From the “settled science” department comes this new revision of Earth’s entire radiation budget. Many WUWT readers can recall seeing this radiation budget graphic from Kenneth Trenberth in 2009:
![erb[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/erb1.jpg?quality=83)
That figure in a slightly different form also appeared in the 2007 IPCC AR4 WG1 report with different numbers:
![faq-1-1-figure-1-l[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/faq-1-1-figure-1-l1.png?quality=75)
Source: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/faq-1-1-figure-1-l.png
Note that in Trenberth’s 2009 paper, the energy from “back radiation” (from GHG action) value went up from 324 w/square meter cited by the IPCC in 2007 to 333 w/square meter. The net effect of that is increased energy back to Earth’s surface, making it warmer.
It seems odd that would increase so much, so quickly in two years. Even more surprising, is that now, the value has been revised even higher, to 340.3 w/square meter, while at the same time, the “Net Absorbed” value, that extra bit of energy that we get to keep from the sun on Earth, thanks to increased GHG action, has gone DOWN.
I know, it doesn’t make much sense, read on.
Alan Siddons writes in an email:
Reviewing NASA’s Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) program this week, I noticed a graphic depiction I hadn’t seen before, at
http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/energy_budget/pdf/Energy_Budget_Litho_10year.pdf .
It was drafted with the assistance of Kevin Trenberth and contains some notable differences from the last effort of his that I’d seen, so I’ve inserted NASA’s new values over it.
Cooler sun than before but a warmer surface. Less albedo and air absorption. Non-radiative cooling is higher than before but surface emission is higher too. “Net absorbed” refers to radiant energy going in but not yet being radiated – a ticking time bomb.
==============================================================
Note that somehow, between 2009 and the present, it was decided (presumably based on CERES measurements) that the Net Absorbed value (which is the extra energy absorbed that would result from increased GHG’s) would go DOWN from 0.9 w/square meter to 0.6w/square meter – an decrease of one third of the 2009 value.
This isn’t a typo, since many of the other numbers have changed as well.
With all the talk of the “settled science” that is certain about increases in Greenhouse gases, it seems that with such a revision, there’s still some very unsettled revisionist work afoot to get a handle on what the “real” energy budget of the Earth is. Perhaps the recent published works on climate sensitivity, coupled with observations of “the pause” have had some affect on these numbers as well. Meanwhile, according to the Mauna Loa data, CO2 concentration has risen from 388.16ppm in November 2009 when we had the big Copenhagen COP15 meeting that was supposed to change everything, to 397.31ppm in November 2013.
So with GHG’s on the increase, their effect has been reduced by a third in the NASA planetary energy budget. That’s quite remarkable.
So was Trenberth’s 2009 energy budget wrong, running too hot? It sure seems so. This is what NASA writes about that diagram:
The energy budget diagram on the front shows our best understanding of energy flows into and away from the Earth. It is based on the work of many scientists over more than 100 years, with the most recent measurements from the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES; http://ceres.larc.nasa.gov) satellite instrument providing high accuracy data of the radiation components (reflected solar and emitted infrared radiation fluxes).
This energy balance determines the climate of the Earth. Our understanding of these energy flows will continue to evolve as scientists obtain a longer and longer record using new and better instruments (http://clarreo.larc.nasa.gov).
Source: http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/energy_budget/
It seems to be a clear case of observations trumping Trenberth.
So with the retained energy (the net absorbed figure) resulting from GHG’s like CO2 dropping by one third since 2009, can we now call off some of the most alarming aspects of global warming theory?
Related posts:
CERES Satellite Data and Climate Sensitivity
==============================================================
UPDATE:
Alan Siddons writes in with some further research. Commenter John West also noted this in comments. Siddons writes:
Well, let me tell you what I found while tracking down that IPCC illustration. I did find it on an IPCC document, Regional Changes of Climate and some basic concepts , but it looked shabby there too, so I surmised that it was a careless copy-paste of somebody else’s work, not a product of the IPCC itself. On that basis I searched for “radiation budget” or “energy budget” and added the illustration’s particular figures to my search demand.
Bingo. The illustration actually came from a May 2013 American Institute of Physics paper, A new diagram of the global energy balance , by Martin Wild, et al.
Here’s a small version for your records.
Other notes by Wild, Decadal changes in surface radiative fluxes – overview and update , yield some insight into his perspective — for instance, this panel,
which seems to indicate that less sunlight creates more compensatory back-radiation but a weaker terrestrial emission, while more sunlight “unmasks” the greenhouse effect. Wild’s conclusions are also notable.
