Guest essay by Bob Irvine
A common refrain from the “settled science” community is that there is no known low sensitivity model that can produce either the total temperature rise or the general temperature profile of the last century.
This, however, is only the case if we assume that the efficacy of a GHG forcing is substantially the same as or slightly higher than the efficacy of a similar solar forcing. The lack of a successful low sensitivity model, then, should not come as too much of a surprise, as this is the position taken by all the IPCC reports, including the AR5.
There is, however, a strong physical case to be made for GHG efficacy being a lot lower than solar efficacy. The following paper published by the Wessex Institute of Technology outlines this case.
The abstract can be found at ; http://www.witpress.com/elibrary/wit-transactions-on-engineering-sciences/83/27156
A Comparison Of The Efficacy Of Greenhouse Gas Forcing And Solar Forcing
Free (open access) Paper DOI 10.2495/HT140241
R. A. Irvine
Abstract
The efficacy (E) of a forcing is a measure of its capacity to generate a temperature response in the earth’s system. Most Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate models assume that the efficacy of a solar forcing is close to the efficacy of a similar sized greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing. This paper examines the possibility that a change in short wave solar forcing may more readily contribute to ocean heat content (OHC) than a similar change in long wave GHG forcing. If this hypothesis is shown to be correct, then it follows that equilibrium restoration times at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) are likely to be considerably faster, on average, for a change in GHG forcing than for a similar change in solar forcing. A crude forcings model has been developed that matches almost perfectly (R2 = 0.89) the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) temperature series from 1880 to 2010. This model is compared to and performs much better over this period than the United Kingdom Met Office’s (HadGEM2) contribution to the CMIP5 (R2 = 0.16). It is concluded, by implication that the efficacy of a GHG forcing is likely to be considerably lower than the efficacy of a similar sized solar forcing. Keywords: efficacy, forcing, greenhouse gas, solar, sensitivity, climate, model.
Free access to the paper is available by logging on at witpress.com and conducting an advanced search for “A comparison of the efficacy of greenhouse gas forcing and solar forcing” by R.A. Irvine, 2014. doi:10.2495/HT140241
The Basic Energy Model (BEM) outlined in the paper produces the following reconstruction (Fig 1). It has a low CO2 sensitivity of approximately 1.3C (CO2 doubling) or 3.5C/wm2 and a very strong correlation with the NOAA temperature series of R2=0.89. Importantly this model reproduces the current temperature hiatus which is proving to be a major problem for all the high sensitivity models used by the IPCC.
Fig 1; Low sensitivity model described in Irvine 2014 compared to NOAA temperature series
The inputs to the model are anthropogenic GHGs, solar, anthropogenic aerosols and internal variability.
The aerosol input to the model is toward the lower end, but still within the IPCC’s range. Internal variability is consistent with our current knowledge and is based on a combination of the AMO and PDO indexes. The solar input assumes a solar multiplier of some sort and is consistent with our knowledge of temperature over the last millennium as graphed in the AR5 and discussed in Yu & Luo 2014.
The physics behind the model is based on the established fact that the oceans are opaque to long wave GHG energy but are very transparent to short wave solar energy. This implies that GHG energy is returned to the atmosphere and space very quickly as latent heat of evaporation while solar energy is effectively absorbed to a depth of many meters with consequent delays in equilibrium at the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA).
The following quote from Hansen 2011, makes the obvious point that response time is proportional to climate sensitivity; ‘On a planet with no ocean or only a mixed layer ocean, the climate response time is proportional to climate sensitivity….Hansen et al 1985, show analytically, with ocean mixing approximated as a diffusive process, that the response time increases as the square of climate sensitivity.”
The case has been made at Real Climate and other places, that the top fraction of a millimetre, warmed by GHG energy, acts as a blanket to slow the cooling of the oceans or, alternatively, is thoroughly mixed by wave action to the point where it effectively has the same effect on Ocean Heat Content (OHC) as solar energy that is transported many meters into the oceans by radiation.
All these different mechanisms will have some effect, but to say they have the same effect is a huge assumption and, nearly certainly, not true. In fact, this is shown to be untrue by an experiment outlined in the paper. Basically, two tubs of warm water, one under a clear cling wrap roof and one under a reflective foil roof, are allowed to cool. In test A they are both free to evaporate and both cool at the same rate. In test B evaporation is restricted by placing cling wrap on the surface of the water in both tubs. In test B the tub under the foil sky is significantly affected by downward long wave radiation and cools more slowly.
Test B is how the IPCC models the oceans while test A indicates that long wave radiation does not significantly affect the temperature of a water body if that water is free to evaporate. I should at this point acknowledge the work of Konrad Hartmann and Roger Tattersal in developing the experiment. I have performed this experiment myself and confirmed their results.
The initial high sensitivities used by the IPCC were based on glacial maxima and volcanic measurements and are essentially based on solar forcing only. These sensitivities will, therefore, not apply to GHGs if this paper’s assumptions are correct, a position that is supported by the experiment and the accuracy of the model in Fig 1. The IPCC’s high sensitivity models are now assuming large amounts of energy are diverting to the deep ocean as an explanation of the lack of atmospheric warming. This is unlikely given the NOAA’s recent sea level budget report 2005-2012 by Eric Leuliette; http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/sod/lsa/SeaLevelRise/documents/NOAA_NESDIS_Sea_Level_Rise_Budget_Report_2012.pdf
This report shows a sea level budget that is balanced since 2007 using a level or falling thermal expansion component. It is becoming increasingly obvious that no model, with a solid physical basis, can accurately track the slope of the temperature increase from 1910 to 1940, the cooling from 1940 to 1970, the slope of the increase from 1970 to 1998, and the current temperature hiatus without assuming GHG forcing efficacy is considerably lower than solar forcing efficacy.
References;
1. Yu & Luo, 2014, Effect of solar variations on particle formation and cloud condensation nuclei. Doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/4/045004
2. Hansen, Sato, Kharecha & von Schuckman, 2011, Earth’s energy balance and implications. Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss, 11, 27031-27105, pp 19-21.
http://okulaer.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/the-pressing-need-for-ever-upward-temperature-adjustments-a-matter-of-life-or-death-to-the-agw-hype/
During periods short & long of elevated UV component of TSI & solar magnetism, the planet & its oceans warm. In periods of lower UV & magnetic flux, climate cools, as for example during the Maunder Minimum.
Amen, the fact that longwave IR from greenhouse gases cannot heat 71% of the Earth’s surface area [oceans] alone blows the CAGW hypothesis out of the water. Even RealClimate indirectly shows from in-situ measurements that doubled CO2 could only warm the oceans by 0.002C at the very most:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/09/realclimate-admits-doubling-co2-could.html
IR from greenhouse gases causes evaporative cooling of the top few microns of the ocean skin surface, not warming. Only solar shortwave radiation can penetrate to depths of up to 100 m to heat the bulk of the oceans.
I have read that assertion frequently and I am wondering about this evaporative cooling. The water vapor will eventually cool down and release some heat to the atmosphere. Plus, the resulting rain could also carry some heat back to the surface, no? I don’t know how important this effect would be, if at all. Any insights?
Everything is coupled, so you need a tachometer reading to get a handle on aggregate oscillations. And obviously the integral has to determine the long-run central limit. Also remember that evaporation is proportional to wind-speed cubed, so there’s scope to cube the insight gained by cubing the evaporation experiment with variable-fan-speed. With that cubed factor who’s going to expect to not see evaporation varying with acceleration & deceleration of the fan??? …which, remember, is set by heat spatial-gradients in real-climate — what they call a “heat engine”.
Richard Verney you wrote, “According to K&T, DWLWIR is approximately double that of solar.” How could IR, radiated from a planet at an average temperature of about 58°C, then partially back-scattered from CO2 molecules be double that of solar? That seems impossible.
You also wrote, “Unless someone can put forward a convincing physical model explaining how the energy that is absorbed within the first 4 microns of the ocean is dissipated to depth at a speed faster than the energy so absorbed would drive evaporation, there is a major problem for those who claim that DWLWIR heats the oceans and who promote the gross energy budget, rather than the net energy flow budget.”
I don’t understand “the gross energy budget, rather than the net energy flow budget.” But energy added to the top 4 microns of the ocean surface need not be “dissipated to depth at a speed faster” than evaporation. The ocean and atmosphere are thermodynamically coupled so that energy entering the system should eventually affect both.
Energy added to the top layer of the ocean via downwelling IR may be quickly transferred to the air via evaporation but that energy can later enter the ocean.
IR hitting the ocean surface doesn’t cause net cooling. The water is heated at the surface, so evaporation occurs, and the water surface is cooled again, perhaps back to it’s original temperature. But the released water vapor increases the heat content of the air above the ocean surface (latent heat of vaporization). Temperature is not a measurement of the heat content of atmospheric air. Total heat is latent heat (water vapor) and sensible heat (temperature). Enthalpy is the term used to express total heat content (units are Btu/lb, or kJ/kg for the metrically inclined). For example, the total heat content of 110°F air in Phoenix (dry) is be the same as 80°F air in Orlando (humid). Temperature is at best a proxy for heat content of our atmosphere; maybe not a very good one. Using temperature to diagnose human-caused global warming assumes that moisture content changes in lock-step with temperature. The few degrees of warming over the past 100 years (which is slightly more than the difference in temperature near the floor and the ceiling in the room I’m currently sitting in) would represent no change in total atmospheric heat content, if water vapor decreased slightly, or vise versa.
“IR hitting the ocean surface doesn’t cause net cooling.”
I’m afraid it does, as is described in this paper in Nature, and many others finding the ocean skin surface [top few microns where IR is completely absorbed] has been measured to be ~0.2-0.3C colder than the immediately underlying layer.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v358/n6389/abs/358738a0.html
and as illustrated in this figure showing cooling of the skin surface top ~10 microns
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceans/science-focus/modis/MODIS_and_AIRS_SST_comp_fig2.jpg
If your assertion that IR was capable of heating the top few microns in which it is absorbed was true, the top few microns would be warmer, not cooler. The phase change of water from liquid to gas absorbs more energy than provided by IR from greenhouse gases to cause evaporative cooling of the skin surface.
I agree with your other comments, however.
