Richard Betts heads the Climate Impacts area of the UK Met Office. The first bullet point on his webpage under areas of expertise describes his work as a climate modeler. He was one of the lead authors of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report (WG2). On a recent thread at Andrew Montford’s BishopHill blog, Dr. Betts left a remarkable comment that downplayed the importance of climate models.
Dr. Betts originally left the Aug 22, 2014 at 5:38 PM comment on the It’s the Atlantic wot dunnit thread. Andrew found the comment so noteworthy he wrote a post about it. See the BishopHill post GCMs and public policy. In response to Andrew’s statement, “Once again this brings us back to the thorny question of whether a GCM is a suitable tool to inform public policy,” Richard Betts wrote:
Bish, as always I am slightly bemused over why you think GCMs are so central to climate policy.
Everyone* agrees that the greenhouse effect is real, and that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Everyone* agrees that CO2 rise is anthropogenic Everyone** agrees that we can’t predict the long-term response of the climate to ongoing CO2 rise with great accuracy. It could be large, it could be small. We don’t know. The old-style energy balance models got us this far. We can’t be certain of large changes in future, but can’t rule them out either. So climate mitigation policy is a political judgement based on what policymakers think carries the greater risk in the future – decarbonising or not decarbonising.
A primary aim of developing GCMs these days is to improve forecasts of regional climate on nearer-term timescales (seasons, year and a couple of decades) in order to inform contingency planning and adaptation (and also simply to increase understanding of the climate system by seeing how well forecasts based on current understanding stack up against observations, and then futher refining the models). Clearly, contingency planning and adaptation need to be done in the face of large uncertainty.
*OK so not quite everyone, but everyone who has thought about it to any reasonable extent
**Apart from a few who think that observations of a decade or three of small forcing can be extrapolated to indicate the response to long-term larger forcing with confidence
As noted earlier, it appears extremely odd that a climate modeler is downplaying the role of—the need for—his products.
“…WE CAN’T PREDICT LONG-TERM RESPONSE OF THE CLIMATE TO ONGOING CO2 RISE WITH GREAT ACCURACY”
Unfortunately, policy decisions by politicians around the globe have been and are being based on the predictions of assumed future catastrophes generated within the number-crunched worlds of climate models. Without those climate models, there are no foundations for policy decisions.
“…CLIMATE MITIGATION POLICY IS A POLITICAL JUDGEMENT BASED ON WHAT POLICYMAKERS THINK CARRIES THE GREATER RISK IN THE FUTURE – DECARBONISING OR NOT DECARBONISING”
But policymakers—and more importantly the public who elect the policymakers—have not been truly made aware that there is great uncertainty in the computer-created assumptions of future risk. Remarkably, we now find a lead author of the IPCC stating (my boldface):
… we can’t predict the long-term response of the climate to ongoing CO2 rise with great accuracy. It could be large, it could be small. We don’t know.
I don’t recall seeing the simple statement “We don’t know” anywhere in any IPCC report. Should “we don’t know” become the new theme of climate science, their mantra?
“THE OLD-STYLE ENERGY BALANCE MODELS GOT US THIS FAR”
Yet the latest and greatest climate models used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report show no skill at being able to simulate past climate…even during the recent warming period since the mid-1970s. So the policymakers—and, more importantly, the public—have been misled or misinformed about the capabilities of climate models.
For much of the year 2013, we presented those model failings in dozens of blog posts, including as examples:
- Will their Failure to Properly Simulate Multidecadal Variations In Surface Temperatures Be the Downfall of the IPCC?
- Models Fail: Land versus Sea Surface Warming Rates
- Polar Amplification: Observations versus IPCC Climate Models
- Model-Data Comparison: Hemispheric Sea Ice Area
- Model-Data Precipitation Comparison: CMIP5 (IPCC AR5) Model Simulations versus Satellite-Era Observations
- Model-Data Comparison with Trend Maps: CMIP5 (IPCC AR5) Models vs New GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Index
In other words, the climate models presented in the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report cannot simulate what many persons would consider the basics: surface temperatures, sea ice area and precipitation.
Shameless Plug: These and other model failings were presented in my ebook Climate Models Fail.
