A Correction – And Much More of the Answer
Guest essay by Mike Jonas
I think this post is a big deal. It’s not quite the answer to everything but, if I’ve got it right, it solves a lot of the climate riddle. It also shows that CO2’s contribution to late 20th century global warming was very minor. So here’s a request: please can the best brains on WUWT check it all very carefully – a serious online peer-review. If I’ve stuffed up, I want to know that right away, so please get a critical comment in asap. Most of the relevant data is in the spreadsheet absorptioncalcs_upper (.xlsx see also Appendix B).
1. A Correction from Nick Stokes
What seems like a long time ago, when I saw Nick Stokes’ comment on my How Climate Works – Part 1 post, I thought it looked significant and I should check it carefully. Well, silly me, I didn’t check it until after my last post, which asked where El Niño’s heat came from. In that post, I looked into the ocean at 10-100m depth, and found enough extra energy absorption caused by a 1983-2009 cloud cover decline to match the global warming claimed for CO2. There’s enough energy for that alright, but the trouble is, when I examined it further, there’s too much water down there and not enough extra energy.
What I had been doing in the post was to check whether the extra heat going into the deep ocean was enough to match the amount claimed for CO2. All the analysis in the post was correct for the part of the ocean I was looking at, so what had I missed? [Actually, one formula I was using was wrong; I use the hopefully correct one in this post.].
I went back and checked Nick’s comment, and it supplied the answer. It showed the daily cycle of temperature in the upper ocean:
Figure 1. The diurnal (day-night) cycle in the top few metres of the ocean. From Nick Stokes’ blog Moyhu. NB. The two panels have different scales on the x-axes (that’s not an issue at all, just be careful to see the panels correctly).
What this chart shows is that, on a daily basis, the solar energy absorbed into the top fraction of a millimetre of the ocean then mixes (conducts and convects) into the top 5-10m only, and nearly all of it stays in just the top 1m. But overnight, it is all lost, back into the atmosphere.
I was looking far too far down into the ocean. The answers are much nearer the surface. That’s the correction from Nick.
So the first clue that put me back on track was that the daily mixing was in the top 1m, not the top 10m that I had been allowing for. There’s longer-term mixing too, but that basically spreads the heat across a wider band of ocean. The heat retained from the top 1m will still be there, it will just be diluted.
The second clue, which confirmed that I had been basically on track, was that the surface skin is cooler, day and night, than the subskin. What that tells you is that the net heat flow between the skin and the subskin is one-way – upwards from subskin to skin. So no matter how much the skin may affect the rate at which the subskin warms or cools, it cannot ever give it a higher temperature than its own. If the subskin’s temperature is higher, then the subskin’s other heat sources have to be capable of providing.all of its temperature.
I’ll make one more comment on Nick’s arguments, before I move on: It is unreasonable to extrapolate, as Nick implicitly does, from a single day’s data, arguing that the net zero effect over one day applies to longer periods. The net effect over one day may simply be too small to measure, or disappear in “noise”. To see what happens over longer periods, you need to find a way to work with longer periods.
NB. While you’re reading this article, please don’t think that I’m criticising Nick. Nick’s information and ideas have been invaluable. It’s just that I have a different interpretation, and obviously it’s the differences that get most attention.
2. The CO2 argument
Nick’s argument re CO2 is simple: “On average, the surface loses heat, by evaporation and radiation (and some conduction to air). Incoming IR does not generally need to be absorbed. It simply offsets some of the emission. [] In a very technical sense, the sea is heated by sunlight rather than downwelling IR, as is the land. That’s just trivial arithmetic – the sun is the heat source. [] But downwelling IR does add joules to the sea just as effectively as SW “.
Here, Nick confirms that the sun is the heat source, but skates over the mechanism saying it’s “just trivial arithmetic“. We’ll do some of the arithmetic in a while, and see if it’s trivial.
First, I want to establish how effective CO2 is.
The IPCC say that a doubling of CO2 increases downward IR by 3.7 Wm-2, and that without feedbacks this would increase global temperature by about 1.2 deg C [at equilibrium]. I’ll use these numbers, and use average surface temperature 290 deg K, to relate temperature to radiation: for radiation R, temperature T, some k, we have R=k*T^4 so k*291.2^4-k*290^4=3.7 hence k=3.7/( 291.2^4-290^4)=3.14E-8. That’s different to the black body figure, but presumably we’re not dealing with a black body. NB. I’m not looking for extreme accuracy, just the ball-park.
From 1983 to 2009, the increased CO2 delivered a downward RF increase of +0.20 Wm-2 (see previous post Appendix A). That would raise temperature by dT where k*((290+dT)^4-290^4) = 0.2 which gives dT ~= +0.07 deg C. That’s only reached at equilibrium, and as Nick says, ““Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity. What has happened after everything has settled down, which takes a very long time.“. [my bold].
I think that +0.07 deg C at equilibrium is probably about right. And its contribution from 1983 to 2009 would have been much less.
3. The cloud effect
The argument about clouds is even simpler: Clouds affect upward and downward radiation roughly equally, so cloud changes have negligible effect on atmospheric temperature. NB. We’re looking at averages, not day vs night.
I think that’s probably about right, too. As I said in my last post, “Clouds have a minor overall effect on average atmospheric temperature“.
But does that argument extend to the ocean ?
Nick Stokes argues that solar radiation that penetrates the ocean is just re-radiated away. He puts it this way: “A large part of the insolation that penetrates the sea, to a depth of several meters, is later radiated in this way. It’s a big part of the thermal balance. Somehow, that heat is conveyed to the surface, and is emitted by the surface layer.“. And that one word that I have highlighted is the third clue – what is this “Somehow“?.
Let’s look at those “several metres” and see what goes on there:
Using all the same data as in the El Niño’s heat post , here is the absorption profile for the ITO down to 15m depth:
Figure 2. ITO absorption to 15m depth.
Most of the solar radiation is indeed absorbed in the top 1 metre, but for the ITO virtually none is in the top 1mm. The total energy absorbed from thee ITO in the top say 5m is 88 Wm-2. That definitely doesn’t look trivial.
What we are interested in is the effect of clouds. Clouds have little net effect on IR, but for the ITO the equation is different. A reduction in cloud cover lets more ITO into the ocean well below the surface skin. There is now an additional heat source inside the ocean. Using the same figures as before, but correcting the formula (see Appendix A), the 4 percentage-point reduction in global cloud cover from 1983-2009 would see an additional 2.0 Wm-2 absorbed in top 1m, and 1.6 Wm-2 absorbed into the 1-15m band.
That’s a lot more than the +0.2 Wm-2 from CO2 over the same period. Sure, it’s going to get to the surface Somehow, but in the meantime it is going to heat the ocean below the surface. In fact, it can’t (net) release any of its heat to the surface unless it has warmed to a higher temperature. Just like the CO2 change, this extra wattage isn’t a one-day wonder, it’s coming in every day while the cloud cover stays down.
The exact equations from here onwards get difficult, because the situation in the real ocean is fluid – pun intended – ie, the water can move, horizontally or vertically, and heat conducts through it, too, so there’s a lot more going on than just radiation. But the bottom line is that the radiation balance – the “Somehow” – comes from the top few metres of the ocean getting warmer. And if the the top few metres of the ocean get warmer then the globe gets warmer. So …..
