Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The CERES dataset contains three main parts—downwelling solar radiation, upwelling solar radiation, and upwelling longwave radiation. With the exception of leap-year variations, the solar dataset does not change from year to year over a few decades at least. It is fixed by unchanging physical laws.
The upwelling longwave radiation and the reflected solar radiation, on the other hand, are under no such restrictions. This gives us the opportunity to see distinguish between my hypothesis that the system responds in such a way as to counteract changes in forcing, and the consensus view that the system responds to changes in forcing by changing the surface temperature.
In the consensus view, the system works as follows. At equilibrium, what is emitted by the earth has to equal the incoming radiation, 340 watts per metre squared (W/m2). Of this, about 100 W/m2 are reflected solar shortwave radiation (which I’ll call “SW” for “shortwave”), and 240 W/m2 of which are upwelling longwave (thermal infrared) radiation (which I’ll call “LW”).
In the consensus view, the system works as follows. When the GHGs increase, the TOA upwelling longwave (LW) radiation decreases because more LW is absorbed. In response, the entire system warms until the longwave gets back to its previous value, 240 W/m2. That plus the 100 W/m2 of reflected solar shortwave radiation (SR) equals the incoming 340 W/m2, and so the equilibrium is restored.
In my view, on the other hand, the system works as follows. When the GHGs increase, the TOA upwelling longwave radiation decreases because more is absorbed. In response, the albedo increases proportionately, increases the SR. This counteracts the decrease in upwelling LW, and leaves the surface temperature unchanged. This is a great simplification, but sufficient for this discussion. Figure 1 shows the difference between the two views, my view and the consensus view.
Figure 1. What happens as a result of increased absorption of longwave (LW) by greenhouse gases (GHGs), in the consensus view and in my view. “SW” is reflected solar (shortwave) radiation, LW is upwelling longwave radiation, and “surface” is upwelling longwave radiation from the surface.
So what should we expect to find if we look at a map of the correlation (gridcell by gridcell) between SW and LW? Will the correlation be generally negative, as my view suggests, a situation where when the SW goes up the LW goes down?
Or will it be positive, both going either up or down at the same time? Or will the two be somewhat disconnected from each other, with low correlation in either direction, as is suggested by the consensus view? I ask because I was surprised by what I found.
The figure below shows the answer to the question regarding the correlation of the SW and the LW …
Figure 2. Correlation of the month-by-month gridcell values of reflected solar shortwave radiation, and thermal longwave radiation. The dark blue line outlines areas with strong negative correlation (more negative than – 0.5). These are areas where an increase in one kind of upwelling radiation is counteracted by a proportionate decrease in the other kind of upwelling radiation.
How about that? There are only a few tiny areas where the correlation is positive. Everywhere else the correlation is negative, and over much of the tropics and the northern hemisphere the correlation is more negative than – 0.5.
Note that in much of the critical tropical regions, increases in LW are strongly counteracted by decreases in SW, and vice versa.
Let me repeat an earlier comment and graphic in this regard. The amounts of reflected solar (100 W/m2) and upwelling longwave (240 W/m2) are quite different. Despite that, however, the variations in SW and LW are quite similar, both globally and in each hemisphere individually.
Figure 3. Variations in the global monthly area-weighted averages of LW and SW after the removal of the seasonal signal.
This close correspondence in the size of the response supports the idea that the two are reacting to each other.
Anyhow, that’s today’s news from CERES … the longwave and the reflected shortwave is strongly negatively correlated, and averages -0.65 globally. This strongly supports my theory that the earth has a strong active thermoregulation system which functions in part by adjusting the albedo (through the regulation of daily tropical cloud onset time) to maintain the earth within a narrow (± 0.3°C over the 20th century) temperature range.
w.
