Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Following up on a suggestion made to me by one of my long-time scientific heroes, Dr. Fred Singer, I’ve been looking at the rainfall dataset from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. Here’s s the TRMM average rainfall data for the entire mission to date:
Figure 1. Average annual rainfall, metres per year, as measured by the TRMM satellite. The TRMM satellite only measures from 40°N to 40°S, hence the “Tropical” in the name. Data source: KNMI: Click on “Monthly Observations”, click the TRMM data checkbox and then click “Select field” at the top of the page. When the page comes up, the NetCDF file link is at the very bottom of the page
Note the horizontal yellow/red area generally girdling the planet above or around the equator. This is the average position of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). The ITCZ is the location of the energetic deep tropical circulation that powers the great atmospheric Hadley circulation. As you can see, the ITCZ is the wettest large area of the planet, with over 4 metres (13 feet) of rain in some areas. Although this is the average position, it moves during the year. You can see in the Pacific south of the Equator near South America the position it takes over part of the year, as a “ghost” of the average position parallel to the Equator.
Now, the TRMM dataset is fascinating in and of itself, but I was interested in it for a specific reason.
My hypothesis is that the earth has a thermoregulatory system keeping the global temperature within narrow bounds (e.g. ±0.3°C over the 20th century). A major part of this thermoregulatory system is that the tropical cumulus and thunderstorms act to limit the tropical temperatures on both the warm and cool ends. Generally in the tropics, when a morning is cooler than usual, cumulus clouds form later in the day and they are weaker. The same is true of the thunderstorms. On cool days, thunderstorms form later than average or not at all. As a result of the reduction of clouds and thunderstorms, the surface is strongly warmed by the sun, and there is reduced loss of surface energy via the various thunderstorm mechanisms.
On days that are warmer than average, the reverse is true. There is an early and strong development of the tropical cumulus field. In addition, the cumulus formation is also earlier and stronger. Both of these act to cool the surface, with both the cumulus and the thunderstorms able to not only slow the warming, but actually cool the surface below their initiation temperatures. I describe the entire daily cycle in my post Emergent Climate Phenomena.
A hypothesis requires observational support, of course. Now, with such a system, according to my hypothesis as the tropical temperature rises, the albedo should go up, and the thunderstorms should also increase. Do the observations support this?
As I’ve discussed before, the CERES satellite radiation dataset lets us test the first of these consequences of my ideas. If my hypothesis is true, in the tropics, we should see a positive correlation of the albedo and the temperature. Here is that relationship on a 1°x1° gridcell basis:
Figure 2. Correlation of albedo and temperature. A positive correlation means that when temperature increases, so does albedo, and vice versa.
As is predicted by my hypothesis, in the tropics and particularly in the areas just north and south of the Equator where the ITCZ wanders around, there is a strong positive correlation of albedo with temperature.
However, I’d been unable to get any global handle on the effects of the thunderstorms until I started looking at the TRMM. Across the tropics in general and particularly in the ITCZ, the rainfall is from thunderstorms, towering storms that drive the deep tropical convection. Having the rainfall data allows me to do the same thing I did with the albedo—see how the rainfall varies with the temperature. IF my hypothesis is correct, tropical rainfall should increase with temperature, particularly in the ITCZ areas. Figure 3 shows the correlation of rainfall with temperature:
Figure 3. As in Figure 2, correlations. This shows the correlation of rainfall and temperature. A positive correlation means that when temperature increases, so does rainfall, and vice versa.
Now, in the yellow to red sections, as the temperature increases the rainfall increases. As always, there are mysterious and interesting things revealed by any new observational dataset. In this case, the rainfall increases with temperature in the ocean and in the drier parts of the land. But in the wetter parts of the land such as tropical Africa and the Amazon, the rainfall is about neutral or actually decreases with respect to temperature .. go figure.
In any case, over the tropics in general (shown by dashed lines at 23.5°N/S of the Equator) the correlation is generally positive. So for the tropics, my hypothesis is indeed verified—increasing temperature leads to increasing thunderstorms. You can also see how the extra-tropical areas in general are more negatively correlated than is the tropics.
The TRMM dataset also allows us to see not only the correlation, but how much actual change in rainfall we are talking about. Figure 4 shows the change in rainfall per degree C of warming.
Figure 4. Change in annual rainfall per degree celsius of warming.
Now, this is indeed interesting … across the tropics, on average we get 22 mm/year more rain for each degree of surface temperature increase. And since the trends have the same signs as the correlations, as with the correlations the areas north and south of the tropics generally show falling rainfall with increasing temperatures.
Here’s the beauty part. I realized that we can use these TRMM rainfall figures to estimate the amount of energy involved. The main cooling mechanism of thunderstorms is evaporative cooling. We can calculate the energy involved in that evaporative cooling by noting that to reverse the old saying, with rainfall it’s “what comes down must go up” … meaning that whatever water rains down, it had to be evaporated first. To evaporate a cubic metre of seawater in one year takes a constant energy flux of about 80 W/m2. This works out to about 0.08 W/m2 to evaporate one mm of rain. So let me use that conversion, 0.08 W/m2 of evaporative cooling per millimetre of rain, to show the same TRMM data from Figure 1 in terms of the energy needed to annually evaporate the amount of water of the gridcell annual rainfall.
Figure 5. Evaporative surface cooling from the evaporation of the amount of water in the annual rainfall. Annual rainfall from TRMM as shown in Figure 1.
I was pleasantly surprised by the very large amount of energy being moved constantly by thunderstorms in the ITCZ and elsewhere. In parts of the ITCZ, the evaporative cooling effect is well over 300 W/m2 … we can compare that to the cooling effect of the earths variable albedo, in W/m2, shown below in Figure 6.
Figure 6. Surface cooling from the reflection of the solar energy by the earth’s albedo. This includes both surface and cloud reflections. I note in passing the odd equality of the mean hemispheric reflections.
Taken together these last two graphs show something interesting. In the tropics, the average surface cooling from evaporation is about the same as the cooling from albedo reflection of solar energy. Both are about 90 W/m2. However, the variation in thunderstorm evaporative cooling (Fig. 5, from 0 – 375 W/m2) is much larger than the variation in reflected energy (Fig. 6, from 50 -175 W/m2).
