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.)
I cannot understand the statement that the SH receives more solar energy than the NH because the Earth’s orbit is elliptical. Suppose the SH has its summer when the Earth is closest to the Sun, then six months later the NH will have its summer when the Earth is closest to the Sun on the opposite side of the elliptical orbit. It all evens out over one orbit.
Rgbatduke wrote –
[ I wrote] So rgbatduke,you now have two day/night cycles to appreciate and two surface rotations to the central Sun account for them. Enjoy !.
Account for what, exactly? The fact that the Earth has an axial tilt? The fact that the axial tilt precesses so that it is only by merest chance that Polaris is (approximately) the polar star? The period of precession?”
The polar day/night cycle and the separate orbital surface rotation is responsible for the appearance and disappearance of Arctic sea ice or did they not teach you that in academic circles.
The polar coordinates are a window into the orbital behavior of the planet as All locations turn once to the central Sun and coincident with the orbital period of the planet.
What do you think ,that a ’tilting’ Earth towards and away from the Sun causes sea ice at the poles. ! So none of you recognize the cause of the polar day/night cycle,can;t match one rotation and all the effects within a 24 hour day so you are not going to do too well when both of these motions mix together at lower latitudes and cause the seasons?
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 7, 2014 at 11:51 am
Gary Pearse says:
January 7, 2014 at 11:23 am
Hi Willis, I concur on this completely. Thanks for doing my homework for me, sorry for wasting your time.
I look at these guys try to model climate using computers the way these old guys tried to model planetary dynamics using timekeeping averages and they spawned you guys who conjure causes and effects out of thin air without any discipline or responsibility.
I see, so the who argument has been a metaphor from the beginning! Well, that explains a lot. The “old guys” who did things like establish right ascension and declination as a universal coordinate systems, measured angles precisely enough to map out the distances to the nearest stars using pure parallax, and so on are clearly just like guys trying to model climate using computers, and I guess I have to come clean and admit that I was “spawned” by an unholy union of a dead astronomer and a modern climate modeller and am a cause and effect conjurer. Look, nothing up my sleeve, presto-chango and out we pull a thin dime which I drop to demonstrate gravitation, there it goes they fall for it every time. For another two bits, folks, I will demonstrate electrostatic forces in the most — ahem — “undisciplined” manner, if you know what I mean (aside — have you ever seen the way two bits of charged drier lint cling to one another, I mean come on guys, get a room) and I am definitely not responsible for the actions of the strong nuclear force and confess that even I have a hard time pulling that one out of thin air.
Perhaps you could leave behind the metaphor and get concrete. Now that we’ve established that there is nothing whatsoever relevant about any of your comments so far and climate, do you, in fact, have anything relevant to say about any specific aspect of climate science, or is “thin air” all we get there as well?
rgb
Steven Mosher says:
January 7, 2014 at 8:18 am
“Longwave is easy. The longwave passes through a medium called the atmosphere. That longwave is reflected back to the surface, absorbed and scattered. Over time of course it all eventually exits the atmosphere at the ERL. the effective radiating level.”
———————————————————————————
The ERL argument is static atmosphere nonsense. The gases in our atmosphere move and their temperature, and thereby IR emission, fluctuates dramatically with this movement, especially for rising moist air masses. Gases in the troposphere are emitting LWIR as they rise, translate and descend. There are emission peaks on ascent after dew point and on decent during adiabatic compression. “ERL” is a mathematical fiction solely designed to keep the two shell radiative model of the atmosphere alive.
But the two shell radiative model of the atmosphere was a mistake when it was first proposed and still junk science when it was reanimated in 1938. The “basic physics” of the “settled science” rely on the mis-application of SB equations to fluid bodies in a gravity field. That would be both the ocean and the atmosphere. The role of radiative gases in radiative energy loss at altitude, buoyancy loss and subsidence of air masses cannot be simply parametrised in a radiative two shell model. It doesn’t work.