As with my last post, the code for this post is available as a separate file, which calls on both the associated files (data and functions). The code for this post itself only contains a grand total of seven lines …
Data (in R format, 220 megabytes)
Willis, Nick, Phil, Greg and others: Outgoing SWR + Outgoing LWR does NOT have to equal incoming SWR on a monthly time scale! We know that changes of 0.1 degC in any one month are commonly observed in surface and satellite temperature data. These monthly changes are the result of a large energy imbalances from month to month that tends to average out over a year. The average heat capacity of the air plus a 50 m mixed layer is 157,000 kJ/m2/degK, so an 0.1 degC change in one month requires 15,700 kJ/m2. 1 W/m2 is 2630 W/m2. Therefore an energy imbalance of about 6 W/m2 is driving the average monthly fluctuation in temperature anomaly. The monthly anomalies Willis shows in Figure 3 are about 1 W/m2. Outgoing SWR and LWR anomalies this small are mathematically free to VARY INDEPENDENTLY on a monthly time scale when the average monthly imbalance is this large.
When we work with temperature anomalies, we tend to forget that larger changes are happening to the planet. Due to the asymmetric distribution of land, the planet’s surface temperature as a whole warms 3-4 degC every year. This is partially balanced by the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit which changes incoming SWR and – along with albedo – outgoing SWR. The radiation anomalies we use are what is leftover when two much larger numbers are subtracted. See linked paper on seasonal changes in my earlier comment.
The negative correlation Willis has found does shows that changes in LWR and SWR do tend to compensate on a monthly time scale – the “thermostat” IS working in the right direction. The negative correlation doesn’t tell us how EFFECTIVELY it compensates. On the average, a 1 W/m2 increase in LWR could be associated with an 0.2, 0.5, 1, or even 2 W/m2 drop in SWR and we could observe the same amount of negative correlation in each case.
rgbatduke says:
January 9, 2014 at 7:02 am
Second — and remember, we’re still asserting completely random clouds here — LWIR doesn’t come just from the ground.
The CERES product that Willis is using is as far as I’m aware Surface Upwelling Longwave Radiation (rlus) so this correlation is only with that component. Any effect of the clouds on the upwelling SW as asserted by Willis I would expect to have the opposite effect on surface LW and hence a negative correlation. More clouds means more upwelling SW and therefore less downwelling SW at the surface which implies less upwelling LW. That upwelling LW must then encounter those same clouds as discussed above there will be scattering and absorption which will further reduce the upwelling LW (if the rlus is indeed at the earth’s surface this won’t be a factor, but it will be important for the TOA statistic). So I would expect a negative correlation between these quantities which has nothing to do with GHGs.
Let’s assume that there are three components to the LWIR — one is direct ground radiation (clear sky). One is indirect radiation from greenhouse gases at a band of heights approaching the top of the troposphere and is temperature suppressed. The third is from the random clouds, which block the ground radiation and replace it with more weakly temperature suppressed broadband radiation from an intermediate height (but which also represent a substantial amount of latent heat carried aloft).
Sorry the last para should have been indicated as being from rgbatduke.
to continue, we don’t have a, b, and d (or c) = a – b. We have a + eps and d + del = d*, where eps and del are the measurement errors and other random variability independent of the mechanisms we are studying. So consider a weight loss program with a poor scale. Sam starts with a weight of 165, but weighs in at 163; Sam finishes with a weight of 164, but weighs out at 167. The estimated weight change (+4) does not even have the same sign as the true weight change (-1). Across a large number of samples where the measurement error in a and b is large compared to the true difference a – b, the measured difference d* is positively correlated with a + eps and negatively correlated with b + del, no matter what the true relationship of a and b are to each other or to anything else.
That is the possibility that Nick Stokes drew attention to that Willis Eschenbach’s analysis has not ruled out. This does not mean that Willis’ conclusion is false, it means that Willis’ conclusion is unsupported by the analysis and evidence he presented. What is needed is an estimate of d whose random variation is independent of the random variation of a and b.
Bill Illis says:
January 9, 2014 at 4:06 am
I say we either use the Ceres data or we get rid of all the people and the funding used in operating the instruments.