4. How much of the Late 20th Century Global Warming was Natural?
We now have the necessary data to start to calculate how much of the late 20th century global warming was natural, and how much was from CO2.
Downward RF from CO2 increased by about 0.2 Wm-2 over the 1983-2009 period. All of that went into the ocean surface skin. Nick’s data shows that it then mixed into the top 5-10m of the ocean, but mainly into the top 1m.
Over the same period, because of cloud cover changes, the ITO increased by 4.5 Wm-2. About 80% of this was absorbed into the top 15m in the following distribution (the rest went into the deeper ocean).
| Depth (m) | Absorbed | Wm-2 | Cumul. |
| 0-1 | 44.7% | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| 1-2 | 9.3% | 0.4 | 2.4 |
| 2-3 | 5.5% | 0.2 | 2.7 |
| 3-4 | 3.8% | 0.2 | 2.8 |
| 4-5 | 2.9% | 0.1 | 3.0 |
| 5-6 | 2.3% | 0.1 | 3.1 |
| 6-7 | 1.9% | 0.1 | 3.2 |
| 7-8 | 1.7% | 0.1 | 3.2 |
| 8-9 | 1.5% | 0.1 | 3.3 |
| 9-10 | 1.3% | 0.1 | 3.4 |
| 10-11 | 1.2% | 0.1 | 3.4 |
| 11-12 | 1.1% | 0.0 | 3.5 |
| 12-13 | 1.0% | 0.0 | 3.5 |
| 13-14 | 0.9% | 0.0 | 3.6 |
| 14-15 | 0.8% | 0.0 | 3.6 |
Figure 3. Where the ITO’s 1983-2009 increase of 4.5 Wm-2 was absorbed.
The greater the depth of the mixing, the greater the contribution from the ITO, as shown in column “Cumul.” in Figure 3.
If we assume mixing to 1m only, the proportion of the extra RF provided by CO2 is 9% (0.2/(0.2+2.0). For mixing to 5m it’s 6.1% (0.2/3.2), for mixing to 10m it’s 5.5%.
Those percentages for CO2 are still too high, because
· CO2 increased linearly, while the ITO increase had all occurred by 2000. The ITO then stayed high.
· The ITO is supplying some additional RF to the next depths too, while CO2 is not.
We can state with confidence that the data shows clearly that CO2 contributed less than 9%, and probably less than 6%, of the global warming that occurred from 1983-2000.
5. Discussion
The global temperature increased from 1983 to about 2000, but then stalled. This matches the pre-2000 / post-2000 pattern of the ITO as controlled by clouds. The relationship is surely worth investigating very thoroughly. The next 5 years of ISCCP cloud data is due out later this year, and that should present a testing opportunity. By contrast, the CO2 pattern was quite different, CO2 levels increased steadily over the period.
We have seen, above, how clouds are a major driver of ocean surface temperature, and hence of climate, though more data over a longer data period is probably needed before the process can be understood in detail. All of the ocean oscillations (ENSO, AMO, PDO, etc) have a big impact on climate over timescales that range from a year to a few decades. Solar variation appears to have a long term effect on climate, and a possible mechanism has been shown to be via GCRs and clouds. It had been thought that clouds had only a minor effect on temperature, but by looking specifically at the ocean not the atmosphere I have shown how clouds do have a significant impact.
The ocean oscillations are not, as far as I am aware, caused by clouds. Clouds can affect the temperature of the water going into the oscillations, and this I think is the likely cause of the 20th century global temperature pattern. This pattern could be seen as a ~60yr cycle on a rising trend. The cycle seemed to match reasonably well to the Atlantic and Pacific oscillations, and the rising trend related quite well to solar activity for most of the 20th century (increased solar activity => less GCRs => less clouds). The sun is not the only driver of clouds, and clouds continued to decline in the late 20th century even though the sun then started weakening. We need to find why the clouds behaved as they did, but it is clear that the late 20th century global warming was driven mainly by clouds. We know that El Niño affects clouds, so it is likely that the other ocean oscillations affect clouds too. Climate is non-linear, which adds another obstacle to analysis – the same factors can have different results at different times, depending on the state of other factors.
I would postulate that the ocean’s chief influence on the weather (periods of days, weeks) is from the top few mm. That is the layer whose heat is lost fastest into the atmosphere. CO2 would have no influence here, because it doesn’t vary on those short timescales, but clouds certainly would. Factors such as winds would be be important too. An El Niño operates on a slightly longer timescale, and winds have been identified as a (or the) major factor. An El Niño can lift local ocean surface temperature by around 10 deg C, and there is a limit to the depth of water that can be heated by that amount. It therefore seems likely that the pool of warm water that feeds El Niño is not very deep. The multi-decadal ocean oscillations, such as the AMO and PDO, change temperatures by less but over longer periods, so their pools of warm water are probably deeper, and consequently are released over a longer period. But if the pool of warm water is deeper, then the proportion attributable to CO2 over the 1983-2009 period would be at the low end of the range. Over even longer timescales, solar variation via clouds would appear to be a (or the) major factor.
Climate scientists would benefit massively, in my considered opinion, by abandoning their absurdly detailed and desperately manipulated computer models driven mainly by CO2 and the atmosphere. I have explained in previous posts why, as currently structured, they can never work. Energy in Earth’s system is basically a one-way street : sun – ocean – atmosphere – space. (Please note that the ocean surface is warmer than the atmosphere, on average, so net energy transfer is indeed from ocean to atmosphere. See here, eg.). Clouds have a major influence, as they control solar energy entering the ocean. The sun, in turn, has a long term impact on clouds. Until we learn how to predict activity of the sun, clouds and the ocean, we will not be able to predict future climate.
I need to re-write some of my earlier documents, in light of what I have learned since. This will take a while. The concepts are generally unchanged, but some of the detail has changed.
Appendices
Appendix A. Cloud Formula
It’s not very clear in the Kiehl and Trenberth energy budget diagram (Figure A.1 in the El Niño’s heat post) what the effect of a change in cloud cover on the various radiation components would be. So I’ve made some assumptions. NB. I’m not looking for extreme accuracy, just the ball-park. The assumptions:
· At 71.2% cloud cover (the 1983-2009 average), solar radiation entering the ocean is 168 Wm-2. (Figure A.1 in the El Niño’s heat post).
· At zero cloud cover, solar radiation entering the ocean would be 72.5% of total solar radiation. (Figure A.2 in the El Niño’s heat post, “70-75% transmitted“).
· Clouds’ effect is linear with cloud cover.
From this, a 1 percentage-point decrease in cloud cover would increase solar radiation entering the ocean by ~1.12 Wm-2. For a 4 percentage-point increase, it’s 4.5 Wm-2.
This formula is a correction to the one I used before. The previous one gave too high a figure.
Appendix B. A very brief guide to AbsorptionCalcs_Upper.xlsx
Download: absorptioncalcs_upper (.xlsx)
Atmosphere and Ocean data is digitised from graphs shown in worksheets AtmosphereGraphs, OceanGraphs respectively. Atmosphere and Ocean calcs are in worksheets Atmosphere, Ocean respectively. Some energy budget data is taken fron Kiehl and Trenberth’s energy budget chart in worksheet EnergyBudget. The full combination is then calculated in worksheet 2003.