To assess the instantaneous strength of these cloud and thunderstorm thermoregulatory mechanisms, we must bear in mind that these are annual averages. Even in the ITCZ it doesn’t rain all the time. So when it is raining, the effect would be much larger. How much larger? Well, a lot. My guess from living in the tropics near and in the ITCZ is that you might be under a thunderstorm maybe 5%-10% of the time on an annual basis … and if that’s the case, then the instantaneous evaporative cooling effect of individual thunderstorms will be about 10 to 20 times larger than the annual averages shown in Figure 5.
Let me move on to the question of what happens to the cloud reflective cooling and the evaporative cooling as the surface warms. This can be calculated as the trend of evaporative cooling in W/m2 for each additional degree C of warming. This is the same rainfall trend data shown in Figure 4, but expressed as the energy needed to evaporate that amount of rain. Figure 7 shows the change in surface evaporative cooling in watts/m2 per degree C of warming (W/m2/°C):
Figure 7. Change in thunderstorm evaporative cooling with surface warming, in W/m2 per degree celsius of surface warming. Negative values indicate a reduction in evaporative cooling with increasing temperatures.[NOTE: Figure updated.]
It is important to note that this average of the surface-cooling effect of the clouds and thunderstorms hides the fact that the effects are not applied evenly across an area. Instead, the clouds and thunderstorms form only over the warmer areas, and move huge amounts of energy out of those warmer areas and up into the troposphere. As a result, their efforts are concentrated exactly where and when they are needed. Cooling is applied only when and where the surface is warmer, and warming is applied only when and where it is cooler.
To close the circle, we can compare the amount of change in evaporation (Figure 7) per degree of warming with the change in reflective cooling per degree of surface warming (Figure 8 below). Figure 8 shows the change in albedo per degree of warming times the gridcell annual average downwelling solar.
Figure 8. Change in the amount of reflected solar energy due to increased albedo for every degree of warming. As in Figure 7, negative values indicate additional warming with increasing temperature.
Near the poles there is a strong negative correlation between albedo and temperature, meaning that there is reflective warming (negative values in Figure 8). However, because the sun is so weak in those areas the additional warming in actual watts per degree of temperature rise is not that large.
Figure 8 also shows that as the surface warms, the change in W/m2 of tropical evaporative cooling per degree C of warming is about twice that of the change in W/m2 of reflective cooling (Fig. 8, 1.2 W/m2 tropical increase in solar reflections per °C of warming, versus Fig. 7, 2.2 W/m2/°C increased evaporative cooling)
Finally, note that albedo changes and evaporative cooling are only two of the ways that clouds and thunderstorms cool the surface. As a result, the effect will be slightly larger than the numbers above indicate. I append a more complete list in the notes.
So that’s why I wanted to look at the TRMM data. I wanted to determine if my hypothesis about thunderstorms increasing with temperature is correct. And in the event, it appears that my hypothesis has been totally supported by the results.
CONCLUSIONS
• This is a significant addition to the variety of evidence that I’ve amassed showing that the earth indeed has strong thermoregulating mechanisms (see links below). It gives us an idea of the size of the cooling effect due to the tropical thunderstorms, along with actual values for the increase in thunderstorm cooling with increasing temperature.
• As is consonant with my hypothesis, both the tropical albedo and evaporative cooling increase with temperature, especially around the ITCZ.
• The evaporative cooling effect in the ITCZ is on the order of hundreds of watts per square metre. This is evidence of the strength of my hypothesized thermoregulatory mechanism.
• The change in evaporative cooling in the ITCZ is on the order of 10-20 W/m2 more evaporative cooling per degree celsius. This is evidence of the thermally responsive nature of the thermoregulatory mechanism.
• The thermoregulation from tropical clouds and thunderstorms occurs on a daily and hourly basis, not on the yearly basis shown in the Figures. As a result, we know that the instantaneous changes from clouds and thunderstorms are many times larger than the averages shown above. In addition the clouds and thunderstorms only emerge in response to local high temperatures, so their effect is not averaged across space and time as is shown in the Figures. The result is that the thermoregulatory system is applying cooling on the order of hundreds of watts/m2, but not blindly—the cooling is focused only where and when it is needed, towards the warmer sections of the local areas.
My best to you all at one am of a foggy night,
w.
To Avoid Misunderstandings: Let me request that if you disagree with someone, you quote the exact words you disagree with. This lets all of us understand just what you are objecting to.
TRMM Data: For convenience I’ve placed the KNMI TRMM netCDF file here
Ways Other Than Albedo and Evaporation That Thunderstorms Cool The Surface
Cold rain and cold wind. As the moist air rises inside the thunderstorm’s heat pipe, water condenses and falls. The water starts out at the very cold or freezing temperatures aloft. As a result, it cools the lower atmosphere it falls through, and it cools the surface when it hits. The falling rain also entrains a downwards wind which is strongly cooled by the evaporation of the falling raindrops. When it strikes the ground, this cold wind blows radially outwards from the center of the falling rain. Because it is much cooler than the surrounding air, this radial wind runs along the ground, cooling the surrounding area. When I lived in the tropics, at night this wind was often the first indication of a nearby thunderstorm, as it outpaces the rain. It smells wonderful, crisp like the pure upper air … and best of all, on a muggy tropical night it blows through the open windows of all the houses and chills the entire area surrounding the rain.
This combination of cold rain and cold wind could be a shocking change, particularly when I’d be running an open skiff across the ocean at night. The temperature would go from a warm tropical night before I’d hit the thunderstorm, to cold and shivering under the storm, and back into the warmth once I’d run clear of the storm. Not fun. Well, yeah, fun, but cold fun …
Modification of upper tropospheric ice crystal cloud amounts (Lindzen 2001, Spencer 2007) . These clouds form from the tiny ice particles that come out the top of the smokestack of the thunderstorm heat engines. It appears that the varying amounts of this type of clouds has a large radiative effect, as they are thought to warm (through IR absorption) more than they cool (through reflection).