Whenever someone (Willis in this case) finds something particularly insightful with climate data or climate monitoring devices/systems, the pro-AGW’ers pile in and say you can’t use that particular system. A long series of mostly incoherent posts continue until that person loses faith in their newfound insight.
Meanwhile clime science goes on wasting millions of dollars per year continuing to operate the systems (that the pro-AGW’ers say we can’t use). And then the pro-AGW’ers continue on writing papers using the same data from the same systems.
This data presented by Willis is particularly insightful. It answers a huge question with respect to the theory. What do clouds do (or total SW reflectance which is more comprehensive than clouds by themselves anyway) when there is warming.
The feedback is negative and the data says it is a large negative. Opposite to the theory.
Bill is spot on – as usual. This thread has descended into accountancy, several here seem to have missed their true vocation in life.
The time to do thermal accountancy of climate is when we have total knowledge, even approximately, of all the heat ins and outs. When this time arrives the earth’s albedo will change again with the sky black with flying pigs. (/sarc – this means that time will never come.)
In the meantime, what you do is use some intelligence, look for trends, patterns and correlations. That’s if you’re a real climate scientist honestly seeking answers. But if you’re just an accountant please bugger off.
Leave maths to real mathematicians. They understand that it has nothing to do with the real world.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 8, 2014 at 1:55 pm
“I suspected that this mostly reflected the seasonal changes rather than what happens in a month where it is warmer or cooler than average. So I removed the seasonality from the signal.”
So you have removed the main signal for everywhere apart from the tropics.
Willis:
“Since you gave airborne dust as an example of just such a “critical factor”, I was merely saying that no, airborne dust was not in any way critical. As the volcanoes have demonstrated, airborne dust does little to the global temperature.”
While pointing out what is “not [sic!] the critical factor,” I actually did NOT specify any such for “global temperature.” From the exemplary values presented for insolation reduction typically experienced in the field, I would have thought that it was obvious that a) these are local (not global) and measured (not climatic) values and that b) the effect of dust commonly encountered in deserts pales in significance relative to that of far-more-ubiquitous clouds. Apparently it’s not all that obvious to everybody.
Konrad:
You claim that what I wrote is “Only 29% correct. Downwelling LWIR has no real effect over the oceans. Incident LWIR can neither heat nor slow the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporatively cool.” But what I wrote is: “retard the radiative [sic!] cooling.” That statement is 100% correct, irrespective of any evaporative cooling. While the latter is indeed the PRINCIPAL mechanism of heat transfer from ocean to atmosphere and is largely sustained by back-radiation, the radiative transfer from the ocean surface is retarded nevertheless!
So I looked at your figure 1; all three panels, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. So
I looked again; in fact I looked again three times, and no there is NO mistake.
There’s not a jot of long wave radiation coming down from the atmosphere, or the clouds.
I thought that was how the greenhouse effect was supposed to cook the planet.
What gives ??
“””””……Phil. says:
January 9, 2014 at 9:25 am
Greg says:
January 9, 2014 at 6:59 am
If you had originally said “half of the light incident on the cloud will be scattered”, I’m sure it would have been understood perfectly and would have effectively corrected whoever it was that said a cloud absorbed all incident IR.
And as I pointed out above half of that would be backscattered under certain circumstances and so be downward LWIR. This is independent of any blackbody radiation emitted from the droplets which is another component of LWIR…….””””””
The optics of a spherical rain drop is well understood for drops approaching precipitable size. Even highly collimated beams become large angle refracted, inside the drop, so just a few droplets in series is enough to essentially render the flux isotropic. But that is mostly an effect in the visible range (of sunlight).
For the surface emitted LWIR, in the 5-50 micron range, the absortion coefficient of water is very high; between 1,000 and 8,000 cm^-1 (highest at 3 microns).
So I would expect that all but the smallest water droplets, are nearly totally absorbing of upward LWIR radiation. This would also imply, that they are quite efficient thermal radiators, with high emissivity at LW.
So I would agree with Phil, that he clouds basically absorb, and then radiate thermal IR spectra, and be quite isotropic at that.