I use SORCE data for 2003. All years are almost identical.
In the SORCE data, total solar radiation is 330.5 Wm-2 based on Earth’s surface area – cell ‘2003’!D4 divided by 4. Total ITO is 236.5 Wm-2 – cell ‘2003’!E4 divided by 4. The 88 Wm-2 absorbed in the top 5m comes from cells ‘2003’!BC1:BG1. Cells ‘2003’!BC2:BQ2 give the percentagess in Table 3 above.
In the previous worksheet, absorptioncalcs (.xlsx), there was an error in a section labelled Bands for graph only: at cell ‘2003’!AD8009 (now cell ‘2003’!AZ8009). This section is not used for any calcs. The error is that the z axis in the Absorption graph in worksheet Graphs is out by a factor of 10. The section is not used anywhere else, so no calcs are affected.
Abbreviations
AMO – Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation
CO2 – Carbon Dioxide
ENSO – El Niño Southern Oscillation
GCR – Galactic Cosmic Ray
IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IR – Infra-Red radiation
ISCCP – International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project
ITO – Into The Ocean [Band of Wavelengths approx 200nm to 1000nm]
PDO – Pacific Decadal Oscillation
RF – Radiative Forcing
SORCE – Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment
SST – Sea Surface Temperature
SW – Short Wave
Wm-2 or W/m2 – Watts per square metre
WUWT – wattsupwiththat.com
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Interesting paper by Mike Jonas and discussion. Thanks!
I got the impression that it needs to be shown that day and night can be lumped together without effecting the result.
Nice discussion.
Science based on knowledge with a minimum of non-scientific preconceived conclusions.
Anthony, Nick really needs to be a part of this discussion.
He who cannot be named does not have the correct opinions.
Tony, it doesnt matter what opinion Nick has or doesnt have. He’s mentioned in the story and he has been a valuable commenter on this and other sites.
Owen,
As it happened, I was able to comment, for now at least without moderation.
It seems that by focusing solely on heat transfer a person might be led badly astray in this topic. For example, the ocean typically has 35 parts per thousand dissolved solids, and as water evaporates from the surface that salinity figure must rise locally. In turn this makes the surface water more dense. At some point increasing density must lead to descending fingers of saline water which could be warmer than the surroundings, thus transferring heat to depth. On the other hand, when there is a wind blowing across a water surface one can observe streets of trash or debris aligned with the wind. This indicates the presence of roll cells in the upper tens of meters that must transfer heat probably back to the surface.
My point is that a person can’t make a credible story about energy balance without worrying also about mass balances of vapor leaving the surface and also salinity moving between the surface and depth. This is not a simple problem.
Yes, it is not a simple problem considering about 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by water and the heat capacity of the oceans is several orders of magnitude greater than the atmosphere. The whole concept of a CO2 knob is totally stupid considering the complexity of the earth’s circulation heat transfer system and the small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s only been a few years since researchers have started to collect detailed global ocean temperature profile and salinity data. More funds should be directed towards this type of oceanographic research. The longer people study this the more you realize the concept of reducing CO2 emissions to reduce surface warming is totally flawed. Plus on top of this, you consider all the data manipulation that GISS has nicely done over the years with historical climate data you realize the entire CO2 theory is crap. Glacials several miles thick covered most of northern North America just 18,000 years ago and in a relatively short period of time, they melted and receded. This all occurred when the earth’s human population was very low. Our climate system is too complex to simply think that if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions and like magic, the planet’s climate will be in balance. Total bullcrap.
Yup, AGW is indeed “total bullcrap.” And we need only look at the Earth’s climate history to prove it. Ten times today’s CO2 level (and rising, to about 11 times today’s level) couldn’t stop the climate from changing from “hot house” conditions to “ice house” conditions 450 million years ago. So CO2’s supposed “heat trapping” ability is absolute BS.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=zkdHHtl0&id=F9A37C24C166717379809ABAF8B6CDC7FDB4C4F5&q=geocarb+temp+vs.+co2+graph&simid=607994850232370887&selectedIndex=0&ajaxhist=0
It can’t be that complex! Mike “the spike” Mann and dozens of other great minds of climate science, along with the entire IPCC were able to ignore it completely. Their secret is magic tree rings that say whatever you want them to say.
Except when they don’t say what you want them to – in which case you simply replace them with sparse and UHI polluted thermometer data, of course. ;-D
Richard Verney,6.52 a.m.
A low cloud cover increases the sky emittance and hence “back” radiation.The surface energy balance then shows that the surface temperature increases and the convection heat loss from the ocean decreases : thus the nighttime subsurface ocean temperature does not decrease as much compared to that for a clear sky.
5.46 a.m. and 5.37 a.m.
Evaporation rate depends on the dew surface temperature and wind conditions. Where there is no solar radiation, thesurface energy balance shows that the back radiation is less than the heat loss due to emission,evaporation and convection.Hence the surface temperature and evaporation rate are lower .The dew will still evaporate, but at a much lower rate.
For a similar reason, caldera lakes are not” boiled off” by back radiation.
In general,a quantitative surface energy balance that determines the behavior of the surface temperature is required to properly discuss such heat transfer processes.
Thank you, Mike Jonas for an interesting article. It is, however, imo, NOT, sorry to say, a “big deal.” It is based on so many assumptions that, at bottom, it amounts to nothing more than mere speculation.
Assumptions:
1.
There is NO evidence, no observation, proving this.
2.
Not only is there no observation proving this conjectured causation, there it now anti-correlation data, i.e., CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
3.
This is a nonsensical assumption. Worse than unhelpful, it is misleading. When in the world has the climate been at equilibrium? (See Pamela Gray at 6:24am)
4.
This, as stated, strikes me as a grandiose, highly implausible, claim. It would need massive evidence to prove it is so. The better tack would be to re-word it to something like: “Clouds do much to maintain the homeostasis of earth’s surface temperature, whether changes in clouds (from UV or other causes) cause climate shifts is unknown.”
5.
I’m afraid not. All that calculation would be, is speculation and not very plausible speculation.
Finally, two counter-balancing cites for context:
1.
And see the excellent comments in the accompanying thread.
(Source: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/06/new-paper-on-argo-data-trenberths-ocean-heat-still-missing/ )
2.
Richard Lindzen
See also many other articles and lectures by Dr. Lindzen where he lucidly articulates the fact that all the “global warming” or “climate change” which is asserted to have occurred is well within the bounds of natural variation.
(Source: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/17/richard-lindzen-a-case-against-precipitous-climate-action/ )
Janice – There are some techniques in play here, aimed at simplifying without corrupting. So, for example, some IPCC figures can be used, even though they might be wrong, provided they are figures that strengthen the argument for CO2 warming not weaken it. And “at equilibrium” doesn’t mean that equilibrium is ever reached, it’s just a way of seeing the figure so that it’s useful. The CAGW brigade has been successful for this long because they know that they have enough complexity to work with to allow them to obfuscate for ever. I’m trying to cut through to the essentials.
