Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
At the end of my last post , I said that the climate seems to be an inherently stable system. The graphic below shows ~2,000 climate simulations run by climateprediction.net. Unlike the other modelers, whose failures end up on the cutting room floor, they’ve shown all of the runs … including the runs that ran right off of the rails.
Figure 1. Climate simulation runs from climateprediction,net.
Notice that many of the runs go badly wrong, either cooking the planet at some 8°C (14°F) hotter than at present, or spiraling down into an ice-covered unreality. To me this is a perfect example of the basic misunderstanding of how the climate works. People think that the global temperature is free to take up any temperature at all, and that if the forcing changes, the temperature must change. But it is not free to go off of the rails. Instead, the global temperature is an inherently stable system.
Now, what does it require for a natural heat engine like the global climate to be inherently stable? The general way that humans control heat engines like say an automobile engine is by controlling the “throttle”, which in an automobile is what the gas pedal connects to. The throttle decrease or increases the amount of fuel that is entering the engine. To be stable, you need some system that opens or closes the throttle based on some criterion.
In the climate system, of course, the throttle is the variable albedo of the earth. The “albedo” of an object is a number from 0.0 to 1.0 that measures the fraction of solar radiation that is reflected from the surface of the object. It’s usually given as a fraction, although I prefer it as a percentage (0% to 100%). The albedo of the earth is about 0.29, meaning 29% of the sunlight is reflected back to space.
As I showed in my last post, the albedo generally decreases with temperature … up to around 26°C or so. Above that the albedo rises rapidly. As a result, in much of the tropics when the ocean warms the albedo increases, rapidly cutting back on the incoming solar energy.
In such a system, when the earth is cooler than the equilibrium temperature, the solar input goes up, increasing the temperature. And conversely, when the earth is warmer than the equilibrium temperature, the solar input goes down, and the earth cools back to the equilibrium temperature.
In the comments to my last post, someone asked how the increase in albedo worked out on a daily basis. To answer that, I need to take a bit of a diversion.
I got interested in climate in the late nineties. Most folks I read wanted to understand why the earth’s temperature had changed over the 20th century. I had a very different question—I wanted to know why the earth’s temperature had changed so little over the 20th century (a variation of ± 0.3°C). Since the earth’s temperature is about 290 Kelvin, that’s a variation of plus or minus a tenth of a percent or so. As someone who has dealt with regulated engines, to me that was astounding long-term stability. Over the 20th century we had droughts, the clouds came and went, we had volcanoes, times of lots of hurricanes, times of few hurricanes … and the temperature went nowhere. Plus or minus a tenth of a percent.
At the time I started tackling the problem of climate stability, I was living in Fiji. At first, I spent a whole lot of time searching for the reason that there was such long-term stability. I tried to identify and understand any processes acting on multi-decadal time scales. I thought about the ebb and flow of CO2, about how the CO2 makes the rain acidic and dissolves the mountains over millennia. I thought about the purported barycentric solar cycles. I thought about the multidecadal oscillations.
No joy.
In the evenings after work I’d walk and think, think and walk. I picked up and discarded dozens of possibilities. I can’t tell you how far I walked thinking about long-term, slow compensatory systems that could keep the earth on track for a century and more.
Then one day I had a curious thought. I thought, if there were a system that kept each day within a certain temperature range, it would keep that week within that same temperature range, and it would keep that year within that temperature range, and that decade, and century, and millennium … like a fool, I’d been looking at entirely the wrong end of the time spectrum. I needed to look at minutes and hours, not decades and centuries.
This changed the entire direction of my research overnight. I started looking for processes that would regulate the temperatures on a daily basis … and since I was living in Fiji, I didn’t have far to look. I started to think that the action of the tropical cumulus clouds and in particular the thunderstorms were the real actors in the climate pageant.
I could see the daily tropical cycle unfolding most days. Clear at dawn. Then cumulus clouds form usually before noon. Thunderstorms in the afternoon, sometimes lasting into evening or night. However, I was still at a great disadvantage. I didn’t understand how the control worked. The problem was that even in the tropics you have seasons, and not every day is the same. Plus there’s day and night, it was all so complex I couldn’t see how the control was effected. I wanted some point of view where I didn’t have to deal with all of that day/night, seasons stuff.
Then one day I realized that there was a point of view which freed me from all of those problems. This was the point of view of the sun. You see, from the sun’s point of view it’s always daytime—from the sun’s point of view, there is no night. And there are no seasons—underneath the sun, it’s always eternal summer.
So to investigate the cumulus and the thunderstorms from the sun’s point of view, I used the satellite local-noon-time images from the GOES-West weather satellite. I averaged the photos over an entire year, to show the average cloudiness of the Pacific. Figure 2 shows that result:
Figure 2. Average of one year of GOES-West weather satellite images taken at satellite local noon. The Intertropical Convergence Zone is the bright band in the yellow rectangle. Local time on earth is shown by black lines on the image. Time values are shown at the bottom of the attached graph. Red line on graph is solar forcing anomaly (in watts per square meter) in the area outlined in yellow. Black line is albedo value in the area outlined in yellow.
Looking from the point of view of the sun does a very curious thing—it trades time coordinates for space coordinates. For example, in the photo above, it is always local noon at the point directly under the sun. Noon is not a time. It is the vertical line running up the middle of the picture. Sunrise is always at the left edge of the view from the sun, and the left half of the picture is the time before noon. Sunset is always at the right edge of the view from the sun, and afternoon is the right half of the picture. We’ve put spatial coordinates in place of temporal coordinates.
From this, you can see that the onset of cumulus clouds is at about 10:30. This is shown by the increase in albedo (black line at picture bottom). By 11:30 there is a fully developed cumulus field. This shift in albedo changes the reflected sunlight by about 60 W/m2. And that field of clouds persists all through the afternoon (right side of the picture above).
And most important, from the sun’s point of view I could finally understand how the albedo control is actually effected—via variations in the timing of the onset of the cumulus and thunderstorm regimes. What happens is that if the Pacific is warmer than usual, the cumulus clouds and thunderstorms shift to the left in the image above by emerging earlier in the day. This, of course, reflects more of the sunlight. And if the Pacific is cooler than usual, the clouds and thunderstorms shift to the right, emerging later in the day or not at all, and thus exposing more of the area to the stronger sunlight of the mornings. The clouds act like a reflective window screen that covers more or less of the day, depending on the temperature.
Now, from this hypothesis we can advance some testable predictions. First, albedo should be positively correlated with temperature in the tropical Pacific. This is confirmed by my previous post. Next, we should be able to detect the effect of the variations in cloud onset on the daily temperature record … which hopefully will be the subject of my next post.
Finally, while the cumulus and the thunderstorms control the throttle by regulating the amount of energy entering the system, there are a variety of other temperature regulating phenomena as well. What all of these have in common is that they are “emergent” phenomena. These are phenomena that emerge spontaneously, but only when conditions are right. In the climate system, these phenomena typically emerge only when a certain temperature threshold is surpassed.
In the tropical daytime system, once a certain temperature threshold is reached the cumulus clouds start to form. But often, the reduction in incoming sunlight is not enough to stop the daily warming. If the surface continues to warm, at some higher temperature threshold thunderstorms form. And if the surface warms even more and a third temperature threshold is surpassed, yet another phenomena will emerge—the thunderstorms will line up shoulder to shoulder in long serried rows, with canyons of clear descending air between them.
Thunderstorms are natural refrigeration cycle air-conditioning machines. They use the same familiar evaporation/condensation cycle used in your air conditioner. But they do something your air conditioner can’t do. They only form exactly when and where you need them. When there is a hot spot in the afternoon on a tropical ocean, a thunderstorm soon forms right above it and starts cooling the surface back down. Not only that, but the thunderstorm cools the surface down below the starting temperature. This can not only slow but actually reverse a warming trend.
And if there are two hot spots you get two thunderstorms, and so on … do you see why I argue against the entire concept of “climate sensitivity”? When you add additional forcing to such a system, you don’t just get additional hot spots.
You also get additional thunderstorms working their marvels of refrigerational physics, so there is little surface temperature change.
