Quote of the week: a howler from the World Meteorological Organization – what warming?

Between 1990 and 2013 there was a 34% increase in radiative forcing because of greenhouse gases…
How is that possible? Water vapor is the primary ‘greenhouse’ gas and I don’t think it’s atmospheric concentration changed much. And CO2 levels only increased about 10%.
So where does the 34% number come from?

I comprehend Mr. Stokes comment — but if an increase in a forcing is NOT producing an increase in temperature, then somewhere exists a cooling effect that is balancing the forcing such that the “net” is mostly unchanging. It’s not just that the heat is hiding in oceans, something must be exerting a cooling effect, and it may well be the very same CO2 at high altitude whose increased abundance means more radiation into space.
Or something like that. I’ll let the scientists figure it out BUT the claim was global WARMING, not global FORCING.

Janice at 9:22 – Last day of skiing was last week, so yes, lots of good skiing this year – record snowfall in some places. Now we hold our breath and wait for the meltwater.

nc says…..Did they differentiate between natural and anthropogenic c02 levels? That always seems to be left out.
They sure do!!! Them cow farts are a bunch of BS. My question is….how much do THEY produce putting out this garbage? Never seen an answer to that either. Anthony?

Real Climate Science would at least note the increase in plant food!

“Oh, bullshit, you left out this part: “the warming effect on our climate – over the decade 2002-2012″. Nick Go obfuscate the truth someplace else. Now I’m SURE you are a paid troll. – Anthony”
You mean like how he in a previous posting quoted Dr Roy Spencer to imply skeptics were cherry picking. Then when I followed his link, I noticed he left out the part of Dr Roy Spencer’s text that directly contradicted him. And when I pointed this out and included the full (relevant) text, Nick didn’t admit to the error but obfuscated further in a rather sleazy way. When you go down that path it stops being an honest mistake and starts being blatant lying.

David says:
How is that possible? Water vapor is the primary ‘greenhouse’ gas and I don’t think it’s atmospheric concentration changed much. And CO2 levels only increased about 10%.
So where does the 34% number come from?
And remember, the formulas the warmists use to convert the increase in CO2 concentration into radiative forcing are logarithmic. So the radiative forcing increases much slower than the CO2 concentration.

“Time is running out”, “Urgent”, “Wake up call”
Offer ends on monday

They are desperate to drum up fear. They must be in a near state of panic that it isn’t happening. Our fear, that is. Oh, and the warming. And the gravy-train slowing to a halt. And – for some at least – their plan for world domination spiraling down the drain. I’ve never known a bunch to sooo want worldwide destruction and unrest.
How loud and how crazy are they going to get, do you reckon?

Once again its worth remembering that ‘value’ of the message is not in its fact, but in the impact it has despite the facts . To be fair the one area where climate ‘science’ is a leading force is the ‘science by press release’ one .Which given it does not required, good data , honesty nor good scientific pratice is ideal for the norms and standards of this area.

That graph shows cooling. They must have blinkers on, big time. But we knew that, silly me.

Janice Moore says:
May 26, 2014 at 9:42 pm
Janice, you left out the real balance…
Native Source of CO2 – 150 (96%) gigatons/yr
Human CO2 – 5 (4%) gtons/yr
Native Sinks Approximately* Balance Native Sources
Native sinks don’t balance native sources, native sinks were always larger than native sources over the past 50+ years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
where 1 ppmv = 2.13 GtC.
Thus the net contribution of native sources and sinks is negative over the past 50 years.
Human emissions are now over 9 GtC/year and still increasing while the increase in the atmosphere is following with 50-55% of human emissions. The huge variability in rate of change (in fact uptake) of CO2 is caused by the huge variability in year-by-year temperature, but the trend is not caused by temperature. It is caused by the human emissions.
The alternative theories like these of Salby fail one or more observations and thus are proven wrong.

It seems that the scientific method is dead. We have a hypothesis that CO2 causes warming on the planet earth. So mother earth runs an experiment for us. We have a great increase in CO2 while at the same time we have no warming or even cooling on the planet — that according to the cheaters “adjusting” the data upwards. In the old days, we would say that we have a falsification of the hypothesis. But in these modern times of “climate science” (post-modern anti-science to me) we have faith in warming even when it gets colder.
This WUWT post is just one more data point among all the others.
(note: CO2 always follows warming in the distant past which should have told us all something as well)

[NOTE: I recommend to readers that you do NOT click the link above, the free hosted website he uses pops up all sorts of parasitic nastiness, and won’t let you back out of it. You have to close the browser – Anth–]
FWIW:
I opened it in a new tab and had absolutely no problem. Firefox on max recure browsing, no cookies and with addblock active, as I always browse. (The only sensible way?)