Enhanced night-time radiation. Unlike long-lived stratus clouds, tropical cumulus and cumulonimbus often die out and vanish as the night cools, leading to the typically clear skies at dawn. This allows greatly increased nighttime surface radiative cooling to space.
Drying of the bulk atmosphere. Thunderstorms move huge amounts of air vertically at a rapid rate. During the ascent, almost all the water vapor is stripped from the rising air column and falls as rain. After exiting the top of the thunderstorms, the now-dry air descends in the area around and between the thunderstorms. And because this air is dryer than it would be without the thunderstorms, the reduced levels of water vapor allow for increased longwave radiative surface cooling in the bulk of the atmosphere between the storms.
I haven’t even attempted a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the global average size of those effects. And of course, having mentioned it, I now have to give it a shot. Rats, I thought I was almost done with this post … here we go.
The effect of the cold rain, well, in the tropics if the temperature is say 26°C and the rain is maybe at 10°C when it hits the ground, for each cubic metre of rain that’s about 2 W/m2 of cooling effect. (I use my rule of thumb, that 1 W/m2 over 1 year heats 1 cubic metre of water by 8°C.)
I couldn’t even guess the amount of change from the Iris Effect per degree of surface warming. I’ll leave that to the good Drs. Lindzen and Spencer.
The night-time radiation … the night-time cloud radiative effect is entirely longwave, and is about 26 W/m2 of warming. So if there’s say a 10% decrease in night-time clouds that would also be one or two watts/m2.
Finally, the drying of the bulk atmosphere. This is a tough one, in part because the maximum daytime drying will likely occur around the afternoon peak in the temperature, and will be at a minimum around dawn when it’s cool. Hang on, I’ve got an idea … ok, MODTRAN says that in the tropics, if I set the water vapor to zero it lets an additional 58 W/m2 through the atmosphere.
So if the drying of the bulk atmosphere is on the order of 10%, it would be a cooling effect of about 6 W/m2.
Between these three, then, we have a total cooling effect of somewhere around 10 W/m2 on a 24/7 basis. Compare this to the thunderstorm evaporative effect, which Figure 5 says in the tropics averages about 90 W/m2. Thus, it appears that these secondary effects increase the total thunderstorm evaporative effects by on the order of 10%.
There is one more factor that increases thunderstorm cooling, but generally is not occurring on the above Figures. This is when a storm is delivering freezing rain and snow. In that case, the latent heat of fusion also needs to be considered. This is the energy needed to melt the ice at the surface. Energy to melt ice is about an eighth of the energy needed to evaporate the same amount of water. So for polar storms with snow, sleet, hail, or graupel, they would have a total cooling effect about 10% greater than a storm delivering the same amount of rain.
Further Reading About My Thermoregulatory Hypothesis
The Thermostat Hypothesis 2009-06-14
Abstract: The Thermostat Hypothesis is that tropical clouds and thunderstorms actively regulate the temperature of the earth. This keeps the earth at an equilibrium temperature.
Which way to the feedback? 2010-12-11
There is an interesting new study by Lauer et al. entitled “The Impact of Global Warming on Marine Boundary Layer Clouds over the Eastern Pacific—A Regional Model Study” [hereinafter Lauer10]. Anthony Watts has discussed some early issues with the paper here. The Lauer10 study has been controversial because it found that…
The Details Are In The Devil 2010-12-13
I love thought experiments. They allow us to understand complex systems that don’t fit into the laboratory. They have been an invaluable tool in the scientific inventory for centuries. Here’s my thought experiment for today. Imagine a room. In a room dirt collects, as you might imagine. In my household…
Further Evidence for my Thunderstorm Thermostat Hypothesis 2011-06-07
For some time now I’ve been wondering what kind of new evidence I could come up with to add support to my Thunderstorm Thermostat hypothesis (q.v.). This is the idea that cumulus clouds and thunderstorms combine to cap the rise of tropical temperatures. In particular, thunderstorms are able to drive…
It’s Not About Feedback 2011-08-14
The current climate paradigm believed by most scientists in the field can be likened to the movement of balls on a pool table. Figure 1. Pool balls on a level table. Response is directly proportional to applied force (double the force, double the distance). There are no “preferred” positions—every position…
A Demonstration of Negative Climate Sensitivity 2012-06-19
Well, after my brief digression to some other topics, I’ve finally been able to get back to the reason that I got the CERES albedo and radiation data in the first place. This was to look at the relationship between the top of atmosphere (TOA) radiation imbalance and the surface…
The Tao of El Nino 2013-01-28
I was wandering through the graphics section of the TAO buoy data this evening. I noted that they have an outstanding animation of the most recent sixty months of tropical sea temperatures and surface heights. Go to their graphics page, click on “Animation”. Then click on “Animate”. When the new…
Emergent Climate Phenomena 2013-02-07
In a recent post, I described how the El Nino/La Nina alteration operates as a giant pump. Whenever the Pacific Ocean gets too warm across its surface, the Nino/Nina pump kicks in and removes the warm water from the Pacific, pumping it first west and thence poleward. I also wrote…
Slow Drift in Thermoregulated Emergent Systems 2013-02-08
In my last post, “Emergent Climate Phenomena“, I gave a different paradigm for the climate. The current paradigm is that climate is a system in which temperature slavishly follows the changes in inputs. Under my paradigm, on the other hand, natural thermoregulatory systems constrain the temperature to vary within a…
Air Conditioning Nairobi, Refrigerating The Planet 2013-03-11
I’ve mentioned before that a thunderstorm functions as a natural refrigeration system. I’d like to explain in a bit more detail what I mean by that. However, let me start by explaining my credentials as regards my knowledge of refrigeration. The simplest explanation of my refrigeration credentials is that I…
Dehumidifying the Tropics 2013-04-21
I once had the good fortune to fly over an amazing spectacle, where I saw all of the various stages of emergent phenomena involving thunderstorms. It happened on a flight over the Coral Sea from the Solomon Islands, which are near the Equator, south to Brisbane. Brisbane is at 27°…
Decadal Oscillations Of The Pacific Kind 2013-06-08
The recent post here on WUWT about the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has a lot of folks claiming that the PDO is useful for predicting the future of the climate … I don’t think so myself, and this post is about why I don’t think the PDO predicts the climate…
Stalking the Rogue Hotspot 2013-08-21