It’s one AM, big moon a few days past full. Think I’ll go back outside, I heard a fox barking outside around moonrise. Best to all, moon over your shoulder, more to come,
w.
The Perennial Request: If you disagree with someone, please have the courtesy to quote the exact, precise words that you disagree with. That way we can all understand your objection.
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Have you also looked at the desert areas that do not have the thunderstorm effect?
There are other emergent phenomena in desert conditions such as dust devils or willy-willy’s. They form when the air near the surface gets very hot and produce what is in effect a weak tornado that carries hot air and dust into the higher levels of the atmosphere. As with a tropical thunderstorm the air carried up colls by radiation and the dust reduces the amount of light reaching the ground.
Yep – any process engineer would agree that if negative feedback didn’t dominate the planet would have become either a freezer or an oven a very long time ago.
“Yep – any process engineer would agree that if negative feedback didn’t dominate the planet would have become either a freezer or an oven a very long time ago.”
Any climate scientist would agree with that also, if “feedback” is defined the way you define it.
IMHO the way we define words has no effect on whether the Earth becomes a freezer or an oven.
Negative feedback is simply defined as a system in which a portion of the OUTPUT response is fed back to the INPUT with a phase such as to cancel a portion of the INPUT signal.
In the earth climate system, the INPUT is the total solar energy that reaches the earth surface to be converted mostly to HEAT energy (and stored mostly in the deep ocean). The OUTPUT response is the change in global Temperature as a result of that solar energy input.
That is what “feedback” is.
Presumably increased levels of CO2 or water vapour near the surface will lead, all else being equal, to earlier onset of substantial convection produced by heating from the surface since the absorption of infra-red provides an additional mechanism for warming the air near the surface. Sources of CO2 are at the surface, and the biggest sources are in the tropics. As far as I know, the GCMs do not model spatial, and in particular height and latitude, variations in CO2 concentrations. They generally do not model CO2 at all, except as a label given to a presumed change in net radiation flow at the top of the model atmospheres which is attributed to CO2. A good many other factors are able to be readily incorporated, in a sense, in the models in the same way.
From the Earth’s standpoint, when the sky is clear IR losses will not be “throttled” by clouds and during cloudy times, the opposite. Is this a negative or positive feedback situation?
It depends on the temperature. At least.
At northern latitudes, you’ll notice that a summer day with cumulus like cloud cover is cooler than a sunny day, but during winter all cloudy days and nights are warmer than clear crisp days and nights.
Adding cumulus clouds moderates the temperature.
if the regulation is working then why is there a continual considerable increase in heat content of the oceans?
Define “considerable”. It is so little that it is barely detectable within the accuracy of modern instrumentation.
Monckton says the rate of temperature rise is less than a quarter of a degree C per century. The measurements have overall an error band of 0.3 which is greater than the claimed warming per century. And this rate was established over how long a period?
If the oceans as a whole are warming, or cooling at the same rate no one can ‘prove’ it.
Maybe the feedback is slightly smaller than the effect of CO2 forcing? Or maybe the ocean circulation just happens to be in warming phase? Or maybe the OHC calculations are not as precise as marketed by tenure seeking scientists? They kept digging and digging to find the error which caused the cooling result, and then stopped digging?
You’ve got to be kidding.
The Wentz et al paper says that a 1 deg. C increase in global Temperature results in a 7% increase in total global evaporation, and a 7% increase in total global precipitation, and a 7% increase in total atmospheric water content. That is a huge feedback factor. A 1% cloud cover change makes CO2 doubling look paltry by comparison.
As I have mentioned on many occasions here at WUWT, although Wentz et al didn’t say so in their paper. In most polite circles when you have a 7% increase in total global precipitation, it is traditional in most locations to have a commensurate increase in total global precipitable cloud cover.
And I have suggested that this might take the form of increased cloud AREA, and or increased DENSITY of moisture in the clouds, and or increased persistence time of those precipitable clouds.
Another regular poster at WUWT added that this change could also include a movement of cloud formation to the warmer regions of the planet (tropics) where more incoming solar energy is.
My apologies to that person, as my short term memory has failed me, and I’ll remember his name the moment I send this.
So the earlier onset of thunderstorm building that Willis documents here in this essay is a demonstrable incidence of the sorts of cloud MODULATION which I alluded to.
It’s one that I hadn’t specifically thought about. To me clouds is clouds, and more clouds is more clouds, and I agree that thunderstorm clouds are great solar input controls.
I’m amazed that Willis had access to the sort of photographic evidence to bring this subject down to earth in a concrete way.
One of your best missives yet Willis.
G
What is your answer, then, to the question “if the regulation is working then why is there a continual considerable increase in heat content of the oceans?”
“Another regular poster at WUWT added that this change could also include a movement of cloud formation to the warmer regions of the planet (tropics) where more incoming solar energy is.”
Well I’ve been drawing attention to latitudinal climate zone shifting and changes in jetstream zonality / meridionality since 2007.
And yes it was indeed Stephen Wilde who first (to my recollection) mentioned the latitudinal migration of cloud formation as a feedback influence.
Sorry for the mental block there Stephen. My short term memory is going haywire. There are times I can’t even come up with Albert Einstein.
It s a real conversational problem as I can’t spit out some simple word when needed, but easily recall it after it is moot.
The key thing about the various “cloud negative feedback” processes that you, myself, and here Willis, have noted, is that there is no need to invoke any sort of CO2 mechanism.
It doesn’t matter a hoot how much CO2 there is, the cloud cover just adjusts to the proper required amount.
The CO2 GW mechanism is a complete red herring. Yes I know, CO2 and zone do absorb LWIR radiation. Nobody disputes that. But if cloud feedback can completely overcome the considerable change in TSI vale during the annual orbit change, what chance does a pipsqueak effect like CO2 have.
No I don’t deny that CO2 is a GHG that absorbs LWIR outgoing radiation. The cloud feedback just wipes the floor with that harmless change.
g
water vapour coms from the surface of the water. It is the surface of the water that absorbs IR (it only penetrates a few molecules deep (other than wave action mixing). IR WILL therefore have an effect on evaporation.
The top metre or so of sea changes by many °C over the course of a year as you get outside the tropics.
Air temperature will be affected by the SST and the SST will be affected by the air temp (heat flow is a 2 way thing)
OHC is over 2000metres of depth – there will be a delay from surface to 2000m Looking at wiki for SST and OHC it appears that perhaps 20 years may be a figure (peak at 1945 and peak at 1963) but the data is insufficient to accurately say.
CiW says the increase is insignificant – this is just not true it is energy stored which was not there before. can you prove that this massive amount of energy is benign?
It is simply because of hysteresis in ocean temperature. Like room thermostat it has some setting values. If you want to keep 20C, It will start heating at 19.5C and stop heating at 20.5C. From very slowed point of view you can see temperature rising from 19.5C to 20.5C and no thermostat in action.
Good post Willis! We see something very similar here in the Great Lakes region all summer. Clear mornings followed by increasing cloudiness followed by afternoon thunderstorms. And it results in the same thing — a decrease in temperature.
On the much grander scale of the tropical oceans I can understand how this feedback stabilizes temperature.
Excellent Willis.
“… onset of cumulus clouds is at about 10:30 …” How does this vary as the Earth passes through its perihelion and aphelion?
This second post gives a more wholistic view of the various mechanisms you tried to tie together in your first post. The “view from the sun” investigation also provides your most compelling evidence for your theory.
If correct it should also show the “left of picture”, “right of picture” differences as the Earth moves nearer or further away from the sun through its yearly elliptical orbit. When the Earth is closer to the sun, we would expect to see more clouds “earlier” in the day from the sun’s perspective further to the left on satellite photographs and further to the right when the Earth is furthest away from the sun in it’s orbit.
This would be the simplest way to confirm or refute your theory and would be an incredible discovery if you are correct and the issue of why Earths mean temperature remains stable through the year is resolved.
That is an excellent description of the semi-diurnal wave pattern that I have been recording for the last year with my cheap little barometer I bought at Wally World. It also describes to a tee the actions that occur at “high noon”.