I think your criticisms about assumptions are fair, but perhaps a better way of looking at this post is not so much “CO2 caused x amount of warming,” but rather “CO2 COULDN’T HAVE CAUSED MORE THAN x amount of warming,” thereby invalidating the claims of catastrophe. Maybe that would have been a better way of presenting this, Mike.
Hi Mike Jonas,
Not sure if this helps you or not.
My work suggests that The Pause would extend back to 1982, were it not for two huge volcanoes in 1982 and 1991; Bill Illis’s work suggests The Pause extends back to at least 1958.
Since there was global cooling from about 1940 to 1975, one could conclude that there has been no net global warming since about 1940.
Regards, Allan
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/16/october-2016-global-surface-landocean-and-lower-troposphere-temperature-anomaly-update/comment-page-1/#comment-2342825
NOT A WHOLE LOTTA GLOBAL WARMING GOIN’ ON!
[excerpt} … Bill Illis has created a temperature model that actually works in the short-term (multi-decades). It shows global temperatures correlate primarily with NIno3.4 area temperatures – an area of the Pacific Ocean that is about 1% of global surface area. There are only four input parameters, with Nino3.4 being the most influential. CO2 has almost no influence. So what drives the Nino3.4 temperatures? Short term, the ENSO. Longer term, probably the integral of solar activity – see Dan Pangburn’s work.
Bill’s post is here.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/23/lewandowsky-and-cook-deniers-cannot-provide-a-coherent-alternate-worldview/comment-page-1/#comment-2306066
Bill’s equation is:
Tropics Troposphere Temp = 0.288 * Nino 3.4 Index (of 3 months previous) + 0.499 * AMO Index + -3.22 * Aerosol Optical Depth volcano Index + 0.07 Constant + 0.4395*Ln(CO2) – 2.59 CO2 constant
Bill’s graph is here – since 1958, not a whole lotta global warming goin’ on!
My simpler equation using only the Nino3.4 Index Anomaly is:
UAHLTcalc Global (Anom. in degC, ~four months later) = 0.20*Nino3.4IndexAnom + 0.15
Data: Nino3.4IndexAnom is at: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/sstoi.indices
It shows that much or all of the apparent warming since ~1982 is a natural recovery from the cooling impact of two major volcanoes – El Chichon and Pinatubo.
Here is the plot of my equation:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1106756229401938&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater
I agree with Bill’s conclusion that
THE IMPACT OF INCREASING ATMOSPHERIC CO2 ON GLOBAL TEMPERATURE IS SO CLOSE TO ZERO AS TO BE MATERIALLY INSIGNIFICANT.
Regards, Allan
Allan M.R. MacRae on February 18, 2017 at 10:44 am
It shows that much or all of the apparent warming since ~1982 is a natural recovery from the cooling impact of two major volcanoes – El Chichon and Pinatubo.
imho should be replaced by
I think that much or all of the apparent warming since ~1982 might arise from a natural recovery from the cooling impact of two major volcanoes – El Chichon and Pinatubo.
Simply because you give us here no proof of your assertion. In fact, your text contains the same level of supposition as the texts written by some warmistas concerning the role of CO2.
Please digest all the stuff visible when accessing the link below
http://www.globalwarmingequation.info/
Try to falsify it, and come back here with the falsification.
If you succeed, Allan, then be sure I will believe you.
No thanks Bindi – since it’s you, I cannot be bothered.
Your past comments have been nonsense. Your latest one is too.
It was easy to anticipate such an answer.
You suppose, guess, pretend, claim – instead of bringing proofs on the table.
I came across ‘CO2 cools the earth not heats it’ with proofs: https://goo.gl/5w99T9
Is this relevant?
I don’t know. Every time I see someone do the intensity/4 thing to get “average radiation” I get a little squeemish. The true incoming radiation is the part integral of 12 hours of 0 plus the integral of the sun’s top of the atmosphere intensity times a reflectivity term which varies with the angle from zenith, times an atmosphere absorption term that likewise varies with the angle from zenith. It winds up looking similar to a sine curve (though it could be a sine^2 curve) that starts at 0, goes to something like 1200 w/m^2 at noon and back to 0. I know this was looking for a ball park estimate, so that kind of precision could be overkill, but radiation isn’t a linear input to the system.
The outgoing radiation equations get very messy at night since as the surface layer radiates away its heat, its density increases until it begins to sink. This creates the overturning of the water to quite a depth before the sun comes up to recharge the whole mess. How much of the daylight energy get released each night, and how much gets pushed west by the tradewinds and submerged due to salinity density differences as it goes west? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but they look to be part of the process.
This is an important paper. A summary stating sum of data and conclusions would make it a much better. Some of us need structure and must be led by the nose. Especially old decrepit farts like me. THX – GK
G. Karst – Point noted. I want to put together a complete well-ordered summary, but need to get my own time well-ordered first. One day …
Mike,
I have long felt that a decrease in cloudiness better explains such things as glacier retreat than the small increase in global average temperature. I have a question though. The 4% decline in cloud cover from 1983 to 2009 is presumably an average. Is there a difference between land and ocean cloud cover changes?
echoing clyde spencers comment i would also like to see seasonal regional variations in cloud cover. i appreciate that is a big ask on top of the huge amount of work you have already completed.
When refining sugar, a super concentrated but filtered sugar solution is first created by evaporating water from the sugar solution, usually under combined heat and vacuum. The concentrated solution does not form crystals immediately in the same way that the temperature of ultra pure water can be lowered below the freezing point without immediately forming ice. Then, if a piece of dust is introduced or the glass is tapped, the super-cooled water then freezes. In refining sugar, there is a point at which crystals of pure sugar (usually grown in an alcohol solution) are introduced to the concentrated solution as seeds to begin the formation of sugar crystals.
What is interesting is that the size of the crystals ultimately formed during the crystallization process can be controlled by how many seeds are introduced into the concentrated sugar solution. If fewer seeds are introduced, the resulting crystals will be larger than if more seeds are introduced. Thus, the size of the refined sugar crystals can be controlled to suit the requirements of the client.
The hypothesis of cloud formation modulated by cosmic rays has always bothered me. Unlike a carefully filtered sugar solution, there will always be seeds in nature that will allow clouds to form when the cloud-forming conditions are right – usually dependent primarily on relative humidity and dew temperature. I don’t see how cosmic rays could modulate relative humidity and dew temperature. However, if solar activity affects cosmic rays, which, in turn, modulate the number of seeds available to form clouds when conditions are right, AND IF, the number of seeds controls the size of the resulting cloud droplets (as with sugar), THEN perhaps the cosmic rays could modulate NOT cloud formation but cloud lifetime on the assumption that the lifetime of a cloud would be dependent on initial droplet size.
IF this is the case, then varying cloud lifetimes (NOT cloud formation rates) would significantly affect average cloud fraction and thus have a significant effect on climate. In other words, a rain cloud would hypothetically form when conditions are right in any event, but, when there are more cosmic rays, the cloud would not rain out until later in the day because the smaller initial droplet size would affect how long the droplets take to coalesce into the size necessary for rain to happen or something to that effect.