[I’m making this excellent essay a top sticky post for a day or two, I urge sharing it far and wide. New stories will appear below this one. – Anthony] Dr. Kevin Trenberth is a mainstream climate scientist, best known for inadvertently telling the world the truth about the parlous…
The Magnificent Climate Heat Engine 2013-12-21
I’ve been reflecting over the last few days about how the climate system of the earth functions as a giant natural heat engine. A “heat engine”, whether natural or man-made, is a mechanism that converts heat into mechanical energy of some kind. In the case of the climate system, the…
The Thermostatic Throttle 2013-12-28
I have theorized that the reflective nature of the tropical clouds, in particular those of the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ) just above the equator, functions as the “throttle” on the global climate engine. We’re all familiar with what a throttle does, because the gas pedal on your car controls the…
On The Stability and Symmetry Of The Climate System 2014-01-06
The CERES data has its problems, because the three datasets (incoming solar, outgoing longwave, and reflected shortwave) don’t add up to anything near zero. So the keepers of the keys adjusted them to an artificial imbalance of +0.85 W/m2 (warming). Despite that lack of accuracy, however, the CERES data is…
Dust In My Eyes 2014-02-13
I was thinking about “dust devils”, the little whirlwinds of dust that you see on a hot day, and they reminded me that we get dulled by familiarity with the wonders of our planet. Suppose, for example, you that “back in the olden days” your family lived for generations in…
The Power Stroke 2014-02-27
I got to thinking about the well-known correlation of El Ninos and global temperature. I knew that the Pacific temperatures lead the global temperatures, and the tropics lead the Pacific, but I’d never looked at the actual physical distribution of the correlation. So I went to the CERES dataset, and…
Albedic Meanderings 2015-06-03
I’ve been considering the nature of the relationship between the albedo and temperature. I have hypothesized elsewhere that variations in tropical cloud albedo are one of the main mechanisms that maintain the global surface temperature within a fairly narrow range (e.g. within ± 0.3°C during the entire 20th Century). To…
Enjoy …
In this post discussing Willis Eschenbach’s theory, I couldn’t help but recall this comment from the other day.
“Willis, is very good when it comes to saying why climate change theories are not correct but short in coming up with any theories himself to account for why the climate changes.
This to me is a problem, which is to have someone shoot down all theories and have no counter theory.”
http://bit.ly/1WDkJHg
Well that is not a logical statement.
The scrap heap of history is piled with theories which were subsequently shown not to work.
Perhaps Willis has added more to the pile (I don’t know).
But knowing what doesn’t work, does not imply that we must know something that does work.
g
Thanks George. I thought that Cates very stupid remark deserved something very rude in return but you nailed it.
Mark Cates is quoting Salvatore, to highlight how ridiculous Salvatore’s comment was!
Once it’s accepted that the current theory has been falsified a new theory can be chased.
Truth must be sought.
george e. smith says, “Well that is not a logical statement.”
I think you misunderstood my post. I was quoting a comment from the other day made by someone else.
I only intended to highlight how recent it was Willis Eschenbach was taking heat for not having a “theory” to defend. Clearly that’s not the case.
cheers…
You post this here, where Willis is explaining his theory of what DOES work? You said it yourself:
“In this post discussing Willis Eschenbach’s theory…”
leafwalker,
It appears I should have attributed the quote and used html tags. I chose not to do so, but linked to the original quote. I thought that was enough… obviously a mistake on my part.
Gentlemen, I think you will find that Mark Cates is highlighting this quote from someone else to provide a sense of irony regarding such a view versus Willis’ obvious efforts. It is by *no* means a “stupid remark” but instead a dead-on-target lampoon of something someone else said in regard to Willis! (Note commenter “Judge” also points this out in response to George and Stephen.)
@ur momisugly Willis: +10 for making this reasonably understandable and visual to an utter layman!
mdmnmdller,
Phew. for a second there I thought I had forgotten how to communicate completely. I wasn’t trying to slam Salvatore Del Prete, as I appreciate many of his comments and find them interesting, but I thought his comment need to be pointed out for what it was. Inaccurate. I guess I was too subtle.
I’ve been reading this blog daily for probably over a decade now and even donated. I read everything, but comment very little. No doubt Willis’s work is +10.
Very interesting & quite similar to summer observations in the US Southwest monsoon season. You might be able to confirm some of your numbers based on local weather measurements. The surface temperature in the US Southwest this time of year can cool by 15-20F in a few minutes when big thundershowers start. In New Mexico in August, it seems that whenever the temperature gets to about 85F at 7000ft elevation or to about 95F at 5000ft elevation, the clouds billow (>albedo), rain falls, and evaporative cooling drops the surface temperature right down.
Roy Spencer posts complementary :New Evidence Regarding Tropical Water Vapor Feedback, Lindzen’s Iris Effect, and the Missing Hotspot
Willis, congrats. Brilliant analysis of observational data. A corollary is the falsification of all climate models. Your posted thesis is equally an observational explanation for the missing tropical troposphere hot spot, which all CMIP5 GCMs model, but which neither radiosondes nor satellites (including the newest better vertical resolution UAH v.6) detect.
Mark Cates August 18, 2015 at 7:00 pm
Actually, most of my theories are about why the climate doesn’t change. That was what got me into the field, my wonder at how little the climate changes.
However, I did put up a post about that subject, called “Slow Drift in Thermoregulated Emergent Systems“, linked to at the end of the head post.
w.
What does Mr. Cates want? A unified theory of climate variability?
Willis Eschenbach,
I greatly appreciate the effort you make. It is monumental. Unfortunately, it appears my comment was misinterpreted by quite a few.
Regardless, a significant way your work is different (in my opinion) is that you haven’t written it in stone or claim that it should be written in stone. When it comes to climate science, many out there express far more certainty than what is remotely reasonable. This pattern has grown very tiresome over the decades.
What drew me into this field about 25 years ago (and validated in Anthony’s surface stations project), was my college professor who worked with temperature data. His comment at that time with respect to James Hanson’s testimony to Congress…. he said, “We could be on a snow ball headed straight for hell, but Hanson couldn’t tell you anything about that with the data he is using.”
cheers!
