Quote of the week – the numerology of "dialing in" climate science

curioti says:
August 19, 2014 at 12:08 pm
…
The Modelers Hippocratic Oath …
———————————————————————————–
Climate Modelers have a Hypocritical Oath …

JohnB says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:28 am
“The “downward correction” is to account for the predominance of La Nina over recent years.
The “upward correction” is to account for bias due to lack of arctic temperature stations.
Unreasonable?”
Yes. The first because predominance or not, the temperature is what it is. The second because that would conflict with that pesky satellite data, which suffers from no such deficiency.

Its a bit like saying, “if I could just birdie the next 3 holes and finish with an eagle, then I would be as good as Tiger Woods and not have to do my day job anymore”.
The difference between reality and fantasy.

I thought that this was exactly what NCDC, Hadley were doing. Total fraud!!!!!!!

The only temperature in the ocean that relates to climate is the temperature of the thin surface layer which we can consider to be significantly less than a metre deep. Below that the ocean starts to get colder and colder, and so obviously the energy down there is not contributing to warming the air just above the surface.
Now that thin surface layer of the ocean acts nothing at all like a black or grey body. Such bodies are not transparent by definition. However you look at it, only a small portion of the direct solar radiation is absorbed by that surface layer, because most of the insolation passes down into colder layers a few metres below.
So, if you think you can apply SBL, then at least reduce the radiative flux to something less than 10%. Then of course you get a very low temperature, simply because the thin surface layer of the ocean emits far more energy by radiation than it absorbs by radiation. Its surface does not get as hot in the Sun as a black asphalt road nearby.
Where does the rest of the energy come from whilst the ocean surface is warming slightly on a clear sunny day? A similar question applies to the Venus surface. It needs an energy input of about 16,000W/m^2 for its temperature to actually rise, as it does by 5 degrees in its daytime. The direct solar radiation provides less than 20W/m^2. Where does the rest of the required energy come from? It comes by way of molecular collisions happening all through the troposphere as the whole troposphere is absorbing solar energy.
Before you say “from back radiation” you need to read my paper “Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” (published on several websites in March 2012 and never correctly rebutted) because that explains the process whereby spontaneous radiation can only raise the temperature of a target if the radiation comes from a hotter source.
———————–
Gravity acting on individual molecules maintains a temperature gradient as the state of thermodynamic equilibrium with homogeneous total energy. This happens above and below a planet or moon’s surface – yes even in solids – and that is why the core of our Moon is hotter than its surface. It does not require internal energy generation. Because the temperature gradient is an equilibrium state, the addition of new energy in a cooler region makes the gradient less steep, and so energy moves up the temperature plot to restore the equilibrium gradient, and that is how the required energy gets into planetary surfaces – not by back radiation. This non-radiative process provides the missing energy.
Suppose the gravito-thermal effect did not exist. Then the top of a planet’s troposphere would be hotter than the base thereof because the intensity of solar radiation is attenuated as the radiation gets partially absorbed and reflected on its way down. For example, on Venus the only region where direct solar radiation can raise the temperature is in the uppermost regions of the troposphere and cooler regions above. As you go down from there the intensity is reducing whilst the temperature is rising. Hence the temperature is already well above what the intensity of the radiation could acquire as per SBL.
This gravitationally induced temperature gradient approaches a value of g/Cp where Cp is the weighted mean specific heat (not “heat capacity” by the way) and this is because potential energy gained equals kinetic energy lost. Briefly, M.g.dh = M.Cp.dt giving dt/dh = g/Cp with no minus sign because gravity is already in the opposite direction to the increase in height.
Now, in any atmosphere some molecules radiate and radiation between two objects always has a temperature levelling effect. But radiating molecules are only a small portion of the atmosphere, and so they just reduce the gravitationally induced gradient. Thus the wet adiabatic temperature gradient is less steep than the dry one. (No I won’t use the inappropriate and unnecessary term “lapse rate.”) The reduction causes the whole temperature plot to rotate about a pivoting altitude (actually about 3.5Km to 4Km up, not 5Km) and that is why the temperature at the surface is cooler in more moist regions.
In a nutshell, that is the mechanism whereby water vapour and carbon dioxide cool a planet’s surface, as empirical data clearly shows for water vapour