Electromagnetic radiation heats any substance that absorbs it. Solar radiation (including IR) doesn’t heat air very much because it passes through the air, but it does heat the ground and water surfaces, which then heat the air through convection. I’m no expert, but I’ve read that IR can penetrate the ocean surface by as much as 1 meter to less than 1 cm, depending on its wave length. The penetration distance is short because water molecules absorb IR radiation. When a molecule absorbs radiation it is heated. When a molecule releases radiation, it cools. The thin surface layer of the ocean is cooler because of evaporation, which occurs only at the surface. But that does not mean that it wasn’t warmed by IR. A water molecule that gains enough energy from radiation heating, or any other heat source, will have sufficient energy to break the surface tension of the fluid. When it leaves the fluid it takes its energy with it, thus cooling the liquid and increasing the heat content of the air (but not the temperature). If the air above the ocean surface were totally saturated with water vapor (100% relative humidity) no evaporation would take place and the heating from IR radiation would be apparent. Consider this: If you put a bowl of water under a patio heater or heat lamp (IR radiation), will it get hotter and evaporate faster?
Thanks! That answers my question.
“I’m no expert, but I’ve read that IR can penetrate the ocean surface by as much as 1 meter to less than 1 cm, depending on its wave length.”
It is well-known that longwave IR from greenhouse gases can only penetrate a few microns max as shown in this diagram
http://omlc.org/spectra/water/gif/hale73.gif
which shows at the peak emission line of e.g. CO2 at 15um, the penetration depth is less than 10 microns, i.e. less than 10 millionths of one meter.
The peak radiating wavelengths of all greenhouse gases combined is around ~10um, well off the scale of this chart showing penetration depths
http://www.klimaatfraude.info/images/sverdrup.gif
BTW, here’s another chart illustrating the evaporative skin surface cooling of the top ~10 um within which all of the longwave IR from GHGs is absorbed.
“Consider this: If you put a bowl of water under a patio heater or heat lamp (IR radiation), will it get hotter and evaporate faster?”
Will it get hotter? – No, unless some of the heat is absorbed by the bowl and transferred to the water
Will it evaporate faster? Yes
Hockey Schtick is basically correct, but it should be pointed out that the evapotranspiration process is adiabatic. That is, the moist parcel of air formed above the ocean does not warm the surrounding air, rather it rises and cools as it expands.
The process is similar to what happens when a container of pressurized air is released. Latent heat is converted to expanding the atmosphere.
If the infrared light is absorbed by water molecules in the top 10 micron surface layer of the ocean, then the the top 10 micron (um) layer of water is heated. When radiation is absorbed it heats the substance that absorbed it. If water were transparent to IR, then your argument could be valid. But you seem to be saying that the IR is absorbed and that somehow causes cooling. When a molecule absorbs an energetic photon it vibrates faster and temperature is a measurement of the rate of vibration of atoms and molecules. The top 10 um layer of water is about 100,000 molecules thick. Evaporation occurs when molecules just beneath the surface, exit the surface to become water vapor in the air above the surface. Short wave radiation, that penetrates deep into the ocean, would be less likely to cause evaporation because the heating occurs deep under the surface. The surface layer is cooler because that is where the water evaporates from. If you are correct that 10 um IR penetrates only 10 um into the surface layer, then the 10 um radiation heats the surface, and only the surface. But evaporation still cools the surface so it is cooler than the layers just beneath it. The heat is transported by the water molecule that leaves the surface so the heat is no longer in the water, it’s in the air. If there were no 10 um IR radiation striking the surface then the water would be cooler still. Crops are less likely to be damaged by springtime frosts on cloudy nights because the water droplets in the cloud absorb radiation that left the ground and re-radiate it back to the ground. Water vapor is also a strong greenhouse gas. This why it says warm on a summer night in Dallas (humid) but in Phoenix (dry) the ground cools quickly when the sun goes down. If 10 um wave length IR photons can’t penetrate far into water, they are being absorbed. If water molecules absorb energetic photons, they get hotter.
Mr. Schtick. I think I see where we’ve been talking past each other. You are talking about how much heating, of the bulk ocean could, occur with 10 um wave length IR. Since the IR only penetrates the top layer, and if all the extra heat is removed by evaporation, then you are basically correct to conclude there would be no warming of the bulk ocean. But the heat didn’t disappear from the system. It’s transferred from the water to the air. The latent heat of the air increases (but not its sensible temperature). When air close to the ocean surface is lifted by convention currents, and the fact that humid air is less dense than dry air, the water vapor condenses and the latent heat is releases as sensible heat. So it may be true that the 10 um IR reradiated by CO2 does not directly heat the ocean but that heat is still in the system. Of course, more vapor could mean more clouds, which could block solar radiation from reaching the ground and ocean, so the system could be cooled again. Actually, this mechanism could have a damping effect on CO2 warming. Increased CO2, increases downwelling 10 um infrared radiation, which is absorbed at the surface of the oceans, causing more water vapor, which forms more clouds, which removes the heat caused by increased downwelling 10 um radiation.
In summary then, we should be seeing atmospheric water vapour increase in relationnto the increase in CO2?
Or does that water later condense out as slightly warmer than usual rain, and thus warmbthe ocean?
“Increased CO2, increases downwelling 10 um infrared radiation, which is absorbed at the surface of the oceans, causing more water vapor, which forms more clouds, which removes the heat caused by increased downwelling 10 um radiation.”
Yes indeed, a self-regulating, homeostatic mechanism. More water vapor not only has a negative-feedback cooling effect by increasing clouds and precipitation, but also by cutting the adiabatic lapse rate in half, the negative lapse rate feedback effect, i.e. the wet adiabatic lapse rate is only one-half the dry adiabatic lapse rate, indicating increased water vapor cools the surface.
It is my impression that there is not a lot of back radiation in the 10 micron band because that is pretty much the center of the “atmospheric window” where surface radiation sails unhindered into space.
Ah. I am reading on a phone screen, and have just got through the rest of this little subthread. Thanks Thomas and Hockyschtick, and others. Nice discussion, good information.
Thomas,
you are missing the trick. The heat didn’t disappear from the system. Remember, those IR photons that fail to slow the cooling rate of water were emitted by the atmosphere in the first place. If this energy is transferred back to the atmosphere as latent heat, there is no net warming of the system.
As to whether incident LWIR causes cooling of water, I would say that depends on the water temperature. Theoretically LWIR could cause very slight cooling for warm water and very slight warming of cold water.
The experiment Bob Irvine presents was one of my early ones. It did not have the resolution to check these slight effects. All it did was demonstrate that the effect of LWIR on materials that evaporatively cool is very different to materials that don’t. Essentially an empirical disproof of the idea that DWLWIR is slowing the cooling rate of the oceans, raising their temperature 33 degrees.
The experiment shows that incident LWIR doesn’t have a significant effect on the cooling rate of water free to evaporatively cool. To understand why, you need to look at the problem on molecule and photon scale. When we measure the temperature of water, we are just measuring an average of the kinetic energy of individual molecules. But the reality is that all molecules in a fluid or gas have different kinetic states. If a slower water molecule is hit by an IR photon it will have its kinetic energy increased. But if a faster water molecule is hit by an IR photon, it may have its kinetic energy increased to the point it can break surface tension and evaporate. In the later case, more energy will be removed from the water than the IR photo that “tripped” the water molecule into evaporation could have imparted to a slower molecule.
DWLWIR plays no significant role in ocean temperature. As to what is heating the oceans above the theoretical blackbody temperature of 255K, the simple answer is that the oceans are a selective surface, not a near blackbody. I have posted the simple experiments demonstrating this further down thread.
Er, no, Thomas. There is no ‘IR hitting the ocean surface’ heating the water at the surface. Not from the atmosphere. This would be a direct violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Why do you people believe that the 2nd Law doesn’t matter when it comes to radiation?
Markx, I think tropospheric water vapor has increased since we’ve been measuring it but that would be expected in a warmer world so it doesn’t have to all come from evaporation caused by downwelling IR. In fact, downwelling IR is orders of magnitude less than downwelling solar radiation so it much contribute only a very small amount to total global water vapor.
Gymnosperm, the question is not what wavelength leaves the atmosphere but what wavelength is returned by being absorbed an reradiated by CO2. I don’t know the answer so I just accepted Schtick’s number of 10 micron waves. I think CO2 molecules absorb at one wavelength and emit at another.
Konrad, the net warming comes from the fact that the photon would have radiated to deep space if it hadn’t run into a CO2 molecule and been bounced back. It seems to me that a photon is energetic enough to cause a water molecule of any temperature to vibrate faster. You may be confusing thermodynamics and quantum effects. In any event, I don’t think anything can absorb radiation and cool. Absorbing warms, and emitting cools.
Mr. Schtick wrote, “More water vapor [cuts] the adiabatic lapse rate in half, the negative lapse rate feedback effect, i.e. the wet adiabatic lapse rate is only one-half the dry adiabatic lapse rate, indicating increased water vapor cools the surface.”
Lapse rate is the rate at which the temperature of the atmosphere decreases as one moves up to higher altitudes. Pressure falls, so temperature falls. The wet adiabatic lapse rate is less than the dry rate because when water vapor is cooled it condenses and that process releases heat (the heat of condensation). The latent heat of water vapor is retuned as sensible heat when vapor condenses. This is added temperature is why cumulous clouds roil and “boil” as they build up. I don’t understand why you think the fact that the wet lapse rate is one-half the dry rate would cause the surface to cool.
Water vapor is present at levels of two percent or more in hot humid areas. That’s 20,000 parts per million. CO2 is less than 400 parts per million. The absorbing bands for water vapor are also larger than for CO2 so it is a very potent greenhouse gas, which is a good thing because the earth would be much cooler without it.
Thomas and Hockey Schtick. Good thread. This is not my field so I’m a bit out of my depth here, but your back and forth provoked a seemingly obvious question. Are deserts warmer, or colder, than humid regions with similar insolation, wind patterns, and CO2 levels, where we are only interested in temperature averages over 24 hour periods?
If humid regions are hotter over a 24hr average, that would seem to be strong evidence that water vapor has a positive greenhouse feedback. If they’re cooler , then a negative feedback. If the same then no net feedback.
It seems pretty clear that humid regions would have greater atmospheric Enthalpy, but temperature? Not so sure.
In answer to Thomas October 11, 2014 at 7:47 pm
The classic ‘wet adiabatic lapse rate’ considers a saturated volume of air and the dry adiabatic lapse rate a zero humidity volume of air. So in that case as soon as the saturated air cools even slightly latent heat will be released as some of the water condenses out. However, the atmosphere is not a black white switch. Most of the air is neither saturated nor dry.
The volume of air that is immediately above a water surface will be more humid than the air immediately above it. This will have two effects: Firstly the air will have a higher enthalpy, which means that its heat content is significantly higher for the same temperature. This is due to the humidity. Secondly the density of humid air is less than that of dry air therefore even at the same temperature it is lighter this is due to the molecular weight of H2O being lower than that of N2 or O2 the main constituents of the atmosphere and due to Avogadro’s Hypothesis the number of molecules of gas in the volume will be approximately the same.