“APART FROM A FEW WHO THINK THAT OBSERVATIONS OF A DECADE OR THREE OF SMALL FORCING CAN BE EXTRAPOLATED TO INDICATE THE RESPONSE TO LONG-TERM LARGER FORCING WITH CONFIDENCE”
A few? In effect, that’s all the climate models used by the IPCC do with respect to surface temperatures. Figure 1 shows the annual GISS Land-Ocean Temperature Index data and linear trend (warming rate), for the Northern Hemisphere, from 1975 to 2000, a period to which climate models are tuned. The linear trend of the data has also been extrapolated until 2100. Also shown in the graph is the multi-model ensemble member mean (the average of all of the individual climate model runs) of the simulations of Northern Hemisphere surface temperature anomalies for the climate models stored in the CMIP5 archive. The CMIP5 archive was used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report.
Figure 1
The model simulations of 21st Century surface temperature anomalies and their trends have been broken down into thirds to show that there was little increase in the expected warming rate through two-thirds of the 21st Century with the constantly increasing forcings. In other words, the models simply follow the extrapolated data trend through about 2066, in response to the increased forcings. See Figure 2 for the forcings.
Figure 2
So, Dr. Betts’s “a few” appears to, in reality, be the consensus of the climate science community…the central tendency of mainstream thinking about climate dynamics…the groupthink.
And the problem with the groupthink was that the climate science community tuned their models to a naturally occurring upswing in surface temperatures. See Figure 3.
Figure 3
Should the modelers have anticipated another cycle or two when making their pre-programmed prognostications of the future? Of course they should have. The models are out of phase with reality.
But why didn’t they tune their models to the long-term trend? If they had tuned their models to the long-term trend, there’s nothing alarming about a 0.07 deg C warming rate in Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures. Nothing alarming at all.
A NOTE
You may be wondering why I focused on Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures. Well, it’s well known that climate models can’t simulate the warming that took place in the Southern Hemisphere during the recent warming period. See Figure 4. The models almost double the warming that took place there since 1975.
Figure 4
CLOSING
Dr. Betts noted:
A primary aim of developing GCMs these days is to improve forecasts of regional climate on nearer-term timescales (seasons, year and a couple of decades) in order to inform contingency planning and adaptation (and also simply to increase understanding of the climate system by seeing how well forecasts based on current understanding stack up against observations, and then futher refining the models).
In order for the climate science community to create forecasts of regional climate on decadal timescales, the models will first have to be able to simulate coupled ocean-atmosphere processes. Unfortunately, with their politically driven focus on CO2, they are no closer now at being able to simulate those processes than they were two decades ago.
SOURCE
The GISS LOTI data and the climate model outputs are available through the KNMI Climate Explorer.
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richardscourtney
August 26, 2014 at 1:14 pm
Feely e.a. estimated the ocean-atmosphere fluxes, based on a completely inadequate number of ship’s surveys from a very inadequate spatial distribution.
Which doesn’t change the fact that the ocean’s warming of less that 1°C since the LIA can’t be responsible for the 100+ ppmv increase in the atmosphere. Except if Henry’s Law is not applicable anymore…
Moru H.
August 26, 2014 at 1:01 pm
“Naomi Oreskes: Why we should trust scientists.”
TED obviously has become PC crap. Rupert Sheldrake got invited by a TEDx event to speak about the limits of science and the anonymous PC-scientific council of TED raised a stink and called his talk pseudoscience – while he was explicitly talking about the LIMITS of the scientific method. The video then got shoved into a naughty corner of the TED website so it’s not quite censored but nearly.
OTOH, Oreskes can use TED to explain to everyone that they should trust never validated models with no demonstrated predictive skill.
A moneymaking machine of the progressives.
Actually Richard Betts is wanting it both ways:
He agrees with skeptics that models are not important.
Yet Richard also wants to blame skeptics for ever having said that the climate obsessed think the models are important at all.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
…warming of less that 1°C since the LIA can’t be responsible for the 100+ ppmv increase in the atmosphere.
Ferdinand, the <1ºC temperature fluctuation since the LIA can't be responsible for much of anything. It is down in the noise. We are very lucky to be living in such a benign climate. Whether you admit it or not, that is the truth. The LIA was a time of mass deaths from starvation and exposure during one of the coldest episodes in the entire Holocene. Now the planet is finally getting back to normal. It’s all good.
