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.)
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Willis: “Like I requested before … don’t go away mad.”
I fear it may be too him not to go away mad.
I repeat gerald..
“It seems you don’t have anywhere near Willis’s abilities, otherwise you would have fixed these mundane issues yourself. Time for you to do some learnin’ to catch up, it seems.”
OFF YOU GO !!!
Willis
The academic world is full of modelers like yourself who assign 1465 rotations in 1461 twenty four hour days or 4 extra phantom rotations –
” It is a fact not generally known that,owing to the difference between solar and sidereal time,the Earth rotates upon its axis once more often than there are days in the year” NASA /Harvard
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1904PA…..12..649B
This modeling cult has gotten the world into a whole heap of trouble and you want to model your way out of it but effectively it is a assertion labyrinth which buries humanity deeper in the nonsense.
It is not climate stability that is the issue but perhaps the stability of human reasoning in relation to the astronomical narrative which governs daily temperature rises and falls along with the seasonal components. When an assertion that attaches itself to the name of both Harvard and NASA comes up with an imbalance between rotations and days then that is the issue,not climate.
You may not be able to wake up to the fact that this day is another rotation of the Earth but you may now wake up each day to the fact that you and the other modelers are part of the problem fuels this race to the bottom.
Oh and Gerald, its not exactly 1461 rotations in 4 years either.
Off you go, some research for you to do.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:18 am
Gerald Kelleher says:
January 7, 2014 at 1:58 am
Oh, yeah, just a side note. The length of the apparent solar day is different every day following the “equation of time”. As a result, a sundial can be up to a quarter of an hour ahead or behind of the mean solar day.
In addition, that’s just the solar day. The sidereal day is shorter by 1/365.2425th of a day. This, of course, is the fraction of one day per year … which of course also means that in 4 annual circuits, it doesn’t make 1461 revolutions, it only makes 1460.97 revolutions.
Of course, out here in the real world, 99.999136% of the time, none of this makes any actual difference to any of us … but I just thought that since you have a basic human right to know these things, you might as well know that the human rights numbers you’re pushing so hard are … well … they’re wrong.
We don’t want to deceive the children, do we?
w.
And seriously,, WHAT have you been smoking..!!!!
I don’t want any of that , thanks !
Oh and Willis, let’s not forget the minor variations and the gradual slowing of the rotation.
These are of “GREAT IMPORT” in the scheme of things.. over the next 100 or years. 😉
Gerald Kelleher says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:30 am
I deny that allegation entirely and completely. Back it up with a quotation where I said there were 1465 rotations of the earth in four years.
You’re just making things up and putting them in my mouth. I will not stand for that. Either come up with the evidence that I said that, or retract your incorrect claim.
Or you could just continue your oafish ways and do neither one … your choice.
Be aware, however, that how you handle it when you have made a false accusation and someone calls you out on your BS and tells you to put up or shut up, well, that will reveal a lot about you as a man.
Your move …
w.
There is also a very slight wobble in the axis iirc.
Must model that because of the HUGE difference it will make.
Gerald Kelleher says:
January 7, 2014 at 12:29 am
“Snap out of it for goodness sake”
—————————————————
Just put a sock in it for goodness sake!
Out of your depth on a wet pavement doesn’t cover it.
You are a complete waste of skin and you are breathing other peoples’ air!
When I am responsible for installing a 10m death mirror (thankfully spherical not parabolic) in a public area –
http://i41.tinypic.com/2hydstl.jpg
– I do a check of the projected solar concentration –
http://i40.tinypic.com/2n8a2s2.jpg
I do not bother with searching the web for an architectural sun plot program. I simply model the planet and sun in my CAD system and place the mirror at the correct latitude, tilt the planet, spin the planet, orbit it around the sun and compute the resulting focus pattern.
On the ground accuracy? Within 100mm.
There is nothing wrong with our understanding of the pattern of earth’s rotation, axis of inclination, or elliptical orbit.
The only thing wrong here is you. You are so far out of your depth the fish have lights on their noses!
Please go away.
Greg
Of course I have answered it. The orbital position of the Earth is fixed in space by the first appearance of Siirus after a disappearance of a few months and the number of rotations it takes to return the Earth to that orbital position.It is the only time you can use a background star and the foreground Sun to anchor timekeeping in dynamics.
