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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SW out – declining by -1.0 W/m2 per century, a tiny amount but signalling either:
–> a decline in solar irradiance;
–> there is a trend from the impact of the solar cycles on this timeline or the fact the current high point of the solar cycle is 0.3 W/m2 below previous solar cycle peaks;
–> a decline in planetary Albedo, lower cloud or surface/ice or aerosols reflectance.
LW out, declining by -1.3 W/m2 per century signalling either:
–> planet is cooling off (at a trend of -0.24C per decade);
–> GHGs are doing their thing and slowing escape of LW versus the incoming solar (at the same trend of +0.24C per century or one might need to add in that less SW is also being reflected).
All in all, nothing alarming since these numbers are so small.
Can we have a WUWT reference page for anti-social blog activity? Concen trolling, irrelevant pedantry and personal abuse (disguised as “All of that poiitical persuasion are racist/sub-normal/inhuman), these are all common attacks on debate here.
But this thread is being disrupted by an “unusual” commenter.
He has not engaged with any of the points about relevance.
He has not provided any quote to back up his accusation against the original poster.
He is also talking gibberish.
This is new. I suspect an automated spambot designed to break the open censorship policies of WUWT.
But he may just be an idiot.
Konrad wrote –
“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.”
You forget the second surface rotation to the central Sun which is a 100% observation certainty –
http://londonastronomer.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/uranus_2001-2007.jpg
All locations on Earth turns once to the central Sun aside from and in addition to daily rotation and this orbital feature is responsible for apparent variations in seasonal solar declination.You didn’t know that now did you ?.
I am comfortable with the insight and don’t particularly need to be hostile to those who won’t or can’t appreciate what those images dictate.
Whatever Gerald’s on, it would be perfect to be on, if one needed to clean the house.
Look,I admire this website for its moderation policies in what is supposed to be an antidote to the agenda of exceptionally poor convictions that passes itself off as ‘climate research’. The answer is not to create an even bigger modeling labyrinth and the modelers who create a sim planet but to raise the standard of climate studies above an exceptionally low level.
If people want to engage in a tree-house mentality then so be it,this is nothing new to me but mark well that the narrowing of convictions here often serve the opposite ends to which people aim at.
[Reply: It would be helpful if you woud respond to the specific points asked of you by Willis and others. ~ mod.]
Let me guess Gerald.. English is also your third language. !??
Gerald K:
I am a little surprised that you seem to be calling NASA “the most respected organisation in the world.”
Not in my book.
Or did I pick you up wrong?
It is no kindness to the mentally ill to allow them to expose their incoherence to the point of ridicule. Mr. Kelleher will undoubtedly feel triumphant and persecuted if you cut him off, but I expect not only will he not understand how he is wrong, he likely is incapable of correct reasoning in the first place. Can we have our thread back?
And of course NASA know nothing about space.
They are waiting for you to tell them how to launch the next satellite and where to put it and how to get the timing right.
Maybe you can help them put the next person on the moon or something.
You are all fine and it is nothing I haven’t seen or heard before as it moves along a predictable path. There are politics to this however it is really the technical and historical perspectives that interest me and readers do not want to look back in history and recognize errors inherited from other generations so as to move forward with the proper principles .
All men of integrity know how to turn hostile situations to their advantage and nothing goes to loss in an endeavor to be creative and productive. What football team goes out to stop the other team scoring when its aim should be to score a few goals itself and this is the conflict of interest here. If this website is designed to prove ‘global warming/climate change’ wrong then forget it as it is wasting time and doing more harm than good.
“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
Gerald keeps harping on about this, but I don’t think at any time he has stated what is wrong with it.
Has anyone else worked out what he’s going on about?
Perhaps he needs to join the experts at “Princ*pia Sci*ntific Intern*tional” (obfuscated to avoid moderation), where I’m sure Do*g Cott*n would be pleased to discuss these issues.
“The academic world is full of modelers like yourself who assign 1465 rotations in 1461 twenty four hour days or 4 extra phantom rotations”
I’m with Harvard and NASA on that one. The sidereal rotation period is 23h56′ and there are ~366.25 of them in a year.
But on the raving loon’s other point I’m not so sure. Yes, the earth is at perihelion during the southern summer. But it’s also swinging by quicker.
Intuitively I’ll say that the angular velocity rises to the power of 1.5 but the solar radiation to the 2nd power. Any astronomers want to confirm my agreement with Will’s claim? (As off topic that minor point is, it has got me curious.)
lol.. You’re hilarious.
Got anything worthwhile to add about the actual thread topic ??
M Courtney: “But this thread is being disrupted by an “unusual” commenter.”
All those , including myself and Willis, who have replied to his inane comments are equally guilty, as are those discussing it without replying directly.
The internet if full of crap, the only way not to have threads dominated by crap is to ignore when it occurs, You will not stop it happening, just don’t feed it.
Gerald got a fair hearing when he first popped up with this idea and it got thoroughly discussed and dismissed a rubbish. End of storey . If we don’t want threads to be polluted by this sort of thing just ignore it. Totally.
For me the most relevant and interesting post here was from Edim
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/06/on-the-stability-and-symmetry-of-the-climate-system/#comment-1527516
As the atmosphere circulates from the poles to the equator the energy being received by the Earth gets mixed because air flowing away from the poles gets warmer due to increasing radiation and air flowing away from the equator gets colder due to decreased radiation.