REPLY: Oh, bullshit, you left out this part: “the warming effect on our climate – over the decade 2002-2012″. Nick Go obfuscate the truth someplace else. Now I’m SURE you are a paid troll. – Anthony
Sadly, although Nick and Mosher are intelligent people they have been indoctrinated by the money and the fame.

William Astley says:
May 27, 2014 at 2:07 am
William, Salby (and others) make the fundamental mistake to assume that the year-by-year variability in CO2 increase rate (in fact the variability in natural sink rate) and the longer term trend both are caused by the same mechanism.
That is proven wrong: the short term variability is the direct effect of temperature changes on (land) vegetation, while the long term increase is not caused by temperature: vegetation in general grows harder (and over a larger area) with higher temperatures and more CO2. Thus is not the cause of the increase in the atmosphere. For the short term:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
which shows that the short term influence of temperature gives more CO2 but less δ13C, which is the case if less CO2 is taken away by vegetation and/or more vegetation decayed.
For the long term: the uptake of CO2 by the biosphere increased over time:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Oceans are not the cause of the increase in the atmosphere either: any substantial increase of CO2 emissions or throughput from the oceans would increase the δ13C level in the atmosphere, but all we see is a firm decrease…

Was it not some Swiss fella called Bert Onestone who said “A scientific consensus can be undone by a single fact!” So far the theory is at the “throw through window!” stage.

This annoys me for all kinds of reasons, but the lack of intellectual and general integrity actually begins right in the first paragraph of the release.
The fact that CO2 concentrations have passed 400ppm is of absolutely NO “scientific significance” and it does not reinforce anything at all, any more than 399ppm or 398ppm or 400.7ppm or, in due course, 406ppm.
“400” ppm is only interesting if you are the PR executive tasked with spinning the message, and your aim is to create a press release that falsely gives the impression of some threshold having been passed, and the preservation of your own integrity isn’t really an issue…

A) Gawds, does anyone think that perhaps we can leave Nick (and for that matter, Mosher) alone and cease the pointless ad hom? Nick is well educated, generally polite, and has a point of view. Some of his contributions and corrections on list are topical and dead on the money — he’s corrected me on several occasions because I was wrong and if anything I appreciate that. Right or wrong transcend point of view. I’m hoping that in return, I might have made him at least think hard about the correctness of some of his statements. We don’t always agree, but we don’t always disagree either, and he is clearly not incompetent a la the Slayer contingent.
B) Curiously, everybody including Nick seems to be missing the real point of this rather incredible statement. Forget the bit about “causing warming” in an era of neutral to falling temperatures — what they “meant” is obvious enough within the prevailing worldview of missing heat going into oceans or being cancelled by soot or aerosols or the screening of solar radiation by dark matter. The concession that this statement makes is worth the price of the gaffe.
The WMO, ex officio just publicly stated, backed by data, that during the indicated decade, water vapor feedback was at most a paltry 15%.
There, see it now? Let’s do the math:
Nominal direct CO_2 driven warming at 600 ppm is supposedly a sloppy 1 to 1.5 C (some 0.5C of which we have supposedly already realized, as this is relative to the baseline/arbitrary “starting concentration/temperature” at 300 ppm).
Feedback from all other sources is 15% of this. That is, the WMO has just publicly acknowledged that — using the larger of the figures for CO_2 driven warming — we have 1.15 degrees Centigrade of warming to fear as CO_2 goes from the current 400 ppm to a presumed 600 ppm by 2100.
Wow. That’s worth a misstatement about “warming”, isn’t it? And note well, they are in fact hoist on their own petard of they attempt to retract or explain the statement. If they say that there has been only 15% feedback because there has been no warming and indeed a bit of actual cooling, they have to explain why there is any feedback at all when temperatures are neutral to cooling. They also have to explain how temperatures remain neutral to cooling when CO_2 forcing has increased by X, water vapor feedback has inexplicably increased along with it in spite of and along with general cooling! They are caught in a double whammy of inconsistency, giving the kiss of death to the prevailing paradigm of strong positive feedback leading to a total climate sensitivity over 2 C.
In a way, this isn’t surprising; it is only jumping out a little bit ahead of where many current papers are going. Total climate sensitivity is in free fall and will remain that way unless/until the climate resumes aggressive warming, increasingly constrained by Bayesian reasoning that recomputes posterior probabilities given data. At the moment the extreme warmist position is trying hard to hold onto 2.3 C TCS, which would likely be only “weakly” catastrophic in agreement with the majority of the beliefs of climate scientists (who, when polled by George Mason some years ago indicated that they thought that there would be non-catastrophic warming by 2100).
Hell, it’s in agreement with my own POV — I think that there will “probably” be non-catastrophic warming by 2100, although my beliefs are not very strong at the moment because I’m studying the (quantum) details of the greenhouse effect in my copious free time and am not impressed with the quantitative aspects of the argument even before feedback is taken into account. Pressure broadening, for example, appears to be a negative feedback in the early (circa 50’s) treatments of the GHE, because it increases absorptivity in the wings, and the atmosphere (at lower pressure) overhead is transparent in the wings, so that increasing ground level pressure should actually increase cooling by basically squeezing the heat out around the edges of the opaque overhead layers. Also, pressure broadening as a heating or cooling modulation of the GHE appears to be a huge, dominant contribution to the dynamic process — air pressure varies by as much as 5%, with 1% variations possible over hours. Clear sunny high pressure weather centers should actually cool faster both because of generally lower humidity and because the leakage from the wings is substantially augmented, minimizing the effect of direct insolation, but of course cloudy low pressure centers with increased GH trapping from both water vapor and a drawback of the wings and consequent increase in opacity is balanced by the formation of high-albedo clouds, which are an even stronger negative feedback everywhere but the poles. Only in the intermediate zone of medium to low pressure and high humidity (but no clouds) is augmentation of warming likely.
Of course, I’m still working on the quantitative aspects of this — the papers I am reading sadly tend to lack numbers if they are on climate science (probably because they always treat whole bands and we cannot explicitly compute the absorptivity of the atmosphere by the bands of any species, we can only do an approximate computation that is little better than an estimation. Interestingly, pressure broadening is very important to the telecommunications industry, though, and they have papers out there with explicit numbers of the modulation of atmospheric opacity in the microwave spectrum right next to the LWIR, that suggest that this effect is very important indeed. Since they are interested in what happens to comparatively sharp lines (carrier frequencies) their work is of greater use and the computations are a bit more sensible.