The entire AGW debate amounts to spitting hairs; arguing about how many angels can dance on a pinhead. There is no reason to be alarmed. The current planetary climate is wonderful. And the more CO2 that is emitted, the better for the biosphere and everyone in it — unless you can identify any global harm, or damage, due to the rise in CO2. Can you? If you can’t show harm, then you must admit that CO2 is ‘harmless’.
You may be right about the oceans’ response to CO2 and temperature. But where is the harm?
Richard Betts ‘decarbonized’ the models. The synonym in organic chemistry is ‘exterminated’.
DirkH
August 26, 2014 at 1:39 pm
Oreskes can use TED to explain to everyone that they should trust never validated models with no demonstrated predictive skill.
And people believe her (and all other scientists that say “we know, because models”) , which makes Richard’s ‘bemusement’ all the more stranger.
Maybe the headline to next the IPCC reports reads: It’s worse than we thought; because we don’t know!
Nothing a couple more £50,000,000 supercomputers won’t fix, I’m sure!
And here’s me thinking the science was settled 20 years ago…
“…We can’t predict the long-term response of the climate to ongoing CO2 rise with great accuracy. It could be large, it could be small. We don’t know.”
IPCC AR5 TS.6 is pretty much “We don’t know.” about most everything including sea levels, ice caps, extreme weather, and even the magnitude of CO2 feedback. Whomever wrote TS.6 apparently didn’t compare notes with the authors of the summary.
Ferdinand Engelbeen
August 26, 2014 at 1:33 pm
What about a possible centuries-long lag effect? I’m willing to credit most of the past 100 ppm rise in CO2 to human activity, but am interested in your opinion as to the effect of ocean warming not since the end of the LIA c. 1850 but since its depths, c. 1690.
North Atlantic sediments show 1–2 °C cooling since the Little Ice Age. But in sediments off Africa, cooling in Bond Cycles appears larger, ranging between 3–8 °C. So my questions are, has there really been only a one degree cooling since c. 1700, & if more, then couldn’t a larger share of observed CO2 have originated in the oceans rather than from human emissions?
“we can’t predict the long-term response of the climate to ongoing CO2 rise with great accuracy. It could be large, it could be small.
I disagree with this. The Right Climate Stuff Team says in their Feb, 2014 report, “increasing levels of GHG in the atmosphere cannot cause more than 1.2 C of additional warming“.
This is beyond belief. The argument was never about whether AGW was “technically correct”, always about how much doubling CO2 would raise temperatures. The alarmist position was always based on modelling results. The warmists did not just confine themselves to “there could be a problem” – they insisted they KNEW there was a catastrophic problem and that society needed to be restructured based on their say so. This article is an admission the warmists have blatently and massively misrepresented the situation to attempt to coerce government policy and the data suggests the warmists have also deliberately distored the historical temperature record to re-inforce their case. I would suggest that by normal standards of business that would be regarded as fraud and deception.
The article says we dont know how big the effect is. That is rubbish, its not as hard or as complex as they make out. The only greenhouse impact of CO2 is to reduce Earth’s energy loss to space (measured as outgoing long wave radiation or OLR) and OLR is monitored. It is the reduction in energy loss that creates the energy imbalance that causes warming. So we can simply see how much OLR has fallen for a given rise in atmospheric CO2 and that will give us at least a ball park estimate of the impact of CO2. A pretty good first pass estimate of the climate sensitivity would be to treat earth as a grey body with emissivity = actual total OLR/OLR for a black body at Earths surface temperature. Trouble is, when we look at OLR we find that between 1970 and 2010 OLR did not fall, it rose!!!! That tells us two things, firstly rising CO2 is NOT the dominant impact on our climate as claimed, something else is driving OLR in the opposite direction and that something else is more significant. Secondly, if temperatures are rising while OLR is increasing it means energy input is increasing not remaining constant as claimed by warmists and it is this rise in energy input that is driving any warming NOT falling OLR due to rising CO2.
This needs to be investigated and understood before any claim regarding the impact of CO2 can be made. To claim we have an idea of what is going on while not resolving this issue is utterly unscientific and unsupportable. To try to sweep the issue under the carpet as warmists have done is again in my opinion deception and fraud.