The net result is that even if there is no external warming as water molecules evaporate into the air above a water surface, convection will start and remove the higher energy molecules from above the water surface, The air replacing the convecting air will be drier and will take up water molecules then also start to rise. Eventually these rising expanding volumes of humid but not saturated air will stop rising when their buoyancy matches the buoyancy of the ambient air or if they become saturated then the change of state of the water vapor to droplets will take place and you are at the boundary condition that is used for ‘moist adiabatic lapse rate’. However, that level is not necessarily close to the water’s surface and may never be reached (i.e. clouds / water droplets will not form) if the atmosphere is dry. The moist(er) air however will have carried heat away from the water’s surface and thus the water cooled and the heat content of the atmosphere will have increased without any rise in temperature
Temperature is not a measure of the heat content of air volumes of varying humidity.
“the net warming comes from the fact that the photon would have radiated to deep space if it hadn’t run into a CO2 molecule and been bounced back.”
Thomas,
you are still missing the tricks. Most of the energy emitted by the atmosphere as radiation was not acquired by absorption of surface radiation. It was acquired by conduction and evaporation/release of latent heat.
If you think the atmosphere is warming the surface, there is one simple question you should ask –
“how hot would the sun drive the oceans in the absence of DWLWIR and atmospheric cooling.?”
Climastrologists say -18C. The answer is +80C.
I have been posting this info for years on this site, with several of the charts referred to.
There is a major problem with DWLWIR and the oceans, and there is a great deal left to be understood.
1. Many people consider that DWLWIR penetrates to millimetres, but is is just microns.
2. DWLWIR is omni-directional, such that much of the DWLWIR has intercepts with the oceans at a grazing angle of less than 35 deg. The charts show the perpendicular vertical penetration.
3. When one takes account of the omnidirectional nature of DWLWIR, at least 60% possibly ~75% of all DWLWIR is anbsorbed within just 4 microns.
4. According to K&T, DWLWIR is approximately double that of solar. Just stop and consider the implication of that and the fact that solar is absorbed within a depth of about 1 metre (of course some solar penetrates much deeper and the depth of absorption extends well below 1 metre) whereas about 75% of DWLWIR is absorbed in just 4 microns.
5. If DWLWIR is approximately twice the power of solar and if 75% of DWLWIR is absorbed in just 4 microns, in real terms one sees that about 1.5 times the equivalent energy of solar is being absorbed in just 4 microns.
6.Now that is a hell of a lot of energy. In fact it is so much energy that one would expect to see upwards of 16 metres of rainfall annualy from the amount of water that would be evaporated from the amount of energy being absorbed in the first 4 microns of the oceans. We do not see anywhere near that amount of rainfall.
7. The question is how can the amount of energy that is being absorbed in the first 4 microns be dissipated at a speed quick enough so that it does not drive evaporation leading to approx 16 metres of rainfall?
9. It cannot be by conduction since we know that the temperature profile of the top millimetres of the ocean is upwards. Conduction cannot swim against the energy flow.
10. Some suggest ocean over turning, but this is a slow mechanical process, and may even be diurnal such that for half the 24 hour period there is no or little ocean over turning.
11. Of course there is the wind, but waht about conditions of BF3 or less when there would be little wind and waves to drive mixing?
12. And then you have the reverse problem what about BF8 and above? In these conditions, the very top of the ocean is skimmed off and there is a divorced layer of wind swept spray and spume which acts as a DWLWIR block, in much the same way as a parasol can block out solar. THis wind swept spray and spume is a fine mist of water droplets, but these droplets are more than 4 microns in diametre and they would therefore absorb incoming DWLWIR before it reaches the ocean layer below!! In very windy conditions DWLWIR is being absorbed before it even reaches the oceans and is immediately being carried upwards help powering the storm that is ravishing above the oceans.
What needs to be studied in great detail is a column consisting of a few metres of the atmosphere above the ocean and the first few metres of the ocean. We need to know the energy profiles almost on a millimetre by millimetre basis, and for the top 20 cms of the oceans on a micron by micron basis.
What are the energy flows? How is energy being distributed?
Unless someone can put forward a convincing physical model explaining how the energy that is absorbed within the first 4 microns of the ocean is dissipated to depth at a speed faster than the energy so absorbed would drive evaporation, there is a major problem for those who claim that DWLWIR heats the oceans and who promote the gross energy budget, rather than the net energy flow budget.
Hockey Schtick: “IR from greenhouse gases causes evaporative cooling of the top few microns of the ocean skin surface, not warming.”
No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t ’cause’ or ‘do’ anything at the surface. Because it’s not a separate incoming flux of energy to the surface, it is not an extra thermodynamic energy input to the surface. It is a calculated, conceptual number inside an equation, one part of a mathematical operation (to obtain in reverse the only actual – detectable – energy flux within the thermal exchange, the real transfer of radiative energy, going ONLY from warm surface to cool atmosphere – the HEAT). The DWLWIR (as the UWLWIR) value is only a ‘potential’ radiative flux from a solid blackbody at a certain temperature to a surrounding vacuum at 0 K (an infinite heat sink).
As long as people walk around completely buying into the nonsense idea promoted by the climate establishment that DWLWIR (or UWLWIR for that matter) is a real, separate, thermodynamically working flow of energy somehow coming down from a cool atmosphere (after having been recycled) to a warm surface to do … anything, an extra energy input to the surface in addition to and next to the solar input (as if the two were equivalent fluxes!), we will never manage to move on, ‘climate science’ will forever be held captive by braindead physics.
Konrad, I don’t think the atmosphere is warming the surface. It’s the other way around, the sun warms the surface and the surface warms the atmosphere. I agree that most of the energy emitted from the atmosphere as radiation came from conductive heating of air in contact with the surface but I don’t understand what “trick” you think I’m missing. Gasses like CO2 and H2O can absorb long wave radiation from the surface and emit long wave radiation (in any direction) so that some of it is returned to the surface. Without greenhouse gases the energy would be lost to deep space, with the gases it’s retained. The earth’s surface cools less that it otherwise would so it’s overall warmer.
Kristian. In the thermosphere, the part of the atmosphere from about 100 km to about 600 km altitude, temperature rises with increasing altitude because the diffuse gasses are heated by interaction with highly energetic solar radiation. Temperatures in the thermosphere can reach 2,000°C. Yet, if a thermometer where exposed in the thermosphere on the dark side of the earth (no sunshine) it would show a very low temperature, well below 0°C. This occurs because, while the gas molecules that exist in the thermosphere are highly energetic, there are so few of them that they would not provide enough energy to keep the mass of the thermometer from falling to a very low temperature.
Water vapor and CO2 absorb and emit LWIR at all levels in the atmosphere. You seem to think that it’s not possible for CO2 in the cooler atmosphere to absorb LWIR and radiate it back to the earth because heat doesn’t flow from cold to hot. But, like the thermosphere, individual greenhouse molecules can have temperature that are much hotter than the bulk temperature of the surrounding atmosphere.
There are many observable examples of the greenhouse effect. Humid areas tend to have hot nights while dry areas tend to have cool nights. Radiation frosts don’t occur on cloudy or humid nights. Dew will often form on a car that is left exposed to the night sky but not on a car that is parked under a cover. I
t is almost certainly true that some portion of the extremely mild global warming that seems to have occurred over the past 150 years is due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. However, we know warming is not harmful to us or the biosphere which we are inextricably linked too, and CO2 is plant food, so I think the proper response is to keep using fossil fuels.
Ian W. I like your expiration of atmospheric lapse rates. I guess Schtick was trying to say that increasing evaporation means more water vapor, which will cause more convective currents due to more lifting action from the latent heat of condensation, which means more dry air is pulled over the water below the convective activity, so that still more water evaporates, which cools the surface even more. Lot’s of moving parts there but I suppose it makes sense. The sun emits almost no 10 um so must solar radiation heats water well below the surface. So downwelling LWIR from CO2, which heats the thin layer at the ocean surface, could have a significant effect on total evaporation. I don’t think the ocean emits much 10 um IR, that’s about the center of the curve of IR emitted from hot ground but oceans tend to be cooler than ground. Nevertheless, since IR forcing would add heat only to the surface it is likely that most or all of that added heat is quickly removed by evaporation.
TYoke wrote, “If humid regions are hotter over a 24hr average, that would seem to be strong evidence that water vapor has a positive greenhouse feedback.” Humid areas are humid because there is a lot of evaporation from water surfaces, wet ground, and/or plant transpiration. Evaporating water cools the air so humid areas tend to be cooler but they can feel hotted because of the high humidity. As I mentioned before, there tends to be less difference between daytime temperature and nighttime temperature in humid regions (due to the greenhouse effect of water vapor). In deserts the daytime temperature can be much higher but nighttime temperatures can be much lower because there is little water vapor to trap long wave IR.
5,778 K
Sun, Surface temperature
Thomas: “Without greenhouse gases the energy would be lost to deep space, with the gases it’s retained. The earth’s surface cools less that it otherwise would so it’s overall warmer.”
*Sigh*
The great rGHE/AGW delusion repeated yet again.
Just the opposite of what you state is the case. Without IR-active gases in the atmosphere, some of the energy coming in from the Sun would never be able to escape back out to space; it would rather pile up (being ‘trapped’) inside the atmosphere, relentlessly working towards collapsing the ELR to below critical lapse rate, consequently forcing the surface to warm in order to sustain it, both caught in an internal heating race with no apparent end. No steady state could ever be reached in such a situation, until the overly inflated atmosphere itself ended up being blown off into the great unknown, i.e. gone.
With IR-active gases in the atmosphere, the atmosphere (and hence, the Earth system as a whole) is able to shed ALL its energy received from the Sun back out to space. Wihout them, some (most) energy would always (after every ‘cycle’) be ‘retained’ within the atmosphere. Their presence thus keeps the Earth system stable and relatively cool, preventing it from overheating.
The IR-active gases do NOT enable the atmosphere to warm. It would’ve warmed with or without their presence, simply from being convectively coupled with the solar-heated surface. The fact that the atmosphere has a mass alone enables it to warm.
The IR-active gases DO, however, enable the atmosphere to COOL, to space, for this can only happen through radiation. Without them, all the energy brought convectively into the atmosphere would have a seriously hard time getting back out, and it could certainly not to any meaningful degree be able to escape to space.
The IR-active gases in the atmosphere also do NOT work towards reducing the tropospheric temperature gradient. Quite the opposite, just like solar surface heating, their continuous emission to space of energy brought convectively into the atmosphere works towards steepening it, always forcing convection to bring it back down to maintain dynamic stability.