Thus, the modulation of cosmic rays would not have a first order effect on cloud fraction, by modulating cloud formation, but, rather, a lag would be introduced, and the modulation of cosmic rays would have a second order or higher (and thus more subtle) effect on cloud fraction. Whether varying cloud lifetimes, rather than varying cloud formation rates, as a result of varying cosmic ray fluxes, can be measured experimentally or not would be an interesting question. Likewise, whether cloud modeling could be improved by assuming that cosmic ray fluxes modulate cloud lifetimes rather than cloud formation rates would also be interesting.
Or maybe my thinking today is cloudy.
Mike,
Thanks for the discussion, the links and the generally kind words. I think you have helped to increase understanding of the sea surface heat movements.
As an aside, I see that my “somehow” has received a lot of attention. It was a rhetorical device at the end of one para, leading to the explanation in the next para
“That pathway is a mix of turbulent advection, conduction in the top few mm, and radiation in the top microns. All those mechanisms are bi-directional. If heat can be emitted, it can be absorbed.”
Not much detail, of course – as you say, “The exact equations from here onwards get difficult, because the situation in the real ocean is fluid”. My main point, which was also the initial point of my comment that you linked, is that the mechanism is reversible. It creates a pathway, along which heat could flow both ways equally. So the sea could absorb IR, but as it happens, the net flow through that path is upward. And we know that it works for that; the 160 W/m2 does get out.
On the main point of your article, I think it puts too much emphasis on transient effects. Yes, clouds intercept sunlight which reduces this flux ITO and OTO (out of the ocean, =ITO). But that heat isn’t lost to the climate; it just appears in a different place (clouds). As far as the sea surface is concerned, the greater down IR from the warmer atmosphere balances the reduced upflux from the reduced SW.
Nick writes
Apart from the sunlight that is reflected you mean?
This isn’t a given and is potentially a source of considerable natural climate variation. We dont understand the way it works either. GCMs cant model clouds anywhere near well enough to resolve that question over long time frames.
TTTM,
“Apart from the sunlight that is reflected you mean?”
Yes. Albedo change is a recognised but separate effect.
“This isn’t a given”
But it needs to be allowed for. The heat isn’t lost, but appears somewhere else. It may possibly have less warming effect, but will certainly have some, even at sea surface.
Nick writes
SW energy and LW energy are going to have different feedbacks associated with them. GCMs cant resolve those either. So how do you propose its “allowed for”?
TTTM,
I’m talking about Mike’s model. I don’t think you can just isolate the ocean surface/clouds interaction. I think Mike’s calc is based on the loss of heat to sea, or rather the gain in heat when the could go away. But the heat that didn’t immediately reach the sea still lodged in the atmosphere.
I don’t know how you can allow for that – I don’t think this simple model will work.
Nick writes
I think its a mistake to think of energy in the atmosphere as being on its way to anywhere other than space. When you take your eye off the process of SW heating and LW cooling you’re risking treading the path of mathematics without due regard to thermodynamics.
“…Thanks for the discussion, the links and the generally kind words…”
So you want to appear gracious but still get in a dig that the OP wasn’t completely nice to you?
Now run along to the myriad of other sites that you post on where your references to WUWT are all about eeeeeevil and complaints of how you are severely mistreated here.
You states correctly:
And likewise also correctly:
However, what you miss, is that the emissions before 1983 had not settled down in 1983.
We had no climate equilibrium in 1983. The emissions before 1983 continue to have an increasing effect a long time after that year due to long time feedback cycles.
Therefore, you have to take into account the effect the difference between the Transient and Equilibrium climate sensitivity for the emissions before 1983 have in the period you study.
/Jan
‘We now have the necessary data to start to calculate how much of the late 20th century global warming was natural, and how much was from CO2.’
Global data on anthropogenic aerosols is poor to non-existent, but I would content that reductions in aerosols were a significant driver of low level cloud decreases over the 1975 to 2000 period, and hence atmospheric temperatures.
I am also sceptical of the statement that clouds have a negligible effect on atmospheric temperatures. It might be true on a global annual average basis, but I’d need some persuasive data to convince me. However, it is most assuredly not true by latitude, season and time of day, as we recently experienced here in Western Australia when many record low max temperatures were set under unseasonable cloud cover (and rain).
To clarify my point. If CO2 isn’t the cause, it doesn’t follow the cause(s) are natural.
The change from ‘CO2 is the cause of global warming’ to ‘GHGs are the cause’ to ‘anthropogenic emissions are the cause’, is a recognition that humans influence the climate in other ways than CO2. Specifically by aerosol and particulate emissions.
‘We now have the necessary data to start to calculate how much of the late 20th century global warming was natural, and how much was from CO2.’
But the data, they are always a-changing.
so much to say…so little time.
True… let’s look at the bigger picture then.
Four molecules of CO2 in every ten thousand of air. “Come on man!”
As B.O. would say.
Roy, why not go ahead and risk it. Im interested in what you have to say.
Still no mention of deep water brine currents from ice formation or the Millennium+ length deep ocean current cycles either? That plays a role, we just can’t quantify it to my knowledge.
“Solar variation appears to have a long term effect on climate, and a possible mechanism has been shown to be via GCRs and clouds. ”
Clouds form out of water vapor evaporated off the ocean, mostly within the tropical zone, and are not driven by cosmic rays via low solar activity.
Yes, low solar activity yields higher cosmic ray counts, like today, but not clouds:
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/monitor.gif
It’s nearly at the highest counts in 53 years of records, where are all the clouds?
http://sol.spacenvironment.net/raps_ops/current_files/rtimg/dose.15km.png
It’s not coincidental that it’s cooler under the higher intensity area – there’s also low insolation at work.
Today is a beauty in Michigan with perfectly clear skies all day with no clouds:
All the clouds seen above started out first as water vapor evaporated from the ocean tropical zone from upwelling water warmed by incoming sunlight, and was not generated or created from the area under high cosmic ray intensity in the north where the radiation is higher. Where is the evidence that clouds originate at high latitudes and move southward?
It all boils down to what is (or is not) warming up the water… it’s not cosmic rays, it’s what’s modulating cosmic rays!
It’s a water world. What does water do with more or less available heat? Where does that ‘more or less’ heat come from?
“Solar variation appears to have a long term effect on climate” is definitely an understatement!
Clouds will only form if there is humidity??? Even then dew point needs to be breached..yes?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012JC007883/full
There are a lot of collisions in tropical thunder clouds that are rapidly delivering energy (and surface emitted CO2) to the upper atmosphere where it is free to radiate to space rather than back to the surface.
Need some help! How do I patent this newly discovered source of energy? In power plants a common form of insulating piping after the regulations preventing the use of asbestos is reflective insulation. This reflective insulation is three or four, sometimes more layers of highly polished stainless steel. Seems to me that if this DWLWIR, Back radiation, Whatever, warms the ocean , atmosphere, or anything, then the longer that a high energy, high temperature pipe was, that the hotter it would get. This would happen from all of the back radiation being reflected into the pipe making it warmer. It would only be tenths or hundredths of degrees per foot. However, over fifty – 1,000 feet, that small amount would add up, even compounding like interest on a loan, to a significantly measurable amount. Think of all of the free energy a plant could obtain. In fact a plant could even increase the superheat factor of the steam in the pipe thus making the process more efficient!
c’mon usurbrain, USURBRAIN! The radiative insulation around the power-plant piping reduces the amount of separately supplied thermal energy (from the fuel) to the colder ambient, resulting in higher temperatures inside the pipe for the same amount of supplied energy.