And I have been walking and mummering about the same “out of phase” patterns that the changes in atmospheric pressure when compared to solar observations. Maybe, just maybe, there is a time delay of 4 to 6 hours between the observed sun at “high noon” and the temperature changes on earth. Seems like it takes the plasma longer to get here than the light.
Has anyone noticed the glitches that occur several times during the temperature rises from day to day. I plotted RH vs Temp and came up with a graph that shows where enthalpy is changing at those short times. Could that be the missing energy that was suposed to be in the bottom of the ocean? If so it is right in front of our eyes.
Recently, after the sun went down the stillness path (cycle 24), the di-urnal pattern has changed. From a well formed, repeatable pattern to one that is truncated on either side of high noon. The only THING that could cause that is the non-forcing caused by the reduction of the solar wind.
That shining orb puts out a full range of signals containing every possible frequency and mass movement. If I was to cherry pick my data, I could probably make it appear like anything I wanted. But for the life of me, I would not know what to cherry pick at all.
Well I have the right to say I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON UP THERE. After all I am not a scientist.
This is an excellent video on solar plasma and it’s possible terestrial effects and why solar cycles could play a role in climate despite total solar irradiance remaining basically the same.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XdrDg-Nuxdg
Wow. Excellent source. Not.
Your issue with it being?
Excellent and interesting.
Very interesting. I now understand much better what Svensmark is proposing. Bob Johnson’s speculations about other possible links of the sun to the climate are also intriguing. This is one of those places where we should be spending some of that climate research money, rather than chasing CO2 molecules round with computer models.
Im not sure we are seeing the same sun. I am measuring sun energy not light. Not quite sure what the 36 dollar solar charger I am using is looking at.
I have always thought that irradiance encompases that heating aspect of the sun. I now know that each frequency ejected from the sun takes different transit times to get to the earth. Just like the picture in the video of the solar wind wrapping around the sun and ending up on earth days later.
Thanks for the url. At the end he brought up a lot of items that is not settled science yet. Im still trying to wrap my thoughts around how the magnetic field affects our atmosphere without having some kind of mass to force the barometric pressure to change.
I went looking for any university based research Bob Johnson has done on solar plasma. I went looking for major journals he has published in. I went looking for book chapters he has authored. I went looking for mainstream solar groups. I could not find his name anywhere. The only place I found his name was in the completely debunked elect+++ universe side show group.
So yeh. I would not give his theories anymore wasted time than the hour I spent searching for published work under his name. And I want that hour back. I could have been watching grass grow.
” I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON UP THERE. After all I am not a scientist.”
—————
That’s ok Lee, it doesn’t appear that “scientists” know what’s going on up there, either.
Lee O
You do not need to be a scientist to think. Put in the time needed to understand. That’s all the scientists did.
Agreed, sometimes passion trumps pedigree,
Sorry Crispin You should have said ” You don’t have to have a PHD to think, but if you think and try to understand you are a Scientist.”
Well Crispin and Paul
I believe that there are many people like me just reading and learning from these blogs everyday. I do not think they have made the transition to involvement, otherwise we would hear from them. But, when they do, Katy bar the door.
Lee Osburn,
“I plotted RH vs Temp and came up with a graph that shows where enthalpy is changing at those short times.”
Does that happen a few hours after sunrise? When the inversion layer breaks up?
On 2-12-14 I graphed a detail of the temperature. My temperature dropped to 20.6 degrees F and then began to rise at 7:17cst. The first dip occurred 13 minutes later. The second in about 40min. The third about an hour and a half. Three more occurred of which the last occurred around high noon (that is around 12:30pm cst). Temperature peaked at 62deg at 3:00 pm and remained constant til about 5pm when it started dropping. After sundown at 6:22 it began to free fall until it reached 36deg where a spike occurred followed by two more before dropping below freezing at midnight cst.
I have not seen a duplication of the times. It seems very random.
excuse me for an off topic post.
If you look at all of the people and things that they say you might yourself say that the upbringing shapes the individual thoughts, the way the individual looks at the world in trying to understand all and everything.
Well I will just cut straight to my point that the Christian and the islamic fundamentals can be dispensed with and we (humans ) should adopt Buddhist teaching. I think this way a lot of hardships can be avoided.
to further say I know for a fact that thought influences reality, Why do you think that people believe in curses ?
the biological effect should not be ignored in any study trying to say something about the nature.
Thanks, Willis. I am updating your Thermostat articles in ARVAL.
I postulate that those tropical thunderclouds are controlling the atmospheric concentration of CO2 as well as temperature, with cold rain returning a fraction that has been emitted to the ocean surface. Think Henry’s Law at work near the top of those thunderclouds. The pH of clean rain is a function of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 (around 4.2). In the tropics the freezing level is between 600mb and 500mb.
I’m sure I read, years ago, in a Lovelock book, about bugs in the ocean that gave off a gas when things got too warm. This gas encouraged the water vapour above the ocean to form clouds, lowered the dew point or something. Those critters are smarter than we are.
It would be interesting to do the same exercise on the ‘other side’ of the picture where it is always midnight. Perhaps there is an outgoing. Regulator too.
Yes there is and very simple too. It is dew point of water vapors and creation of fog, which retains Earth heat. It is changing nighttime Earth from high radiating blackbody to low radiating white body.
This shows up long before fog does, I have noticed the rate of cooling changing at the high 80% to mid 90% rel humidity, this might be a air pressure adjustment, which would make some sense.
That was my first thought as well. The new knowledge that bacteria release rain causing chemicals when the surface water gets “too warm” for them. (or it could be they are using warm water to spread their kind). Bacteria that live on plants do the same thing, when it’s very warm they spread by riding the updrafts, and end up in the clouds. And both kind cause it to rain.
This next part I find important. These same plant bacteria are the ones that cause frost damage, because they can cause water to freeze above the normal freezing point. This ability, to form ice crystals around them above freezing, is thought to be the source of rain, since they seed clouds before dust or soot would. The bacteria may actually be causing both the clouds and the rain to form.
This goes hand in hand with the idea that the warmer it gets, the quicker clouds form, and the sooner rain falls. Fascinating stuff.
Also, during the warm season, lack of rain is almost 100% correlated with hot periods, and rain is connected with cool periods.
Excellent post. Plausible and well written. My only nit pick is the vague implication that there is some magic going on, or that this is new information or a new theory. Let me add in the same style:
Of course, there is another way that thunderstorms cool the surface off. Water molecules which have been near the TOA, have been cooled considerably by the exposure to the icy blackness of outer space. By an emergent phenomena of spontaneous physical transport, rain drops fall. When they suddenly stop moving, the surface is forced by some magic to Heat the water by another emergent phenomena (known as thermodynamics). This has the effect of cooling the surface. Sun Heats surface. Surface heats water, surface cools. Water evaporates, surface cools. Water rises, surface cools. Space cools water. Water falls. Surface Heats fallen Water, surface cools.
This all points to a system which is inherently stable.
I’m reading the book 1984. In the book, Big Brother changes the past to match his latest pronouncements. Thank goodness, there is nothing like that happening today (or is there?).
Anyways, the main character Winston finds it remarkable that the people went right along with it. One day, the amount of chocolate was reduced from 30 to 20 grams. The next day, it was announced that it had been raised from 10 to 20. Winston is amazed and thinks surely, people remember yesterday, and that it was 30, not 10.
Speaking of stability, I wonder if the argument is stable. Just over one week ago (seems longer, doesn’t it?), this article argued rather vehemently that the climate was unpredictable. Sir Monckton even got into the fray to support the notion of climate unpredictability.
I found this rather perplexing, because although I’m not quite sure where Willis stands, Sir Monckton is clearly anti AGW. Yet, he was arguing the pro AGW position, which is that the climate is unstable, and could reach a tipping point, if we’re not really, really careful. Don’t drive muscle cars, and if you see a butterfly, catch it before it leads to our doom.
Like Winston, I’m amazed that the readers of this blog don’t seem to remember that the allotment of chocolate yesterday was 30 grams and not 10. Just over one week ago, the climate was so unstable that it could not be predicted. Today, it’s inherently stable. I assert that it can’t be both.