23 hours 56 min and 4.1 sec. That’s why we have an extra day every fourth year
Willis asks:
To rescue the thread here are a list of attempts to answer so far:
• Greg Goodman says at January 7, 2014 at 12:07 am Questioning measurement error
• Edim and Greg Goodman January 7, 2014 at 1:11 am argue the mechanisms of heat capture and a heat loss are not symmetric oscillations but two different processes and that heat transport and… beyond me but it seems that transport along a meridian must occur
• AndyG55 says at January 7, 2014 at 1:46 am could it be something to do with atmospheric pressure being the regulator? (let’s be open-minded)
• Stephen Richards says at January 7, 2014 at 1:46 am basically, the two hemisphere data is so close that he is getting red flags about its believability.
• Konrad says at January 7, 2014 at 2:01 am “The atmosphere already has enough radiative gases to drive an effective vapour-condensate heat pump to space. Turn up the heat under boiling water and the water never exceeds 100C, convective circulation and evaporative cooling just speeds up. Tropospheric convective circulation is already at a speed that negates gas conduction, the adiabatic limit. Adding radiative gases to the atmosphere simply speeds up tropospheric convective circulation. After the adiabatic limit has been exceeded the cooling effect of radiative gases in our atmosphere is too small to measure.” Which I think is agreeing with Willis.
• AndyG55 says at January 7, 2014 at 2:04 am The biosphere is increasing so energy must be net entering the system
• Santa Baby says at January 7, 2014 at 2:19 am “The question is also what is the average surface temp NH and SH. And how much solar energy are they holding in the Oceans and Land?” Which appears to be questioning the measurements.
• I ask at January 7, 2014 at 2:23 am Are we sure we are right to expect the hemispheres to be independent
• Joe Born asks at January 7, 2014 at 3:02 am “wouldn’t the long-wave emissions from the top of the atmosphere (or at least the total radiation from there) stay the same anyway?”
• tty says at January 7, 2014 at 3:09 am Energy must be net leaving the atmosphere as geothermal energy is also going in.
• Kev-in-Uk says at January 7, 2014 at 3:21 am That this related to time-lags in the inputs and outputs
• AndyG55 at January 7, 2014 at 3:43 am also points out that energy is absorbed in inorganic geological processes.
Apologies if I misunderstood. I’m just trying to be pro-active in countering the disruption.
Gerald K:
I don’t believe you are a Troll in the usual sense, ie dedicated to causing havoc and derailing the conversation. However, I am having great difficulty following your arguments here. What I suspect is that you have spent a great deal of time thinking about these things, entirely on your own and without the benefit of constructive criticism. I think that Willis’s work triggered a response from you which is frankly baffling to the rest of us here, since it necessarily telescopes your thought processes into far too short a comment. There’s lots missing here which can only result in bafflement of the audience. Not to mention the tone, which doesn’t help.
I would recommend you work on developing your substantial thesis and find a way of publishing it, then elicit comments from folks who might be interested and have the expertise to review it. I don’t really think this forum is the right site for that primary interaction – does anyone else have any (constructive) ideas where Gerald might put out his stuff?
Stuart B
How are day/nighttime variations handled in CERES data / measurements?
What is the orbit of satellite carrying CERES instrument?
Willis – I don’t understand why these lines are so straight! There is a flat-line in global temperature these past 10 years or more, but that includes a major excursion downward by 0.5 C (2008) and upward by almost the same amount (2010) each over a period of a year or more from peak to trough. Since the only reasonable explanation for such swings relates to changes in cloud cover and either loss of LW or reflectance of SW for the cooling, and clearing clouds reducing reflectance for the warming, then how come this variability is absent from the data set – surely these swings would not be removed by taking out the seasonal variation? What am I missing here?
And have you come across the NASA GISS FD series of data…..they show the fluxes for Top of Atmosphere, Surface and mid-Troposphere for both LW and SW radiation…and that data shows variability with the solar cycle, and a major imbalance of about 4 watts/square metre at the surface through the decades 1980-2000…….presumed due to lower cloud cover (other data (ISCCP)showing a 4% decline of low level cloud during these decades); then that imbalance changed around 2001, with cloud cover returning by 2% and interestingly, global surface T then flatlining (the major dip in 2008 not with standing). When Hansen was boos of GISS, he publicly stated that the FD series was not reliable – but many people working on that data base thought they had a good handle on the areas of spurious reading and on what could be regarded as a good signal. I am not sure how the CERES data relates to that earlier data.
I think Gerald is a visitor from TimeCube.com, here to fill our eyes with a bunch of irrelevant crap.
There are some people who aren’t aware of the distinction between sidereal day and solar day, but I suspect that those people aren’t frequenters of this blog.
But here’s something shiny to investigate: iers.org
Gerald Kelleher says:
January 7, 2014 at 4:20 am
No Gerald, I still have no idea what your babbling means. Sounds that we don’t learn from the past? That would be wrong here because we offer many past events and opinions from which we hypophysis our solutions and opinions.
You really must try harder to put your thoughts into a more coherent and cogent argument. If you cannot please refrain from bombing the thread until you can.
There seems to be an echo in here – is that possible?
And how does CERES handle the measurement of SW day/nighttime region, where the reflected SW might be very difficult to measure? That region easily causes significant error in reflected SW measurements.
It’s like I’m stuck inside David Icke’s head.