Similarly, the radiative insulation around the earth reduces the amount of separately supplied thermal energy (from the sun) to the colder ambient of space, resulting in higher temperatures on the earth for the same amount of supplied energy.
Didn’t spot the sarcasm?
The money shot in that piece is here
How exactly do you explain the ~3x positive feedback AGW relies on for its alarming rate of warming…in terms of the pipe example?
TTTM: Of course I spotted the (misguided) sarcasm. usurbrain, because of his inability to do the most basic thermodynamic analysis, thinks the (poorly named) greenhouse effect is tantamount to the creation of energy. I was simply pointing out that the use of radiative insulation to lessen thermal energy losses to a cold ambient, and therefore permit higher temperatures from a given energy input, is an everyday proven technology.
The fundamental greenhouse effect is a very different issue from any amplifying (or attenuating) feedbacks, such as water vapor or cloud changes. If absolute humidity truly increased significantly, and clouds decreased, with any CO2-induced warming, there would be some amplification. But our best evidence (which unfortunately is not that good) says that this is not happening, at least not to near the extent that most models predict.
December 2016 paper in Science: “Nearly all nucleation involves either ammonia or biogenic organic compounds. Furthermore, in the present-day atmosphere, cosmic ray intensity cannot meaningfully affect climate via nucleation.” http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6316/1119
Mike,
Regarding 2. The CO2 argument, you say:
I have two comments on that.
First, I have never been able to verify the IPCC’s figure of 3.7 W/m² for the radiative forcing from a doubling of atmospheric CO2. All my attempts to authenticate and verify it have stalled in the inscrutable inner-workings of radiative transfer models. Therefore, it remains an unsubstantiated claim whose veracity is wide open to doubt, in my view.
Second, even if the 3.7 W/m² figure is correct, it could not possibly produce 1.2°C of warming at the surface. Since the average surface absorptivity and emissivity is ~1 on infra-red wavelengths, the Stefan-Boltzman law deems that 3.7 W/m² of RF would yield only ~0.7°C of warming on an initial temperature anywhere in the range 6° to 19°C at the surface. I think the IPCC’s erroneous 1.2°C figure is not a sound basis for your calculations.
There is another big factor affecting surface climate sensitivity to CO2 which I’m not aware of anyone having considered to date and which I think you might want to include in your model. This is the incoming energy-split between sensible heat and latent heat of evaporation that occurs in all water on the surface of the planet. Such is the huge asymmetry of this energy-split that, for water at thermal equilibrium at today’s average global surface temperature of ~15°C, some 86% of all incoming radiation would be absorbed in evaporating the water at constant temperature and only the remaining 14% would be absorbed as sensible heat to warm the water. So, if the oceans absorb 3.7 W/m² of RF from a doubling of CO2, 86% of that would be returned to the atmosphere continuously in the form of water vapour while only 14% of it (i.e. ~0.52 W/m²) would remain behind to warm the oceans. 0.52 W/m² absorbed RF yields only ~0.1°C of warming at the ocean-surface. Since the oceans cover ~70% of the planet’s surface, they would be responsible for absorbing ~60% (i.e. 70%x86%) of RF from CO2 globally in evaporating seawater, thereby effectively reducing the IPCC’s 3.7 W/m² to ~1.5 W/m² which would yield a maximum of ~0.3°C of global warming.
So we may see that taking the Stephan-Boltzman law and the latent heat/sensible heat energy-split into account reduces the IPCC’s claimed 1.2°C of surface global warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 down to ~0.3°C in two simple steps. If we also take into account the surface water on the land areas as well, our figure for global climate sensitivity to CO2 will be reduced yet further. Clearly, there is no need to model the intricacies of the global climate system before we appreciate that the amount of global warming at the surface to be expected from a doubling of CO2 is almost certainly trivial.
RP on February 18, 2017 at 5:22 pm
I don’t exactly understand what you miss here: you didn’t explain it clearly enough.
Did you have a look at this?
1. http://www.globalwarmingequation.info/eqn%20derivation.pdf
2. http://www.globalwarmingequation.info/temperature%20increase%20eqn%20derivation.pdf
Bindidon on February 19, 2017 at 3:28 am:
What I have missed, Bindidon, is any verification (or ‘proof’ if you prefer) of the IPCC’s proposition that a doubling of atmospheric CO2-concentration would produce ~3.7 W/m² of radiative forcing at the surface.
You ask me:
Thanks for these two mathematical arguments which I don’t recall seeing before but may have done. They appear flawed to me though. At the bottom of page 2 of the first paper:
That is impossible. The fraction of flux returned downward from the entire atmosphere is only ~0.4, so the fraction returned by CO2 alone must be less than that. Doesn’t this error invalidate the whole calculation?
RP on February 19, 2017 at 10:31 am
That is impossible. The fraction of flux returned downward from the entire atmosphere is only ~0.4…
Here you see the problem you create by your own: while you doubt even about the result of a correct sequence of formulas, you simply present a number coming from somewhere, without any mathematic explanation.
So if you request from anybody to accept that the CO2 related fraction of flux returned downward to the Earth is at best 0.4 instead of the value of 0.6 calculated from step (4) to step (12), you must provide for a mathematic alternative to what is presented in § 2.1.
Tha’s the way science works.
Bindidon on February 19, 2017 at 10:31 am:
Of course, no problem. But I am surprised that you need me to explain it, since it is so elementary. Anyway, here goes……
By the Stefan-Boltzman law,
Radiance emitted from Earth’s surface (Rs) = σTs⁴,
where σ is the Stefan-Boltzman constant (5.67E-08 W/m²K⁴)
and Ts is the global mean surface temperature (15°C, = 288°K).
Hence, Rs = 5.67E-08×288⁴ = 390.1 W/m².
At equilibrium, radiance emerging from top of atmosphere (Rt) = insolation to surface = ¼(1 – α)Sc,
where α is the Earth’s albedo (0.306 according to the NASA Earth Factsheet at http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.html )
and Sc is the solar constant (1,361.0 W/m² at same link).
Hence Rt = ¼(1 – 0.306)x1,361 = 236.1 W/m².
The amount of flux returned downward to the surface from the atmosphere (Rr) is the difference between Rs and Rt = 390.1 – 236.1 = 154.0 W/m².
Therefore, fraction of flux returned downward from entire atmosphere = Rr/Rs = 154/390.1 = 0.395 = ~0.4.
Q.E.D.
RP.
One should probably not be using an average T for the whole Earth because T varies considerably over the surface of the Earth, and with time at any particular location, and the emitted radiance varies with the 4th power of T. Thus, the radiance will vary considerably. That is, one should either use extreme temperatures to bracket the expected emitted radiance, or use a global temperature map and integrate the calculated radiances over the surface of the globe to find an area-weighted average.
RP on February 19, 2017 at 2:55 pm
Of course, no problem. But I am surprised that you need me to explain it, since it is so elementary. Anyway, here goes…
You shouldn’t be so surprised, RP: I had decades ago a scientific education, but in a domain far away from this context: thus here I’m a simple layman. And that is the reason why I was not satisfied with your first reply: too many people simply replace visible computations and formulae by arbitrary chosen numbers.