- Still considerable uncertainties in global mean radiation budget at the surface.
- Models still tend to overestimate downward solar and underestimate downward thermal radiation
- Strong decadal changes observed in both surface solar and thermal fluxes.
This last point seems to imply that changes to the Radiation Budget are not merely a result of improved measurements but reflect rather sudden changes in our thermal environment.
================================================================
This leads me to wonder, why did NASA choose the values from Wild et al as opposed to Trenberth from the National Center For Atmosphereic Research?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Joe Chang says:
January 17, 2014 at 9:19 am
Who came up with this: “No, the assumption is made that all that greenry either get eaten or rots and the energy is released as heat. They assume there is zero increase in the amount of plant or animal matter so no energy is sequestered.”
Someone who has never been on a farm…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Joe, I never said the assumption was correct….
Theo Goodwin says: @ur momisugly January 17, 2014 at 9:35 am
…..Special kudos to Gail Combs.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It just means Anthony and the commenters here are good teachers…. and I like to read. :>)
DonV: “Look very carefully at the numbers and you will see that the radiation coming off the surface of the planet is greater than the radiation entering from the sun in every single one of these models! I’m sorry, but that is pure BS! When I go outside I NEVER feel radiant heat coming off my lawn, greater than the radiant heat from the sun, (the top of my head is always hotter than the bottom of my chin, even when my lawn is covered in a foot of white reflective snow).”
Completely forgetting that snow is cold? And that not everywhere on the surface of the planet is as cool as your grassy lawn? You seem to be really focusing in on one number and not looking at where it leads and what happens to it after that. This large surface radiation number you’re talking about goes into the atmosphere and gets split up there, either remaining in the stored heat of the planet or radiating up and out. The reason the top of your head feels hotter than your chin is because this stored heat, the back radiation, is stacking on top of what’s coming from the sun, which results in a much greater number than what is coming off of the surface.
Trick says:
January 17, 2014 at 7:00 am
AlecM 6:23am: “Rayleigh scattering is lossless..”
Maybe so but only because the sky is blue as seen within the atm., this is not what I mean by scattering though. The mass of an atom or molecule will scatter or annihilate a photon of any wavelength during an encounter – this entropy increasing process doesn’t happen to the extent measurable in Tyndall style sized exp. and instrument.
This mass scattering process IS measurable in any atm. gas composition even pure air, no photon beam of any wavelength makes it thru the whole distance horizon to horizon lossless due to mass scattering; the photon beam WILL be attenuated. This makes exoplanet atm. measurement possible. Makes atm. EM radar, remote sensing signals fight through tough conditions, not lossless.
—-
I’ll be Trick, you and I seem to agree on this point. Maybe “Phil.” and Willis, and many others, may expand their understanding a bit on this topic of all thick planet atmospheres for they both seem to believes in near 100% transparency of lines outside GHGs (that by the mass of O2, N2, Argon) through our atmosphere, when really all frequencies are attenuated by about 15-20%. On the scale of a lab of a meter you can say this for it is immeasurable but at many kilometer scale what they say is not true.
I sat through a quantum statistic mechanics class and as I watched as so many terms in the partition equations being crossed out due to their rather insignificance and I thought, not at a planetary scale can’t just ignore those effects! It leaves you to believing that N2 and O2 have no role in e/m passing through atmospheres, that is 100% transparency, so I do seem to see where Willis and Phil. get their beliefs.
All matter (even gases) above 0K absorb, emit, scatter, attenuate e/m passing through such huge amounts of mass at planetary scales. Translational modes are not quantitized as rotational, vibrational and electron energy levels but they do have and existence in the insignificant and usually tossed out terms. That’s what I took away from that class although i was homing onto what the professor was tossing out on the blackboard!
“Broken down to its basics the heat budget is simple:
Sun ==> Surface ==> Atmosphere ==> Back out to space
There isn’t any Surface => Atmosphere => Surface loop.”
An assertion defeated instantly by the existence of weather.
Adding to my previous post. These “energy budgets” completely ignore the change in entropy on the planet. Question: Is the planet increasing or decreasing in entropy? It would seem that: Since the planet’s human population is increasing; Since the human food-animal populations have to be increasing to support the human population’s consumption; Since the human food-plant coverage and productivity has had to increase to support human population growth and food consumption; Since villages, towns, cities and megacities have all grown and converted vast amounts of raw materials into buildings, and cars and appliances etc.; and Since the planet has been measured to be “greening” . . . . . Surely this means that the net entropy is decreasing, ie. we are gradually progressing to a state of greater order. But maybe not? . . . .