1sky1 says:
January 9, 2014 at 4:35 pm
—————————————
Actually downwelling LWIR has no effect on the surface temperature of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool. All it does is cause temporarily increased evaporation that offsets any temperature gain by IR photons absorbed in the skin evaporation layer. LWIR only penetrates about 10 microns into this layer. Not all molecules in water have the same energy state and the absorbed photons simply trip some water molecules into phase change slightly sooner than the otherwise would. Because LWIR does not effect the surface temperature of liquid water it does not change the rate of outgoing LWIR from the waters surface.
The experiment to prove that LWIR can neither heat nor slow the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool is simple to build and run –
http://i42.tinypic.com/2h6rsoz.jpg
Simply start with 40C water under both strong and weak LWIR sources and record the cooling rate of each sample. There is no measurable difference. Now repeat the experiment with a thin film of LDPE floated onto each water sample surface. This prevents evaporative cooling but allows conductive and radiative cooling. Now the samples cool at different rates.
You can even use the set up to test other materials. Try warm sand. The sample under the strong LWIR source cools slower.
Just this one little experiment shows how flawed the “basic physics” of the “settled science” is.
Every single AGW model that shows LWIR slowing the cooling of the “surface” without distinction between land (29%) and ocean (71%) is wrong. Totally and utterly wrong.
When challenged no AGW believer on this blog, Jo Nova or Climate Etc. has ever been able to give an example of a simple experiment like this showing LWIR heating or slowing the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool. Not one, not ever.
Funny thing that. It is easy to demonstrate LWIR having an effect on stone, metal, sand and other materials that do not evaporatively cool. No one can demonstrate this working on liquid water, but every climate model is built on the assumption that it slows the cooling rate of the oceans. Travesty Trenberth even claims that’s how his missing heat got into the oceans.
And now for the experiment that truly disproves the radiative greenhouse hypothesis –
http://i42.tinypic.com/315nbdl.jpg
This water sample has almost no ability to conductively or evaporatively cool. It is heated by SW and cooled by LW and has virtually no LW incident upon its surface. It is as if there were no atmosphere above the oceans.
My direct question to you 1sky1, will the sample –
A. Freeze
or
B. Rise toward 80C
A or B, 1sky1?
If the answer is B then AGW and it’s underlying radiative greenhouse hypothesis is disproved. Because a temperature so high would indicate that the atmosphere is cooling the ocean. And there is only one effective means of cooling the atmosphere. Radiative gases.
I just like to point out that you can address Nick’s point with a simple experiment in Excel, and Nick is right – with random values for TOT and smaller random values for SW, the two are consistently poorly correlated (in my experiment, R-squared between -0.2 and 0.2). However, SW is strongly negatively correlated with TOT-minus-SW (R-squared between -.6 and -.8) . I ran multiple trials with over 100 faux datapoints, then tried adding more datapoints – the relationship holds up well. This also works if you vary the ranges selected for TOT and SW, if you decide to make the ranges the same etc. I suggest you try it for yourself. With any data product, you obviously have to look at how it was derived.
To get a true understanding of how radiative forcing affects cloud cover and albedo, of course you would need data on lateral energy movement (sideways from one grid cell to the next), cloud cover data, etc.
Phil. says:
January 9, 2014 at 11:05 am
Thanks, Phil. I’m actually using the TOA numbers, not the surface numbers.
w.
Ulric Lyons says:
January 9, 2014 at 1:58 pm
I guess maybe you never lived in the tropics. They have seasons there as well. In any case, I showed it without removing the seasonality upthread. Take your pick.
w.
RM writes “with random values for TOT and smaller random values for SW, the two are consistently poorly correlated (in my experiment, R-squared between -0.2 and 0.2). However, SW is strongly negatively correlated with TOT-minus-SW (R-squared between -.6 and -.8) .”
OK, so to analyse why Willis was mistaken in his thinking… quite early on Nick specified that one value needed to be [reasonably consistently] larger than the other and Willis had two examples as counter arguments.