Within that 1461 rotations to the central Sun, the noon cycles vary in length and were averaged out to 24 hours while keeping the value fixed to the noon Sun and cycle. The brilliance of the system is that through the Lat/Long system where the ‘average’ term gets transferred to ‘constant’ rotation at a rate of 15 degrees per hour and 360 degrees in 24 hours.The idea being that ‘average’ and ‘constant’ serve the same purpose.
Of course the variations in length of the natural noon cycle are dependent on the two surface rotations to the central Sun each day where the orbital component of that rotation varies in accordance with the variations in the orbital speed of the planet.
Lately they tried to muddy the picture further by jettisoning the old ‘solar vs sidereal’ view for an equally stupid and distorted assertion which doesn’t even include the planet’s dynamics –
“At the time of the dinosaurs, Earth completed one rotation in about 23 hours,” says MacMillan, who is a member of the VLBI team at NASA Goddard. “In the year 1820, a rotation took exactly 24 hours, or 86,400 standard seconds. Since 1820, the mean solar day has increased by about 2.5 milliseconds.” NASA
A pale analogy is shifting ‘global warming’ to the intellectually suicidal ‘climate change’ to keep a corpse dancing.
The good news is that kids will not only learn how the timekeeping systems actually developed but where the system meshes and separates from planetary dynamics in order to explain why they wake up to another rotation each 24 hours. It has none of the pretension of modelers who have made a complete nuisances of themselves and fools of everyone else over the last few centuries.
AndyG55 says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:04 am
You ask “How much energy is dissipated in a large wave? Where does it go to?”.
The answer is, all of the mechanical and chemical and other forms of energy eventually end up as heat. Energy in a tree, for example, is locked in for the life of the tree … but when the tree dies, eventually it all goes back to heat. In the same way, while a raindrop is falling, it is trading potential energy for kinetic energy. But when it hits the ground, much of that energy is converted by turbulence into heat. This is a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics, which say that nothing is 100% efficient, there is always loss to heat.
Or as the old jingle has it:
As a result, if more energy is coming in than going out, the climate system will warm up.
Regards,
w.
Gerald Kelleher says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:45 am
Yeah, those modelers back in 1780, using their steam-driven analog computers built of wrought iron, those nuisances made fools of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, and well, “everyone else” over the last few centuries …
I must say, though, it’s a pleasure watching you gerbilate as you lose the plot. You’re so cute when you are backing and filling …
w.
Willis Eschenbach: “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.”
Although I’m inclined to believe those that such regulation occurs, there’s a step in your reasoning that I’m missing: I’m having trouble seeing how such regulation follows as a conclusion from the emissions data’s stability.
If surface temperature were slowly increasing because of increased CO2 and water vapor–and the temperature were not being regulated–wouldn’t the long-wave emissions from the top of the atmosphere (or at least the total radiation from there) stay the same anyway?
Willis
Just as modeling got this world into a lot of trouble there is no way to model your way out of it because modeling itself is the problem hence “academic world is full of modelers like yourself “.
The notion that daily rotation does not cause temperatures to rise and fall daily,after all,that is what the 1465 rotations in 1461 days amounts to is the only real problem and resolving it is actually an exciting ,productive and creative affair as ,among other things,people come to understand what defines global climate.
Want to see what a $17 billion dollar a year organization has to say about it –
“The Earth spins on its axis about 366 and 1/4 times each year, but there are only 365 and 1/4 days per year.” NASA
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970714.html
They have done in that statement what you have been doing,carelessly asserting something which are not backed up by basic facts.
As for ‘your move’,please don’t try to compete or stick with the hostility as I have heard it all before.It goes back to the old saying that academics are vicious because the stakes are so low and this issue is meant to appeal to those who wish a stable astronomical narrative in which to build climate research.
Actually slightly more energy must be going out than coming in, since geothermal heat is continuously being created by radioactivity. There may also be some residual heat from the early stage of planet formation, plus a little bit being liberated by tidal braking of the Earth’s rotation. In all about 0.1 wm-2.
Willis, The biosphere is expanding.
Energy must be being retained on the surface.
For the time being at least. And certainly over the period of these results.
Willis wrote –
“Yeah, those modelers back in 1780, using their steam-driven analog computers built of wrought iron, those nuisances made fools of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, and well, “everyone else” over the last few centuries ”
Only when it comes to astronomy and terrestrial sciences because when you assert something as mindnumbingly dumb as the belief that there are more rotations than days then you are doing something really wrong.