Well there are many different viewpoints on here. The only consensus being that man isn’t going to cause a catastrophe to do with temperature.
It’s not when separate bloggers contradict one another that it’s worth worrying about, only when one contradicts himself/herself
wickedwenchfan, both are written by the same person.
It also seems likely that there are readers of both posts that have commented favorably to both, but I’m not sure of that.
For example, this commenter calls this a Magnificent post, while calling a post with the opposite thesis a
brilliant exposition.
surely, people remember yesterday, and that it was 30, not 10? Apparently, like in 1984, people can have it both ways.
Just for info:
In Willis’ post yesterday he did say that this system of stability he is describing isn’t the only factor in`climate stability and that there are probably many more.
You are making a really stupid (and I suspect, not a charitable) assumption, which is that I and however many others, completely agreed with one point of view or another, and then turned around and bought into a diametrically opposite argument. Yeah, I see the various arguments, and some I agree with, some I reject, and some I have no opinion about. On this particular argument (Willis’s hypothesis) I am in full agreement. His mechanism keeps the zone on earth that receives the bulk of the Sun’s heat input from boiling over. It also is the basis of several other earthly phenomena, like the Hadley cells, the obviation of greenhouse gas involvement in temperature, the strength of the equatorial trade winds, and perhaps more.
This reply is responding to things said further down the chain that don’t allow a reply. Essentially, you are an ass. Yes, physics surrounds us, doing its thing. Unlearned men make it out to be magic. Scientists study it and propose an hypothesis that ties together what the physics is doing. Willis has done that. If you have an issue with it, refute it. Otherwise, shut up, you embarrass us with your stupid animosity.
James Finley,
Me thinks thou dost protest too much. Animosity? You’re the one calling me an ass and stupid. All I did was point out that in the span of just over a week, opposite viewpoints were expressed, and no one seemed to notice. It can’t be both ways.
Why should I refute this post, since I agree with it? I agree with it, because it seems correct to me, not because it’s my side. Now, why would you react so strongly? Curious…
VikingExplorer June 4, 2015 at 6:06 am
Really? You’ve seen the hypothesis before that the timing of the emergence of various emergent phenomena (in particular but not limited to thunderstorms) is what is keeping the temperature of the planet within narrow bounds?
If you had provided even one citation for that claim, I’d be tempted to believe you … but as it stands, sorry, I’m not that credulous. I know of no one who has proposed this idea before.
w.
other than you, previously, on this web site…
Willis, it’s an excellent essay. You have a knack for bringing things together into a compelling story. My only issue is the way you’re describing the underlying scientific ideas as new: “emergence of various emergent phenomena”. Adding the word “emergent” periodically doesn’t make it new.
In reality, the laws of physics are always in operation. Of course, a hot spot causes thunderstorms. It’s not by magic, so there is no artificial timing involved. The hotter, the quicker it will form.
There is no need to find a scientific paper, because it’s well known that a hot spot causes thunderstorms. Scientists know, and many, many people, including myself, have been saying for years that there are multiple Energy transfer mechanisms in place, which are operating in parallel.
And just like with parallel circuits, if one increases the resistance of one leg, the existing voltage difference will cause more current to flow in the others (Kirchhoff’s current law). In the same way, many people have been saying that a slight change in radiative resistance will have no effect for this same reason.
That’s the meaning of my analogy of a house with the doors and windows wide open:
The point is that there are energy transfer mechanisms (like evaporation, physical transport, rain fall, thunderstorms, etc.) which all serve to transfer energy from the surface to the TOA. They are like the open doors and windows.
Thanks Willis, very enlightening but I have a question for you.
If albedo is the emergent phenomena at the equator, is there a corresponding effect at the poles. And, if there is do you think it might be found in the phase transition between ice and water? (As the cloud formation in the tropics is due to the cyclic phase transition between liquid water, water vapour and back to liquid water at different pressures)
The Arctic is interesting this time of year because in a sense it is “always noon.” To my simplistic way of thinking it seems there should be no cooling if it is “always noon.” Yet then you see cooling occur. That gets me walking around my garden, (or kneeling and weeding), and wondering, “Where did the cooling come from, if it is :”always noon”?”
Midsummer polar cooling seems to occur, (using my haphazard observations), when a summer low up over the arctic is filling and weakening. Sometimes the cameras up there show the sun comes out, and it is a bit baffling because it gets abruptly colder.
Hopefully Willis will find time to ponder the Poles at some point.
The arctic is never at noon. Much less “always noon”.
By noon I meant, “as high as the sun gets on a given day.” Sorry if that was unclear.
At the Pole itself the sun is up for six months. During roughly two of those months the sun is high enough to warm the air at the surface to just above freezing. Because the sun just travels around and around the sky, I wondered why temperatures didn’t stay stuck at just above freezing. In actual fact temperatures can dip quite low after summer gales. I saw it get down to -7° C a couple summers ago.
Most of the heat in the Arctic is transported there by the atmosphere and ocean. Because the sun strikes at a shallow angle, its main effect is to reduce the net heat loss to outer space*. In July the top of atmosphere (TOA) shows approximately a 10 watt per square meter heating from the sun. In the winter, there is approximately 180 watts per square meter heat loss.
Given the tiny net solar heat gain in the summer, it doesn’t take much to swing it to a loss.
Note also that the Arctic heat budget is not well understood. ie. The numbers don’t balance. http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_4271_f10/lectures/week_2.pdf
Usually we define noon as the time when the sun is highest in the sky. That coincides with when it is directly south. At the exact north pole, neither of those definitions works. Elsewhere in the Arctic, noon happens once per day as it does down south.
*Even so, the sun feels wonderful. I remember glorious days, the sun warming my face, stripped down to only a couple of layers of clothing, the temperature a balmy -15 F.
Willis, another beautiful scientific essay pure in its simplicity. To Chiefio’s point, how do you feel the tropical thunderstorms fit in with large-scale phenomena like TSI/solar activity and orbital perturbations?
Brilliant, well written and enjoyable.as usual.
Thanks Willis
But how do your theory account for what happens outside the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone? It is a larger area and some of it quite cold.
Thanks for the question, Arthur. The answer is threefold. First, there are thunderstorms all over the world, just not as regularly as those in the tropics. Second, there are a number of other emergent phenomena (dust devils, the El Nino/La Nina pump, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc.) that affect larger areas of the planet. And in the tropics it’s not just the area of the ITCZ that is cooled by thunderstorms.
Finally, the tropics is where the majority of the incoming solar energy strikes, and from there a good chunk of it is exported to the extra-tropics and poles. So if you control the energy entering the tropics, you control the energy entering all parts of the system. This is why the action is not happening mostly at the poles … because we’re trying to control incoming energy, and it is incoming mostly in the tropics.
w.
Thank you for the explanation.
Look at all the heat and rain El Nino just transported north and flooded Texas with.
Well, if the surface temperature rises to 300K, then yes, but very seldom at under 280K.
But do you really need thunderstorms and 26C, would it not be enough to have some clouds, which basically requires some moisture and some reason for convection, like a cliff.
The better analogy in this case is not to governing engine speed, as done through the gas pedal, but engine coolant temperature. In an internal combustion engine, there are two ways to adjust this. The first is as this article says by increasing the fuel rate use–especially that used against parasitics. But there is a second means, which is to adjust the coolant flow through the radiator. Likewise the earth has several such throttles at least. In addition to the visible iris of albedo, there is also, potentially, an IR iris that acts like a throttle on the heat rejection end of earth’s climate. Lindzen postulated this some 15 years ago, upon which the idea was rejected immediately by the climate science “community”, but the idea is now having a revival. The vigor of the heat transfer system from equator to pole should also have an impact on global temperatures–i.e. what mean earth temperature difference is there when flow is zonal versus meridional? Or even the mode of transfer ( fraction in ocean versus atmosphere) could provide another throttle.
And I think Arctic ice is one of the thermostats, open water radiates more than it gains at least 18 hours a day.
Yes, when a person begins to build a list of potential “throttles” it turns out to be surprisingly long. Some interact with one another, they have very different response times, and the end result is a very complex system.