One was of coin tosses where the values flipped and one coin wasn’t producing larger values than the other (funnily enough) and the second was an example where the figures flip a little and mostly are quite similar in size. By comparison the LW vs SW is a factor of more than 2.4 difference and none of Willis’ example figures were anything like that. One was generally bigger for sure but never even a factor of 2.4 let along bigger still…
In short, I think Willis’ counter arguments were flawed and didn’t actually address the point Nick was making.
TimTheToolMan writes: “OK, so to analyse why Willis was mistaken in his thinking… quite early on Nick specified that one value needed to be [reasonably consistently] larger than the other and Willis had two examples as counter arguments.”
In the coin toss scenario, the sum of the numbers is between 0 and 2, and the “missing” (LW) value could only be a 1 or a 0. This is difficult to simulate in my excel sheet, because if you set the random interval for TOT to 0 to 2 and the interval for SW to 0 to 1, occasionally the difference (LW) will be -1, an impossibility in coin world. I haven’t found a good way to model the coin situation that doesn’t involve flipping the LW coins before running the simulation.
I will note that if there were any random error in the SW coin data (there is usually some random error in large datasets like the CERES data) then those random errors would tend to cause a negative correlation between SW and LW amounts. On any given coin toss, if SW is “over-estimated” by 1, then LW will be “under-estimated” by 1. Likewise, random variability in TOT would tend to cause a positive correlation between LW and TOT. This effect would add or detract from any real correlation between LWR and SWR.
Note a comment made earlier:
“What is needed is an estimate of d whose random variation is independent of the random variation of a and b.”
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 10, 2014 at 1:04 am
“I guess maybe you never lived in the tropics. They have seasons there as well. In any case, I showed it without removing the seasonality upthread. Take your pick.”
There isn’t much difference between the two plots over the tropical oceans. The problem is that beyond the Tropics, the anomalies will tend to cancel each other out from summer to winter, and by removing the seasonal signal, it removes the annual balance.
@Ulric Lyons at 1:58 pm to Willis 1/8 13:55
UL: So you have removed the main signal for everywhere apart from the tropics.
I wouldn’t go that far, but the signal has been confused.
I think the statistical assumpiton being violated here is Homoscedasticity
The standard deviation of the signals during A) polar winter, B) polar spring, C) polar summer and D) polar autumn are obviously very different. So normalization of the data by removing the monthly mean will result in combining a wide summer or autumn cloud with a narrow winter cloud. If homoscedasticity is violated, the correlation coefficient on the combination of normalize populations with different standard deviations is of dubious value. Whatever we see will be dominated by the the population with the larger scatter, which in this case might be the Autumn.
More is to be gained, I think, by looking at the data in individual seasons. The more I consider the dynamics, NH Autumn (Sept-Oct) may be a key month with day-night in the polar regions and freeze up begining of the Arctic Ocean.
Konrad 9:16pm: “..record the cooling rate of each sample. There is no measurable difference.”
There is a difference even if not measurable by your instrumentation; the water cooling rate slows if the source T is .LT. 40c as entropy must increase in the universe due this process even if 1st law is satisfied. The 2nd law says no real process is reversible though ideally it is ok to hold entropy unchanged (adiabatic) for learning examples.
”The experiment to prove that LWIR can neither heat nor slow the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool…”
Here you describe a reversible process so it is not real. LWIR to LH to LWIR 100% efficient. If you expand the real experiment and integrate over the ocean surface, then instruments can easily detect the slowed water surface cooling rate by LWIR from a cooler source as shown by Willis CERES data, text books and many supporting papers.
Was looking for 1sky1 to answer but this will do.
I note hedging words too…”no effect” changes to “..almost no ability…”, and “..virtually no..”. Konrad hedges showing reduced confidence; the only reason I can see Konrad doesn’t publish findings – plus they would repeal 2nd law. That would enable much enthusiasm as it constrains many perpetual motion salesmen today. They sort of died down after Clausius’ stuff was upheld. (Actually Carnot had it right too but he didn’t write it down.) If all real processes cannot go on forever, then they must stop – apology to Herb Stein.