In principal I like the theory but I think you’ve spent long enough finding reasons to believe in it. I think to give it credibility you need to think of reasons why it might not be true and try your hardest to prove your own theory wrong.
The fact we move in and out of ice ages, on the surface, disproves it. Long term warming or cooling trends also seem to disprove it at some level. You concentrate on the tropics with its thunderstorms but cant really say with any confidence whether non-tropics changes rule the overall climate. There are quite a few areas you could consider.
Just a suggestion…
Tim –
I think if we have a particular issue, then maybe we ought to flesh it out ourselves. Willis has already covered a lot of things that may cause instability and cyclic swings. We have many hypotheses. We know the temperate Northern Hemispheres bis much different from the temperate Southern Hemisphre and the Yropics are are goon unto themselves and we know why.
The GCM modellers know that too. The trouble is they “picked” a particular control knob for CLIMATE CHANGE (aka Global Warming) even as the IPCC said it was a chaotic unpredictable system that requires years of study to determine all the important variables. Then they look backward at palaeontology to. I would suggest we look forward to collecting 1000 years of future data and upgrade the GCM’s as we go and see if we develop anything of predictive value. Precautionary principle be damned.
In the meantime, we know CO2 is just a GHG Political football used for political leveraging purposes which have no relationship to science. It is good politics. Its good for BIG GREEN Businesses. It’s bad science.
The IPCC says so:
FROM THE IPCC.
Other reports in this collection
14.2.2 Predictability in a Chaotic System
The climate system is particularly challenging since it is known that components in the system are inherently chaotic; there are feedbacks that could potentially switch sign, and there are central processes that affect the system in a complicated, non-linear manner. These complex, chaotic, non-linear dynamics are an inherent aspect of the climate system. As the IPCC WGI Second Assessment Report (IPCC, 1996) (hereafter SAR) has previously noted, �future unexpected, large and rapid climate system changes (as have occurred in the past) are, by their nature, difficult to predict. This implies that future climate changes may also involve ‘surprises�. In particular, these arise from the non-linear, chaotic nature of the climate system … Progress can be made by investigating non-linear processes and sub-components of the climatic system.� These thoughts are expanded upon in this report: �Reducing uncertainty in climate projections also requires a better understanding of these non-linear processes which give rise to thresholds that are present in the climate system. Observations, palaeoclimatic data, and models suggest that such thresholds exist and that transitions have occurred in the past … Comprehensive climate models in conjunction with sustained observational systems, both in situ and remote, are the only tool to decide whether the evolving climate system is approaching such thresholds. Our knowledge about the processes, and feedback mechanisms determining them, must be significantly improved in order to extract early signs of such changes from model simulations and observations.� (See Chapter 7, Section 7.7).
Why is it disproved? Remind me again.
“Why is it disproved? Remind me again.”
It is obvious “on the surface” why going into and out of ice ages disproves Willis’ theory of a highly stable system. I was very careful not to say it DID disprove it and instead suggest that there are issues that need to be dealt with that he hasn’t addressed (or possibly even considered)
Well, this regulator works in one direction. It limits the upper end of the temperature range. Nobody pretended that it can also control the lower end.
“Nobody pretended that it can also control the lower end.”
Actually Willis’ theory says it does control at the low end. Specifically he says (in the tropics) clouds form later in the day or not at all and so the earth receives more energy from the sun and reflects less.
So within that, he needs to explore ice ages and the LIA and the MWP and so on. AFAIK he’s not really done any of that.
My take is that the regulatory mechanism (negative feedback) kicks in at higher temperatures and acts more like a maximum temperature limiter. At lower temperatures, when the surface is covered in ice and snow, the negative feedback from incremental clouds reflecting incremental solar power disappears as the surface reflectivity becomes about the same as the reflectivity of clouds.
The range of temperatures during ice ages and interglacials is likely to be about the same. The main difference is the relative proportion of cold surface to warm surface.
Tim, you are confused in your thinking that Willis’s “thermostat” is regulating the amount of energy that the Sun is permitted to radiate.
The Sun transmits as much energy as it wants to …… and Willis’s “thermostat” adjusts Tropical Zone surface temperatures accordingly.
nice addition by co2 is not evil there to explain how willis theory is compatible with glacial and interglacial periods.
“Tim, you are confused in your thinking that Willis’s “thermostat” is regulating the amount of energy that the Sun is permitted to radiate.”
Nope. Not in the slightest. I said receives more energy from the sun. Not that the sun was producing more or less energy. If there are fewer clouds in the way, then more of the suns energy makes it to the ground. Its a straightforward argument Willis is making.
Tim, you have misunderstood Willis’s statement of : “and so the earth receives more energy from the sun and reflects less.”
Tim, there is a big difference in …… receiving (absorbing) energy ….. and reflecting energy.
Thus, …. when a cloudless sky, … the earth’s surface will absorb more of the incoming energy from the sun and thus reflect less of the incoming energy back into space.
But when there is a cloudy sky, the earth will reflect more of the incoming energy back into space and thus less of the incoming energy will be absorbed by the earth’s surface.
If the earth’s surface absorbs the incoming energy ….. then it is either radiated or conducted away from the earth’s surface, ….. not reflected.
It’s nice to see the data showing exactly what many of us have assumed. It seems so obvious. The only question I have is when will this and other negative feedbacks be accurately accounted for in the GCMs.
So how do you know just what the average lower tropospheric temperature of the earth was during those ice ages.
We have a -94 deg. C to +60 deg. C range now that averages out to 288 K or 15 deg. C or 59 deg. F
So you can have oodles of ice and the same average Temperature too.
Come to think of it; that is one of the arguments against talking about anything as silly as an earth average Temperature.
Now just last weekend, I actually saw live on the T&V evening news, an actual real live news person actually measure the Temperature of an object in a local UHI; likely a blacktop strip on the road, and for that location the instrumental reading was 190 deg. F which I think is close enough to + 105 deg. C
So that means earth’s daily temperature extreme range is at least 200 deg. C, from -94 to +105.