“We’ve put spatial coordinates in place of temporal coordinates.”
Willis, that’s so clever and simple (and so obvious in hindsight), I’m kind of kicking myself for not having thought of it. Show’s how easy it is to let one’s thinking become trapped in a particular frame of reference.
Hat tip to you sir.
Willis,
I have been following your WUWT posts for quite a while now and your writings on your adventures on the sea or at different jobs in your past are always enjoyable. However, when you start to venture in your ‘thought experiments’ to meteorological issues, and you build climate-oriented hypothesis’s out of it, well, you lack of tropical meteorology knowledge shows. I hate to throw cold water on your Thermostat Hypothesis but the tropical atmosphere just does not work the way you explain in your simplistic model. It is much more complex in how it governs and modulates deep convection.
Through out your various Thermostat Hypothesis write ups in your analysis of the tropical atmosphere, focus on water temperature as being the sole variable.
“It [daily weather] is driven by the day/night variations in the strength of the sun’s energy. Before dawn, the atmosphere is typically calm and clear.”
Satellite imagery shows that the low level trade wind cumulus clouds are present in a near continuous mode through day & night and the trade winds are, for the most part, continuous but they do modulate over time in response to the dynamic pressure systems which may move through a particular area.
” As the ocean (or moist land) heats up, air temperature and evaporation increase. Warm moist air starts to rise. Soon the rising moist air cools and condenses into clouds.”
Ocean water temperature does not track the short-term day/night atmospheric temperature swings. From the short-term perspective, it is constant – only changing slowly over weeks/months in response to solar illumination angles.
“The full development of the cumulus clouds sets the stage for the second part of temperature regulation. This is not simple negative feedback. It is the climate governing system. As the temperature continues to rise, as the evaporation climbs, some of the fluffy cumulus clouds suddenly transform themselves. They rapidly extend skywards, thrusting up to form pillars of cloud thousands of meters high in a short time. These cumulus are transformed into cumulonimbus or thunderstorm clouds.”
While trade wind cumulus clouds are near-continuous, deep convection is active in both day and night regimes and their development is *not* governed by water temperature alone. In your analysis, you leave out three very important words which are critical in tropical thunderstorm/deep convection – ‘trade wind inversion’ (TWI). This is a stabilizing feature in the lower atmosphere caused by the sinking air of the Hadley Cell circulation and modulated in strength from upper-level dynamics. Also, the tropical atmosphere is conditionally unstable to deep convection and near-absolute unstable to shallow convection (trade wind cumulus). The shallow convection is capped by the TWI and, due to the conditional nature of the tropical atmosphere, a trigger or forcing must come along to force deeper convection and the strength of the TWI. The weaker the TWI is, the more more cloudiness there is and the less forcing required to establish deep convection. However, when the TWI is strong, clouds are suppressed (even trade wind cumulus) and deep convection cannot exists even with the strongest of forcing.
A forecast tool has been developed at the NWS/HPC Tropical Desk (http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/international/gdi/) called the Galvex-Davison Index (GDI) where it states “The GDI is a stability index developed for tropical and subtropical locations in which (1)subsidence inversions and (2)stabilizing/destabilizing effects of upper ridges/troughs play an important role in modulating convective development.” This is correct because throughout the tropics where there is uniform water temperatures, there are areas where there are clouds/deep convection day/night *and* areas where there are few clouds/no deep convection day/night as seen in satellite images.
In short, water temperature is not the driving force in tropical clouds/deep convection – the upper atmosphere is. Water temperature is the fuel/energy source (heat/moisture) for the clouds & storms but, by itself, cannot get warm enough to spontaneously trigger deep convection.
Also, in reference to your discussion of the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) as seen in your GOES-West local noon image over the year, you are misinterpreting the information. The ITCZ, as with any other deep convection in the tropics, is not modulated with daytime heating as you say your picture is showing. As explained above, tropical deep convection can occur any time of the day there is forcing to overcome the TWI, and with the ITCZ, the forcing is surface convergence from the northern hemisphere/southern hemisphere trade winds along a specific latitude. That convergence will cause lift & the ITCZ is proof the convergence is overpowering any TWI present and, as long as the warm water & surface convergence exists, the ITCZ convection will persist…day & night.
Continuing on…
“The thunderstorm sucks up warm, moist air at the surface and shoots it skyward. At altitude the water condenses, transforming the latent heat into sensible heat. The air is rewarmed by this release of sensible heat, and continues to rise.
“At the top, the air is released from the cloud up high, way above most of the CO2. In that rarified atmosphere, the air is much freer to radiate to space.”
Are you implying that air rising through deep convection gets warmer with height and is hotter at the top of the cloud than the surface air that originated? The adiabatic process and satellite imagery says that is incorrect. Clouds cool as they grow vertically not warm and the tops of deep convection are cold not hot. Deep convection block/reduce Outgoing Long Wave Radiation (OLWR) not enhance it. This is basic stuff.
Now, please understand, all of this is not to say there is no overall climate governor mechanism occurring in the tropical area. I’m just saying the weather processes occurring in the tropics are not nearly as simplistic as your description is. I’d be more inclined to lean toward the low-level trade wind cumulus being modulated as opposed to deep convection due to the extra atmospheric requirements to getting deep convection going.
Regards,
Jeff
From what I understood of his post, the central premise is that when viewed from the view of the Sun (ie the face of the earth always in daylight) satellite imagery shows more tropical clouds on the side that has been in daylight longest (as the earth rotates one side will be continuously coming out of darkness and the other moving into it). If this is correct, then regardless of any ignorance on how specific processes work, the theory should hold some merit. If this claim is wrong however…..
JKrob June 4, 2015 at 7:33 am
Thanks for your reply, Jeff. Gosh, you mean that tropical meteorology is more complex than can be explained to educated laymen in a couple of pages?
Who knew? …
No, I focus on it as being the main variable. I do this because it is justified by the observations. See below for more discussion.
Dear heavens, man, have you ever lived in the tropics? Cumulus clouds are not “present in a near continuous mode”. Nor are the trade winds “for the most part continuous”. Like the clouds, they change all the time. It appears you’ve never heard the term “trade wind season”. You’re trying to explain trade winds to a long time tropical sailor, my friend. Bad idea.
Really … truly … you need to get out more. If you actually think that the ocean surface has no day/night variations, I encourage you to spend a few months sailing and surfing and both day and night diving in the tropics. Not only are the ocean temperatures different day and night, but during the day the ocean is thermally stratified, while at night it overturns, bringing water up from below to cool.
Sorry, but that claim of yours is not even wrong. In its place let me offer this, from the Journal of Oceanography:
So no, ocean temperatures are by no means “constant” in the short term, nor are diurnal swings non-existent or unimportant as you claim.
First off, “trade wind cumulous clouds” are not what I was talking about. I’m talking about cumulus clouds whether it is trade-wind season or not. And neither the trade winds nor the cumulus clouds are “near-continuous”. If you can’t make it to the tropics, you should spend a couple of weeks wandering around in the TAO buoy data before you start up with that kind of misconception.
Next, yes, there are plenty of other factors. But at any given location they seem to either average out or cycle in such a way that we can use temperature as the independent variable and explain a large amount of the variance in a wide range of tropical phenomena.
The ITCZ is “not modulated with daytime heating”? Really? The instantaneous strength of the sun has zero diurnal effect on the deep circulation of the ITCZ? Like I said … you need to get out more. You could start by reading things like “The diurnal variation of deep convection and inferred precipitation in the central tropical Pacific during January-February 1979″ … it’s about the non-existent diurnal variation that you say isn’t happening …
Nope. You’re inferring that.
What I said was that the higher up in the atmosphere a parcel of air might be, the less greenhouse gases there are between that parcel and space. As a result, whatever does radiate say up by the tropopause will be relatively unimpeded in its path to space, and thus whatever heat it contains will be rapidly radiated to space. I hold to that.
Again I gotta say, the fact that tropical meteorology is more complex than can be explained in a couple of pages written for the educated layman is not news.