IOW, the presence of IR-active gases in the atmosphere aids in the continuous convective cooling of the surface. Without them, convection could not keep up at equal surface temperature, and the surface would naturally warm from the solar input accumulating as a result. This is an automatic response whenever an externally heated surface is surrounded by a fluid (like water or air) in a gravity field.
“Water vapor and CO2 absorb and emit LWIR at all levels in the atmosphere. You seem to think that it’s not possible for CO2 in the cooler atmosphere to absorb LWIR and radiate it back to the earth because heat doesn’t flow from cold to hot. But, like the thermosphere, individual greenhouse molecules can have temperature that are much hotter than the bulk temperature of the surrounding atmosphere.”
What nonsense. Of course the atmospheric CO2 absorbs (some of the) IR from the surface, but first of all it hasn’t got time to reemit the energy in any direction before it collides with a nearby N2 or O2 molecule, rather ending up transferring the energy conductively to the atmosphere at large. And what happens when the energy absorbed is thus incorporated into the ‘mean temperature’ (the dynamic energy throughput pool) of the atmosphere? The gas absorbing the energy warms slightly, expands and lifts – AWAY from the surface, higher up into the troposphere, positioning it along the tropospheric temperature profile. Convection is what governs completely and utterly the energy (and thus temperature) distribution within the troposphere. There is nothing internal radiation or conduction can do to perturb the tropospheric temperature profile. Because convection (buoyancy) is naturally and automatically there to check and restore, always.
Listen, and read carefully: NO energy escaping the surface as loss, being thus brought up into the atmosphere, ever returns to the surface! It is ALL ultimately radiated back out to space. All energy that enters the Earth system also exits. It has to. Otherwise we would have continuous heating. Convection forces the energy to trickle forever upwards, away from the heating end – the surface – towards the cooling end – the tropopause. This is how the Earth system works – it’s a fine-tuned piece of machinery.
“There are many observable examples of the greenhouse effect. Humid areas tend to have hot nights while dry areas tend to have cool nights. Radiation frosts don’t occur on cloudy or humid nights. Dew will often form on a car that is left exposed to the night sky but not on a car that is parked under a cover.”
This is not the rGHE, Thomas. This is not what it’s supposed to be doing. The rGHE is supposed to give a net overall warming of the surface underneath the atmosphere. But tropical rainforest regions are consistenly COOLER annually than tropical/subtropical desert areas by several degrees. The net effect of more H2O in the atmosphere is clearly one of cooling, not of warming. Having H2O in the atmosphere does NOT give a positive rGHE. It gives a solidly negative rGHE.
Don’t get me wrong, having water on our planet is definitely one of the reasons why we have such a nice, balmy MEAN surface temperature here on Earth as compared to the Moon. But this is NOT stemming from its radiative properties. It is not because of the “back radiation heating” it allegedly provides. In purely radiative terms, it cools Earth. There are however other physical properties of water that are much, much more important when it comes to climate. If you stop and think just for a wee while, I’m sure you’ll figure out which ones …
“It is almost certainly true that some portion of the extremely mild global warming that seems to have occurred over the past 150 years is due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere.”
It is definitely true (not ‘ALMOST certainly true’) that no portion whatsoever (0%) of ‘global warming’ over the last century is ‘due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere’.
It’s ALL (100%) natural: Sun + ocean.
This of course makes sense. And the evaporated gases are at a higher energy state. That is, the humidity has more energy. When it condenses, it releases it’s energy. If the humidity condenses up in the troposphere, the released energy goes to space, If it condenses in the low atmosphere the heat of condensation stays in the climate system.
Just sayin’
The paper failed to demonstrate how capitalism is to blame for increased solar forcing, an obvious deficiency which must be addressed before this idea can gain currency.
I would like to see what Leif has to say about variations in TSI.
We know what he will say. 🙂 TSI is all that matters, unless otherwise proven. And TSI does not change enough to account for warming associated with the variation of TSI and global temperatures. So that leaves the theories that suggest that there are other mechanisms. Leif will say they are not proven. I’d say, that they are not proven does not mean we should try to understand these mechanisms.
http://www.witpress.com/elibrary/wit-transactions-on-engineering-sciences/83/27156
From the Irvine 2014 paper:
“The GHG forcing parameter was assumed to be about 0.35°C/wm2 or 1.3°C for CO2 doubling.”
My suggestions:
Hadcrut and NOAA temperatures have a warming bias, imo.
This 1.3C/2xCO2 (CO2 sensitivity) is an “approximately neutral” number with no positive or negative feedback – better than IPCC, but I suspect it is still too high.
Aerosol forcing numbers are typically wrong – see comments by Douglas Hoyt on Wattsup and ClimateAudit.
Still, this crude model directionally gives a better result than the models cited by the IPCC.
Use satellite data (UAH or RSS), drop the aerosol fabricated data, decrease the CO2 sensitivity to about 0.2C (and maybe increase the solar influence), and you will probably still get a good result.
Finally, please explain why CO2 lags temperature by about 9 months in the modern data record (so what drives what?). 🙂
Regards, Allan
Agreed. I think this analysis does not prove its particular concept, but it does show that there are at least equally valid alternatives to the IPCC narrative.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/12/blue-sky-research-reveals-trends-in-air-pollution-clears-way-for-new-climate-change-studies/#comments
Allan M R MacRae (17:53:04) :
Please see Douglas Hoyt’s post below. He is the same D.V. Hoyt who authored/co-authored the four papers referenced below.
Please note there is historic data available that could be of considerable use.
BUT: “There is no funding to do complete checks.”
Anyone want to take on this challenge?
Suggest tapping into the millions that Obama has allocated for climate modelling to get these modelers some real data on aerolsols.
I understand they’ve been inventing aerosol data to get their models to history-match the cooling period from ~1945-1975. Hoyt says so such evidence exists in his data.
Regards, Allan
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=755
Douglas Hoyt:
July 22nd, 2006 at 5:37 am
Measurements of aerosols did not begin in the 1970s. There were measurements before then, but not so well organized. However, there were a number of pyrheliometric measurements made and it is possible to extract aerosol information from them by the method described in:
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. The apparent atmospheric transmission using the pyrheliometric ratioing techniques. Appl. Optics, 18, 2530-2531.
The pyrheliometric ratioing technique is very insensitive to any changes in calibration of the instruments and very sensitive to aerosol changes.
Here are three papers using the technique:
Hoyt, D. V. and C. Frohlich, 1983. Atmospheric transmission at Davos, Switzerland, 1909-1979. Climatic Change, 5, 61-72.
Hoyt, D. V., C. P. Turner, and R. D. Evans, 1980. Trends in atmospheric transmission at three locations in the United States from 1940 to 1977. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 1430-1439.
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. Pyrheliometric and circumsolar sky radiation measurements by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1923 to 1954. Tellus, 31, 217-229.
In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly. There are other studies from Belgium, Ireland, and Hawaii that reach the same conclusions. It is significant that Davos shows no trend whereas the IPCC models show it in the area where the greatest changes in aerosols were occurring.
There are earlier aerosol studies by Hand and in other in Monthly Weather Review going back to the 1880s and these studies also show no trends.
So when MacRae (#321) says: “I suspect that both the climate computer models and the input assumptions are not only inadequate, but in some cases key data is completely fabricated – for example, the alleged aerosol data that forces models to show cooling from ~1940 to ~1975. Isn’t it true that there was little or no quality aerosol data collected during 1940-1975, and the modelers simply invented data to force their models to history-match; then they claimed that their models actually reproduced past climate change quite well; and then they claimed they could therefore understand climate systems well enough to confidently predict future catastrophic warming?”, he close to the truth.
_____________________________________________________________________
Douglas Hoyt:
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:37 am
Re #328
“Are you the same D.V. Hoyt who wrote the three referenced papers?” Yes.
“Can you please briefly describe the pyrheliometric technique, and how the historic data samples are obtained?”
The technique uses pyrheliometers to look at the sun on clear days. Measurements are made at air mass 5, 4, 3, and 2. The ratios 4/5, 3/4, and 2/3 are found and averaged. The number gives a relative measure of atmospheric transmission and is insensitive to water vapor amount, ozone, solar extraterrestrial irradiance changes, etc. It is also insensitive to any changes in the calibration of the instruments. The ratioing minimizes the spurious responses leaving only the responses to aerosols.
I have data for about 30 locations worldwide going back to the turn of the century.
Preliminary analysis shows no trend anywhere, except maybe Japan.
There is no funding to do complete checks.
This is tacit acknowledgement of the absolute failure of the models, that they cannot hind cast with a lower climate sensitivity, which failure the modeling fraternity is otherwise loath to acknowledge. And how do they hind cast with models with a high CS? By turning knobs and tweaks. Climate models are a pretense at science.
“This implies that GHG energy is returned to the atmosphere and space very quickly as latent heat of evaporation while solar energy is effectively absorbed to a depth of many meters with consequent delays in equilibrium at the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA).”
Sergey Kravtsov at UMW has an unpublished paper from 2008 (he likely was never able to get it past the ClimateGate mafia reviewers) that modeled the climate as a delayed-feedback oscillator whereby his model estimated the delay to be 14-16 years. Further, he observes that the theory of delayed-feedback oscillators predicts that the period of the oscillation can typically be 3–4 times the delay (tau) or longer. Which he observes is the 40-70 year oscillatory period of the AMO.
Of significant note, Sergey also has just published a Online Version of Record published before inclusion in an issue in GRL, 10 October 2014 (yesterday) with co-author Judith Curry, “Two contrasting views of multidecadal climate variability in the twentieth century”. Authors Sergey Kravtsov, Marcia G. Wyatt, Judith A. Curry, Anastasios A. Tsonis. First published: 10 October 2014. DOI: 10.1002/2014GL061416
Abstract:
The bulk of our knowledge about causes of twentieth century climate change comes from simulations using numerical models. In particular, these models seemingly reproduce the observed nonuniform global warming, with periods of faster warming in 1910–1940 and 1970–2000, and a pause in between. However, closer inspection reveals some differences between the observations and model simulations. Here we show that observed multidecadal variations of surface climate exhibited a coherent global-scale signal characterized by a pair of patterns, one of which evolved in sync with multidecadal swings of the global temperature, and the other in quadrature with them. In contrast, model simulations are dominated by the stationary—single pattern—forced signal somewhat reminiscent of the observed “in-sync” pattern most pronounced in the Pacific. While simulating well the amplitude of the largest-scale—Pacific and hemispheric—multidecadal variability in surface temperature, the model underestimates variability in the North Atlantic and atmospheric indices.
==================
So the two observations here with Sergey’s papers are that
1. the delay is around 15 years, equating to an average cycle length of ~60 years. (So may argue this is an aplles-oranges comp, but it is not. It is all about the temperature lag (fig 1 above compare to Sergey’s Fig 1A here: https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kravtsov/www/downloads/GlobalWarming_v4.pdf) .