But we think that the average is one deg. F higher than it was in 1852.
So there.
g
Why Tropical Sea Surface Temperature is Insensitive to Ocean Heat Transport Changes
Daniel D. B. Koll and Dorian S. Abbot
“Previous studies have shown that increases in poleward ocean heat transport (OHT) do not strongly affect tropical SST. The goal of this paper is to explain this observation. To do so, the authors force two atmospheric global climate models (GCMs) in aquaplanet configuration with a variety of prescribed OHTs. It is found that increased OHT weakens the Hadley circulation, which decreases equatorial cloud cover and shortwave reflection, as well as reduces surface winds and evaporation, which both limit changes in tropical SST. The authors also modify one of the GCMs by alternatively setting the radiative effect of clouds to zero and disabling wind-driven evaporation changes to show that the cloud feedback is more important than the wind–evaporation feedback for maintaining constant equatorial SST as OHT changes. This work highlights the fact that OHT can reduce the meridional SST gradient without affecting tropical SST and could therefore serve as an additional degree of freedom for explaining past warm climates.”
Willis, thank you for another good essay.
” … tell us …how your hypothesis accounts for/allows glaciation… ”
Why must it also explain glaciations? It is completely possible that a stabilizing mechanism may work nicely for long periods, until external forces/events combine to take it past a tipping point. Then eventually that system stabilizes at that new point (perhaps by a different mechanism or predominance of factors) until tipped back out of it. Then the ‘Willis Mechanism’ comes back into effect.
God there are some idiots out today. They show a complete lack of ability to read English.
Thanks Willis. Your data presentations are logically sound and very thought provoking. Un fortunately ther are a lot of people here incapable of thinking.
So, the theory predicts that as global temps rise storms will increase.
The warmistas will use that as proof of impending doom whilst completely ignoring the point.
Thanks for Your guidance-always so clear and educational.
As stated above snow can give additional cooling. That might disturb the circulation during colder conditions. But not around the equator now days!
Many thanks, Willis, for having actualized observations as well as your comments about processes involved in climate regulation in tropical regions.
Climate changes must be pulled out of the frame of this work. The heat accumulated during the interglacial periods, or dissipated during the ice ages, or even during the Holocene (including the current climate) are of course far different from those mentioned in the tropics throughout the seasons. The energy exchanged through the ocean surface is small (of the order of W / m2) in the Milankovitch cycles and tens of W / m2 during an El Nino event, but for a period ranging from a few months to several tens of thousands of years.
Mechanisms mentioned by Willis are very effective for controlling the temperature of the atmosphere. They work little on ocean temperatures due to their high thermal capacity and the smoothing effect that follows, by averaging the effects of warming and subsequent cooling of the atmosphere.
Also the phenomena mentioned by Willis are important in seasonal regulation. But even to explain the El Nino phenomenon, these phenomena are involved only marginally. That is long-term climate variability results from baroclinic waves in the oceans.
The observations of the oceans, the reconstruction of solar and orbital forcing as well as the Earth’s global temperature from ice and sediment cores converge in the same direction: the oceans have a major role in climate variability and allow explaining all or part of what we observe (including the warming that occurred during the 20th century) while referring to irrefutable physical concepts.
To synthesize:
1) The tropical oceans produce quasi-stationary baroclinic waves (which store or release heat by oscillation of the thermocline) whose mean periods are 1, 4 or 8 years, which resonate with trade winds and ENSO.
2) The western boundary currents (Gulf Stream, Kuroshio …) carry this succession of warm and cold water to the subtropical gyres. Again a resonance phenomenon occurs. But these waves that I call ‘gyral’ and which wind around the 5 subtropical gyres have a remarkable property they do not deaden when the period increases (driver = Earth’s rotation + gravity). They have another property, they resonate with the solar and orbital cycles whose periods coincide with their natural periods. These baroclinic gyral waves store or otherwise release heat resulting from changes in solar irradiance.
3) At mid-latitudes thermal equilibrium occurs between the sea surface temperature anomalies of the subtropical gyres and thermal anomalies of impacted regions of continents (Western Europe is one), due to cyclones and highs (depending on the sign of anomalies, deficit or excess of latent heat withdrawn from the oceans, then restored by condensation of water vapor).
4) Global temperature anomalies are homogenized from the impacted areas, this resulting from the high specific heat of seawater compared to that of continents.
After very complicated models and parameterized so as to explain what is expected of them, simple ideas, even simplistic are not useless…
http://climatorealist.neowordpress.fr/
Willis, your regulater as laid out by this post and your previous ones appears to be self eveident when so clearly explained.
There are however a couple of other “stages” in the process that would bear inspection.
How much energy is put back in to the atmosphere when the water condences back in to snow/hail/rain, which is now already closer to space and hence more quickly lost.
Also there is the aspect of the actual precip itself, I am sure everyone has experienced the “Summer Storm” and how quickly those large drops of rain cool the atmosphere at ground level, where does that heat go so suddenly?
condenses, not condences.
I’ve long been a supporter of the basic proposition that the hydrological cycle achieves a negative system response to forcing elements via emergent phenomena such as those described by Willis.
Nonetheless I think it needs to be extended globally because every cloud and thermal updraft anywhere is an emergent phenomenon and part of the negative system response.
It isn’t just a matter of the tropics or of thunderstorms.
Then there are other interesting issues as to how and why the mechanism works and whether it would work with no water at all.
I assume that Willis would suggest a warmer surface in the first instance so as to provoke the emergent phenomena but if the system is to remain stable one also needs a cooled surface elsewhere to offset it.
Which has led me to this:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/erasing-agw-how-convection-responds-to.html
My article points to the vertical displacement of air at the tropopause at the top of convective columns whereby cold air is displaced downwards from the top of ascending columns to the top of descending columns without changing its temperature since it is in contact with the stratospheric air mass and follows the inevitable distortion of tropopause height between ascending and descending columns.
It then follows that descending air compresses and warms less than it otherwise would have done because it is starting at a lower height along the lapse rate slope and it is that which offsets the additional surface warming at the surface beneath ascending columns that provoked the additional convection required by Willis’s emergent phenomena.