When Callendar tried to re-animate AGW in 1938, Sir George Simpson had this to say –
“but he would like to mention a few points which Mr. Callendar might wish to reconsider. In the first place he
thought it was not sufficiently realised by non-meteorologists who came for the first time to help the Society in its study, that it was impossible to solve the problem of the temperature distribution in the atmosphere by working out the radiation. The atmosphere was not in a state of radiative equilibrium, and it also received heat by transfer from one part to another. In the second place, one had to remember that the temperature distribution in the atmosphere was determined almost entirely by the movement of the air up and down. This forced the atmosphere into a temperature distribution which was quite out of balance with the radiation. One could not, therefore, calculate the effect of changing any one factor in the atmosphere, and he felt that the actual numerical results which Mr. Callendar had obtained could not be used to give a definite indication of the order of magnitude of the effect.”
Sir George Simpson’s words are as true today as when he wrote them in 1938 and the “basic physics” of the “settled science” relies on ignoring them.
Which bit of “it was impossible to solve the problem of the temperature distribution in the atmosphere by working out the radiation.” is not clear? “ERL” games are no use, you would need CFD, and GCMs don’t have the vertical resolution for this.
The situation is in fact even more complex than Sir George Simpson envisaged. Radiative gases play a critical role in tropospheric convective circulation, the speed of which alters with their concentration. And strong vertical tropospheric convective circulation across the pressure gradient of the atmosphere is what generates the observed lapse rate. No radiative gases and the Hadley, Ferrel and Polar cells stall and the atmosphere would trend isothermal, with its average temperature far hotter than present.
For AGW propagandists there is no way out. The critical flaw in the hypothesis was identified in 1938 and no amount of “ERL” games can cover up the mistake, and no amount of handwaving or snowstorming will make Sir George Simpson’s wise words disappear. Yes, there were a flurry of radiative-convective models after 1990, but this sorry band-aid to save AGW is useless in the age of the Internet. The claims of Doooooom! were made well before these models existed. The history cannot be re-written.
Steven, the “ERL” argument is pseudo science. You cannot use SB equations alone to solve for the temperature profile of mobile fluids in a gravity field.
rgb,
Here is a really cool orrery. You can set it to a Copernican or a Tychonean view, and the date of your choice, etc.
The polar day/night cycle and the separate orbital surface rotation is responsible for the appearance and disappearance of Arctic sea ice or did they not teach you that in academic circles.
I have no idea what you are talking about at all, so I guess they failed to teach me that in academic circles. Let’s just take it for granted that I completely understand the motion of the tipped earth around the sun — because I do — and hence whatever you mean by polar day/night cycle, I probably understand it as well or better than you do. Now what exactly is the “separate orbital surface rotation” as I’ve never heard of anything of the sort. Indeed, I can’t even identify which surface you might be talking about, which orbit you might be talking about, or which rotation you might be talking about. Since I have no idea what you are talking about, I obviously fail to see how it is responsible for the appearance and disappearance of Arctic sea ice. I always thought it was just the usual axial tilt of the Earth relative to the direction of incident sunlight producing the NH/SH seasons, sort of like it is described in astronomy textbooks and so on. You know, the kind of trivial geometry built in to every general circulation model on the planet so that this is the least of the physics they include.
But I’m sure that you can explain separate orbital surface rotations and it will all make sense.
rgb
London247 says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:15 pm
“Whether by design or accident the Earth is a wonderfully self-regulating system”.
Or, inevitability. Think of it like, say, a pile of rocks stacked up. Initially, you have stones falling down as wind, rain, and what have you disturb the pile. But, over time, the loose stones become situated so that it is more and more difficult to dislodge them. Eventually, you have a very stable pile, and few if any rock slides.
Any system left to its own tends to pile up against its fundamental constraints, in a configuration from which it becomes progressively more difficult to perturb it.
Here is a really cool orrery. You can se it to a Copernican or a Tychonean view, and the date of your choice, etc.
Very cool. And with it, one can even count synodical vs sidereal days. Although the cornell picture makes such a count pretty superfluous.
rgb
At a glance, this topic has become distressingly controversial, but I feel obliged to give my 2 cents.
The comment on the south getting more insolation than the north due to eccentricity caught my eye. That’s what I expected, but when I did the numerical integration some time ago it turned out to be false, to my surprise. Some more careful maths confirmed it.
The south is further away from the sun in winter and closer in summer. Between the geometry and the varying orbital speed, the effects cancel, and the hemispheres get exactly identical total energy from insolation over a year.