But now you gave a scientific answer: thanks for that. It’ late here now, and tomorrow I will have to digest the two paths to understand where exactly they differ. Nich Stokes probably would need 2 minutes for the job 🙁
What now concerns your question
Doesn’t this error invalidate the whole calculation?
I would, as a layman, answer with
Do you see the effect of a change of Fa->g elsewhere than
– in the end computation of the constant (5.35, firstly computed by Myhre in 1998 I guess) linking radiative forcing and CO2 concentration (now becoming 3.57)
and hence
– in the end computation of the radiative forcing delta resulting from CO2 doubling (now 2.47) ?
Clyde Spencer, February 19, 2017 at 3:19 pm:
That may be true in many cases, Clyde, but we’re only considering rough approximations here. So long as the global average surface temperature (Ts) lies somewhere between 10°C and 22°C, the returned fraction of outgoing flux will still be ~0.4.
RP,
You said, “So long as the global average surface temperature (Ts) lies somewhere between 10°C and 22°C, the returned fraction of outgoing flux will still be ~0.4.”
Well, that is the point I was making. Surface temperatures can vary between about -73 deg C in Antarctica to 53 deg C in deserts, a range an order of magnitude greater than your 10-22 deg C.
RP on February 19, 2017 at 2:55 pm (2)
Two layman’s remarks after having read your explanation.
1. You do not consider what is part of the calculation in the page I linked to above: the optical thickness (or vertical opacity) of the atmosphere. This factor is used in other publications.
2. I managed to retrieve a publication (Myhre & al., 1998: New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases) where the well known factor used to compute the CO2 flux density out of its concentration’s logarithm (5.35) was found by using line-by-line and narrow-band models on the base of data stored in the HITRAN database.
Bindidon on February 19, 2017 at 3:52 pm:
Me too. I think we must all be laymen really – even the professionals – in this fledgling field of study.
I’m afraid I do. I think the error in Kelly’s derivation of the IPCC’s formula for radiative forcing from CO2 which we were talking about was not merely numerical, but was conceptual too. His un-numbered equation at the bottom of page 2 shows that he has conflated the concept of the greenhouse effect from CO2 with the concept of the greenhouse effect from the whole atmosphere as though they were one and the same thing. That’s a fatal error, in my view, because it renders his whole mathematical argument illogical and false. Therefore, as far as I can see it provides no verification at all of the IPCC’s formula for radiative forcing from CO2.
@Clyde Spencer, February 19, 2017 at 7:59 pm
I understand what you’re saying, Clyde, and I agree with you. The 4th power relationship between temperature and surface radiance could make a significant difference to our estimates of average surface temperatures and radiances. I think this could be another reason why the derivation of the IPCC’s formula for radiative forcing from CO2 offered by Bindidon is not valid, since that derivation involves the assumption that our estimate of the global mean surface temperature can be converted directly into an estimate of global mean surface radiance by a simple application of the Stefan-Boltzman formula, which you have pointed out is not necessarily true.
Still, while it is true that we don’t know for sure that 390 W/m² is a reasonably accurate estimate of the global mean surface radiance, I don’t know that it is an unreasonably inaccurate one either. Do you?
RP,
You said, “Still, while it is true that we don’t know for sure that 390 W/m² is a reasonably accurate estimate of the global mean surface radiance, I don’t know that it is an unreasonably inaccurate one either. Do you?”
I haven’t waded through the calculations, so I can’t say that it is unreasonably inaccurate. However, when you have a function dependent on a 4th-order parameter that varies widely over time and location, it just seems to me that taking an average temperature and computing a single number doesn’t give one a good view of what is happening. As I have stated previously, I think that what should be done is look at all the climate zones defined by physical geographers and see if they are all reacting similarly, which I doubt because of what we know about the Arctic. Knowing qualitatively and quantitatively what is happening in all of the climate zones, or alternatively physiographic regions, will provide us with more information than a single number. As an example, alarmists are panicked about what is going to happen to crops and outdoor workers because of a single projected number. However, we already know that Polar Bears are going to be stressed more than humans living in mid-latitudes, which is where most humans live. However, there may be a reason behind alarmists using one number to try to make their case. It is very easy to distort what is happening when using averages without error bars.
Clyde Spencer February 20, 2017 at 5:09 pm
I quite agree.
That would be wonderful! But I think that solution is impractical at present because we don’t have an adequate global monitoring system that could provide us with the necessary area-specific information. Analysing the existing temperature data-sets according to their coresponding radiances might yield a little more information on the global mean radiance I suppose, but since those consist mostly of guesswork anyway I don’t think we should expect them to produce any major advances on our current state of knowledge (or state of abject ignorance, more like it). Still, far be it from me to deter you from trying it if you want to. I would be delighted to have my pessimism proved wrong in this case.
Isn’t it just! And when they do use error bars those are uncertain and unreliable too! It seems to me that there is always plenty of wiggle-room in the alarmists calculations for them to produce whatever numerical result is desired, with or without error bars. I guess they didn’t get to be the master-tailors of Emperors’ new green suits that only denialist fools cannot see by stinting on wiggle-room when weaving their mathemagical cloth.
Bindidon on February 20, 2017 at 8:54 am
That’s true. But are you suggesting that I should consider it? If so, why?
Thanks, Bindidon. How can one verify that their line-by-line, narrow-banded calculations with the HITRAN database are correct and true to life? As far as I can see, that just is not possible in today’s world.
RP on February 21, 2017 at 10:59 am
1. But are you suggesting that I should consider it? If so, why?
I (diagonally) read two papers focusing on the problem and
– in both papers this vertical opacity was considered the same way
– in your presentation (RP on February 19, 2017 at 2:55 pm) it was not at all. What you wrote lets think that you build a ‘TOA minus surface’ value without considering what happens inbetween.
But… I’m just a little layman as I said, and I supposed it was missing in your thoughts.
2. Thanks, Bindidon. How can one verify that their line-by-line, narrow-banded calculations with the HITRAN database are correct and true to life?
That was not the point RP. The point was that Myhre & al. developed 20 years ago an argument path ending with a value of 5.35 for the so called Arrhenius constant: the same value as that calculated by math in this ‘globalwarming.info’ page.
3. As far as I can see, that just is not possible in today’s world.
Wow a bit strange: many people use HITRAN since decades with a lot of success. But according to your isolated opinion they are all wrong? Please explain with real life examples, I’m interested.
Bindidon February 21, 2017 at 3:20 pmRe. 1. Optical thickness/vertical opacity, you say:
My “presentation” in that comment was an explanation of the flaw that I had found in the derivation of the IPCC’s logarithmic formula for radiative forcing from CO2 which you had suggested I look at. The atmosphere’s “optical thickness” (or “vertical opacity”) was not relevant to that flaw and so I did not mention it.
I did not mention “what happens in between” the surface and the TOA for the same reason.
It may not have been your point, Bindidon, but the intractable problem of verification of the IPCC’s proposed formula for radiative forcing from CO2 has been the central theme of my responses to you throughout this comment-thread. And Myhre et al’s calculations with the HITRAN database do not resolve that problem for me because I have no means of verifying that they are accurate and true themselves either. Citing Myhre et al merely displaces the answer to my question one stage backwards; it does not provide the answer.