CO2 non est quid erat.

Ferdberple:
May 27, 2014 at 7:02 am
can we leave Nick alone?
————————————————————————————
If one suspects an adversary is lying, usually there is a better answer found in their incompetence. Such is the nature of things.

Consider this: Those of us old enough to remember Geology in the 1970’s may also recall Imbrie’s assertions that the Earth was trying to go back into a glacial period, and it was only CO2 that was keeping us from doing that. So maybe it really is getting warmer, and just enough to keep us from getting colder. Neat, eh?
Then if the CO2 reductions really work, we should soon see a vast wall of ice looming on the Norther horizon.
Just in case you did not pick up on it at University, the Pleistocene ice ages really sucked.

ferdberple says:
May 27, 2014 at 7:12 am
I have no direct information about which model does what, but have used a simple EBM model (energy balance model) which can be manipulated by giving different effect factors to different forcings. You can halve the sensitivity for CO2 if you reduce the sensitivity for human aerosols, which anyway is overblown and in both cases you can fit the past century, but the result in the 21st century is better with a low sensitivity for CO2/aerosols. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/oxford.html
I need to update the graphs beyond 2000, but here what happens for the two sensitivities if you plot them to the year 2100:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/oxford_2100.jpg

milodonharlani – Nice we’re on the same page. Only 7 billion people to go. With half of them of below average intelligence we have our work cut out for us.

Given that CO2 absorbs only at certain wavelengths and the amount of energy available at those wave lengths is finite, how much solar energy is available to be absorbed by additional atmospheric CO2? Isn’t the absorbed-energy-vs-CO2-concentration curve getting pretty flat?

