show how little science AGW believers actually know.
First the basic principles of the lapse rate are high school science. Take a large plastic syringe. The larger the better to minimise conductive loss. Place the plunger at the half way mark. Insert a fast response thermocouple in the open end of the syringe and seal with blue-tac. With draw the plunger and watch the temperature fall. Push the plunger back in and watch the temperature rise. The principle of the dry adiabatic lapse rate is demonstrated. No scissors involved, so it should be safe for AGW believers.
Next should be the moist adiabatic lapse rate, but first condensation and nucleation. Take a 2 L PETG drink bottle. Pour in a small amount of warm water and shake vigorously with the cap on. Turn the bottle upside down and drain the water. Next light and extinguish a match (AGW believers should get mum or dad to help with matches) and allow the smoke from the just extinguished match to rise into the bottle. Screw the cap back on tight. Now squeeze the bottle hard and hold for a few seconds until some of the heat of compression is conductively lost from the bottle. Now release the bottle and watch as a cloud instantly forms in the interior. Try again without the match. It doesn’t work as well without the smoke particles providing nucleation points for condensation.
Now on to the moist adiabatic lapse rate. These experiments can be easily conducted in the lab using apparatus very similar to what Wilson used in 1899 when investigating fog. The primary problem with these experiments is conductive loss at small scales, however modern materials help minimise this. A cloud chamber with well insulated walls with very low conductivity is used. The chamber is connected to a bellows that can be used to accurately govern the pressure inside the chamber. Dry or moist air can be tested and the lapse rate observed. When testing moist air, the lapse rate can be observed to slow after dew point. Wilson was perhaps the first to discover the importance of nucleation to the onset of condensation. This was important for cleaning up London’s air as he was able to show coal burning was making fog a far greater problem than it would normally be. Switching to town gas was a real solution to a real environmental problem. In contrast, the modern environmental solution of switching to global socialism has never be shown to work for anything.
And now Trick, the lapse rate experiment that no AGW believer wants to see conducted. The vertical circulation experiment.
Most AGW believers seem to believe that the lapse rate is a product of maths, black squid juice on the bleached and dried pulp of dead trees. But it’s not. The observed lapse rate is the product of air circulation across the vertical pressure gradient of the atmosphere. If this circulation stops (such as without radiative cooling at altitude), gas conduction would send the atmosphere isothermal.
This experiment is very expensive because of the forces involved. What is required is a centrifuge arm with an insulated gas column along its length. The column is filled with dry nitrogen. All interior corners in the gas column must be rounded to allow smooth flow. Interior thermocouples are required along the length of the column. In the centre of the column two fans are required, one facing up the length of the column, one facing down. A short plastic flow divider can be placed between the fans parallel with the length of the column.
Bring the centrifuge up to speed until a significant gas pressure gradient is generated. A lapse rate will occur along the length of the column. This is not what we are looking for. Keep the centrifuge spinning for a few minutes until the gas column trends isothermal through gas conduction.
Now start the circulation fans and watch as a lapse rate re-develops. This is how the lapse rate observed in the troposphere is generated. Circulation of gas across a pressure gradient. You should note the the average temperature in the gas column has not changed (there will be conductive loses and small input from the fans), just the temperature profile.
Now switch off the fans and keep the centrifuge spinning. The lapse rate disappears. This is what would happen if radiative gases were removed from the atmosphere.
As you can see this experiment is very expensive. While it is not necessary to generate an 800 millibar pressure gradient such as in the troposphere, a significant gradient is required. Gas conduction works against the experiment at small scale, however engineering problems involving far higher rotation speeds make larger scale difficult.
So as you can see it is entirely possible to conduct all relevant experiments showing the basic physics of atmospheric lapse rate in the lab.
But apparently the effect of LWIR on water that is free to evaporatively cool is special and different and only to be inferred from noisy environmental observations and the scribblings of climate “scientists”. Give me a break.
Nice try –
“Also, please get a paper published in say Nature on the discovery that disproves the multitude of ocean emissivity papers and text books that have built up from Tyndall’s day ever improving the science. Konrad’s reluctance to do so indicates really not so confident the small experiments replicate the data measured from oceans.”
Firstly emissivity has nothing to do with the effect of LWIR on water temperature. Nor does absorption. The figures for this are fine. The question is the effect on the cooling rate of water below the skin evaporation layer. None of satellite observations give any insight into the effect of LWIR on the cooling rate of liquid water. This is simply being inferred by climate scientists using assumptions with no empirical evidence. The fact that you cannot find just one empirical experiment showing LWIR heating water should be telling you something.
Secondly I have previously had correspondence with the editors of Nature. That was the time I told them to stop using the “D” work when referring to sceptics. That should tell you what I think of their editorial standards. Spinning off “Nature Environment” in an effort to scrub the slime of AGW advocacy from their hands is no defence. Nature’s reputation regarding climate science is dirt and will remain so until they sack those editors and start with the grovelling apologies.
Konrad 5:14pm: “This is how the lapse rate observed in the troposphere is generated.”
Centrifuge not a relevant experiment, results are from having a gravity(r) gradient. In the atm. gravity is essentially constant for the lapse. Must test for case of constant gravity. Also test a near adiabatic atm. column in a constant gravity field which will move toward non-isothermal increasing entropy to max. and not possibly become isothermal as you claim, cite Bohren 1998 Sec. 4.4 p. 161. Adiabatic column can only become isothermal in absence of gravity. Check also the relevant Poisson eqn. for lapse T(p) .NE. constant.
Nor does absorption. The figures for this are fine.