Warmists have taken something which is “technically correct but practically insignificant” and exaggerated the impact by more than an order of magnitude to support their political agenda. Again in my opinion, an exceptionally dangerous and unscruplous movement with a totalitarian agenda.
Dear Mr. Betts, you have got to read the following and discover the fatal flaw of the global warming theory :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/10/the-diminishing-influence-of-increasing-carbon-dioxide-on-temperature/
milodonharlani
August 26, 2014 at 2:26 pm
What about a possible centuries-long lag effect?
The (very) long term effect over the past 800,000 years as seen in ice cores is ~8 ppmv/°C and surprisingly linear, but with a variable lag. The lag is 800+/- 600 years during a glacial-interglacial transition and several thousands of years the other way out.
Most of the fast changes are from the direct response of the ocean surface and vegetation (seasonal to multi-year 4-5 ppmv/°C). For longer time scales like the MWP-LIA transition, the 8 ppmv/°C can be reached with a lag of ~50 years as can be seen in the medium resolution (~20 years) Law Dome DSS core:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
In the long-time changes, both the deep oceans and the expansion of land vegetation / ice cover area play a role, which need much longer time frames. But I have the impression that these largely compensate each other as there is little change in the maximum 8 ppmv/°C between the 50 years lag of the several hundred years MWP-LIA transition and the 10,000/100,000 years interglacial/glacial time frames with 800 years and more lag.
In general, only the ocean surface temperature is of interest, as that is in direct contact with the atmosphere and shows a rapid equilibrium of CO2 and temperature (1-3 years) with each other. In balance, more deep ocean circulation has little effect on CO2 levels.
Ferdinand Engelbeen
August 26, 2014 at 3:25 pm
Thanks.
So if the average ocean temperature change since c. AD 1700 has been, let’s say, two to five degrees C (average of tropical, temperate & polar gains), the upper limit for natural CO2 increase should be around 40 ppm (5 degrees max gain X eight ppm per degree), but could be as little as 16 ppm.
That assumes that the lag is only ~300 years.
The failure of the UN IPCC climate models to provide any useful or meaningful scientific connection between man made CO2 emissions and global temperatures is well document in the AR5 WGI report particularly in Chapter 11 Near-term Climate Change: Projections and Predictability. Also the failures of these UN IPCC AR5 WGI climate models is addressed in three prior WUWT posts noted below.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/07/un-wgii-report-relies-on-exaggerated-c
limate-model-results/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/15/un-ipcc-ar5-climate-reports-conjecture
-disguised-as-certainty/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/16/un-ipcc-ar5-report-infected-with-fatal
-technical-and-procedural-flaws/
Furthermore the UN IPCC AR5 report Technical Summary clearly establishes that these climate models are considered to provide only “plausible and illustrative” results with “no probabilities” associated with their outcomes. This is explicitly stated in the AR5 WGI Technical Summary Box TS.6 as “These RCPs represent a larger set of mitigation scenarios and were selected to have different targets in terms of radiative forcing at 2100 (about 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 W m–2; Figure TS.15). The scenarios should be considered plausible and illustrative, and do not have probabilities attached to them. {12.3.1; Box 1.1}”
Additionally the “likelihood” finding provided in the UN IPCC AR5 WGI report results is based on subjective assessments devoid of analytical analysis as noted in the AR5 WGI Technical Summary Box TS.1 as “Each key finding is based on an author team’s evaluation of associated evidence and agreement. The confidence metric provides a qualitative synthesis of an author team’s judgement about the validity of a finding, as determined through evaluation of evidence and agreement.”
The fact that the UN IPCC AR5 WGII and III reports utilized the WGI climate models to assess and determine future climate risks associated with global CO2 emissions is shear scientific incompetence.
The UN IPCC climate models are worthless for use in addressing any assessment of the impacts of global CO2 emissions on global temperatures. Those who ignore the demonstrated and proven flaws in these climate models and utilize them to propose governmental actions on “climate” issues are pushing nothing but politically motivated actions which completely disregard the results of valid climate science which documents the huge scientific shortcomings of these models.
Ferdinand Engelbeen said: “…The CO2 pressure (pCO2) to escape the oceans increases with 17 μatm/°C. That is fully compensated by an increase of ~17 ppm in the atmosphere. Including the opposite reaction of plants on increased temperatures, the average change was 8 ppmv/°C over the past 800,000 years. The MWP-LIA drop in temperature was good for some 6 ppmv drop in CO2.
