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)
“Gases absorb energy by conduction from a surface and such absorbed energy is not available for radiation out whilst it remains absorbed.”
I think this is convection. Normally, convection includes advection and diffusion. The latter is neglibile – still air is a very fine insulator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection
There’s no conduction in the atmosphere, stop the movement of air and heat transfer reduces drastically (basically stops), except for evaporative or radiative transfers.
Max Hugoson says: @ur momisugly January 7, 2014 at 8:49 pm
Bad amatuer…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It could be worse. Listening to This could be the punishment.
Kevin Kilty says: @ur momisugly January 7, 2014 at 9:20 pm
Very interesting….
2) You have shown the correlation, but what can you do to establish causation?
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Have you read Willis’s The Thermostat Hypothesis and Further Evidence for my Thunderstorm Thermostat Hypothesis
This is the last of several essays/papers on this subject by Willis.
Willis,
I hope you will address MikeB’s comments, as they form the basis for practical infrared thermometry and photography, which in turn, is verified through contact thermometry. Specifically, what is the mechanism behind this shift in wavelength?
Scientists on both side of the debate are focused on understanding the role of cloud formation in regulating the energy budget. Unless I’m mistaken, none of these studies postulate that increased cloud formation causes a shift in the wavelength of emitted energy.
Kelvin Vaughan says:
At noon I am measuring a clear sky at -30°C, the ground is 7°C and the air temperature is of 9°C. When it is cloudy at Noon the cloud temperature is 5°C and the ground and air temperatures are 8°C, A big change in sky temperature doesn’t make a lot of difference to the ground and air temperature.
And what is the sky temperature on a clear, dry day? (Well away from direction of sun)
“Gases absorb energy by conduction from a surface and such absorbed energy is not available for radiation out whilst it remains absorbed.”
Energy is energy. Some energy absorbed by a molecule due to heat or thermal collisions will be radiated. Some energy absorbed by a molecule as radiation will be converted to thermal and not be radiated. How a gas acquires energy does not determine how that gas radiates energy.
Richard111 says:
January 8, 2014 at 12:02 am
Actually, the surface emits at all frequencies, but the relative amount in those 2 bands is insignificant when compared to the amount at 15 microns.
CO2 both absorbs and emits in the same frequency band – IR at about 15 microns. When the temperature of the air is lower than the temperature of the surface, CO2 absorbs more than it emits. When the ground is cooler, then the CO2 emits more than it absorbs. What most people miss is that the majority of the radiation is absorbed less than one foot from the surface.
Kevin Kilty says:
January 7, 2014 at 9:20 pm
“Very interesting. I’m not surprised at the result.”
Comon’ Kevin, you’re not surprised because you’ve had a good education on the subject from Willis over the years. It’s not being trumpeted by the mainstream of climate science. Basically no one in the IPCC cadre is buying into this – it kills the golden goose. Willis’s theory has caused a lot of heartburn in the “community”.
I think there is a misunderstanding in Willis’s CERES analysis. The upwelling LW channel produced by CERES is Surface IR which is confined to the window wavelength range of 8-12 μm, this range is unaffected by GHGs. The expectation is therefore that if the cloud concentration goes up backscatter to space of incoming SW will increase but backscatter of LW towards the surface and absorption of the surface LW by the water droplets in the cloud will also increase. This means that the presence of the clouds will reduce the upwelling LW at the same time as it increases reflected solar leading to the negative correlation. This effect has nothing to do with GHGs.
Just thinking aloud… Condensed water vapour can form a dispersion of sub-micron liquid droplets. which would appear invisible or very slightly misty at most. These would no longer have the GHG properties of the water vapour. They would still scatter incoming solar radiation. So although we talk about clouds, these are collections of much larger droplets and may not form unless there is appropriate seed particles for nucleation to occur. The point is that I don’t think you need actual clouds to achieve the effect that Willis describes. You just need to block or scatter the incoming SW.
Robert Clemenzi says:
January 8, 2014 at 6:22 am
Richard111 says:
January 8, 2014 at 12:02 am
My understanding is that the surface does not emit in 2.7 and 4.3 micron bands so there is no effect there.