Why do these people just blatantly lie to us ??
They keep on saying that CO2 is the most important GHG put into the atmosphere by human burning of fossil fuels.
Nonsense.
There is more H2O released into the atmosphere by burning hydrocarbons, than there is CO2.
If we were burning benzene, C6H6; which we are not the CO2 / H2O ratio would be 2:1.
But aromatic hydrocarbons, are all strongly suppressed in getting fuels out of crude oil, for example; because they are carcinogens.
Saturate carbon chain type molecules are close to 1:1, with more water, and with methane, as in natural gas, you get a 1:2 CO2 / H2O ratio.
When we exhale, we exhale comparable amounts of water and CO2.
I did a calculation , on our new entirely unprecedented (in human history) 400 ppm record breaking milestone. for CO2 in the atmosphere..
Whoop de do, a round number we can enjoy; that’s one CO2 molecule in 2500 air molecules.
So air is (1) CO2 + (25) Ar + (500) O2 + (1974) N2 molecules per 2500.
So if we take one stere of STP air, that is 1,000 litres of air; which contains 1,000 / 22.4 mols of air, or 44.643 mols of air.
So this is 44.643 x 6.023 E+23 air molecules, or 2.68884 E+25 air molecules.
So a sample of 2500 air molecules would be about 9.3 E-23 steres.
Cube root of that gives me 45.3 nm for the side of a cube of air with 2500 molecules in it.
Now just remember that the semiconductor industry passed the 50 nm critical dimension point in their chip technology a long time ago. I can’t recall if they are at 25 nm yet, or not, but that would be around 300 molecules of air.
So I have 1974 + 500 + 25 + 1 molecules in my 45 nm sample. I shaved it a bit so as to leave the CO2 molecule out of it; just outside my sample. (but still there).
No I don’t have any kind of microscope that I can see my sample with, but Mother Gaia; my super Maxwell’s demon, sure does, and she can see 2499 molecules dancing around crashing into each other at thermal energies. 2499 is a big enough number to declare that my sample has a recognizable Temperature; with a roughly Maxwell-Boltzmann kinetic energy distribution, and an equi-partition energy of about (3/2)kT Joules per molecule. Well maybe the N2 and O2 molecules need about (5/2)kT energy, if you give them two rotating dumbbell moments of inertia. IANACh, so this is all Alchemy to me. But it is something like that.
And since this is PCh, my alchemybrew sample does NOT radiate any electro-magnetic radiation, and certainly not in the LWIR region.
Well those rotating dumbells maybe broadcast at microwave frequencies. I think Dr. Roy and Prof Christy tune to that station.
Every once in a while, that absent CO2 molecule gets kicked into the field of view, and MG gets a shot in the eye, of 15 micron LWIR photons; but for most of the time, her entire field of view, really has no photons coming from it, from my air sample. The CO2, out of the field of view, is of course singing like a canary, at 15 microns, but that isotropic broadcast never gets into MG’s microscope with its narrow depth of field “macro” lens.
So compared to the one CO2 molecule, my air sample is huge, and is emitting no LWIR EM radiation; nor is it absorbing any.
Well, we non Ch’s know full well, that those quiet molecules, in collision, do in fact have an off and on radiative antenna, that is active during those interminably long times, it takes for the molecules to crash into each other, and then get out of each other’s way. Those collision induced radiative antennas really do emit LWIR EM radiation, but it is in a broad continuum thermal spectrum, peaking at about 10 microns wavelength; but relatively weak on a per molecule basis.
So if you view the atmosphere as a large collection of samples of 2500 air molecules, each having just one CO2 molecule just outside it, you can appreciate that most of the atmosphere is quite transparent to LWIR radiation, and only a small part is causing all of the ruckus.
Of course, I played the same trick, that the Ch’s do, and decreed, that my air samples are of dry air, because as we know, H2O is not a permanent part of the atmosphere, but just comes and goes .
One important concept to grasp.
The CO2 in absentia, is absorbing and emitting narrow line spectra EM radiant energy.
What my MG is looking at in her microscope, is 100% ……””””” HEAT ENERGY “”””…..consisting entirely of the mechanical kinetic energy of colliding molecules. Essentially NO electro-magnetic processes are involved (well apart from the collision debris which Ch’s don’t admit to.)
[ IANACh = ?? And a Ch = ?? .mod]

I called Bulls**t on the 30% increase in Co2 (or 34% depending on which propaganda dept. referred to) and was attacked for it. See this thread;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/22/unsettled-science-new-study-challenges-the-consensus-on-co2-regulation-modeled-co2-projections-exaggerated/
Yet here we are on this thread all agreeing that it is Bulls**t.

@ David Ball, “34% increase in radiative forcing” stated in the beginning of article uses what as a baseline? How was the 85% of global warming calculated? I am no mathematician, but something about calculating and quantifying %of radiative forcing attributed to CO2 increases just feels fuzzy. I am also thinking that through the month’s now reading articles and comments here I see evolution of thought largely due to sharing of vast amounts of information which often makes my head spin. I think you forced a valid question in the other thread (sorry I am new to both this site and my new computer, cut and pasting challenged here) which as I remember it, defining how much an increase is 300ppm to 400ppm CO2 in the atmosphere? I kinda would like to know that one….curious

@David Ball and Theodore.. You both answered my query! I just could [not] see CO2 increasing in the atmosphere by 33.3 % when the metric measuring is 300ppm to 400pmm. Thank you David! And my unwritten thought was exactly about how Radiative Forcing was calculated relative to increased CO2 measured in ppm?? Thank you Theodore!