Rgbatduke wrote
“There are not 1461 rotations fitting inside 4 orbital circumferences, because the year is not exactly 365.25 days long. ”
To the nearest rotation there are 1461 rotations in 4 orbital circuits by virtue that the time the Earth returns to the same orbital position using the first appearance of Sirius far enough to one side of the Sun to be seen there are 1461 day/night cycles corresponding to 1461 rotations.
You just don’t realize that the astronomical event which comes into play after 4 orbital cycles of 365 days is that Sirius will skip an appearance which is made up by an extra day’s rotation in tandem with the distance it moves to that part of its orbital circuit where Sirius is seen once more. Some climate researchers you all are !.
You show me a website where the apparent daily motion of a star against the foreground Sun is meant to serve your conclusion that the Earth turns one more time than there are days in a year !
http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/sidereal.htm
If you can’t put the ancient observation into dynamical form then sorry but it is not an accident that you are lost when you can’t mesh the daily temperature fluctuations within a 24 hour period with one rotation of the planet nor explain sea ice formation from the orbital surface rotation. –
“on account of the precession of the rising of the Siriusby one day in the course of 4 years,.. therefore it shall be, that the year of 360 days and the 5 days added to their end, so one day be from this day after every 4 years added to the 5 epagomenae before the New Year, whereby all men shall learn, that what was a little defective in the order as regards the seasons and the year, as also the opinions which are contained in the rules of the learned on the heavenly orbits, are now corrected and improved” Canopus Decree, Egypt
Konrad says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:39 pm
Thank you for a very thought-provoking post.
Some climate researchers you all are !.
Oh, by the way, I’m not. I’m a humble physicist. Climate is at most a hobby at the moment. Teaching (and learning!) are more my current professions. I’d be happy to teach you a thing or two, if you were capable of learning. But I doubt that you are. I’m even pleased to be taught by you, if you have anything meaningful to teach, but I have to warn you that senseless assertions are not convincing. You’ll have to get both concrete and specific, and possibly even mathematically precise to make much progress there.
rgb
Rgbatduke
Let me get this straight – you have the daily day/night cycle, which you won’t accept, is due to the daily surface rotation of the planet and you are asking me about the orbital surface rotation which causes the polar ice to form as those latitudes swing around in a circle to the central Sun and experience 6 months of darkness followed by 6 months of daylight .
No need to hold anyone’s hand, the imaging is there to confirm that Uranus both turns South to North in its daily cycle and East to West orbital surface rotation which takes over 8 decades to complete –
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1999/11/video/b/
If this website has a component concerned with sea ice then I suggest contributors start to look at the dynamic behind its seasonal formation.
If this website has a component concerned with sea ice then I suggest contributors start to look at the dynamic behind its seasonal formation.
Do you seriously think that one single person on this list doesn’t understand the connection between axial tilt and the seasons? Wow, dude, you are seriously self-deluded.
rgb
Br’er rgbatduke – I suggest you leave it be. Thanks db for that really cool orrery.
The trends seem remarkably flat despite the 6.9% annual variation in solar irradiance due to the Earth’s elliptical orbit about the sun. Is there an obvious explanation I’m missing ?
The near-constancy and hemispheric symmetry of both TOA LW emissions and planetary Bond albedo has been a working hypothesis in geophysics long before the advent of CERES data. In the presence of multiple heat-transfer mechanisms from surface to the atmosphere, it is a straightforward consequence of the efficacy of entropy maximization in robustly homogenizing air temperatures well aloft. Thus, despite the large differences in peak TSI at perihelion and aphelion, hemispheric land-mass, etc., the annual average planetary emissions remain nearly constant. The sooner that people on both sides of the climate debate realize that empirical fact–which flies in the face of commonly experienced near-surface variations–the less empty speculation and outright quackery will arise in trying to understand the planetary system.
Rgbatduke
I haven’t met a follower of the Flamsteed/Newton agenda who actually cared to revisit what they tried to do with the Equatorial coordinate system and Sir Isaac’s use of absolute/relative time,space and motion as a distortion of the antecedent astronomical discoveries.