Even Tyndall was tripped up on his small sample in the case of pure air scattering not recorded by his instruments. It happens.
Looking back ‘up-thread’ Willis, I’m surprised that you are so pleasant with all those ‘fucked up theory’ individuals whose main aim seems to be to de-rail whole the thread.
Seriously … Why do you spend your time replying to the likes of ‘Racehorse’ or ‘mono comment Mosher’? And … Does it really matter that some dick can’t work out that (s)he is talking about something that (s)he doesn’t understand and that their nonsense derails the thread by accident?
In future please only reply to direct questions about your post. I get so tired of wading through the nonsense that gets generated!
3×2 says:
January 10, 2014 at 11:11 am
3×2, the problem is that when someone comes in with some off-the-wall theory, unless you stomp on it, six other people start nodding their heads and they all write in to agree with the nutso theory, and before you know it, we got ourselves a convoy of lunatics all racing in the same direction.
In addition, I feel a responsibility to the lurkers. There’s lots of folks reading these threads. When some charmingly innumerate anonymous fellow pops up to claim that pressure alone can warm a planet with a GHG free atmosphere, the lurkers have no way to know that that nonsense has been thoroughly discussed and falsified here on this website, among other places.
So, while I’d like to ignore the lunatic fringe, they have a great attraction for folks who don’t have a strong science background. Just take a look at some of the wacky “scientific” ideas which have wide circulation around the planet.
Or take a look at what happened here. Nick “Racehorse” Stokes claimed that how we measure two things determines if they are autocorrelated. Matt Marler believed Nick’s bull, and accuses me of a “newbie mistake”.
Now, if I let that kind of rubbish go on, between them Matt and Nick will soon have everyone convinced that if I measure the weight of a man and his wife on a scale together, then measure the man’s weight separately and calculate the wife’s weight from the difference … that this will somehow magically make their weights negatively correlated with a value of -.707.
Seriously. That’s what those idiots were claiming, and there’s lots of folks out there that would be convinced.
And as a result, I try to point out what’s beyond the fringe. Like you say, it may do nothing immediately visible. But that’s no surprise, because like I said, Racehorse Stokes has never been caught actually admitting he was wrong … and he hasn’t admitted it here either, despite his stupid mistake being obvious to anyone who looks.
But that doesn’t matter to me, because I’m writing for the lurkers.
w.
PS—I respond to Mosh because I know him, and despite appearances he’s both a very smart guy, and a friend of mine. Go figure …
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 8, 2014 at 1:54 pm
Willis, I know this is not the analysis you are performing. But no analysis is legitimate if it leaves out essential phenomena. Re-radiation is so immediate that the atmosphere’s temperature has no connection with it, except as how the air temperature might slightly alter the resonant frequency of the IR “absorptive” molecules (pressure broadening).
Yeah, I’ve read the argument that between absorption and re-radiation, the GH molecule has an opportunity to share its heightened energy with all the other molecules (heating). The problem with this argument is that it also works in the other direction: GH molecules that are naturally warmer than the mean temperature will spontaneously radiate (cooling), and they will be heat-replenished by any other “hot” molecule. The result is balance. There is no radiant accumulation of heat.
The air is a pass-through, insofar as radiation is concerned. It gets heated only from contact with Earth’s surface and the resultant convection mixing. (Now, it is true that you can heat a column of air by temporary absorption of a high-energy laser beam, but that is a non-equilibrium event. And even then, the air eventually “bleaches,” or becomes transparent to the radiation once it reaches equilibrium with the radiation.)
No misunderstanding on my part. I’ve been doing this professionally over the past 40 years.
Michael J. Dunn says:
January 10, 2014 at 1:26 pm
We know the temperature at the surface. From that we know the amount of upwelling longwave radiation from the ground. We also can measure the upwelling longwave at the top of the atmosphere.