An advantage of that proposition is that it works even without emergent phenomena from the hydrological cycle.
The vertical displacement of air between the tops of ascending and descending columns at the tropopause causes surface temperature differentials at the surface which are then countered by horizontal winds so that the average surface temperature stays the same as before.
Now the AGW proponents could argue that those windiness changes at the surface constitute climate change but the scale of such changes from our CO2 emissions compared to those from changes in the effects of sun and oceans would count for nothing.
@Mardler: No, I think the theory will say that ‘around’ the equator, changes in the level of rain/clouds etc will dump more ‘heat’ out of the atmosphere to stabilise the temperature.
we can see a non linear response: the difference between the energy requirements 25-20 degrees C require 18 kJ/kg whereas 20-15 degrees C require 15 kJ/kg.
A physical mechanism could be: “Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution”.
We all know that melting ice is typically at 0 degrees C, and remains so until the heat input to it melts all the ice. We also know that water (without ice) increases in temperature for each unit of energy injected until the water starts to boil at 100 degrees C. (all at atmospheric pressure).
However, the amount of heat transferable by water/water vapour varies with temperature.
If we look at psychrometric chart
My interpretation of this is that in a nonlinear manner, warmer water vapour can transmit/communicate/pass/dump more heat energy than cooler water vapour.
This variation in heat flux would contribute to the thermo regulating effect.
The sensible heat capacity of dry air is 0.24 Btu.lb – F. Sensible heat of liquid water is 1.0 Btu/lb F.
The latent heat of water vapor in the air is about 1,000 Btu/lb. And, yes, it varies slightly with temperatures.
It remains obvious that water/water vapor absorbs/releases huge amounts of energy compared to dry air. The major flaw w/ the GHE is that it ignores water vapor, focuses only on SWIR/LWIR and air temperatures.
A greenhouse without water vapor is an oven.
I think I’ve never heard so loud
The quiet message in a cloud.
==============
Your paper is fascinating. The one thing that looked odd was your negative correlation of rainfall and temperature across tropical, wet, land areas such as the Amazon Basin and wetter parts of West Africa (only). In that limited case, what causes what. Drying of a normally extremely wet column would allow higher temperatures there. If you get over a desert, which is always hot, high afternoon temperatures would cause dry-adiabatic mixing well above the 500 mb level. If any slight amount of moisture would reach such a desert column, very high base convection would result. Maybe, just maybe, some of those hail-stones would fall far enough to melt, and actually reach the ground, occasionally, as spotty but measurable rain, preserving your general finding of a positive correlation between rainfall and temperature. Thank you for your paper.
another great reply highlighting how important this blog is. gets the idea to many people instantly,allowing them to think aloud after reading the post. i hope willis takes a look at this contribution.
http://www.co2science.org/subject/other/clim_hist_2million.php
The global temp. range is higher then what Willis has suggested between ice Ages and Inter- glacial periods of time.
Salvatore Del Prete
“The global temp. range is higher then what Willis has suggested between ice Ages and Inter- glacial periods of time.”
___________________
Even during the 20th century. Willis suggests “…that earth has a thermoregulatory system keeping the global temperature within narrow bounds (e.g. ±0.3°C over the 20th century).”
NOAA uses the 20th century as its anomaly base period, i.e. 20th century average temperature = zero. According to NOAA, half the years between 1901 and 1920 were cooler than -0.3°C, while 12 out of the 20 years between 1981 and 2000 were warmer than 0.3°C.
The last full year that was cooler than 0.3°C on average was 1993. I don’t see where Willis is getting his ‘narrow bound of ±0.3°C over the 20th century’ figure from.
Just look at the ice core data and you will see the thermo regulation that Willis keeps harping on is not quite what he wants us to believe.
Willis said: “In this case, the rainfall increases with temperature in the ocean and in the drier parts of the land. But in the wetter parts of the land such as tropical Africa and the Amazon, the rainfall is about neutral or actually decreases with respect to temperature .. go figure.”
I would hazard a guess this is to do with the effects of vegetation. The evaporation in the tropical forests happens at the canopy level rather than the ground level, with a sort of microclimate under the canopy.
As far as the thermo regulator you have suggested again that works to keep the tropics regulated within a range as dictated by the overall climatic regime the earth is in.
Your regulator however can not does not stop the climate from going from one regime to another as the historical climatic record shows and in no way does it give a semi cyclicality to the climate.
What gives a cyclicality to the climate is most likely extra- terrestrial beats ranging from Milankovitch Cycles to Solar Variability to the Geo Magnetic Field Strength to Land/Ocean Arrangements .
Your thermo regulator at best keeps the earth range bound but the range is to large to stop the earth from going from a glacial state to an inter- glacial state which for practical terms makes the climate of the earth unstable.
So yes the earth has the regulator you suggest which keeps the tropics more stable then what they would be otherwise, but this regulator at the same time is unable to keep the climate of the earth from going from a glacial to inter- glacial state.
And even the variation ice age to interglacials to ice age is only about ± 2.5°K, or about ± 1%. So in the interglacial the regulation is to ± .1%, and over the last million years the regulation is still to ± 1%
Willis says which is much to conservative, try plus or minus 4c. In addition this range in global temperatures is much greater in the mid and high latitudes when the earth transits from glacial to inter-glacial periods.
See my comments above.
JL
Willis,
First off, thanks for presenting this work in the Gladiator Pit.
Although I’ve generally been a fan of the reflective cooling part of your hypothesis as a factor in global (rather than local) climate, I think some pieces of the puzzle are still missing for the evaporative part of climate self-regulation.
I agree with your conversion from rain (mm) to evaporation Watts, but what is missing is where all that latent heat goes. Either it rains back down, gets moved to other regions, or it’s radiated out to space. The first two options are neutral on a global scale. The last one should show up as a component in the LWIR part of CERES, but I think it’s hard to distinguish it from the LWIR component that is directly related to the temperature. So can you really talk about 100s W/m2 of cooling (your third conclusion) unless you have a good idea of what part of that evaporation heat comes straight back?
By the way: which parts of the CERES data are you using for the reflective and evaporative cooling graphs?