So where on this energy budget is there accounting for the energy from the sun that has gone into decreasing (or increasing?) the global net entropy?
NASA’s latest diagram http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/images/Erb/components2.gif correctly shows no re-radiation down to the Earth.
NASA’s latest diagram http://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/images/Erb/components2.gif correctly shows no re-radiation down to the Earth from Greenhouse gases. After CO2 is excited by a photon in its absorption spectrum, it immediately transfers that energy as heat into the well-mixed gases before it has time to re-radiate. Thus energy absorption by the GHGs is just another way, like convection and conduction and latent heat, for land heat to become air heat.
Climate science likes it cartoons. Even CO2 absorbing a photon is cartooned up.
Cartoons are for laughing at; not for changing the entire world energy generation system on.
There’s no trends in cartoons. There is no time. There is no speed of light. There is no quantum mechanics. There is no daytime, nighttime. etc.
Michael Moon 8:48am: “The atmosphere does not heat the Earth’s surface, as the atmosphere is cooler than the Earth’s surface virtually everywhere and always. And, more importantly, the atmosphere does not heat itself.”
Right Michael – as the atm. uses up no energy reservoir as does the sun. Close inspection of the cartoons in top post and reading their source papers from Trenberth 1997, 2009, Loeb 2008, Stephens 2012 you will notice each of the authors also agree with you. Atm. radiative energy amount transfer to the surface control volume (cv) is shown in each and every cartoon less than surface radiative transfer amount into the cv.
Meaning the atm. radiation is emitted from cooler object on avg. than the surface as you point out and the science agrees. The discussion provides this meaning and supports the cartoons .
“Apparently Trenberth and his ilk are ignorant of the Second Law.”
Not as demonstrated in their papers, where they, obviously by inspection, observe 2nd law as shown in their cartoons and discussion which all agree with 2nd law in that the atm. radiation is always shown less than Earth surface radiation. T lapse starts at surface Tmean and declines with z increase as shown in the relevant Poisson eqn. at least up to where convection ceases b/c the fluid becomes heated from above at the tropopause.
They forgot to add an arrow for flow into the ‘deep oceans’.
Those pics look like the sort of thing one would expect to find in a school textbook, not in a cutting-edge research paper.
Joe Chang 8:35am: “…curious as to why the energy balance diagram does not show photosynthesis?”
If you look at the top post top cartoon note the 80 evapo-transpiration. The amount transpiration is in part from flora (plants), as fauna (animals) and humans also have transpiration processes this is a more general term. Discussed in the papers if you want to look up the details.
Note the NASA diagram uses LH (change of state), an even more general term.
I did not want to read through the Trenberth paper, but a word search for “photosynthesis” is negative, nor is there anything in the references that would appear to indicate such a topic. So is a key assumption in the “Missing Heat” theory that there is no photosynthesis sequestration? Is there actually evidence for this? or are the “peer-reviewed” research also missing?
@ur momisugly Steve Case
That religoious dogma, rather the very jewel in the crown of climate denial, for which a certain Joseph Postma has made himself very fameous, can be quite easily falsified in a very simple expereiment.
Take, and mount a common incandescent lamp to a precise, stab power giving the nominal voltage for the lamp and measure the current by a quite precise instrument.
Then pack and cower the lamp with aluminium foil.
The current will slightly drop.
Then give us the true and very simple explaination for why the current does drop a bit, and it will kill your very argument, your religious postulate from your scriptures.
The experiment was carried out and shown under the famous article “Slaying the slayers 2” on WUWT last spring, where you will find it.
===============00
It does warm you to take on a pullover and an anurak in the cold, you see.
But there are blind believers to the scriptures here, who even deny that, due to a very fameous religious dogma in the denial scriptures from recent years.
But truth is that if you take on a pullover and an anurak in cold weather, you do not have to run so fast and / or lift so much iron or heavy stones and burn so many caloroies to keep warm, you see. Your grand aunt was probably right on that point.
And this is true experience for many many people. Simply because that pullover does warm you and that Anurac protects it from being cooled by the winds.
But what warms up that pullover? There is no elecrical heat in it.
Michael D 10:38am: The genesis of the diagram you link AFAIK was for a 2002 on-line class NASA put together for high school students in which, after explaining the Trenberth 1997 stuff, they asked the students in a pop quiz: “What is missing from this diagram?” I have lost the cite, have to research it (google et. al.) on your own.
The NASA answer back then was the radiation from the atmospheric gas is not shown only the net is shown. That particular diagram has been picked up and used for way more than its apparent original construction.