Thus you need some 12.5°C temperature increase of the ocean’s surface to give the 100+ ppmv CO2 increase…
About volcanic: the largest volcanic event of the past century was the 1992 Pinatubo, with as result a drop in CO2 rate of change: the dust caused more CO2 uptake by cooling and light diffusion (= more photosynthesis) than it emitted……”
Comparing a laboratory beaker to the entire ocean is an extrapolation.
Basing your argument on a single volcano also lower its credibility.
I think you’ve assumed that the ocean’s CO2 content is globally constant, and ignored the possibility of 3,000,000 volcanic seeps adding more CO2 to the system.
Re Tisdale, A Lead Author … 8/20/14,quoting Betts:
”Everyone* agrees that CO2 rise is anthropogenic[.]
“*OK so not quite everyone, but everyone who has thought about it to any reasonable extent[.]”
Here’s a response in 20 tweets or less:
(1) If an argument contains a false premise, any conclusion can follow.
(2) Question: Where is the principle of science that what everyone agrees upon is valid? Answer: In Post Modern Science.
(3) IPCC says that about 90 GtC/yr flows out of the ocean to be reabsorbed by the ocean every year. The fate of 120 GtC/yr off the land is the same. Similarly, and presumably, the 270 GtC/yr between leaf water and the atmosphere. However, IPCC puts the flux of CO2 from burning fossil fuels at about 6 GtC/yr into the air, but only 3 GtC/yr back to — where, all of the above? Why is the fate of natural CO2 emissions different than the fate of manmade emissions?
(4) The only difference between the CO2 from the two sources is the isotopic mix, so maybe the absorption coefficients for the three isotopes causes 100% of natural CO2 to be absorbed but only 50% of ACO2? However, the equations for that fractionation have no solution!
(5) IPCC says the rate, net or not, of anthropogenic emissions matches the rate of increase in the atmosphere, therefore the former is the Cause and the latter the Effect. Anyone who has thought about this for even an instant will recognize IPCC’s application of the faux principle that Correlation Proves Causation. Correlation Proves Coincidence.
(6) The fate of ACO2 is exactly the same as the fate of nCO2 in the atmosphere. In fact the two species remix to form a distribution of other isotopic mixes which suffer exactly the same fate, estimated to the first, second, and maybe more order. (The dissolution coefficient should depend on isotopic weight, but the effect is relatively too small to have been measured as yet.)
(7) IPCC experts say the surface of the ocean is a bottleneck to the absorption of CO2, with their fingers crossed behind their backs. This is based on the carbonate equations, which depend on the pH of the surface layer, and on the condition of the surface layer being in thermodynamic equilibrium. Thanks to David 35Kyr Archer. Only isolated, dead planet’s have any part of their climate system in thermodynamic equilibrium. The finger crossing is because the alleged bottleneck would apply equally to nCO2. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
(8) Henry’s Law applies to the flux of CO2 between the ocean and the air. Henry’s Coefficients are known only for thermodynamic equilibrium, but for all practical purposes on climate, if not meteorological, timescales, the flux is instantaneous. Atmospheric CO2 is the Effect of temperature changes in the surface layer, not the Cause. This is demonstrated in the paleo record from Vostok.
(9) What does IPCC say about Henry’s Law? When it appeared in IPCC’s attempt to resurrect the failed Revelle Factor, it concealed the discovery: The diagram showing the T dependency of the buffer factor was omitted now in order not to confuse the reader.
(10) Conclusions: atmospheric ACO2 is no more a Long Lived GHG than is nCO2. Neither ACO2 nor nCO2 is “well-mixed” in the atmosphere. Global temperature is the Cause and atmospheric CO2 the Effect, not the reverse.
(10) (Almost) everyone, the Consensus, is wrong. All Betts are off.
@ur momisugly Moru H Aug 26th at 1.01 PM.
Re. Naomi Ordskes’ TED video
Could you explain why it is that, despite referring to the temperature rise matching the models so faithfully “for the last 50 years”, Oreskes uses a graph that stops in 1994, fully 20 years before the date of her lecture (May 2014)?
Could you also furnish us with a graph comparing the IPCC models to the instrumental data from 1994 to May 2014 so we can properly verify her claim?