“””””…..Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 27, 2014 at 4:05 pm
george e. smith says:
May 27, 2014 at 1:58 pm
George, while a lot of water is formed from fossil fuels (and cooling towers, including nuclear), that is not important: the average decay rate of any excess water vapor is only a few days. For CO2 it is ~50 years. …..”””””
Well Ferdinand, I deliberately left out the water, and other polar molecules to point out that a lot of the atmosphere is quite transparent to the CO2 molecular spectral lines. And your 70 km of air, consists of a large number of 45 nm samples, each of which has a CO2 molecule just outside it. The total scale doesn’t matter.
And NO, I am not one of those “how can 400 ppm of anything have an effect?” people. I never deny the CO2 or other GHG influences. But I’m glad you mentioned that “excess water” in the atmosphere can decay quickly.
Just how much water vapor is “excess”, Ferdinand ??
You just explained how rapid variations in the water vapor quickly counteract the much slower changes in CO 2
In a nutshell one can simply say that the range of Temperatures and other climate conditions, that earth enjoys, and has enjoyed for eons, are simply a consequence of the various properties of the H2O molecule. Notable among those properties, is the roughly 104 degree angle of the H2O molecule. Life wouldn’t exist without it.
And your 50 year lifetime of CO2 excess is nonsense.
Every year the atmospheric CO2 “excess” at the north pole and surrounds, drops 18-20 ppm in just five months, due to the natural removal processes. At that rate, of decline, the claimed 120 ppm excess over the “pre-industrial” comfort value, is all removed in 25 months, about two years. So following an exponential decay, 99 % of the excess would be gone in 125 months; ten years and five months; not 50 years..
If our oceans were methyl alcohol, instead of water, the earth’s comfort range would be different. I have no idea whether life could evolve in such a Goldilocks state; or what sort of life it might become.
The statisticians can masticate their R values all they like; but unless they can change the water molecule angle to some value different from 104 degrees, they won’t ever change earth’s comfort range.

Didn’t they invent radiative forcing because they didn’t know what actualy caused the warming?
So the forcing of the models has risen 34% to keep the temperatures even? or something?

george e. smith says:
May 27, 2014 at 7:51 pm
And your 70 km of air, consists of a large number of 45 nm samples, each of which has a CO2 molecule just outside it. The total scale doesn’t matter.
Sorry, but the scale does matter: the CO2 molecules are not lined up against each other, but randomly distributed together with the 45 nm samples. Thus the probablility of a 15 nm IR wave to hit a CO2 molecule is very high near ground, but less and less with reducing air density.
Just how much water vapor is “excess”
Every molecule above the maximum humidity at the temperature and pressure of any point in the atmosphere… Where it is emitted, it may get into the atmosphere, but when that reaches colder places – a few hundred meters from a cooling tower may be sufficient to drop out as condens/rain.
And your 50 year lifetime of CO2 excess is nonsense.
You make the classic mistake of looking at the residence time of CO2: that is how much CO2 of the total amount in the atmosphere is exchanged with CO2 from other reservoirs. That is ~150 GtC of the current 800 GtC or a residence time of ~5.3 years. But that is only exchange and doesn’t remove any CO2 from the atmosphere as long as ins and outs are equal over the full (seasonal) cycle.
But the ins and outs aren’t equal: there is a net uptake of ~4.5 GtC/year of CO2. That is the result of the extra pressure from 110 ppmv (234 GtC) above equilibrium which pushes more CO2 into the oceans and vegetation. The e-fold decay rate of a linear dynamic equilibrium process can be calculated:
234 GtC / 4.5 GtC/year = ~51 year. That is a half life time of ~40 years.
Far longer than the residence time, far shorter than the IPCC’s Bern model, which is based on the saturation of the deep oceans, for which is currently not the slightest sign.
See also a similar calculation by Peter Dietze at the late John Daly’s website:
http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm Peter Dietze
That is already from 1997, but he did find a similar decay rate as today…

The saddest part about things like this piece and those that defend it with their posts is what do they REALLY think is in it for them? Do they REALLY think that they will be part of the 10% of the population the elite will show favor to by keeping alive when the preparations for “global warming” have been completed – tear down of the energy system and reduction in arrable land dedicated to food production – and we are faced with the reality of a little ice age or worse? Useful idiots they may be at this time, but are they the constructive, productive portion that will be retained to serve as the servants to the privileged? I doubt it. And I truly have a difficult time believing that they can actually BELIEVE what they are saying, either. They would have to be “blind with eyes wide open.”