2. The Kravtsov, 2014 GRL paper shows how the models only simulate the Pacific warming when they are “in-sync” with the PDO, and that the models underestimate natural variability.
Combine 1 and 2 above with the diminishing ECS/TCR values, and the conclusion above that “GHG forcing efficacy is considerably lower than solar forcing efficacy”,
and Climate Change due to increasing CO2 based on the IPCC is simply wrong. Further, these results make a powerful Science-based conclusion which suggests the Global Warming scares from the IPCC and others should be discarded..
It’s apparently too obvious.
― Leo Tolstoy
This seems like something you could confirm in a laboratory experiment. Run a couple of thousand variations, maybe publish some raw data …
If the Science is Settled, why bother? Sounds like work. We can’t delay. We must commence to destroy our economy now and end this ruinous era of cheap energy.
I have confirmed it with a couple of hundred measurements in the real world from the edge of my sailboat, in the Bahamas and Caribbean.
Do you really expect me to actually do some work? This is the Bahamas, Mon.
The basic idea that increased LW radiation doesn’t increase surface warming is correct. All it takes to confirm is an IR gun and a months (preferably longer) vacation in warm tropical water 🙂
Well, some of us just have to make do with an IR gun, a harbour city and a Kayak…
Sailboat? Bahamas? You call that science? I call it hedonistic indulgence!!
What next? Chilled pina coladas and glamorous lab assistants?!
”A common refrain from the “settled science” community is that there is no known low sensitivity model that can produce either the total temperature rise or the general temperature profile of the last century.
This, however, is only the case if we assume that the efficacy of a GHG forcing is substantially the same as or slightly higher than the efficacy of a similar solar forcing.”
That’s assuming we accept the fictitious temperature profile of the last century promulgated by activists portraying themselves as scientists.
This post and comments show yet again the uselessness of the IPCC climate-models on grounds quite apart from their inherent inutility because of computational difficulties. There is growing acceptance of this idea at least in the blogosphere . Is it too much to hope that soon it might, no doubt, be seen as “settled” science ?A new approach must be used as the basis for discussion.
For an alternative approach see the forecasts of the probable coming cooling based on the 1000 and 60 year periodicities seen in the temperature record and using the 10Be and neutron count records as the best proxy for solar activity at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
So just what are the units of “efficacy”.
I can’t even get straight in my head just exactly what “Climate Sensitivity” is.
Some claim it is the surface/lower troposphere Temperature rise for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 abundance (from ANY starting value). Some say, well only that doubling from 280 to 560 ppm molecular abundance or ppmv, or whatever units. Some say it is the watt/squ meter “radiative forcing” for such a CO2 doubling, while others say it is the Temperature rise (surface or lower troposphere; I guess your choice; Temperature for agiven w/m^2 “Forcing”. NBo idea what the SI units of forcing are, so what are the “efficacy” SI units ??
George e. smith, I am still struggling with what watts mean exactly. I know a watt is one joule per second and a watt is a watt when it comes to heating, but I also know that a watt of SW radiation has a lot more energy and different properties than a watt of IR radiation. And it gets worse, watts has zero to do with specific heat or energy content and watts seems to have some reflective properties. It is so confusing 🙂
Well watt is the SI unit of power, which is an instantaneous differential quantity, that describes the RATE of doing work using energy (measured in joule units), or rate of transport of energy. It does not measure the average rate of energy usage or conversion or transport. When the sun sets, the solar insolation on the night time earth drops to effectively zero, not to 342 W/m^2 that Kevin Trenberth et al claim.
But neither the power nor the energy differs simply because of any change in wavelength of an EM wave or photon if you prefer the quantum view.
It is true that a shorter wavelength photon carries more energy, since Einstein’s relation says E=h (nu) or hf if you don’t have Greek symbols, like I don’t. Or some put it as hbar (omega), where hbar is simply h/2pi for folks who prefer their frequencies in radians per second rather than hertz (cycles per second). For thermal radiations which are direct products of the Temperature of bodies; solid, liquid or gaseous, the emission (or absorption) spectra do have a peak wavelength or frequency . You have to be careful which form you use. Physicists (ir1) seem to use wavelength based spectra, and chemists prefer frequency or wave number (cycles per cm), but the vertical axes are also different, being watt per square meter per meter (or micron) of wavelength increment, whereas the chemist use watt per square meter per wave number for the spectral radiant emittance. So the black body (Planckian) spectra have their peak at entirely different wavelengths or frequencies, depending on whether you plot on a wavelength or frequency increment. The 288 K supposed mean earth surface emission peaks at about 10.1 microns, on a wavelength based graph, but more like 15 microns, on a wave number based spectra. That’s nice for the warmists, because it is more dramatic to show the LWIR peak close to the CO2 15 micron resonance band.
Just keep in mind that there are more wave numbers available at high frequencies than at low and more microns of bandwidth at the longer wavelengths, which is why the peaks are different.
Some users avoid the conflict and they plot actual photon counts instead, in which case the peak occurs at a single frequency or wavelength.
Also note that gases have very low molecular density, and are therefore highly transparent compared to liquids or solids, and this leads to the myth that gases do not emit thermal radiation following a BB spectrum. They do, but the power per molecule is miniscule so the intensity of gaseous thermal radiation is very small. The entire thickness of the earth’s atmosphere doesn’t attenuate the solar (visual) spectrum much at all. So you wouldn’t call the atmosphere a black body, because a black body, which is an entirely fictional theoretical body must absorb 100% and reflect 0.00% of ALL EM radiation that falls on it from zero frequency to zero wavelength. No such real object exists, or is even theoretically possible.
But the simpler atmospheric molecules like Argon, or O2, N2, or H2 do not have permanent electric dipole moments so they do not behave individually as antennas that can radiate (or absorb) EM radiation at some antenna tuned frequency. H2O on the other hand has a permanent electric dipole moment, because of the 104.X angle between the two hydrogen atoms. That simple fact makes life possible, and helps make water the universal solvent, and the most important green house gas.
But when atoms or molecules collide, or approach each other closely at some velocity, you have equal charges in the nuclei, and the electron cloud, that generate similar coulomb forces, but the mechanical momentum and kinetic energy is all contained in the much more massive nucleus (about 3750:1 split, in the light atoms), so the electron cloud and nucleus separate during collision, and give a transient electric dipole antenna which can radiate like a struck bell during the interaction, and that is the source of the thermal radiation, which has no spectral lines (it’s a continuum) because the dynamics of the two particle collision have no predictable energy or momentum involvement.
In contrast the absorption and emission of the GHGs in certain bands, are a consequence of mechanical oscillations or vibrations/rotations that only occur at very specific frequencies, that depend entirely on the structure of the molecules. In the case of CO2, the normally straight CO2 molecule O=C=O bends like an elbow, at the carbon atom, with the center of mass of the molecule continuing to do what it was doing before.
This is a property of a SINGLE MOLECULE BY ITSELF, whereas thermal BB like radiation, is a product of huge assemblages of molecules.
The GHG mplecular absorption
I love your posts, George. I think I am not the only one who says that. Your explanation about absortion and molecular dipoles is what I recall from my college years. Something important is missing, though. H2O has a permanent dipole, as you say, because it is an angled molecule. But CO2 is linear and does not have a permanent dipole, It only has a dipole when it collides and bends, which makes CO2 less effective in emitting radiation than H2O.
I also have problems understanding what “climate sensitivity” is, and “forcing”, I also wondered what the physical meaning of “forcing” is and what are its SI units. Now add “efficiency” to the list.
Over at his blog, the Chiefio wrote the following:
He had a lot more and gave a link to the paper, but then he said that The Hockey Schtick site had a more approachable write up of the whole thing.
As I have maintained for decades now, CO2 don’t do exactly what they think it does. It depends on where in the atmosphere and under what conditions we find it.
I’ve said the same thing for years as well. Until you get way up in the atmosphere where the molecules are farther apart all energy transfer is mechanical via convection and NOT radiation. If CO2 was “back radiating” energy away and water vapor was doing the same thing, devices like FLIR, based on microbolometers, would not work because the atmosphere would be this opaque, thermal soup from all that radiation bouncing around. Funny, those devices work just fine for extremely long distances. Even if both CO2 and water vapor DID emit energy via radiation the only thing that’s going to absorb those wavelengths is CO2 and water vapor and you can’t transfer heat unless you have colder matter to transfer to.
The “greenhouse” garbage really needs to be completely tossed and the actual atmospheric energy transfers, according to Gas Law (pressure, temperature and constants for each gas) and gravity need to be substituted because they actually match up with the real world.
“the actual atmospheric energy transfers, according to Gas Law (pressure, temperature and constants for each gas) and gravity need to be substituted because they actually match up with the real world.”
True not only for real-world Earth, but all the other planets with thick atmospheres as well, demonstrated by e.g. Robinson & Catling in Nature Geoscience:
http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Robinson2014_0.1bar_Tropopause.pdf
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/robinson-and-catling-model-closely-matches-data-for-titans-atmosphere/
In other words, Arrhenius was WRONG. Atmospheric radiative forcing is non-existent. Of course, Arrhenius was proven wrong in 1909 (Wood) and his radiative GHG claims rejected for half a century as based on refuted mid-19th century theories and bad math. Big Climate (TM) doesn’t care. They will not relent until icicles hang from their nostrils as they scream at us about imminent global warming catastrophe. Even then, it will take universal derision to shame them into admitting they were wrong. Hansen, for one, will never admit it.
Michael,
“In other words, Arrhenius was WRONG. Atmospheric radiative forcing is non-existent”
Exactly, how otherwise intelligent people could equate “forcing” from the Sun (an actual energy source that is converting “fuel” to electromagnetic energy (aka light)) with “forcing” from a passive substance (solid, liquid or gas) boggles the mind.
My furnace burns fuel (LP gas) and warms the interior of my residence, after being warmed the walls “back radiate” IR energy towards the interior, but this is simply a delay in the flow of energy through the system. I certainly cannot turn off my furnace and hope that the walls will keep me warm can I ?
Arrhenius’s “greenhouse effect” (if it existed) would be a perpetual motion machine. Funny but no matter how hard they try they just can’t seem to find that missing heat; Hint: IT DOES NOT EXIST.
Cheers, Kevin.
You mentioned Hansen.
I wonder what it will do to his head when he realizes he spent his career and his entire adulthood knowingly preaching an adjusted lie even after he’d been caught.
Won’t his grandkids be proud to learn about the lies grandpa and his pals told to improve their livelihood?
Well the data, as opposed to which models are correct or not, shows warming. NASA GISS LOTI for September is just out – the September anomaly is +0.78 C (baseline 1951-1980).