Thanks
Ferdinand Engelbeen
August 26, 2014 at 1:33 pm
“Except if Henry’s Law is not applicable anymore…”
It is applicable for the static conditions for which it is intended. Not for the dynamic flows of the ocean, however.
Ferdinand Engelbeen August 26, 2014 at 12:36 pm
Steve Oregon
August 26, 2014 at 10:27 am
“Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!”
A few remarks on this:”
#########################################
Ferdinand,
Your few remarks made no connection to the quotation you were responding to. I can’t tell if you are agreeing with, disputing or ignoring the human role that was calculated here:.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
I do not know what it takes to get my main beef answered but I want to know why the human percentage (proportion/role) of the greenhouse effect is no where to be found among the AGW Team.
I hate to keep repeating myself but if it is true and accurate that the “Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor)” then why isn’t this insignificance more significant to the debate?
If it is untrue then what is the human contribution percentage?
It’s something?
If “they” don’t know is that why their models fail?
Please explain with sufficient specificity.
“””””…..
Ferdinand Engelbeen
August 26, 2014 at 12:36 pm
Steve Oregon
August 26, 2014 at 10:27 am
Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!
A few remarks on this:
Water vapor rapidly decreases with height/temperature, while CO2 is rather evenly distributed up to 30 km. Once passed the lower atmosphere,
“””””…..Water vapor rapidly decreases with height/temperature, while CO2 is rather evenly distributed up to 30 km. Once passed the lower atmosphere, water becomes less important and other GHGs more important for IR absorbance……”””””
So why do all the popular meteorology texts, say that “low clouds cool” and “high clouds warm”, and show graphs that claim, that “the higher the clouds, the greater the warming.” ??
Why do they preach that ?? If “””…water becomes less important and other GHGs more important for IR absorbance….””” ?? Why ??
We’ve even had citations on WUWT, that “Noctilucent clouds” are an important ingredient of GHG warming.
What is the height of noctilucent clouds, up where water is less important.
In any case, WATER VAPOR is ONLY important, when and if, IT LIES BETWEEN THE SUN, AND THE OCEANS, where it can block a lot of solar spectrum EM radiant energy from reaching the safety of the deep ocean storage, where some of it can be converted to stored “heat” (noun) !!
It isn’t particularly germane to the problem, just where WATER VAPOR does its cooling, by converting deep ocean storing, solar spectrum, beam energy, into non-deep ocean storing LWIR isotropic radiation; only half of which proceeds towards the surface (where it will just promote more surface evaporation.)
The WATER VAPOR only needs to stop the solar spectrum energy from getting within a kilometer, meter, millimeter, micron, of the ocean surface; and that kills it !!
George, clouds also block the IR path to space, and therefore their bottoms are a lot warmer than the IR temp of clear skies.
I’ll assume that Geometric Optics, is not your forte.
Solar energy arrives at earth’s atmosphere as a nearly collimated laser like beam (divergence 0.5 deg; no it’s not a coherent beam). So WATER VAPOR in those CAVU skies, absorbs significant amounts of direct solar energy, WITHOUT scattering it, so you get a one dimensional absorption path, that in a certain way DOES behave according to the Beer-Lambert Law: Ts = To.exp(-alpha.s)
That is the transmission to the ocean surface, of direct solar spectrum energy; with the absoption loss being in the near IR >700nm where water absorbs. That energy goes into the deep ocean, with a 1/e absorption depth of about 100 meters for the peak of the solar energy spectrum (green-blue).
However, the absorbed solar energy due to WATER VAPOR in clear air, does not stay dead. It is re-incarnated as ISOTROPICALLY EMITTED LWIR EM radiation, which only half of, is directed towards the sea surface, the other half to space (in clear air).
That does not mean that half of that lost solar spectrum energy, makes it to the surface, disguised as LWIR.
Because of the density, and temperature gradients, in the atmosphere, and the consequent reduction in line broadening, with altitude, the escape path is favored over the surface path; so less than half of the water vapor clear air solar energy absorbed energy, can make it to the ocean surface. But because of the wavelength shift by a factor of ten or more, the ocean surface is virtually opaque, with alpha changing from around 1E-4 cm^-1, for the blue green solar energy, up to around 1E+4 cm^-1 at 3 microns, and about 1E+3 for the ten micron LWIR, which corresponds to the surface emitted 288 K emissions as well.