Gail Combs says, January 17, 2014 at 3:36 am:
“AlecM says: @ur momisugly January 17, 2014 at 2:46 am
….So, there can be no ‘back radiation’ and no ‘slowing down’ of cooling….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
First. Can a CO2 molecule absorb a packet of energy at a certain wavelength? – Yes.
Does it re-emit that packet of energy? – yes.
Can that packet of energy come from the sun?- YES! This is a bad illustration but it gets the point across. link I much prefer this graph since it gives a better picture of relative ‘strength’ of the energies at different wavelengths.”
There is a definite point in considering the frequency of incoming radiation rather than its intensity when determining its effect. All ‘back radiation’ proponents seem to ignore the former and focus only on the latter. 300 W/m^2 of atmospheric flux is just as intense as 300 W/m^2 of solar flux. So in their Stefan-Boltzmann world, these two fluxes must be regarded as equals. Hence, they can freely be added together as one.
But the radiation (electromagnetic energy) making up the 300 W/m^2 of solar flux has a much, much higher mean frequency than the 300 W/m^2 of atmospheric flux. It is capable of ‘doing things’ that the atmospheric radiation cannot. Their effect on the surface they hit will be vastly different.
The GHE proponents invariably appeal to the ‘principle of energy conservation’ (T1). They claim that 300 W/m^2 down from the atmosphere to the surface of the Earth can’t just disappear. It must go somewhere. It must somehow heat the surface. Adding to its internal energy. What else would it do? Where would it go?
But this is a statement on the ‘effect’ of the energy being conserved, not on its conservation itself.
The ‘principle of energy conservation’ does not make ANY claims whatsoever on what ‘effect’ the energy conserved must have or on what ‘form’ it must take. Only the ‘back radiation’ defenders do that.
The second law of thermodynamics (T2) clearly and unequivocally states that there can be no energy transfer from cold to hot making the hot hotter. Because an energy transfer making the absorber hotter (an ‘effect’) is per definition HEAT (or work).
T1 cannot and does not dispute this.
Here’s an excerpt describing the difference between ‘intensity’ and ‘frequency’ and why it matters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon#Historical_development):
“In 1865, James Clerk Maxwell’s prediction that light was an electromagnetic wave — which was confirmed experimentally in 1888 by Heinrich Hertz’s detection of radio waves — seemed to be the final blow to particle models of light.
The Maxwell wave theory, however, does not account for all properties of light. The Maxwell theory predicts that the energy of a light wave depends only on its intensity, not on its frequency; nevertheless, several independent types of experiments show that the energy imparted by light to atoms depends only on the light’s frequency, not on its intensity. For example, some chemical reactions are provoked only by light of frequency higher than a certain threshold; light of frequency lower than the threshold, no matter how intense, does not initiate the reaction. Similarly, electrons can be ejected from a metal plate by shining light of sufficiently high frequency on it (the photoelectric effect); the energy of the ejected electron is related only to the light’s frequency, not to its intensity.“
(My emphasis)
Joe Chang 11:02am: “I did not want to read through the Trenberth paper, but a word search for “photosynthesis” is negative, nor is there anything in the references that would appear to indicate such a topic.”
A quick read of TFK09 shows the transpiration data in the cartoon relies in part on research published J. of Hydrometeor. by Qian et. al. 2006. I cannot do all your reading work, you really do need to read the research and cites to find your answers. I’m able give a hint or two.
nomad,
If only our CO2 obsessed bretheren actually practiced what you mention. Instead, they chase weather events and declare each one, no matter heat or cold, wet or dry, calm or storm, as *proof* of the holy grail of climate. But to your main point: It is not simply averaging out the so-called noise. I would subm it that cie pack, desert, open grass, forest, open ocean and other surface conditions that influence how sunlight interacts with Gaia is not “noise”.
“So with the retained energy (the net absorbed figure) resulting from GHG’s like CO2 dropping by one third since 2009, can we now call off some of the most alarming aspects of global warming theory?”
No because the global warming scam was always about stealing money, never science, and there’s too much stolen money at stake for the recipients to quit.
Looks like serious Tren[d]be[a]rth[ing] with ‘Wild’ fudging of numbers beyond all hope of sanity.
Another bad day for Tren[d]. Ha ha
“Note that in Trenberth’s 2009 paper, the energy from “back radiation” (from GHG action) value went up from 324 w/square meter cited by the IPCC in 2007 to 333 w/square meter. The net effect of that is increased energy back to Earth’s surface, making it warmer.”