However, while simplified, I would argue that my description of temperature as the main variable of interest is correct. For example, you claim that we have to take all kinds of other things into account, like this:
However, as I clearly demonstrated in my last post, we can separate the ocean into areas where clouds decrease with increasing temperature from other areas where clouds increase with increasing temperatures … and we separate them by temperatures alone. No need to check whether the low-level trade wind cumulus is modulated or not.
And this temperature dependence for albedo and other variables in the ocean in general (70% of the planet) and for the all important tropical ocean in particular occurs as distinct temperature thresholds. For example, if the sea surface is below a certain temperature, we don’t get cyclones. Yes, there are other factors in play, upper atmosphere wind shear, all kinds of things … but temperature alone lets up identify where cyclogenesis will occur.
So you are correct that there are a host of other things that affect the timing of thunderstorm development. However, in the real world, they seem to average out over time and space, leaving temperature as the key variable. I refer you again to my last post.
The same temperature dependence is also true for other variables such as say parasitic losses. These are the losses from the surface to the atmosphere by way of sensible and latent heat. Now do other things affect the sensible and latent heat loss from the surface? Of course they do, lots of them. But despite that, there is still a clear dependence of parasitic loss on temperature. See my post Marginal Parasitic Loss Rates.
I want to emphasize that you are right in saying that there are lots of other factors at play in the formation of thunderstorms and cyclones and tornadoes and dust devils and the like—wind, vertical instability, upper level shear, CAPE, the list is long and varied and in some sense endless.
However, what I’ve noticed is that dust devils form over hot spots. And tropical convective thunderstorms form over hot spots. They and many other emergent phenomena seem to have temperature thresholds.
Now, these are generally temperature DIFFERENCE thresholds, involving the difference in the surface temperature and the temperature aloft. So you are certainly correct that there is more to it than surface temperature, much more.
But over wide areas of the ocean, and for many variables of interest, for whatever reason we can see that the upper atmospheric temperature and all of the rest of the variables, CAPE, wind, and the rest, they all cancel out of the equation. This is not theory. We can not only know it, we can measure it.
How do we know this? Simple. We make a scatterplot of the variable (e.g. albedo) using just the temperature on the X-axis. If most of the data falls in a fairly narrow track, we can model it using temperature alone. Not only that, but we can measure exactly how much of the variance is explained by temperature alone.
For example, here’s Figure 4 from my last post:
If we look for example at the area below 26°C, the R^2 of the albedo and the temperature is … hang on, let me run the numbers … ok, R^2 = 0.96. This means that temperature alone explains all but 4% of the variance in albedo in the entire global ocean that is below 26°C, including ice-covered ocean.
So yes, there are lots of things that affect the albedo and the thunderstorms and most climate phenomena, none are simple. But when we see that temperature alone can explain almost all of a variable, we’d be fools to ignore that valuable information simply because there are other factors. Can we refine it our understanding using the other factors?
Sure … but my rule of thumb is that when I want to understand how some complex system works, I ignore what I call second and third order variables. In my mental geometry, third order variables explain less than 1% of the variation in the measurement of interest. Second order variables explain less than 10% of the variation. And first order variables, they’re the ones that I start by trying to understand. In the tropical ocean, the temperature is clearly a first order variable.
My best to you and everyone,
w.
PS—In that regard, downwelling average 24/7 global surface downwelling radiation is about half a kilowatt per square metre, with about 170 W/m2 from the sun and about 330 W/m2 downwelling thermal radiation from the atmosphere.
If the CO2 doubling makes a change of 3.7 W/m2 in a half-kilowatt/m2 system, it’s definitely a third-order variable … which is one reason I first became very suspicious of the idea that CO2 is the secret climate thermostat.
Sorry, it’s not my job to read your mind. It’s your job to communicate clearly (for someone who does so much communication in your writings, you would think that would be obvious, but…). I, nor anyone else, has any idea what you know or don’t know and with what I’ve see in the past with your posts concerning statistics, you can get pretty deep into things which can go over ‘educated laymen’s ‘ heads so, sorry, that is no excuse for not including and addressing other impacts to tropical weather besides the Sun and clouds.
Fair enough, I should not have used the definite word ‘sole’ but since you don’t list any other (than Sun & clouds, of course) what is one to think (see above on clear communications)?
Now Willis, I didn’t say they were ‘continuous’, I said they were near continuous. IOW, allowing for change. Reading is fundamental.
(sigh…)
“Trade Wind”
noun
1. Also, trade winds. Also called trades. any of the nearly constant (my bold) easterly winds that dominate most of the tropics and subtropics throughout the world, blowing mainly from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere, and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere.
2. any wind that blows in one regular course, or continually in the same direction.
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/trade+wind)
or…
The trade winds are the ‘prevailing pattern’ of easterly surface winds found in the tropics, within the lower portion of the Earth’s atmosphere, in the lower section of the troposphere near the Earth’s equator.(Glossary of Meteorology (2010). “trade winds”. American Meteorological Society. Retrieved 2008-09-08.)
“Prevailing winds” – are winds that blow predominantly from a single general direction over a particular point on the Earth’s surface.
or…
http://derecho.math.uwm.edu/classes/TropMet/notes/TradeWind.pdf
…and your trying to defend a really foolish position to someone who has 40+ years in meteorology and 25+ years in GOES Satellite operations/meteorology – worse idea…
Also, to be clear, I’m talking about the Global Tropics basin wide, not just what is in front of your front porch in Fiji.
I sailed the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean & Atlantic in the Navy for 6 years so I’m familiar with tropical weather, thanks.
Again, sorry, in my explanation of surface water temperature, I left out the word ‘basicly’ when saying it’s short-term constant. But since you ignored my modifiers “near” and “most part” above, it wouldn’t have made much difference.
In saying above, the surface cools & overturning brings up [warmer] water from below, THANKS! – you proved my point that the surface stays “basicly” the same temperature. From your reference from the Journal of Oceanography, “large diurnal SST rise occurs over wide areas in a specific season, and in an extreme case the diurnal amplitude of SST exceeds 5 K.” EXTREME CASES??? Please make up your mind if you are talking about day/night variation or El Nino. You can’t have both. I’m not going to allow you to ‘move the goal posts’ to justify your position.
Yes they are, Willis, you are wrong.
(double sigh…)
Wikipedia
Shallow cumulus clouds are seen within trade wind regimes, and are capped from becoming taller by a trade wind inversion, which is caused by descending air aloft from within the subtropical ridge. The weaker the trade winds become, the more rainfall can be expected in the neighboring landmasses.
or…
The Free Dictionary
The characteristic cumulus cloud of the trade winds over the oceans in average, undisturbed weather conditions; the individual cloud usually exhibits a blocklike appearance since its vertical growth ends abruptly in the lower stratum of the trade-wind inversion; a group of fully grown clouds shows considerable uniformity in size and shape. Also known as trade cumulus.
or…
Betts, A. K., 1997: Trade cumulus: Observations and modeling. The Physics and
Parameterization of Moist Atmospheric Convection, R. K. Smith, Ed., Kluwer
Academic, 99-126.
or…
Siebesma, A. P., 1998: Shallow cumulus convection. Buoyant Convection in Geophysical
Flows, E. J. Plate el al., Eds., Kluwer Academic, 441 – 486.
or…
Stevens, B., 2005: Atmospheric Moist Convection. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci., 33,
605 – 643.
or…
Bob Rauber (2009-05-22). “Research-The Rain in Cumulus over the Ocean Campaign”.
http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/~rauber/researchRICO.htm
Trade-Wind Cumulus is EXACTLY what you are talking about! I watch the tropics from the satellite point of view nearly every day. I see the trade-wind cumulus in the morning, noon, evening & overnight with very little change (and when the TWI [trade wind inversion, remember that?] allows it). I know exactly what I am talking about…Willis, you are wrong.
Also, the Rain in Cumulus over the Ocean Campaign (RICO) paper has a very nice graph over several days of their research showing the ‘very slight’ temperature variations of the surface ocean temperature. Again, I’m right, you are wrong.
Again, now Willis, you really need to read what you reference to defend your argument to keep yourself from looking like a fool… If this reference was to defend that deep cumulus is a primary afternoon event (as is stated in your paper), your reference didn’t agree with you.