So that LWIR energy, is all absorbed in less than 50 microns of surface water, and simply promotes increased evaporation.
Now when it comes to your cloud bottoms, they are NOT WATER VAPOR, they are liquid water drops and ice crystals, both of which are also totally absorbing, of 10 micron LWIR emissions from the surface. They do NOT reflect, that LWIR radiation, they absorb it.
Then being a near black body absorber, for that wavelength range, the water / ice of those clouds, re-radiates a thermal emission spectrum of LWIR, radiation, with a spectrum characteristic, of the cloud temperature. Need I add, that this new cloud radiation, is also directionally isotropic, unlike the laser like half degree divergence, of the arriving solar beam, so once again, only half of that re-radiation is headed down, and less than half, will reach the surface, for the same gradient reasons already explained, and what does reach the ocean surface, will suffer the same fate, as the re-incarnated lost solar energy.
And just to add insult to injury, the tops of those fuzzy clouds, are transparent at the micro level, to the solar spectrum, visible wavelengths, so the water droplets and ice crystals refract and transmit, in a highly scattered fashion, that incident solar energy, rendering it a virtually Lambertian radiating source, or even isotropic, so something in the 40-80% range of the solar radiation, incident on the cloud tops, is re-scattered towards outer space, and total escape.
So good luck in trying to make that look like a warming, positive feedback effect..
For the benefit of Kevin Trenberth, and others unfamiliar with the solar system, the sun beats down on half of the earth 24 hours a day 365 1/4 days per year at an orbital average power rate of 1362 watt/m^2; and for 100% of that time, that incoming solar energy has to run the gauntlet of atmospheric water vapor, and atmospheric ozone, and atmospheric CO2, all of which nibble away chunks of that incoming energy, and stop it from reaching the deep ocean storage system.
It is somewhat irrelevant, just how much solar spectrum energy lands in Kevin Trenberth’s back yard on any given day. Somewhere, some place else, ALL of the incoming solar radiant energy, is undergoing attenuation by atmospheric clear air WATER VAPOR, all the time; continuously, and other solar energy is redirected by cloud top refractive scattering, back into space; also on a continuous basis.
Atmospheric water NEVER warms this planet, it ALWAYS reduces earth’s solar energy collection, and it ALWAYS COOLS.
george e. smith commented on A Lead Author of IPCC AR5 Downplays Importance of Climate Models.
Nope, and I accept that clouds absorb then re-emit IR down.
But my point still stands, cloud bottoms are much much warmer than clear blue skies, and when calculating SB equations, the surface radiates more energy to blue skies, than to clouds, therefore clouds reduce surface cooling, even if clouds have already reduced incoming solar energy. Our normal experience with weather shows this, cloudy nights in general don’t get as cold as clear nights.
I talk about this because I want more people to go out and point an IR thermometer at the sky. Remember this is directly what Co2 is required to warm, to cause surface warming.
For “passed” read “past” .
The Catholic Church during the period between Copernicus to post-Galileo, sponsored Ptolemaic mathematicians to churn out ever more epicircles on epicircle models to support an geo-centric universe. It was a belief system driving pursuit of ever more failing scientific explanations. Sounds like today’s AGW in pursuit of a carbon demon.
Today, we only know the names of the great scientist dissenters of the orthodoxy of that era, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton.
The Ptolemaic believers and their models are forgotten to history except for the one name that is identified as a perojerative adjective for failure, Ptolemy (much like Ponzi is a perjorative name today).
As for Dr. Betts, I really can’t imagine the feeling of one’s life work, that at one time seemingly was so correct and lauded by the political powers, to watch it slowly crumble to dust and see nothing but forgotten discarded models and failed efforts in your wake.
To say the life’s work of today’s professional climate modelers have taught us something about climate would be akin to saying Ptolemy taught us something about how to planets moved around the sun.
Ferdinand Engelbeen August 26, 2014 at 12:13 pm
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LOL, I can increase pH in my aquarium by 0.3 by merely turning on the circulation pumps … imagine the effect of wind on the ocean pH?
Betts’ bet on the climate models should have him mopping the floors of the casino. But then he’s connected with the current powers that be. That may change.