That’s the warmest month this year so far and puts the year to date at +0.66 C – so it could yet be a record warm year on their data.
James Abbott October 11, 2014 at 2:12 pm
Read this:
Of course September was the ‘warmist year/month on record’, so was August, so was July, etc. You can bet October will be the ‘warmist October on record’. Ditto November and December. So why do they also have to come up with 50+ reasons we all don’t notice the catastrophic warming occurring all around us?
The average Land Temperature anomaly in September 2014 according to the high resolution Aqua satellite (2001-2010 base period) was 0.01C.
http://s9.postimg.org/75kp20d67/Land_Satellite_Temps_Sept_14.jpg
GISTemp Land Temperature anomaly in September (2001-2010 base period) was 0.21C. So just 0.2C of fake adjustments since 2001.
http://s3.postimg.org/4zzng6eur/GISTemp_Land_Temps_Sept14.gif
James,
I don’t think you have understood what Bob Irvine has presented. It is not just the incident LWIR is not slowing the cooling rate of liquid water, the mistake at the very heart of the AGW hypothesis is far, far worse than that. Bob writes –
This physics of graybodys or selective surfaces is actually absent from the “basic physics” of the “settled science”. The basic SB equations that were used take no account of SW transparency. This is a gross error. The entire AGW hypothesis rides on a surface at 255K being raised by 33K by a radiative GHE. For our ocean planet 312K would be a more accurate figure for surface without atmosphere, and this means the net effect of our radiative atmosphere is surface cooling. No AGW, ever. It is quite simply a physical impossibility.
There is therefore no point to pointing to fudged surface station temperatures or any other metric. Whatever variability we are experiencing must be natural not anthropogenic. The gross error of the 255K assumption can never be hidden, therefore there can be no “CO2 causes warming but less than we thought” soft landing for the hoax.
I get the impression from Goddard that NOAA’s temperature data has been severely “..tortured and molested…” to create an illusion of warming so comparing it to less molested data seems meaningless. Or has all the data been buggered into junk?
Michael Wassil you are wrong on all counts.
The adjustments when they are made are small and don’t change the overall trend.
There have not been successively warmer months this year nor has every month been a record warm one. So for example July was +0.53 C which is significantly cooler that the +0.78 C for September, but May was the second warmest at + 0.76 C.
There are signals of warming all over the world, but clearly your “catastrophic” input is meant to skew the argument.
Only on your planet James
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/screenhunter_26-jun-22-11-20.jpg?w=1280&h=802
James Abbott October 11, 2014 at 3:03 pm
Did you read the article Kristian conveniently linked at the top of this thread and I included in my post to you? I think not. It’s over James. The evidence keeps mounting and the Earth keeps refusing to cooperate. They’re lying, James. They’ve been lying all along, they’re lying now and will continue to lie as long as they can get away with it. Reputable scientists are bailing out. When the Airship CAGW crashes and burns it won’t be pretty for those still onboard.
BTW, it’s not me claiming catastrophe is bearing down relentlessly. That would be your side. I happen to think warmer temperatures and more CO2 will bring nothing but benefits to life on Earth. I also think it’s not going to happen, unfortunately.
BTW James:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/2014-on-track-to-be-hottest-year-on-record/
Yet, they still have to give us 50+ reasons why we don’t notice it.
Hey James! I didn’t notice any comments from you in this article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/11/agricultural-losses-in-2014-due-to-cold-temperatures/
Maybe I missed something, but that doesn’t seem to jibe with 2014 being the hottest year on record. What do you think? I’m buying wheat futures.
James Abbott looks away when he encounters such posts as this.
James Abbott,
The IPCC and most professional science organizations now admit that global warming has stopped. It stopped many years ago, in fact, and it shows no indication of resuming.
True, they call it a “pause”, or a “hiatus”. But both terms mean the same thing: global warming has stopped.
That fact pretty much debunks the global warming scare, no? And that is why more and more comments throughout the blogosphere, and the media in general, are ridiculing “global warming”. It stopped.. There’s been no sign of it for a long time.
The public used to be concerned. But they are laughing at that false alarm now. Why don’t you just admit the obvious: that Planet Earth is laughing right along with them.
The ‘carbon’ scare is bunkum. No one believes it any more.
I can verify that differences in atmospheric radiation levels, in other words clouds or no clouds, don’t affect the surface temperature of the Ocean at night either way. The wind or lack of wind can make a huge difference.
I have made hundreds of observations off the edge of my sailboat specifically trying to detect a temperature increase due to a cloudy sky vs a clear sky and have seen no changes at all.
Theoretically (via calculations from measurements) a cloudy sky is radiating ~130 more watts downward than a clear sky and that should warm the top couple of microns 8 degrees per second. It doesn’t happen.
dbstealey
You clearly are fixed in your view.
I was merely pointing out the facts regarding the NASA GISS LOTI data for September, which suggest we could get a record warm year for 2014 on their data set.
So if that happens, will you have a rethink – or will you just revert to saying the data is wrong ?
By the way what is “the carbon scare” ?
James you are clearly fixed in your view.
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/james-abbott/26/3a4/42
James, you have been taken in by the desperate ones. Look the temperature went up in the 80s and 90s. It hasn’t gone back down yet. So while we are walking across the “plateau” it shouldn’t be much comfort to CAGW zealots that little bumps up could be warmer and even set a record (at least in the shorter term reckoning of the faithful – July 1936 is still the real record) and then it bumps back down again. A plateau is like that. Its insignificance to the global warming scare is obfuscated by the desperate warmers use of this subterfuge to keep guys like you on the team. Imagine walking across a mesa in arizona. You won’t be climbing as you go in any meaningful sense, but you could step up a foot or two and then step back down again. Are you getting this?
James, you understand politics. We do too. Those data sets are fudged by your own fellow travelers. It’s election time, you see, and everyone is doing what he can to help because if the other guys win the senate, everyone goes to prison. So, the big push is on and climate alarmism is the order of the day.
But James, too bad, it has been a real cool summer and an early fall and the alarmists have run out of luck.
When data is ‘homogenised’, ‘infilled’ – it is no longer ‘data’.
And don’t you find strange that the year that breaks the Antarctic ice extent record (south hemisphere) and comes close to break the great lakes ice extent record (north hemisphere) can end up being the warmest year on record?
Hello James Abbott.
You clearly are fixed in your view.
———–
James you talk about someone elses fixation with the reality and can’t really see your own fixation with the AGW.
You talk about this year been a record hot year like that will fix the peroblem of AGW.
Let me give you a picture how bad AGW stands.
Nothing can fix anymore the problem of AGW, even a huge blowing warming coming out of the oceans in a
N. Dana manner of expectation.
With a CS=3C [for a CO2 DOUBLING] for the projections to be close enough to the expected reality at 560ppm CO2, the warming from this point on should be as such as at 560ppm we have a 7C to 8C warming from the 1850 where only 3C will be due to CO2. Can you see the paradox of your AGW now.
7C to 8C is a very big number, the 4C warming for other reasons than CO2 is beyond impossible.
Even at CS=1.5C the number remains to big…..funny enough the big number representing the warming requiried to make reality and projections close enough for 1.5C CS is no any different than the number in the case of CS=0C……
Only CS=0.8C to 1C for a doubling seems the closest to fit at the moment but does not hold up the AGW, …..and further more does not fit well with paleo climate data, not as good as CS above 2C for a doubling.
The other thing about CS=08C to 1C is that projection it will have a better closure with the expected real climate as from this point on in a cooling trend up to around 600ppm, and after that the GCMs will stop projecting anyfurther. Still the number representing the cooling will be big one but not as big as in a warming case.
So unless an impossible warming that can’t be due to CO2 STARTS HAPPENING SOON the GCMs projections will not be close enough to the real climate data, and the discrepacy will be mantained and growing even in the case of a CS=0.8C to 1C per doubling.
You have to understand climate is sensitive to CO2, but the range of our estimate does not seem to cover it even in the case of an extreme range of CS from 0C to 4.5C for a doubling…tha is how big the problem of the AGW towards reality is……
Agw makes no more sense either in a hiatus or any expected warming or cooling of the climate from now on, that is why this guys are turning to anything else like the Sun or anything else they may come up the next time to somehow keep the AGW afloat for a year to year bases and confuse the issue even further…….
That is why a hiatus of 15 years and over has to be a thing to worry about…. as at that point the numbers fail to add up… no matter how much one may try and adjust them…
Cheers
Andyj
How do you come to that conclusion based on my linkedin entry ?
Unlike dbstealey, who just repeats the same mantra and does not appear to know how the Greenhouse Effect works, I follow the science.
And if you do that, you can never have a fixed view.
It’s not science at all.
If you read this site you will find too many papers that totaly deny the ability of CO2 as a warming gas below the Tropopause. In Fact CO2 and also O3 are radiators of latent heat in very cold or rarefied areas.
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/images/stratospheric_cooling.jpg
Also “Steven Goddard” digs into historical data and compares with new after the adjustments. Cooling the past and heating the future. No “science”. Just an edict.. The tricks have rendered the likes of GISS etc relegated to the bin for science.
However the WTI/CO2 and its variance are here below. Note how CO2 FOLLOWS temperature variations on the shorter time scales.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1997/offset:-0.5/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997/normalise/mean:12/detrend:0.81/offset:0.42/scale:10/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997/normalise/mean:12/plot/wti/from:2000.85/offset:-0.5/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997/normalise/mean:12/detrend:0.81/offset:0.42/scale:1
I follow the science and I happen to think the surface temperature record you are so fond of is a crock. It is not global in any meaningful sense, and while the adjustments have usually been small, the cumulative effect of them changing it every time they change their underwear has not been small, and the “trend” of the adjustments is clear and disturbing.
You might remember from following science in school that warm air has a very strong tendency to rise. Thus, surface warming should rise through the lower troposphere, yet none of the satellite groups (which are vastly more global) has registered any signal of the supposed surface temperature trend.
What data has been used for the solar input?
Bob,
Hi! On these issues I believe we are on the same (peer reviewed) page(s) 😉
I’m glad you took the time to do your own empirical verification.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, the newer version of that experiment is preferable –
http://i42.tinypic.com/2h6rsoz.jpg
– the reason if the LWIR sources are constant, and this leads to a more definite temperature differential in the evaporation constrained second run of the experiment.
What you write here is very important –
– so important, that when properly investigated it invalidates not just AGW hypothesis, but the net radiative GHE hypothesis as well.
I use this simple experiment to demonstrate the problem –
http://oi61.tinypic.com/or5rv9.jpg
– while both target block have equal ability to absorb SW and emit IR, when exposed to solar radiation they both rise to a near equilibrium temperature, but a 20C differential between the blocks develops. This is solely due to the different depth of SW absorption between the blocks.