Then you now agree with ocean emissivity measurements and now better understand why Willis’ top post Fig. 1 LWIR overlays NH and SH. Maybe Callendar’s & Willis’ work is having an effect, keep up the study you will eventually concur based on 1st principle theory & experiments in atm. nature (small n).
I do remember the plunger experiment you describe at HS science fairs demonstrating P=density*R*T, work = force x distance. That is relevant.
Trick says:
January 9, 2014 at 6:58 pm
——————————————
I say –
“..I will bite because it just gives another opportunity to show how little science AGW believers actually know”
And then you go an try this –
“Centrifuge not a relevant experiment, results are from having a gravity(r) gradient.”
Like fish in a barrel….
No, not a gravity gradient, it is the pressure gradient that results that is relevant. This can be generated by centripedal force with the centrifuge arm or by gravity acting on the real atmosphere. The method does not matter, only the pressure gradient and the circulation of gas across it.
The experiment is completely relevant. The fact that you don’t understand why it works is starting to indicate why it may be hard for you to understand that AGW is a physical impossibility.
Or perhaps it’s that you won’t understand?
It isn’t an assertion,it is a 100% observational certainty but apparently readers have difficulties putting the orbital surface rotation to the central Sun in context with the unexplained cause of the polar day/night cycle
That’s just it. It isn’t unexplained. It is completely, totally, 100% understood. We have satellites that watch it happen from space. We can measure the tiny, tiny motion of the precession of the tilt axis. You are living in a fantasy world, disconnected from the need for the hypotheses you use to explain observations to hang together as a coherent whole. You also continue to use terms that mean nothing to any human being but you, such as “orbital surface rotation”. An orbit is a linear trajectory — it is basically a 1D object confined to a 2D plain oriented in a 3D space. A surface is two dimensional. I have no idea what surface you might be referring to in the same sentence as “orbital”, and since your terminology is not standard, you cannot expect anyone to even understand the precise meaning of the phrases you have invented to try to explain this to yourself.
As a Christian, there is no more appropriate insight into those who do not work off a stable foundation while they go about constructing a house as they see fit with elaborate features
As I said, living in a fantasy world. This, too, explains a lot. You believe that the entire Universe is some sort of MMORPG, that nothing is as it seems, and that a syncretic dynamic text with thousands of authors and hundreds of thousands of distinct versions extant explains it all. Your “stable foundation” for physical science is probably the fantasy that is the Book of Genesis. You aren’t 17th century, you’re stuck in the the early iron age.
Look, all I can say is that the keyboard you are using to type your response was designed and built according to principles that contradict every single one of your beliefs. If you receive medical services at any hospital, they are delivered in a way that directly contradicts the teachings of the Bible concerning the causes of disease. If you turn on electric lights to see by, the physical laws that drive them contradict your fantasy. When you watch the stars at night, imagining that they were placed there “to mark out the seasons”, your eyes are blind to the 100’s of billions of galaxies each made of 100’s of billions of stars that are visible in the night sky with amplification, most of them so distant that the light we observe is itself over ten billion years old.
Believe whatever you like in your state of cognitive dissonance — you have clearly been brainwashed by the church as a child too young to do anything about it (like so many others) but bear in mind — nature speaks its own language. Let those with eyes that can see and ears that can hear, etc…
rgb
Konrad 6:58pm: “The experiment is completely relevant.”
Delta gravity simulation in centrifuge goes from max. at the bottom of your column to delta 0g at the center of rotation, that’s quite a delta g lapse gradient AND delta pressure gradient. In an atm. column gravity is constant for practical purposes, no g gradient only a T lapse, do you not see that? Just look it up. Results from the centrifuge test, while obeying same laws of physics, are not like an atm. column. Run your experiments without it if you can, no need to introduce a centrifuge analogy except to anti-clarify.
“Or perhaps it’s that you won’t understand?”
I understand Callendar’s 1938 paper which doesn’t depend on a centrifuge delta simulated gravity field, and that you have not proven any theoretical or experimental science in the paper to be at all faulty. This is all you need to understand and against which you have not provided any simple, cogent clarifying physics argument:
“…if any substance is added to the atmosphere which delays the transfer of low temperature radiation, without interfering with the arrival or distribution of the heat supply, some rise of temperature appears to be inevitable in those parts which are furthest from outer space.”
Like shooting fish in a barrel with the water drained out. Go ahead, knock yourself out – find physical fault with that simple statement. I’ll doubtless understand if shown based on relevant 1st principles and clarifying experiment. BTW, your LWIR and water evaporation experiment behaves to 1st principles and results obtained have no counterargument to this statement, they simply anti-clarify. Else get it published, show where Callendar’s statement and his atm. physics explanations do have a basic fault.
Gerald K says:
“…when people wake up on January 8th they are waking up to another rotation of the planet and the same will happen January 9th and every day after that but the cult member will insist that there are more rotations than there are 24 hour days.
“…the cult guys will still insist there are more rotations than 24 hour days.
“…the flaws created by the rotating celestial sphere system created in the late 17th century using time keeping averages and the calendar system in direct conflict with the 24 hour and Lat/Long system and the cult guys will still insist that there are more rotations than days.
“…Due to the consensus against the 1461 rotations in 1461 days,this group has fallen to the wrong side of that line and all the reactions are merely a disturbance to the narrow mindset common to those who find themselves in rut convictions…”
Gerald never responded to my point that Venus rotates backward [retrograde], therefore someone on Venus could not possibly experience the same number of rotations as days. The same thing happens on Earth, but to a much smaller degree.