Even Newton’s use of the difference in the variations between natural noon cycles and the average 24 hour cycles known as the Equation of Time is rewritten to mean something different by the early 20th century –
“Absolute time, in astronomy, is distinguished from relative, by the equation or correlation of the vulgar time. For the natural days are truly unequal, though they are commonly considered as equal and used for a measure of time,astronomers correct this inequality for their more accurate deducing of the celestial motions….. The necessity of which equation, for determining the times of a phænomenon, is evinced as well from the experiments of the pendulum clock, as by eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter.” Newton
The original astronomical principle was explained by Huygens –
.and that those days, reckon’d from noon to noon, are of different lenghts; as is known to all that are vers’d in Astronomy. Now between the longest and the shortest of those days, a day may be taken of such a length, as 365 such days, 5. hours &c. (the same numbers as before) make up, or are equall to that revolution: And this is call’d the Equal or Mean day, according to which the Watches are to be set;”Christian Huygens
Newton was doing what most of you did here today by handling precise astronomical terms in the most casual of ways so that even though his statement refers to the fact that there is no external reference for the 24 hour day and the rotation of the Earth insofar as the ‘average’ 24 hour day serves the purpose of assuming ‘constant’ rotation through 360 degrees,that meaning was lost through the adoption of Flamsteed’s Equatorial Coordinate System.Only Mach came close without really knowing it –
“This absolute time can be measured by comparison with no motion; it has therefore neither a practical nor a scientific value; and no one is justified in saying that he knows aught about it. It is an idle metaphysical conception.” Mach, Analyse der Empfindungen, 6th ed.
Even with an interested individual who really want to know what happened,it would take the best part of a year to explain why you can’t use the Equatorial coordinate system to prove the Earth’s motions and why a rotating celestial sphere system is homocentric and a really obnoxious foundation to consider planetary motions and solar system structure.
Humble physicist !,you have every reason to be humble.
Rgbatduke wrote
“Do you seriously think that one single person on this list doesn’t understand the connection between axial tilt and the seasons? Wow, dude, you are seriously self-deluded.”
You need a surface rotation to explain the daily day/night cycle so you need another one to explain the 6 month day/6 month darkness polar cycle plus the sea ice that forms at the poles due to that surface rotation.
If you can’t appreciate the separate day/night cycles and their separate dynamical causes then fine but ‘axial tilt and the seasons’ is no longer an answer.
That’s all very well, but how many rotations does the Earth do in 4 years? Does anyone know?
Gary Hladik says:
January 7, 2014 at 2:28 pm
[Reply: WUWT does not ban commenters for having different opinions, even if everyone else disagrees. If they start violating site Policy, that’s different. ~ mod.]
Fair enough. But what if they are way off the topic or at least have not demonstrated the remotest connection with the topic under discussion?
Well not sure if Gerald Kelleher is a real person, but if he is, he is pretty stubborn and kind of stuck somewhere between 1650 and 1900. I think I have distilled his argument to three things:
1. I am happy to note that I am not the only one who finds his belief that a very trivial item creates the seasons basically he is saying the seasons are caused by the difference between solar time and sidereal time.
2. Or His insistence that the earth is not rotating on an axis but instead is rotating on two axis and this is demonstrated by how the light dark changes over time, and creates the polar climate.
3. Or His insistence that the earth is flat as far as receiving energy from the sun goes.
So Gerald is this an accurate summation of what you have been saying because I would like you to say yes so I can tear your arguments to tiny tiny pieces. I am asking this also because you refuse to actually make an argument and describe with some kind of scientific system (say calculus, physics or even math) how you are right and say someone like Willis is wrong, even though he backs up his ideas with actual math, code and data for anyone to use, and double check his work. So far all you have published here on WUWT is what my English professor used to call bafflegab!
Konrad. The ERL is pretty simple. It’s the height at which the system radiates to space. The height of the ERL is determined by the concentration of GHGs above it.
Konrad:
Thanks for taking the time and finding the reference to Simpson’s historical remarks regarding the gross inadequacy of purely radiative determinations of earthly temperatures via the S-B equation. For years I’ve been trying to alert WUWT readers to the pitfalls of such simplistic radiative algebra and to the dominant role of moist convection in transferring heat to the atmosphere. Such pointers often fall flat upon those whose comprehension of geophysical processes consists of regurgitating Wikipedia without ever digesting the rigorous treatment given by John Dutton’s classic “The Ceaseless Wind.” (The Dover reprint, BTW, retitles it “Dynamics of Atmospheric Motion.”) They prefer the library of graphic web-links maitained by the apostles of AGW.