There were five areas of investigation; 1)SPCZ(South Pacific Convergence Zone)-West, 2)SPCZ-East, 3)ITCZ(Inter Tropical Convergence Zone), 4)the tropical cloud intrusion region and 5)the convectively suppressed region. In the SPCZ-West, it showed two modes of behaviour “…The deepest clouds…exhibited maximum coverage near sunrise and minimum coverage near sunset.” “thus, the picture emerges of a population of very deep clouds that increases in areal coverage during the night and reaches its peak near sunrise…” (bold mine).
It continues; “A somewhat similar pattern of behaviour is observed in the SPCZ-east region”.
And again: “The ITCZ region is also characterized by a convective regime in which the deepest clouds (those reaching above 300mb) are most prevalent near sunrise and least prevalent near sunset”. Now, this was written back in 1985 using data from January-February 1979. This was way before the current knowledge of what triggers/drive deep tropical convection…and it’s not what you say it is Willis.
Well, that doesn’t look very good for you, Willis…but it sure does for me because it goes to show that tropical deep convection can occur anytime of the day/night if the TWI allows it and, more importantly, if the forcing is present.
Uh, I didn’t have much choice because you did not explain yourself clearly.
I’m sorry…CO2?!?!?! You would only include the issue of CO2 if you believed it has a major impact. The impact of CO2 in the broad IR spectrum is extremely narrow – almost to the point of being ignored compared to water vapour & the like. I though that was pretty much established on this blog by the evidence but…I guess you do not agree.
Well, yes…but the people who cling to the “top of the thunderstorm is more efficient IR emmitter that surface” always confuse me. Please explain how a surface which is at -40C to -80C is doing a better job at radiating to space when there is so much less energy vs the LWIR radiated from the Earth’s surface or even the tops of the shallow trade wind cumulus which is much more wide-spread across the area of the tropical basins. Also, the air that is lifted in deep convection, it may cool in the process but when it sinks back down (and it will to maintain the vertical hydrostatic balance), it will warm at the faster dry adiabatic rate than it cooled at the moist adiabatic rate. OIW, there is less LWIR at the tops of thunderstorms than there is at the surface. One would think this was obvious but…and if you want to continue to cling to your fantasies, that is your choice. I’m trying to help you from looking like a fool…
So, now you say clouds both increase and decrease with increasing temperature?? Well, if that’s not confusing, I don’t know what is.
Sorry, disagree since it has already been shown the upper atmosphere is the thing doing the regulation along with temperature & not temperature alone.
Tropical cyclones, yes because it is the heat from the sea surface which is driving the cyclone, but as for cold-core cyclones, you are quite wrong…again. And as for your other quote, if I may;
“…but temperature alone lets [you] identify where cyclogenesis may occur.”
There fixed.
Average out over time & space…isn’t that what climate is?? But your hypothesis is based on a “repeatable, daily” event of clear in the morning & cloudy-rain in the afternoon & my position is that those “repeatable, daily” events are interrupted for, at times, weeks or months swinging from extended clear/dry to extended cloudy/rainy and that cloudy/rainy can occur at anytime during day or night if the upper atmospheric forcing is present.
As for everything else,
Finally, I have shown that, as you wrote & presented your hypothesis, it is incorrect. You have presented a simple model to represent a very complex situation and, as in the world of meteorology & climatology, if you don’t get it right, you are wrong. I challenge you to go back, perform deeper research to the complete working of the tropical atmosphere (as we know it) & see if it still matches your idea of the climate ‘governor’. As presented, I’m not impressed.
Regards,
Jeff
JKrob,
Good to see someone else referring to hydrostatic balance and air warming at the Dry ALR as it descends after the initial convective ascent at the Moist ALR.
The rest of your post provides a detailed explanation of my basic point previously expressed that Willis’s hypothesis being limited to the tropics does not adequately deal with the overall stability of Earth’s climate system. For that one needs to involve the entire global air circulation including latitudinal climate zone shifting.
Also, Willis fails to account for how stability is achieved in the absence of water vapour yet it surely is hence the similarity between the atmospheres of Earth and Venus (and other planets) at similar pressures.
Willis is really only referring to the way that the water cycle helps to maintain stability in a system that would be stable even without water.
The main value in Willis’s hypothesis is that he shows how in the tropics we see an upper bound on temperatures set by the fact that water vapour is lighter than air and so beneath humid air the weight of the atmosphere is more readily overcome than beneath dry air and that is the factor that limits Earth’s equatorial surface temperatures to about 26C over water.
Willis makes good points but claims more for his hypothesis than is justified.
JKrob June 6, 2015 at 7:20 am
Given the unpleasant nature of your opening, obviously it’s not my job to give you much response. I just wanted to say that if you haven’t heard of “trade-wind season”, it’s the season when the trade winds blow. Typically it lasts about half the year. You were talking about “trade-wind cumulus”. There is also cumulus during the other half of the year when there is no or little trade wind blowing. Since I was speaking of those non-trade-wind clouds as well, I said that I wasn’t just talking about trade-wind cumulus.
You responded by proving beyond doubt that trade-wind cumulus exists … so?
You also fatuously claimed that there was no diurnal ocean temperature variation. Let me get that, it’s precious …
… and when I produced citations showing otherwise, you started waving your hands, claimed that wasn’t what you meant, and said you should have included “basically” in your description, viz:
But your statement is not true whether or not you include “basically”, and that’s what my citation showed. Not only do diurnal variations exist, they are an important part of the tropical climate phenomena. Tropical ocean temperatures don’t “barely” vary, Jeff, that’s a joke, and my citations showed that.
And those citations, you just blew off entirely. Nice try. Here’s a single example of what I mean. This is the sea surface temperature (actually 1.5 m below the surface) measured every ten minutes on the Equator in the heart of the tropical Pacific.
You can call that “basically doesn’t track the short-term” temperature swings, but I’ll pass on the whole thing, Jeff. I’ll leave you to go “educate” someone else. Perhaps you can impress them with your experience. I prefer a discussion where when I provide citations showing a man is wrong I get a discussion of the issues, not a string of nitpicking claims coupled with an unwillingness to admit that you are wrong. I fear your educational talents are wasted on me, so let me invite you to try to school someone else.
Regards,
w.
Sad to see the rather testy exchange between Willis and JKrob since I see most of the disagreements as semantic issues and differences of scale.
🙂
Let the record show that JKrob’s first response was constructive and cordial. Willis responded with unpleasantness.
VikingExplorer June 7, 2015 at 12:47 pm
Let the record show that VikingExplorer has now appointed himself as the Officious Recordkeeper Of All Official Records That Are To Be Offally Recorded.
Let the record also show that I’ve provided a number of citations that show that some of JKRob’s claims are simply wrong.
Finally, let the record show that I’m happy to discuss any of this further with JKRob. However, I’ve not seen anything from him that calls into question what I have described. Yes, I’ve not included a host of variables … so what? That’s what theories are about, seeing the order underneath.
w.
The Earth’s Albedo does change over longer time-scales.
Clouds are one of the great governors, but it is white snow and glacial ice that has the greatest capacity to make a lasting change in Albedo. Ice is the biggest make or break between a very cold Earth or a hot Earth. Normal ocean water only has Albedos in the 10% range while sea ice and land glaciers can get to 80%. The difference in the Albedos between frozen water and liquid water is the Earth surface substance that has the greatest capacity to change the climate.
The most obvious example is the ice age cycles when Milankovitch changes end the summer melt season in the far north and south. Sea Ice and land glaciers build up, causing an initial cooling and then snow and ice spreads away from the poles and the Albedo rises and rises and there is a cold Earth ice age. Successive further changes in Milankovitch over a long period of time eventually melt back the snow and ice from the mid-latitudes toward to poles and an warmer interglacial Earth arises.
In the ice ages, the global Albedo rises to 33% to 34%.
The continental alignments through continental drift over even longer periods of time can also change the Earth’s Albedo.