Then, using only the clear-sky data, we can subtract the TOA longwave from the surface longwave to see how much of the radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere. When we do that, as has been known since the ERBE experiments decades ago, we get something like this:
As you can see, globally the clear air absorbs an average of about 130W/m2. And as Ramanathan pointed out some years ago, what you’re looking at there is essentially a map of the location of water vapor in the air.
So I think we can agree that the atmosphere actually absorbs longwave radiation, and that water vapor is the variable regarding how much is absorbed.
Now, your argument seems to be that somehow this absorbed radiation is re-emitted instantaneously, with no net effect on the atmospheric temperature. If I understand what you are saying, you think the radiation just stops momentarily, then goes onwards to space.
And if that were the case, all the radiation leaving the ground would reach space unaltered. If that were the case, then TOA radiation would be the same as the surface radiation … but it’s not.
Or if you don’t like CERES, we can show this another way.
We know the temperature of the surface, which gives us the upwelling longwave from the surface by the Stefan-Boltzmann relationship. If we average it out 24/7 annually we get 400 W/m2 of upwelling radiation from the surface. We’ve known that for a while.
But we also know that averaged globally 24/7, the sun only provides us ~ 340 W/m2 of incoming energy, and of that about 100 W/m2 is reflected back to space. That means the average constant input energy is about 240 W/m2.
Given that we’re neither roasting nor freezing, the average output has to equal the input … and that’s 240 W/m2. If the atmosphere is a “pass-through, insofar as radiation is concerned” as you say, then the 400 W/m2 should be passing through.
And that would mean that the planet would be constantly receiving 240 W/m2 and radiating 400 W/m2 to space … sorry, we’d have frozen long ago if that were true.
So both these different methods establish that the atmosphere is not in any sense a “pass-through” for radiation.
Michael, I should warn you that here on WUWT, appeals to authority just get laughed at … particularly when, by some amazing coincidence, the claimed authority is the person who is appealing to authority.
Best regards,
w.
Konrad says:
January 9, 2014 at 9:16 pm
Konrad, what results did you get when you ran the experiment with the fans turned off?
Also, if you wish to emulate the ocean, you’ll need to emulate the night-time overturning.
Finally, I would be shocked if the only mechanism in action were the one that you propose, viz: “Not all molecules in water have the same energy state and the absorbed photons simply trip some water molecules into phase change slightly sooner than the otherwise would.” The idea that the IR would be entirely absorbed by that mechanism doesn’t pass the laugh test. Some IR must strike some low-energy water molecules and be absorbed as heat.
And in fact, this is strongly borne out by the observational data. Globally, the downwelling IR at the surface is on the order of 320 W/m2. Hang on, let me see what CERES says … CERES gives a slightly larger number, 345 W/m2.
However, we also know that the total amount of energy that goes into evaporation globally is less than a third of that, about 100 W/m2. So we know for a fact that an absolute minimum of 2/3 of the incident IR is absorbed as heat, and in all probability it is much more than that.
As a result, your claim that the IR doesn’t get absorbed by the ocean because it goes into evaporation is falsified.
Regards,
w.
Konrad:
Ocuppied full-time with geophysical research, I have neither the time nor the inclination to deconstruct contrived experiments that differ materially from in situ conditions, where diurnal cycles and (Knudsen) boundary-layer effects exert important effects upon surface heat transfer from the ocean to an LWIR-absorbent atmosphere. For present purposes, suffice it to say that in any quasi-steady state, ALL heat-transfer mechanisms are involved in various proportions (q.v., the Bowen ratio) to balance a fixed influx of energy available for thermalization. Thus when evaporation and convection, which have pronounced diurnal cycles, are at their greatest, the LW net losses are necessarily at their least. Despite the fact that back-radiation doesn’t heat the oceans, it would require a completely LW transparent atmosphere for your claim of “no effect” to be true. BTW, your surmise that the great convective cells (e.g., Hadley) would then disappear is likewise physically untenable; they are the product of latitudinal pressure-differentials, not GHGs.