Anthony et al
I’ve got to agree with Nick Stokes. There is nothing wrong with the NOAA statement. The fact that we haven’t seen warming doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a “warming effect”. As sceptics, we might be able to argue that this provides evidence that sensitivity to ghg forcing is not as high as that claimed by the CAGWers but we can’t claim that ghg forcing has not increased.
Also, note that radiative forcing is effectively a disturbance from “normal” background levels of ghgs, solar, volcanic etc forcings.
Finally, thanks to Ferdinand Engelbeen who, with great patience, continues to explain atmospheric CO2 concentrations. I fear ,though, he will probably need to do it all over again in the near future.

ferdberple says:
May 28, 2014 at 8:42 am
interesting result. What happens if you reduce CO2 and aerosol sensitivity even further?
Below 1.5°C/2xCO2, the curves of the past divert more and more. But still, the main trends are the same with of course less and less future warming. The whole exercise is with only the four main “forcings” without any feedbacks. With the help of feedbacks like water vapor/clouds the whole thing on a spreadsheet probably may show even less sensitivity for CO2. Or introducing the remarkable PDO-temperature correlation and other natural variability…
One of the ironic points is that such a simple spreadsheet has the same or even better results for the retrofit (thus for the future?) than the multi-million dollar GCM’s running on supercomputers.
See: http://www.economics.rpi.edu/workingpapers/rpi0411.pdf
the climate science community seems blissfully unaware of this problem.
Oh, they know it and have used it to “explain” the 1945-1975 flat/cooling period with increasing CO2 levels, But that haunts them now, because the level of cooling human (SO2) aerosols only shifted from Europe and North America to SE Asia, but the total quantity hardly changed (but the brown -warming- aerosols increased) while the CO2 increase is in full mood… See the old discussion at RC:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/climate-sensitivity-and-aerosol-forcings/
with my comment at #14
and http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/an-aerosol-tour-de-forcing/
with several comments of mine…

The absorption of those 15 micron photons, apparently sets the CO2 molecule off in a bending mode of (purely internal) oscillation; which it would seem does not change the global kinetic energy of the CO2 molecule, and hence doesn’t change its Temperature. Ultimately, that internal energy should be re-emitted, possibly prematurely as a result of a collision with some other molecule, and I would presume that some frequency shift occurs as a result.
So how big do you think a 15 micron wavelength photon is; or does it have a size at all ??
This isn’t the right question. The question is, “What is the absorption cross-section for a 15 micron photon”. That’s the effective surface area intercepted by each CO_2 molecule. It is large enough that the mean free path of LWIR photons in the pressure-broadened absorption bands of CO_2 in the lower atmosphere is order of a meter. That means that LWIR photons — whatever their “size” — with frequencies in the band go no more than a meter or few before they are absorbed by a CO_2 molecule.
The lifetime of the excited state(s) is much longer than the mean free time between molecular collisions between the CO_2 molecule and the (usually nitrogen or oxygen or argon) other molecules in the surrounding gas. That means that the radiative energy absorbed by the molecule is almost never resonantly re-emitted, it is transferred to the surrounding gas, warming not just the CO_2 but the oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor, argon as well as the other CO_2 molecules around. Periodically CO_2 is thermally excited in-band by just such a collision and radiates energy away, but it is not like an elastic scattering process such as occurs in specular reflection within clouds. In band/thermal radiative energy gradually diffuses upwards, with the mean free path of the photons increasing the higher one goes, until it starts to equal the remaining depth of the atmosphere and photons emitted “up” have a good chance of escaping, cooling the molecules (on average) that emit them. It takes order of 100s of absorptions and emissions for radiation to diffuse upward to escape, and there is an almost equal probability that radiation will diffuse downward (especially from the lower levels) where we observe it as back-radiation/greenhouse radiative forcing of the surface.
Even this is oversimplified. Because of pressure broadening, molecules close to the ground emit photons “in the wings” at frequencies that less broadened molecules at higher altitudes/lower pressures are nearly transparent to. That means that there is a steady CO_2-mediated “leakage” even from lower altitudes directly to space from the edges of the monotonically decreasing-with-height absorptive bandwidth. It also means that there is a MAJOR change in atmospheric absorptivity/emissivity with simple high and low pressure centers as they move around, as well as a modulation of the size of the emission-wing “hole”.
Grant Petty’s book can walk you through much of the physics.
rgb

“This should serve as yet another wakeup call about the constantly rising levels of greenhouse gases which are driving climate change. If we are to preserve our planet for future generations, we need urgent action to curb new emissions of these heat trapping gases,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “Time is running out.”