In terms of surface temperature for IR opaque, SW transparent materials, the differential is increased if the material is a liquid experiencing convective circulation or intermittently illuminated. Both conditions effect our oceans. I demonstrate the same “selective surface” effect in liquid here –
http://oi62.tinypic.com/zn7a4y.jpg
For water the problem gets worse. The “basic physics” of the “settled science” assumes that IR emissivity and SW absorptivity are near unity. This is also incorrect, effective (not apparent) emissivity of water is below 0.8. It could even be lower, but the experiment I used to minimise the atmospheric Hohlrumn effect was limited as I could only drop background to -40C. –
http://i61.tinypic.com/24ozslk.jpg
This physics of greybodys or selective surfaces is actually absent from the “basic physics” of the “settled science”. Climastrologists provably went an used standard SB equations on a transparent material that evaporatively cools. This is a gross error. The entire AGW hypothesis rides on a surface at 255K being raised by 33K by a radiative GHE. For our ocean planet 312K would be a more accurate figure for surface without atmosphere, and this means the net effect of our radiative atmosphere is surface cooling. No AGW, ever. It is quite simply a physical impossibility.
Konrad,
“The entire AGW hypothesis rides on a surface at 255K being raised by 33K by a radiative GHE. For our ocean planet 312K would be a more accurate figure for surface without atmosphere, and this means the net effect of our radiative atmosphere is surface cooling.”
Where do you get 312K? That is 38˚C or 100˚F? When I do the S-B equation based on solar insolation and emissivity=absorptivity I get 278K or 5.5˚C. Which is apx. the average temperature of the ocean. Also the apx. average surface temperature of the Ocean is 22˚C, which means that the Ocean creates the true green house affect of 16˚ or 17˚.
Genghis,
you should never use the short form SB equation (where e=a) on SW transparent materials. Use CFD or empirical experiment.
312K is a crude estimate for “surface in absence of atmosphere” simply derived by 29% at 255K (land) added to 71% at 335K (ocean).
Konrad says;
Genghis,
you should never use the short form SB equation (where e=a) on SW transparent materials. Use CFD or empirical experiment.
312K is a crude estimate for “surface in absence of atmosphere” simply derived by 29% at 255K (land) added to 71% at 335K (ocean).
*************
Water, specifically the ocean, isn’t SW transparent it is almost a blackbody absorber.
Where does the 335K come from? That is 62˚C or 140˚F. Are you really trying to claim that the ocean would be almost boiling without an atmosphere?
Actually without an atmosphere it would be boiling and/or frozen and much much colder. The presence of an atmosphere makes the ocean warmer than it would be without. The question is by how much?
Think about it, the average surface temperature of the ocean is 22˚C, 7˚ above the average ‘surface’ air temperature. The oceans thermal skin layer is the key to understanding the climate.
James Abbott says:
You clearly are fixed in your view.
True. My view is that global warming has stopped. I am fixed in that view. Nothing you have written refutes that.
And to answer your question: the “carbon” scare is your falsified conjecture that a rise in CO2 [“carbon”] will lead to runaway global warming and climate catastrophe.
If a rise in CO2 only caused a tiny amount of global warming [or none, as Konrad shows above], then you would have no reason to post here. Climate alarmism is your motivation. It is your Belief and it is evident in your comments.
But if you admitted what all real world evidence shows — that what we have been observing is entirely consistent with natural climate variability, and nothing more — then you would have nothing to be concerned about. You would have to admit that your scare has fizzled.
Anyway, thanx for the amusement. When you say, “I follow the science”, you left out a word: “fiction”. Because that’s what your “carbon” scare is based on: science fiction.
Was it even necessary to twist the knife ?
I like to pull the wings off flies, too. ☺
Thank you for the laugh!
db,
You have to understand. The green party do not want the Earth to be verdant… It’s an Orwell thing.
As goes the top skin of seawater being cool.
I can personally attest that from old Linescan deep IR films from the 70’s. Ships churn up the water and leave a bright trail behind them. This fact also makes a mockery of HADCRUT4 by upping the sea water temperatures from leather buckets to the engine room coolant pipes that measured sea water. This hides the decline in temperatures from the 1940’s.
Bob Irvine, your R^2 0.89 may be better than that in the real world. Remember, the temperature fiddlers stuck a thumbtack in the temperature record about 1945 or so and rotated it counter clockwise to make the warmiing steeper (cool the past, warm the present and get rid of the pesky record high 1930s that was prominently a burr under the CAGW saddle unti this was “fixed” by GISS’s Hansen in `1997. The reason your curve fits the NOAA curve very well at the top is that satellite temps are constraining the “room” these guys have for adjusting the temperature upwards. Indeed, I think their machinations succeeded in only accentuating the pause more. Your model since 1970 probably is closer to the real path. Maybe your correlation is more like 0.93 or so.
Anyway, the temperature gymnastics and the invoking high forcings by aerosols, etc, to keep the CAGW ship afloat have been begging for someone to develop a model with lower CO2 sensitivity for over a decade. I would like to see what you get with a forecast. It could be fair for the next 5-10 years before it falls apart – (chaotic systems and the like).
I comment further to the interesting comments by Hockey Schtick
October 11, 2014 at 1:48 pm, and Konrad’s experiment that suggests that LWIR cannot heat water at least not when water is free to evaporate.
I have been posting this info for years on this site, with several of the charts referred to.
There is a major problem with DWLWIR and the oceans, and there is a great deal left to be understood. This is an area which has not been sufficiently studied by the Climate Science community and is an extremely important one since it is the oceans that drive climate here on planet Earth. Not only do they cover approximately 70% of the globe, they represent about 95& of the total heat capacity of the syste. They are the heat pump that circulates energy absorbed in the equitorial and tropical regions polewards.
1. Many people consider that DWLWIR penetrates to millimetres, but is is just microns.
2. DWLWIR is omni-directional, such that much of the DWLWIR intercepts with the oceans at a grazing angle of less than 35 deg. The charts show the perpendicular vertical penetration.
3. When one takes account of the omnidirectional nature of DWLWIR, at least 60% possibly ~75% of all DWLWIR is anbsorbed within just 4 microns.
4. According to K&T, DWLWIR energy is approximately double that of solar. Just stop and consider the implication of that (if it were true) and the fact that solar is absorbed over and within a depth of about 1 metre (of course some solar penetrates much deeper and the depth of absorption extends well below 1 metre) whereas about 75% of DWLWIR is absorbed in just 4 microns.
5. If DWLWIR energy is approximately twice the power of solar and if 75% of DWLWIR is absorbed in just 4 microns, in real terms one sees that about 1.5 times the equivalent energy of solar is being absorbed in just 4 microns.
6.Now that is a hell of a lot of energy. In fact it is so much energy that one would expect to see upwards of 16 metres of rainfall annualy from the amount of water that would be evaporated from the amount of energy being absorbed in the first 4 microns of the oceans. We do not see anywhere near that amount of rainfall. WHY NOT?
7. IF DWLWIR is capable of sensible work, the question is how can the amount of energy that is being absorbed in the first 4 microns be dissipated (and thereby diluted) at a speed quick enough so that it does not drive evaporation leading to approx 16 metres of rainfall?
9. It cannot be by conduction since we know that the temperature profile of the top millimetres of the ocean is upwards. Conduction cannot swim against the energy flow.
10. Some suggest ocean over turning, but this is a slow mechanical process, and may even be diurnal such that for half the 24 hour period there is no or little ocean over turning.
11. Of course there is the wind and waves, but is this truly effective? What about conditions of BF3 or less when there would be little wind and waves to drive mixing?
12. And then you have the reverse problem what about BF8 and above? In these conditions, the very top of the ocean is skimmed off and there is a divorced layer of wind swept spray and spume which acts as a DWLWIR block, in much the same way as a parasol can block out solar. This wind swept spray and spume is a fine mist of water droplets, but these droplets are more than 4 microns in diametre and they would therefore absorb incoming DWLWIR before it reaches the ocean layer below!! In very windy conditions DWLWIR is being absorbed before it even reaches the oceans and is immediately being carried upwards thereby help powering the storm that is ravishing above the oceans.
What needs to be studied in great detail is a column consisting of a few metres of the atmosphere above the ocean and the first few metres of the ocean. We need to know the energy profiles almost on a millimetre by millimetre basis, and for the top 20 cms of the oceans on a micron by micron basis.
What are the energy flows? How is energy being distributed?
Unless someone can put forward a convincing physical model explaining how the energy that is absorbed within the first 4 microns of the ocean is dissipated to depth at a speed faster than the energy so absorbed would drive evaporation, there is a major problem for those who claim that DWLWIR heats the oceans, and who promote the gross energy budget, rather than the net energy flow budget.
Maybe DWLWIR is a signal incapable of performing sensible work. In the winter one often sees a hollow filled with dew. One side of the hollow may be in shaddow most of the day and the dew hangs around all day, whereas the other side of the hollow is sunny. Within an hour of sun up, even though early morning winter sun is weak, the dew, on the sunny side, is driven off. Why is that? Similar surface, similar atmospherice conditions, the only difference is that one side is receiving low energy solar which even in just a short duration can drive evaporation of the dew. Solar can do work that DWLWIR seems incapable of performing.
Richard can I second your excellent post? I am a latecomer to party, but It didn’t take me long when I started pointing an IR gun at the ocean and sky.
By my calculations the extra wattage from the clouds at 130 watts (which I can measure with an IR gun, they are real), should warm the top few microns of the surface by 8 degrees per second depending on the estimated depth of the radiation. The surface doesn’t warm that much, so something is wrong.
What is wrong is the concept of separating upward radiation and downward radiation. The only concept that works is NET radiation. Then the math works nicely.
It is kind of like the idea of separating two metal plates that have been heated together. Before separating them there is zero radiation between the two plates but after separating them there is 1000 watts going both directions, if I neglect to subtract the radiation from one plate I can show where 1000 watts is going to vaporize one of the metal plates very quickly.
Despite the warmest September on record, GISS is flat for the last 10 years.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/last:120/to/plot/gistemp/last:120/trend
Irving supports the ideas in his paper:
http://www.witpress.com/elibrary/wit-transactions-on-engineering-sciences/83/27156
with an experiment developed by Konrad Hartmann and Tattersall.( H and T )
Irving incorrectly describes this experiment in this post.
They say
From what I have observed, backscattered LWIR can slow the rate at which substances cool.
There is no evidence in these experiments of “backscattering” existing, or affecting cooling or evaporation.
The experiments show the a metal surface reflects radiation.
The transparent surface allows radiation out and so cools faster .