“Trick,”
I thought I was quite clear why this could not happen? Which part confused you?
Carbomontanus says, January 17, 2014 at 11:03 am:
“But what warms up that pullover? There is no elecrical heat in it.”
Ever heard of temperature gradients, Carbomantanus? Of convective heat transfer?
E. A. Bartholomew says at 9:54:
“Completely forgetting that snow is cold? And that not everywhere on the surface of the planet is as cool as your grassy lawn? You seem to be really focusing in on one number and not looking at where it leads and what happens to it after that. This large surface radiation number you’re talking about goes into the atmosphere and gets split up there, either remaining in the stored heat of the planet or radiating up and out.”
Wrong. I was forgetting no such thing.
My first point had to do with the fact that this “budget” focused on “radiative transfer” only as though that was the predominant (exclusive?) method by which energy transfer occurs in the atmosphere. So, I was trying to imagine what “radiative” surface on land would present the very best, and very worst surfaces to radiatively transfer or reflect solar insolation at its peak and at its valley. The highest “reflective surface” I could imagine, other than a solar array of mirrors, was very white reflective snow ie the highest albedo. The highest radiating “hot surface” I could imagine was the one I experience in college working on a tarmac paving crew, or as a kid on the hot sandy Sahara desert. During the day the peak solar insolation is 3 to 4 times the “average” shown in the chart, and during the night the radiative transfer drops to zero from the sun. On none of those occasions, even at night, have I felt heat excessively “radiating” from those surfaces – I have felt the warm air convect off of those surfaces; I have seen water evaporate and felt the humidity convect off of those surfaces; and I have stepped on and felt the conductive burn from those surfaces . . . . my point was, within the first 10 m from the surface of almost all naturally occurring out-in-the-open materials on earth, any “radiated” energy is very quickly absorbed by a “working” atmospheric fluid. I’m sure that if I had an imaging IR camera, I could “see” the heat radiating off of a high emissivity building or paved surface just as long as I was only looking through the “transparent IR window”, but from about 100 meters away I suspect the image would be so smeared, if I were looking through water’s IR bands, as to be indestinguishable from the air around me. IMHO, in order of importance the working fluids in our atmosphere are (based on concentration, broad band extinction coefficient, heat capacity and emissivity) water vapor (radiative and conduction by contact), nitrogen (conduction by contact), oxygen (conduction by contact), water liquid (conduction contact if on surface, radiative), and at a very narrow wavelength around 15 um CO2 (conduction by contact and radiative) . CO2’s contribution is significantly reduce (I have seen some estimates of up to 80 X less) because of its significantly lower concentration, and the fact that it’s radiative only contribution is pretty much already maxed out at the only wavelenth it participates in.
My second point emphasized the “averaging” issue and TIME problem. This graphic attempts to create an overall “black box” scenario for the various energies going into and out of various other collective “black boxes” on the earth. The problem as I see it is that there is a variable that is orthoganal to this graphic (TIME) that, if you were to visualize the same graphic instantaneously, and follow it like a movie, you would see a completely different picture than what this graphic is trying to paint. You would see an absolutely HUGE daily oscillation that nearly always balanced to zero on any given day. You would see even bigger annual oscillations, and decadal and century. You would see widely different oscillations based on WHERE on the earth you drew your black box to attemtp to do your energy budget graphic. And if you were truely honest about the resolution and certainty of the numbers you were entering into the “movie” you would realize that mathematically “averaging” the noisy data gives you a statistical mirage of what is actually there. You have to include the uncertainty +/- error to show that the new “average” value holds no meaning. Adding up errors increases the uncertainty by the square root of the sum of the squares of each contributing measurements errors. At least that is what I have always been taught.
This energy diagram will always be wrong while it doesn’t take into account the different wave frequencies affect on matter. It is 340.3 W/m2 of nothing if the matter in contact with it is not penetrated..
Michael Moon 11:43am: ”…up from 324… to 333…I thought I was quite clear why this could not happen? Which part confused you?”
The part where Michael Moon moved from 5 yr.s in mid-80’s ERBE data 324 to March 2000 to May 2004 CERES data 333. 1st law and measured data means surface control volume Tmean got very slightly increased temperature from sun using up H over the two decades period in balanced steady state response from atm. composition emissivity changes, natural chaos and observed data in part from better instrumental data and improved science very well discussed in the papers if Michael would only read them. I know the pre-req.s to effectively read them are difficult but gotta’ achieve them or rely on others.
I remain astonished so many interested will not bother doing their required homework. There can’t be that many dogs and cats to eat it all.