Actually, the surface emits at all frequencies, but the relative amount in those 2 bands is insignificant when compared to the amount at 15 microns.
Please, just what energy is CO2 absorbing from the surface?
CO2 both absorbs and emits in the same frequency band – IR at about 15 microns. When the temperature of the air is lower than the temperature of the surface, CO2 absorbs more than it emits. When the ground is cooler, then the CO2 emits more than it absorbs.
Not correct because the emission by the CO2 is not immediate and is orders of magnitude slower than loss of energy by collisions to surrounding molecules when in the lower troposphere. In that region of the atmosphere CO2 always absorbs more than it emits.
What is meant by surface.
Surely it’s not skin surface. It’s not being measured. It’s not increasing.
If what is meant is surface air temperature. Highest surface temperature is
not increasing.
So that leaves higher average surface air temperature. Which is increases in
average in higher air temperature and/or less cooling of coldest/colder air temperature.
The fact that one isn’t getting highest *ever* air temperatures nor highest *ever* skin
surface indicates problem with idea surface getting warmer. Which leaves us with reduction
coldest ever coldest air/skin surface temperature and/or less cooling of average cool
temperature.
And it doesn’t seem this the argument which is being made and until make this the argument
they wasting their time. Or there is no evidence of anything else.
An increase in clouds, whatever the cause, results in blocking surface IR and increasing reflectivity. The negative correlation says nothing about the greenhouse effect.
Hi Willis,
Very nice graphics. A couple of comments:
1. High latitude regions in winter have zero upwelling short wave (24/7 darkness). The correlation between SW and LW should then fall to zero, because upwelling LW would depend only on surface temperature and the the presence/absence of clouds. Right?
2. High latitude regions with snow/ice cover during the non-winter months will have high albedo, even with a clear sky, so the SW/LW correlation again will drop, since albedo (upwelling SW) will not be as much influenced by cloud cover, while upwelling LW will be.
3. Land areas outside the polar regions will have somewhat lower correlation because the clear-sky surface albedo is greater than the clear sky ocean albedo (which is very low); once again the influence of clouds is somewhat reduced compared to most ocean areas.
“Gases absorb energy by conduction from a surface and such absorbed energy is not available for radiation out whilst it remains absorbed.”
Huh? It certainly is “available” for radiation, but that radiation (should it happen) will be in accordance with the material properties of the gas, or liquid, or solid; far more important than the Plank temperature in this context.
Pretend that we know what happens to all the incident LW, that it gets absorbed and involved in a food fight between atmospheric and surface H2O, which happens to adore it, until scraps fly back to space.
What of the SW? It’s a lot more skittish. Most (?) of it gets reflected off clouds and ice and bright land and various shiny things. Water in its various forms does not absorb it efficiently. Does anything? Dirt? The ground and metals certainly warm in the sun but is that from LW or SW?
So now the SW enters the ocean where it passes through some 100 meters but is refracted, reflected, prismaticly separated, and generally dissipated by dissolved and suspended stuff. Perhaps the oceans are the SW-LW converters?
Good work, Willis.
The phrase “removal of the seasonal signal” begs the question of what the data looks like seasonally. Would it be possible to see the correlation map for Dec-Jan, Mar-Apr, and/or June-July?
I am also concerned about the blending of all 24 hrs into one graphic. Your thermostat hypothesis operates on a time scale as short as 15 minutes. Reflected solar SW is a daylight process. Emitted Longwave is a 24 hrs, with power that veries by temperature. Integrating the fluxes over the day ought to give a good answer, but I still have the question whether we are missing something important at hourly scale. But given CERES data isn’t hourly, (only the GOES-converted data is hourly), the data may not be available.
On the diagram, I bristle at the Trenberth diagram which uses clouds as a one-way mirror on the SW ray path. LW is also affected by clouds. LW is absorbed by clouds and emitted by clouds. Clouds have a thickness and a temperature difference across the top and bottom. Maybe as viewed by the CERES instruments, integrated across the 24 hrs, it make no difference to your work.