Preserve our planet for future generations?!? Oh, come on now, get a bloody grip. Conserve, I’ll give you, but that would make no sense in this context, nor is it a simple slip of the tongue. Total scare-mongering, trough-snouting, agenda-driving horse manure.

Dr Brown says: “The lifetime of the excited state(s) is much longer than the mean free time between molecular collisions between the CO_2 molecule and the (usually nitrogen or oxygen or argon) other molecules in the surrounding gas. That means that the radiative energy absorbed by the molecule is almost never resonantly re-emitted, it is transferred to the surrounding gas, warming not just the CO_2 but the oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor, argon as well as the other CO_2 molecules around. Periodically CO_2 is thermally excited in-band by just such a collision and radiates energy away”.
There seems to be a contradiction here, first you say the lifetime of the excited state is so long that a CO2 molecule passes its energy to surrounding molecules and its practically never re-emitted. Then at the end of the quote you say that when a CO2 molecule is excited it “radiates energy away” and this happens “periodically”. So which is correct, “almost never” or “periodically”? If a CO2 molecule is excited by whatever means (radiation directly from surface or through contact with another GHG molecule) surely the long period of excitation means its mostly not re-radiated and instead passed on to other molecules?
Not sure if I explained that very clearly, apologies if not.

“””””……rgbatduke says:
May 28, 2014 at 10:21 am
The absorption of those 15 micron photons, apparently sets the CO2 molecule off in a bending mode of (purely internal) oscillation; which it would seem does not change the global kinetic energy of the CO2 molecule, and hence doesn’t change its Temperature. Ultimately, that internal energy should be re-emitted, possibly prematurely as a result of a collision with some other molecule, and I would presume that some frequency shift occurs as a result.
So how big do you think a 15 micron wavelength photon is; or does it have a size at all ??
This isn’t the right question. The question is, “What is the absorption cross-section for a 15 micron photon”. That’s the effective surface area intercepted by each CO_2 molecule. It is large enough that the mean free path of LWIR photons in the pressure-broadened absorption bands of CO_2 in the lower atmosphere is order of a meter. That means that LWIR photons — whatever their “size” — with frequencies in the band go no more than a meter or few before they are absorbed by a CO_2 molecule……”””””
Well I am not in any disagreement with the explanation that RGB gives here or elsewhere. He in fact makes a point which I could not make as he does, in that I can’t get my mind around the quantum mechanical picture of this situation, since my own knowledge of QM stopped well short of such understanding. I have always assumed that Phil too is fluent in this field.
The whole point of my 45 nm sample of “air” was in fact to demonstrate that a “classical” picture of the atmospheric gas at a small scale, in which a single CO2 molecule itself was a tiny part of a gas sample that clearly is big enough (at 2500 molecules) to demonstrate the basic properties of a real gas, in terms of MB statistics; yet the total sample is itself tiny compared to the wavelength of the EM wave associated with the “quantum”, that just the even smaller CO2 molecule is supposed to swallow.
So my question, “How big is a 15 micron photon anyway” was really tongue in cheek; but asked to point out the weird QM picture of reality, in that the supposed “wavelength” of the EM wave associated with an approximately 87 meV photon, is huge compared to the 45nm air sample which itself is huge compared to that single CO2 molecule, which we all believe can and will gobble up that photon.
Usually, in “particle” physics, we think of sub atomic sized “things” hitting a similarly small target (crossection) and interacting in the event that target size is hit. That’s much closer to our common experience of “target shooting”, but the photon hitting to molecule all seems completely backwards, and not at all similar to our street experience.
A similar “absurdity” image would be an alternative description of meteor showers; those flashes and streaks of light in the sky.
We could describe these common events, as simply the earth “landing on” other heavenly bodies; they just happen to be the size of dust particles, and get “squished” in the process. Yes a weird view, but actually a quite accurate one. Who is to say, which is the lander, and which the landee ?
Or we could say, that you can weigh the entire earth on any ordinary bathroom scale, by simply putting the earth “on” the bathroom scale. Well the earth is “down there”, so of course you have to turn the bathroom scale, upside down, and then put the earth on it. When I do it, I get about two pounds for the “weight” of the earth. Gravity on my bathroom scale is rather small. I can increase it, by putting the scale on top of my shoe soles, before putting the earth on it, and with that much greater mass and gravity, the weight of the earth increases up to about 180 pounds.
Again, a weird, but quite real view of reality.
RGB says the photon travels a meter before getting captured. I take that as true since I have no idea how one computes that, but it suggests to me, that means it must pass through a vast number of 45 nm air samples and CO2 molecules, before it scores a hit on the target.
That’s a picture quite foreign to my daily experience, but if you can see it as just a ho-hum ordinary event, then your imagination is much wilder than mine. To me that is weird. What QM tells us is reality, is also weird. That is not disputing it; just suggesting that truth really IS stranger than fiction.
I did notice that Robert said pressure broadening, but didn’t mention Temperature / Doppler broadening. I don’t have a good mental picture of the relative importance of the collision, versus Doppler broadening components, at these energy levels.
The wave / particle duality of EM radiation, forces us to confront seemingly absurd pictures of (evidently “large”) photons “landing on” a tiny molecule, and being absorbed by it.
The fact that much of reality is “weird”, does not dispute the accuracy of it.
Even Einstein thought QM was weird, even as he was constructing a solid case for its reality.