We can have supercontinents like Pangea centred at the equator or sea level rise caused by new spreading but shallow oceans covering more of the land as in the Cretceous when 30% of the continents were flooded by ocean.
In the hot periods of these land/ocean arranagements, Albedo can decline to about 24%.
Then we have periods when the continents are weighted towards the poles as in Gondwana and the Carboniferous and Ordovician Ice Ages. Again Albedo in the 32% to 35% range.
Then there are supercontinents over top of the poles as in Pannotia (635 Mya) and Rodinia (715 Mya) in the last snowball Earth periods where Albedo rose to as high as 50%.
The Earth’s Albedo has varied between 24% and 50% in the last 1 billion years.
We also have at least two other Snowballs at 2.4 Bya and 2.2 Bya when Albedo got into the 45% to 50% level but we don’t have good evidence for periods other than these except that Albedo was likely less than 24% due to fewer clouds and a different atmosphere given the lower solar irradiance and little evidence for glaciers in all the other epochs.
Bill , very good points.
Bill Illis,
“Clouds are one of the great governors, but it is white snow and glacial ice that has the greatest capacity to make a lasting change in Albedo. ”
We don’t know that. There is far more snow, ice, and desert (high albedo) in the NH and far more ocean (low albedo) in the SH. So how do the albedo’s of the two hemispheres compare? They are identical, due to clouds. So although the albedo of the surface was surely higher during glacial periods the albedo of the planet may not have been higher.
The albedo was as Bill has said much higher during glacial periods. The climate Mr. Mike is not as stable as Willis keeps trying to portray.
Salvatore,
I am pretty sure there is zero evidence for your assertion that “The albedo was as Bill has said much higher during glacial periods”. If there is, I would be grateful if you could point me towards it.
It is obvious that the albedo during glacial versus inter-glacial conditions can not be of the same value. I will try to get some studies to lend support to this conclusion over the coming days.
Mike M. first of all, the global temperature was as much as 5.0C lower during the last glacial maximum.
The only way that occurred is if:
—> the Albedo was 31% (versus 29.8% today) and CO2 produces 3.0C per doubling; or,
—> the Albedo was 33% (versus 29.8% today) and CO2 produces 1.5C per doubling.
Furthermore, according to global warming theory, cloud cover actually INCREASES in the ice ages. The theory is based on cloud radiative forcing changing by 0.7 W/m2/1.0C. If temperatures actually fell by -5.0C, then cloud radiative forcing changed from -21.0 W/m2 today to -24.5 W/m2 in the ice ages. (Noting of course, that cloud radiative forcing is negative due to about -44 W/m2 reflectance of sunlight (ie. albedo) versus +23 W/m2 of greenhouse OLR reduction).
Sorry, the math can only be that global Albedo rose to 31% to 33% in the ages. I also built an Albedo calculation spreadsheet based on each 10 degree latitude band and how it varies based on conditions in those latitude bands) and the math works out to 33.5% with that calculation for the last glacial maximum.
Bill Illis,
It is possible that the albedo was higher during glacial periods but that has not been demonstrated.
“the global temperature was as much as 5.0C lower during the last glacial maximum.” Or as little as 2.0C lower, according to the MARGO assessment. Probably somewhere in between.
“The only way that occurred is if:”
Or if the T change was not so large, or if there were variations in solar output, or if it was something else we don’t understand.
“Furthermore, according to global warming theory, cloud cover actually INCREASES in the ice ages.”
And we all know that the positive cloud feedbacks in the models must be right. Unless they aren’t. The same models say that the SH has a lower albedo than the NH. Wrong.
“Sorry, the math can only be …”
The math depends on the assumptions you make and can not tell you if those assumptions are right or wrong.
The assumption of a higher albedo helps to explain glacial periods. But it leaves a whole lot unexplained. Until we have an explanation that fits all the facts, we don’t know that your assumption is true.
And don’t forget the effect of changing continents and the effect on the cyclical ocean currents. Most recently, the effect of closing the Pacific-Atlantic connection at Panama and the effects on salinity and circulation. This has no effect on the observations stated by the original poster, but it is and should be significant when trying to compare climates across millions of years.
Yet one must conclude from this information about large changes in Albedo that it too has large stabilising negative feedbacks affecting it. Though Ice Age to totally Ice free Ages may look like huge differences in temperature, in absolute terms measured in Kelvin they do not correspond to the much larger changes in Albedo. Especially so if there is also an underlying change in the Sun’s activity to start the original shift from one climate to another in the first place.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/02/multiple-intense-abrupt-late-pleisitocene-warming-and-cooling-implications-for-understanding-the-cause-of-global-climate-change/
Willis, inherently stable meaning what? Does that include a range in temperature that delineates glacial conditions versus non glacial conditions such as in the data I presented? If so then I agree in principal, but nevertheless even so one can say the climate is stable but the threshold between glacial versus glacial conditions is unstable meaning it only takes a small change of the so called stable climate system to plunge a good portion of the earth from glacial versus non glacial conditions.
So inherently stable I think needs to be specified in so much of what limits of variability does that lend to the climate system and does that meaning incorporate the degree of change the climate can under go from glacial versus interglacial conditions?
Willis does your inherently stable climate reconcile with changes in the climate from a glacial state to a non glacial state?
Thanks.
correction- threshold between NON glacial versus glacial conditions is unstable.
Willis,
Figure 1 is intriguing. Could you provide some details on the source? The link to climateprediction.net does not really help. The question I have is why do some of the simulations go off the rails? Everything that I have seen indicates that climate models are very stable as long as the forcing is not perturbed. That is a key part of the argument that the observed 20th century variation can not be natural. So if much of the observed change is natural, the implication is that the models are *too* stable. I suspect that what is shown in Figure 1 are perturbed physics ensembles and that the ones that go off the rails are parameter combinations that are unphysical. As such, it would say nothing about the stability or instability of climate models.
You wrote: “People think that the global temperature is free to take up any temperature at all, and that if the forcing changes, the temperature must change”. Who are these people? Certainly not climate modellers. They think that the global temperature is only free to take a very small range of values, determined by the forcing.
Mike M.
You make a lot of statements about what Climate scientist and climate modelers think. When did you become the official climate community spokesman? I feel privileged to have you available here to talk to.
Bob Boder,
I certainly not some sort of spokesman. But I have read quite a bit of the primary literature. And I think I only make claims about what the specialists think in response to clearly false statements about what they think.
Mike M statement about albedo is absurdity. What he is trying to convey is somehow cloud albedo and surface(ocean/land albedo) are anti correlated so that if one increases the other will decrease keeping albedo at a constant value. That is not the case..
Article
Nature
(Impact Factor: 42.35).
03/1975;
254(5495):44-44.
DOI: 10.1038/254044a0
ABSTRACT THE surface temperature of the Earth depends primarily on the solar constant, the Earth’s albedo and the total mass and chemical composition of the terrestrial atmosphere. Studies of climate covering the past few million years have generally allowed for variations in albedo in calculating average values of the surface temperature. But over longer periods of time, however, less allowance has been made for albedo variations; it has, indeed, frequently been assumed that the albedo, when averaged over a long enough time, can be taken to be constant (see ref. 1). We wish to point out that, on the contrary, long term variations in the albedo can be expected to occur, and to produce significant changes in the average surface temperature.
Long term variations in the albedo and surface temperature of the Earth. Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/242861911_Long_term_variations_in_the_albedo_and_surface_temperature_of_the_Earth [accessed Jun 4, 2015].
Here is the research Mike.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/242861911_Long_term_variations_in_the_albedo_and_surface_temperature_of_the_Earth [accessed Jun 4, 2015].
Salvatore,
I agree that the surface albedo changes. The question is the extent to which it my be countered by changes in clouds. The paper you cite makes no effort to account for clouds other than to observe “the effect of introducing cloud cover … is to reduce the change in albedo”.
You assert that an anti-correlation between surface and cloud albedo is “absurd”. I admit it is not intuitive. But how do you explain the virtually perfect compensation between the hemispheres?
I am not saying that such a compensation happens on 100 kyr time scales. I am saying that we do not know if it happens or not.
http://www.snowballearth.org/snowball.html
The changing albedo