For centuries people have crumbled at the mere mention of the ‘theory of gravity’ without even knowing that Sir Isaac was building his agenda of connecting experimental sciences to planetary dynamics using the rotating celestial sphere framework which assigns the wrong number of rotations within an orbital period .By a mixture of voodoo and bluffing that not even his followers understand he conjured up modeling to an astronomical scale by distorting the greatest known astronomical insights and in this day and age it can be shown exactly that with imaging,graphics and what have you .
“That the fixed stars being at rest, the periodic times of the five primary planets, and (whether of the sun about the earth, or) of the earth about the sun, are in the sesquiplicate proportion of their mean distances from the sun.This proportion, first observed by Kepler, is now received by all
astronomers; for the periodic times are the same, and the dimensions of the orbits are the same, whether the sun revolves about the earth, or the earth about the sun.” Newton
Newton and his followers have come as close as anyone to defying Lincoln’s adage about fooling all the people all the time and it all begins with those two basic questions – how long does it take the Earth to turn once and how many times in 4 years ?.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:49 am
AndyG55 is essentially right though – but it still all comes down to an ‘energy time lag’ effect. i.e. whatever changes there are INTO the system – these may take many years/decades/or more(?) to effect a change in the actual OUTPUT of the system due to the inherent adaptability and ‘storage capacity’ of the dynamic climate system and indeed the whole biosphere itself ?
Willis
BTW,the antecedent to modeling climate with computers was modeling planetary motions using watches and timekeeping averages so yes,modeling has been a problem since John Flamsteed first tried to model the daily rotation of the Earth by using the average 24 hour day and putting the great star Sirius in stellar circumpolar motion –
“Flamsteed used the star Sirius as a timekeeper correcting the sidereal time obtained from successive transits of the star into solar time, the difference of course being due to the rotation of the Earth round the Sun. Flamsteed wrote in a letter in 1677:-
… our clocks kept so good a correspondence with the Heavens that I doubt it not but they would prove the revolutions of the Earth to be isochronical…”
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Longitude2.html
You don’t see the problem and all the other things built on that catastrophe but I assure you I did as he may as well have concluded the Earth was flat.
Gerald…
I remember Benjamin Franklin’s quote, “It is better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”…
Gerald Kelleher says:
January 7, 2014 at 12:29 am
“Snap out of it for goodness sake”
—————————————————
Just put a sock in it for goodness sake!
Out of your depth on a wet pavement doesn’t cover it.
You are a complete waste of skin and you are breathing other peoples air!
When I am responsible for installing a 10m death mirror (thankfully spherical not parabolic) in a public area –
http://i41.tinypic.com/2hydstl.jpg
– I do a check of the projected solar concentration –
http://i40.tinypic.com/2n8a2s2.jpg
I do not bother with searching the web for an architectural sun plot program. I simply model the planet and sun in my CAD system and place the mirror at the correct latitude, tilt the planet, spin the planet, orbit it around the sun and compute the resulting focus pattern.
On the ground accuracy? Within 100mm.
There is nothing wrong with our understanding of the pattern of earth’s rotation, axis of inclination, or elliptical orbit.
The only thing wrong here is you. You are so far out of your depth the fish have lights on their noses!
Please go away.
Willis,
You have found Gerald’s Petard and he has been neatly hoisted by it.
You said that “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.”
This implies ,does it not, that although the “setpoints” are similar, the processes in the hemispheres are inconstant and variable which maintain the equilibrium ?
Thanks for the mental stimulation.
Quote all you like, when the most respected organization in the world can’t understand how the 24 hour average within the 1461 rotations of the Earth it takes to cover four orbital circumferences transfers to the Lat/Long system as 15 degrees of rotation an hour and once in 24 hours then all other concerns are secondary.
“The Earth spins on its axis about 366 and 1/4 times each year, but there are only 365 and 1/4 days per year.” NASA
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970714.html
Like the opposition you have your wants and hates but what the people of the world do not have is a straightforward explanation for the development of timekeeping and where it meshes and separates from planetary dynamics.Without that you can forget climate or any of the other terrestrial sciences.
I notice there was no uproar at the NASA ‘fact’ and that says more than the hostility directed towards me.
Also Willis, erosion take a lot of energy, and the products of that erosion remain on the surface of the Earth. Not just the rock particles, but the chemicals.
Is all the work done converted back into energy.?
It takes massive amounts of energy to recreate those rocks.