Graham W says:
May 28, 2014 at 5:31 pm
There seems to be a contradiction here, first you say the lifetime of the excited state is so long that a CO2 molecule passes its energy to surrounding molecules and its practically never re-emitted. Then at the end of the quote you say that when a CO2 molecule is excited it “radiates energy away” and this happens “periodically”.
As far as I remember, the absorbing and emitting CO2 molecule are in general not the same molecule. When a 15 micron wavelength photon is absorbed most CO2 molecules hit another molecule (of any kind) and redistribute their energy before the molecule is emitting the 15 micron photon again. What we call temperature is the average vibrational energy of all present molecules: that is some contain more vibrational energy than others. If one of the high energy O2 or N2 or… hits a CO2 molecule, the redistributed energy can be high enough to get the CO2 molecule to emit a 15 micron photon…

A forcing of the magnitude of CO2 must be a farce.

I think the WMO should follow the old adage, “it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”.

John Finn:
You are another theoretician who ignores observations and is stuck on theory. The record shows no warming the last seventeen years, and you vaguely refer to the “warming effects “. Your claim that ghg forcing has increased is presumably based on theory, because you can give no observational support to this assertion.
The statement that there has been warming these past seventeen years is false and is apparently made for propaganda reasons, not for scientific discussion.
Anthony called out Nick for his support of this blatant propaganda. If you call yourself a skeptic, then please do not provide support to alarmist propaganda.

ferdberple says:
May 29, 2014 at 7:51 am
In other words, the variables themselves have better predictive power than the GCM’s. None of the GCM’s add any information that is not already in the variables.
Indeed a simple spreadheet gives the same or better information than the multi-million dollar GCM’s…
Smart guys like Willis did come to the same conclusion.
Not a surprise that Kaufmann (not a skeptic at all) didn’t find an editor willing to publish his work…

Nick Stokes says:
May 29, 2014 at 4:20 pm
Nick, it is the same Kaufmann who complained at RealClimate some years ago that his work was not accepted by the climate community:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/naturally-trendy/comment-page-2/#comment-6801
While an economist, he did see the same problems as occured with the large multivariable programs once used for economics which all failed, while the simple programs with less variables approached to what really happened…
Despite that, even in 2011 he tried to explain the “pause” with a combination of more human SO2/aerosol emissions (which is not true globally) and natural variability:
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/29/11790.abstract
About the skills of the models:
Here a comparison between the temperature trend (RSS MSU lower troposphere) since 1996.8, with the longest “pause” of all trends and the temperature increase caused by CO2 over the same time frame, asssuming no feedbacks (0.9 C for 2xCO2 according to Modtran). And here the same for the average of the range of 1.5-4.5 C according to the IPCC, thus 3 C for 2xCO2.
It may be clear that all models assuming a high sensitivity beyond 3 C for 2xCO2 are out of reality.
There is a small error in the plots above, as the trendline for the T-CO2 relationship should be logarithmic, but here linear,as no other ratio is possible in Wood for Trees. But the deviation is small.

Nick Stokes says:
May 30, 2014 at 1:50 pm
Except that the increase in SO2 doesn’t exist: the increase in SE Asia is mostly balanced with the decrease in Western Europe and North America… And the brown aerosols over India are warming, not cooling… Moreover, the alleged influence of SO2 is far overblown in a lot of models, which leads to the huge differences in sensitivity, which is mainly the result of the CO2 – SO2 tandem. But if SO2 is overblown, then there is an increase in forcing without any result in temperature…