Frank,
The latent heat removed from the surface by the evaporation of water warms the atmospheric water that the water vapor ultimately condenses upon which then falls as rain. To the extent that in LTE, there are net emissions to space from atmospheric water, the emitting water must be receiving an equal amount of power to replace those emissions (otherwise. it’s not in LTE), thus emissions from water are only offsetting emissions that would be present if the water wasn’t there.
If you calculate the power of the photons emitted by the surface that do not pass directly through the atmosphere it’s about 300 W/m^2 including absorption by clouds, leaving about 90 W/m^2 exiting to space (Trenberth fails to account for surface energy passing through ‘average’ clouds and instead assumes that all clouds have unit emissivity and absorb all surface emissions). In LTE, the atmosphere must be emitting what it’s absorbing. If you calculate the difference between the power passing directly through the atmosphere from the required 240 W/m^2, there’s a 150 W/m^2 shortfall which is half of what the atmosphere is absorbing. The remaining half makes up the difference between the 240 W/m^2 of input from the Sun and the 390 W/m^2 emitted by the surface at its average temperature. The 50/50 split is expected, in fact required if the planet behaves as a gray body, as power enters the atmosphere from half the surface area over which the atmosphere emits power. Proof that the planet does behave as a gray body is here:
http://www.palisad.com/co2/docs/latestproof.pdf
The implication is that any non radiant energy that enters the atmosphere (latent heat, convection, etc) can only be returned to the surface and can not increase or decrease the radiant energy otherwise emitted by the planet. Of course, this is also a zero sum process (COE) and the difference between the non radiant energy entering the atmosphere and whatever fraction of this is returned to the surface is already accounted for by the average temperature of the planet and the emissions consequential to that average temperature.
CO2, your argument that “any non-radiant energy that enters the atmosphere can only be returned to the surface” seems to hinge on the assumption that the Earth is in thermal equilibrium everywhere and at all times. Although that may be true in the long term on a global scale, I don’t see why that should be the case in the time frame and locality of Willis’ emerging thunderstorms?
Frank,
Transiently, the Earth is rarely in balance (except twice per year near the equinoxes). During winter months, the surface emits more than it receives as it cools while during summer months it receives more than it emits and warms. The crossover point is shortly after each equinox. This becomes clear when you examine the seasonal difference between the emissions of the planet and the post albedo input power arriving from the Sun.
LTE describes the behavior after all seasonal variability has been averaged out and all ‘feedback’ has had its influence. It’s unambiguously clear that the current steady state where each W/m^2 of solar input results in an average of 1.6 W/m^2 of surface emissions represents LTE which the planet has had billions of years to converge upon (consensus claims that the gain of 1.6 is pre-feedback are ignorantly ludicrous). My analysis is based strictly on the average steady state behavior as this is all that matters relative to how the LTE steady state of the planet varies in response to change and the long term data suggests that none of the non radiant power leaving the surface affects LTE, except to the extent that water vapor yields clouds which do have an effect. The main effect non radiant energy has is to redistribute energy throughout the atmosphere.
Any year to year imbalance will not be more than a fraction of a W/m^2 or so and varies around zero from year to year. The idea that there is some long term imbalance is absolutely wrong since the planet responds far too quickly to seasonal variability for any perceived imbalance to persist for very long. The consensus incorrectly assumes that the entire mass of the oceans must adapt for any change to be fully realized and this gives them the wiggle room to claim time constants on the order of decades to centuries, rather than the approximately 12-24 months that the seasonal response suggests. If the dominant time constants were really on the order of decades to centuries, we wouldn’t even notice the seasons!
Emergent thunderstorms are part of the chaotic path from one steady state to another, but have little to do with what the new steady state will be in response some change. The feedback from clouds does have an effect and that effect seems to be consequential to net negative feedback towards the equator (thermostatic control), net positive feedback towards the poles (warming and/or cooling is amplified) and zero somewhere in between. One of the biggest errors made by the consensus is to extrapolate the positive feedback in colder climate to the entire surface of the planet.
George
Thanks, George. I understand and do agree with a lot of what you are saying, but it doesn’t seem to address my main concern.
As I understand it, Willis hypothesizes that the climate is more stable than the IPCC suggests because the planet can get regulate its temperature through the forming (or not) of thunderclouds. So he’s hypothesizing that despite CO2 levels rising, the Earth climate will still be stable due to this self-regulation.
Now if you want to prove that precise fact, you can’t also assume it is so — that would be a circular argument. So it’s gotta come from the data: when he suggests that the evaporation can soak up lots of heat from surface, all of it has to be accounted for in the data — without assuming that the Earth is in thermal equilibrium a priori.
So my point is that the only way in which evaporation can help stability on a global scale is if somehow some of that heat can be radiated out to space when necessary. Since you believe all heat must come back to earth because of LTE, I guess your point is that it can’t??
Frank,
The ‘regulatory’ property Willls describes is an observation that the net feedback in the tropics is quite negative (the mechanism he describes seems plausible) and that the net feedback acting on the entire planet is slightly negative, but not negative enough for the level of stability he asserts. Remember that the effect of net positive feedback is to amplify change, while the effect of negative feedback is to oppose change and its this opposition to change that manifests a regulatory mechanism. Also, much of the recent stability is a consequence of near constant solar input.
Just as warmists incorrectly extrapolate positive feedback at the poles to the entire planet, it’s incorrect to project negative feedback in the tropics across the planet. The net feedback must be calculated as the weighted fraction of input energy each kind of feedback affects. This is also why warmists think melting ice feedback is important, they fail to understand that as the planet warms, there’s less ice to melt and the effect of this feedback is reduced, moreover; as we are in an interglacial period, there’s not much dynamic range left in this feedback as there’s little headroom to decrease average ice much more than it already is.
During ice ages, more of the planet is cold and the feedback is net positive which both amplifies cooling as temperatures drop and amplifies warming as the temperatures rise. But, as the temperatures rises, less of the planet is cold and the global effect of the positive feedback in polar latitudes decreases until the negative feedback in the tropics starts to dominate. I should point out that cold itself does not determine feedback, but that it’s surface ice and snow that reduces the negative feedback effect of reflection from incremental clouds.