There is no “backscattering”, or back-radiation slowing cooling.
(H and T) continue:
However in the case of liquid water that is free to cool evaporatively this effect is dramatically reduced.
It has not dramatically reduced, it was never there.
This argument reminds me of the guy selling dragon repellent spray.
” But there are no dragons here”, says the sceptical customer.
“Yes, see how well it works”. “only $10”.
Roger,
“DWLWIR” or “back radiation” or however you want to phrase it does exist.
Remember the experiment has two sections. The second run should be done with LDPE film restricting evaporation but not conduction or radiation. Here radiation reflected back to the water sample does slow its cooling rate. This works for most materials, but not for materials that are free to evaporatively cool.
REPLY: Bullshit, it does. Get over yourself, and stop wasting the time of myself, moderators, and others by arguing the unarguable. There’s a blog for that, called “Principia Scientific”. Go argue it there all you want, but you’re done here on this topic. -Anthony
Anthony,
I point out to Roger that DWLWIR does exist. You respond, calling my comment “bullshit” with a link to Dr. Spencer demonstrating (using exactly the same instruments I use) that DWLWIR does exist. What’s up with that?
Never on this blog or any other have I ever argued that the atmosphere does not absorb or emit IR. Never. Nor have I ever claimed, as “slayers” have, that IR emitted from a cooler object cannot slow the cooling of a warmer object. In fact I attempted to combat the “slayers” just as you did with empirical experiment, demonstrating how to build Willis’ “steel greenhouse” for real. Nothing I am claiming in any way violates existing laws of radiative physics.
All I am demonstrating by those experiments is –
A. DWLWIR has a different effect over water than it does over land.
B. Solar SW has a different effect on water than it does on land.
I don’t not believe these are incredible claims. Bob Irvine has confirmed A. As to B, I found out after I had run the experiments that it was old news. Very old news from 1965 –
Harris, W. B., Davison, R. R., and Hood, D. W. (1965) ‘Design and operating characteristics of an experimental solar water heater’ Solar Energy, 9(4), pp. 193-196.
Researchers at Texas A&M found, just as I did that, that depth of SW absorption made a dramatic difference in average temperatures in convecting solar ponds.
What I am essentially demonstrating is the base assumption of the AGW hypothesis of 255K for “surface without atmosphere” is in grave error. The application of the short form of the SB equation to the oceans essentially treats them as opaque to solar SW. This clearly isn’t the case.
I do not understand where you think I am “arguing the auarguable”.
Anthony,
I point out to Roger that DWLWIR does exist. You respond, calling my comment “bullshit” with a link to Dr. Spencer demonstrating (using exactly the same instruments I use) that DWLWIR does exist. What’s up with that?
Never on this blog or any other have I ever argued that the atmosphere does not absorb or emit IR. Never. Nor have I ever claimed as “slayers” have that IR emitted from a cooler object cannot slow the cooling of a warmer object. In fact I attempted to combat the “slayers” just as you did with empirical experiment, demonstrating how to build Willis’ “steel greenhouse” for real. Nothing I am claiming in any way violates existing laws of radiative physics.
All I am demonstrating by those experiments is –
A. DWLWIR has a different effect over water than it does over land.
B. Solar SW has a different effect on water than it does on land.
I don’t not believe these are incredible claims. Bob Irvine has confirmed A. As to B, I found out after I had run the experiments that it was old news. Very old news from 1965 –
Harris, W. B., Davison, R. R., and Hood, D. W. (1965) ‘Design and operating characteristics of an experimental solar water heater’ Solar Energy, 9(4), pp. 193-196.
Researchers at Texas A&M found, just as I did that, that depth of SW absorption made a dramatic difference in average temperatures in convecting solar ponds.
What I am essentially demonstrating is the base assumption of the AGW hypothesis of 255K for “surface without atmosphere” is in grave error. The application of the short form of the SB equation to the oceans essentially treats them as opaque to solar SW. This clearly isn’t the case.
I do not understand where you think I am “arguing the auarguable”.
REPLY: My mistake, an error in reading comprehension. I apologize. It has been a difficult week for me due to some health issues and I simply read it wrong. – Anthony
Anthony,
no problem, I was been able to reply to Roger Clague more fully at Rog’s site, and I apologise for any misinterpretations that have occurred elsewhere.
I hope your health issues are not too serious. The work you do with WUWT is greatly appreciated. The discussion resulting from Dr. Brown’s essay shows just why WUWT is so important.
Konrad.
Hockey Schtick mentioned a post at Digging in the Clay. It is a most interesting post by Peter Morcombe which I have enjoyed reading. I was reading a few of the comments (Dr. Brown of Duke added to the comments) and saw that “Ron C.” added the following:
I would add that this means that convection and conduction are the overwhelming dominate means of heat transfer in the lower atmosphere just like they taught us at university in the early 70s before the madness set in.
As Peter Morcombe pointed out in conversation with Dr. Brown:
And so it is gravity which causes the atmosphere near the earth to be very, very dense and less dense as one climbs up the mountain (grew up in the Appalachian mountains). As one goes up one notices it gets colder. It is in the upper atmosphere (Stratosphere and above) where the air is very thin that radiation (CO2 being a player there) is the dominate means of moving heat out into space. In the lower atmosphere CO2 radiation plays only a very small role.
I don’t see much in the above about the latent heat of evaporation at the ocean’s surface. Evaporation/clouds/precipitation cycle process a hundred times more cooling and heating than sensible radiative heating.
http://www.writerbeat.com/articles/3713-CO2-Feedback-Loop
This post is something I’ve been saying for a while — forcings aren’t all the same. Watts are watts, yes, but GHG infrared’s effect is mostly limited to surface effects, while solar-shortwave penetrates water surfaces. So GHG’s effect is pretty much the same over oceans as on land (immediate), but shortwave can be partially stored in water to manifest later. That very much affects sensitivity time-constants — much shorter for GHG warming than for solar changes (albedo/clouds).
The models use the adjustable parameter “ocean diffusivity” as the estimate for how quickly & to what extent heat enters & mixes in the ocean (and shows up later). After only a brief search, I came up w/this quote from RPielkeSr at:http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/paper-sensitivity-of-distributions-of-climate-system-properties-to-the-surface-temperature-dataset-by-libardoni-and-forest/
That confirmed what I thought — modellers/climate scientists don’t have a handle on this.
I am afraid the whole forcing idea may be “barking up the wrong tree”. We see that the models cannot predict the warming and cooling phases that have been observed in the recent past (1910 onward). Now everyone looks at forcing mechanisms because prima facie the “forces” that are observable are not large enough to explain the observable facts. That’s like seeing a tiny Asian martial artist throwing three grown men in one sweep without much effort and thus concluding he must have access to some “forcing”. Yet he hasn’t.
“Basically, two tubs of warm water, one under a clear cling wrap roof and one under a reflective foil roof, are allowed to cool. In test A they are both free to evaporate and both cool at the same rate. In test B evaporation is restricted by placing cling wrap on the surface of the water in both tubs. In test B the tub under the foil sky is significantly affected by downward long wave radiation and cools more slowly.”
Irvine
In test A, convective cooling is more significant than radiative cooling. In test B, convective cooling is suppressed. To measure the effect of evaporation, measure the weight of the water in the tubs before and after cooling.
Opacity is not a measure of heat transfer. A slab of concrete is opaque to sunlight. Expose it to the sun and it will warm. Solar variation is about 0.25 W/m^2. CO2 radiative forcing since pre-industrial era is 1.88 W/m^2. They are unequal even if all other things remain equal.
On the sphere that construct the radius size of 1 AU (150 million kilometers), can accommodate about 500 million spheres the size of our planet. Who is more powerful the sun or something that exists on the planet, so small and negligible in size and power.? It seems that everything that exists on our planet and around it behaves according to the laws of nature, respecting each other and obeying these laws, a person is not incorporated into these laws, because he wants to be “smarter” than all that is formed and the planet and everything in it. Is not that proof .that all such considerations and discussions have not led to real results, therefore it is up to now nothing has proved as true cause of these phenomena.
Therefore, in the interest of science and consciousness that we get to reveal to her the true causes of the phenomenon, an urgent need to turn science to the study of the laws governing with all existing in the universe. Who can ignore such power and force that drives the planet that revolves around the sun, around and around the center of mass itself. If you ignore this, we wander up to the new (never present the last of the big bang), but we can not come in this way to the true causes of events in and around us. Many scientists behave like Grandma fortune teller, who look at a cup of coffee or a glass globe, and scientists in the model extracted from the PC, and think that there is a lot smarter than themselves. Is this so? If not, why so many took the PC as a “god” as did the Jews who had believed in the golden calf.
Climate change on the planets, in general, have quite different causes than are today’s science advocates. That science is right, I guess by now found something that agrees with the phenomena of nature.
There is so much that seems to be missing in the IPCC models. According to energy budgets, more heat energy is moved from the Earth’s surface to where clouds form then by LWIR absorption band radiation and convection combined. Clouds have a net cooling effect. As CO2 is added supposedly increasing the LWIR absorption band radiative insulation properties of the atmosphere, upper atmospheric H2O decreases which provides another negative feedback. Another point is that an increase in greenhouse gases increases the LWIR absorption band emissivity of the atmosphere. If a gas is a good absorber in a particular band it is also a good radiator in that band. The gases that really hold LWIR absorption band related energy the best are really the non greenhouse gasses because they are such poor radiators in greenhouse gas LWIR absorption bands. The primary so called greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere is H2O and it provides ample negative feedbacks to changes in other so called greenhouse gases so as to mitigate any effect they might have on climate. The Earth’s climate has been sufficiently stable to changes in greenhouse gases over the past 500 million years for life to evolve. There has been no runaway global warming. We are here. There are many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels but global warming is not one of them. The real environmental problem is Man’s our of control population in a finite world with finite resources. If Man does not learn to control his own population, Nature will, catastrophically.
Hockey Schtick
The top 10 um is cooler because of convective cooling from the air. The effect of IR is warming because without it the top layer would be cooler. To cause evaporation, either warm the water or reduce partial pressure. IR can warm water and cause evaporation. But warming has to occur first. Blowing wind can reduce partial pressure can cause evaporation. So IR warming can be cancelled by evaporation caused by wind. But IR itself does not have cooling effect.
If you visit the WIT Press site you’ll now find: REMOVED – A Comparison Of The Efficacy Of Greenhouse Gas Forcing And Solar Forcing
Apparently they decided to do some peer review after all.
‘Free (open access) Paper DOI 10.2495/HT140241’
Your link now says:
‘REMOVED – A Comparison Of The Efficacy Of Greenhouse Gas Forcing And Solar Forcing’