Thanks Willis, this article is very good.
You keep on driving nails to shut down the CAWG coffin.
Your graphs show that anti-correlation is the dominating norm between incoming SW and outgoing LW. More evidence that there is at least one regulator (governor, thermostat) in our climate system. Lindzen pointed to another. Probably there are more, but we are too invested in throwing money after CO2 as a the direct control for global temperatures to let it go.
TomVonk says:
January 8, 2014 at 2:00 am
Tom, it appears you haven’t realized that those are by no means the total system diagrams, so let me be the first to inform you—there was no attempt to cover anything but the two outgoing radiation streams (LW and SW) and the incoming radiation.
So no, the diagrams are not wrong, they were never meant to show the other details.
w.
@Geoff Sherrington:
The “yellow” areas near continents are places where the respective ocean gyres puts cold water off shore. Very low evaporation. Leads to very low rainfall in the land next to them and sometimes a Mediterranean or desert climate zone. I would interpret this as saying that very cold water areas can’t make much cloud.
@Greg:
I can attest from personally jumping into it that the yellow area off of N. California is darned cold. The temps run about 45 F on a warm day… It’s the return path of polar cold water toward the equator for another round of heating and recirculation…
@gymnosperm:
The way SW is converted to LW is that a molecule has several “modes” of oscillation. Especially those with three atoms in them. A SW is absorbed, and sets the whole thing wobbling and spinning and even the ends bouncing in and out. Some of those modes have lower energy levels than the original SW. They can emit a LW photon of that sized energy package.
Also note that an atom or molecule could absorb a SW and be unable to emit LW (say, being a He atom) and yet it could whack into an Ozone or CO2 or H2O and transfer some of the energy to that other molecule, which could then emit a LW photon to dump that part.
It is more rare, but also possible for two LW photons to be absorbed, then one SW photon emitted.
Greg says:
January 8, 2014 at 2:15 am
The colors are set in the file “CERES Functions.R”. It’s not part of the map library, it’s set by statements like:
Chop and change as you wish …
w.
Willis, As always I’m glued to your dissertations. As a long retired military forecaster I have a direct question for you. To keep my hand in this I’ve purchased one of Anthonys touted Davis Instruments, a fairly sophisticated one. I measure incoming shortwave radiation everyday. Here in New Zealand it’s fascinating to watch how it changes with not only higher relative humidity (downward), high cirrus (downward) and general cloud cover (downward). Should you graph the values they go up and down like a yo-yo. My question concerns the values. On a low humidity day and cloudless sky, readings of 1500 w/m2 are common; much higher than what you indicate and many texts indicate. Why the discrepancy?
richard verney says:
January 8, 2014 at 2:40 am
It’s just a simplistical diagram. You are right, there is scattering both on the downwards and upwards paths. Numbers quoted are therefore net numbers …
w.
It is interesting that most of the -1 areas in figure 2 are between the horse latitudes and generally follow the upper flows of the Hadley cells.
gbaikie says:
January 8, 2014 at 7:57 am
What is meant by surface.
As far as the surface IR measured by CERES it refers to the temperature of the solid/liquid surfaces of the earth, it does not refer to atmospheric emission (which doesn’t exist in this wavelength range except for ozone which is corrected for using other satellite measurements of ozone).
Rob Ricket says:
January 8, 2014 at 5:53 am
Yes, and I hope that when people ask me questions, they quote whatever they are talking about. Both of us look to be disappointed in this interchange.
Look, Rob, I run on limited time. I have a day job, I do the scientific research, I write it up, and I answer questions. Somewhere in there I sleep, but not much.
So if you, or anyone else, want to get a comment from me, then you need to quote, cite, or otherwise indicate what you are talking about. I’m not going to run off and root through MikeB’s comments, and reply to one of them, only to find out that the comment I replied to wasn’t the comment that you were referring to.
I’m doing the hard part in this game, folks, the least you can do is do your damn homework, identify whatever it is you are talking about, and cite, quote, or otherwise identify it.
w.