All that proves is that the authors’ lines of thinking and calculation converged on the same conclusion, not that they were correct and true. Life is full of coincidences.
“success” in doing what? Writing academic papers? What examples can you give of HITRAN accurately predicting radiative forcing from CO2 better than chance?
No! I said that they cannot be verified, not that they are necessarily wrong. My “opinion” is that I have no way of knowing whether they are right or wrong.
RP,
You might want to browse this website: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/hitran/
HITRAN is widely used in the remote sensing field, particularly for doing atmospheric corrections of hyperspectral imagery. Pragmatically, it is good enough that it turns unusable imagery into something that is visually acceptable and useful computationally for identifying materials on the ground. While it may not “accurately predict[ing] radiative forcing from CO2 better than chance,” it seems improbable that it doesn’t, considering how widely it is used by by civilian and military people who are doing more than writing papers. They are doing things that are related to national security and flipping a coin wouldn’t cut it for that.
Clive writes
Or it may be that as an instantaneous solution to radiative transfer, HITRAN is ok, but to the question of non-instantaneous energy transfer from the surface to the TOA which necessarily includes convection and transfer of energy by latent heat of vaporisation and more…then it only tells part of the story.
When RP calculated fa using TOA and surface values for the radiative flux as 0.4 for whole of atmosphere, he was automatically taking into account these additional energy transfer mechanisms. When the IPCC does an “all else being equal, radiative transfer only via CO2” calculation then they’re only looking at part of the problem.
But because there are massive overlaps on emission and absorption with water vapour now, and a likely case the lapse rate will change over time as well as possible convection changes, the IPCC calculation is worthless as a value to be using in later calculations.
Plus of course there’s all the uncertainty surrounding the T^4 issue Clive raised. None of that adds to the validity of the IPCCs assertions!
This is the IPCCs stake in the ground and it will be a very long time before there is any possibility that their well established 3.7 W/m2 and 1.2DegC values will change in the scientific community.
The other issue I have is the way the IPCC has engineered a belief that feedbacks are definitely positive and just a question of how much. Well I happen to think they’re probably negative in the longer term even if the spike in temperatures we’re seeing now makes them look positive. I think Lindzen was right before anyone was swayed by the IPCC hype.
TTTM,
HITRAN was never intended to solve feedback problems involving multiple gasses and a surface continuously changing in temperature. However, it is a tool that can help to better understand what is going on because the database has been validated by practitioners in remote sensing.
I find it improbable that the WV/cloud feedback is positive. If it were, we would probably look like Venus after all the perturbations over the last 4.5 billion years. The concept of a “Tipping Point” is just another scare tactic intended to get people to quit thinking about the issue and get behind the ‘solutions’ proposed by the likes of Gore.
ps. Sorry for misquoting your name, Clyde.
TTTM,
No problem on the name. I’ve been called worse things! 🙂 I’m also regularly ignored by Mosher. I guess my questions are too inconvenient.
Clyde Spencer February 22, 2017 at 8:35 am
Thanks for the Harvard link to the HITRAN page, Clyde.
You say:
No doubt, but HITRAN solves a different kind of problem, don’t you think? Identifying the relative absorption/emission spectra of different substances is not the same as accurately predicting the precise total downward radiative emissions from CO2-molecules existing under varying local conditions of concentration, temperature, pressure, humidity and so on, which is what we would need it to do to verify the IPCC’s famous formula for radiative forcing from CO2.
We cannot judge the veracity of scientific formulae by making subjective estimations of their likelihood of being true. There is a due process of verification to be gone through and it entails taking critically-decisive real-world observations as well as calculating things. HITRAN may perform some classy calculations but we still need the real-world observations to verify that they represent reality instead of just the notions in the program-writers’ heads.
Perhaps that has been done for HITRAN’s calculations of the absorption and emission spectra of different materials in the laboratory, but I think it cannot have been done for its calculations of CO2’s absorptions and emissions in the atmosphere because (fortunately for all life on the planet) the atmosphere cannot be placed in a laboratory. And the relevant observations cannot be taken with the atmosphere in situ because there is no global monitoring network in existence that that is capable of taking them. Consequently, as far as I can see the relevant observations cannot be taken at all, so the HITRAN calculations for atmospheric CO2 cannot be verified and they cannot verify the IPCC’s formula for radiative forcing from CO2 either.
Bindidon February 24, 2017 at 11:47 am
I’m sorry to hear that you find this discussion “boring”, Bindidon, but I think that is probably the result of your own lack of mental engagement with its contents rather than of anything in the contents themselves. I have read all the comments in this thread and I haven’t seen anyone put simple doubt on the same level as a scientific falsification. Certainly, I have not done that.
You say:
Bindidon, you have presented me with two proposed ways of verifying the IPCC’s formula for radiative forcing from CO2 and I have pointed out how they are both fundamentally flawed. And now your answer to that is to suggest that I should “deeply go into the material” and “start learning” as though I need to know more about the subject than I do already. Very well then, maestro, please tell me what, specifically, I need to learn that will enlighten me as to me how your proposed verifications are not fundamentally flawed after all and how the IPCC’s formula actually has been verified in truth and reality. Otherwise, I at least will think that you are just blowing smoke to hide your own ignorance and lack of an honest scientific argument.
Thanks for this personal information. I appreciate that the intellectual discipline of your work was exacting and that you appreciate the critical importance of rigorous verification before a product can be sold to the public. But that is precisely the problem that I am seeing with the IPCC’s formula for radiative forcing from CO2, i.e. that has been sold to the public without its having been rigorously verified first.
It gets a bit too boring for me to follow this discussion. For the simple reason that some commenters here seem to place a simple doubt a the same level as a scientific falsification.
The end of RP’s last answer to me is so typical:
My “opinion” is that I have no way of knowing whether they are right or wrong.
Maybe RP you simply should deeply go into the material you seem to know so few about, and start learning, unti you become able to express a really valuable contradiction, allowing you to clearly state ‘whether they are right or wrong’ instead of guessing.
I know even less than you: but never I would allow me to simply doubt where knowledge is needed instead.
Decades ago, RP, I was working in hard software engineering projects, and there there was no place for doubt.
You had to bring a repeatedly verifiable proof that your suppliers delivered something incorrect; and conversely the same held for your clients concerning the software you delivered.
A last hint: http://spectralcalc.com/info/about.php
I think you might have a look at it, even if I of course anticipate your answer.
Bindidon writes
Its not that simple. The question of whether the IPCC’s values of 3.7W/m2 and 1.2C are correct in the sense they’re useful for further calculations goes beyond whether HITRAN gets the values right in the very narrow view of radiative transfer, it describes today.
RP has already demonstrated that CO2’s naive “view” of opacity of the atmosphere is much greater than reality. So one would expect an increase of CO2 to come with an equally “lessened” effect in reality. ie a negative feedback.
How does that translate into using the HITRAN data in calculation of changes to CO2 concentrations? What does that mean about the HITRAN data’s usefulness describing change in our real atmosphere when AGW theory prefers positive feedbacks? There’s plenty of room for scepticism there.
Bindidon February 24, 2017 at 11:47 am
I’m sorry to hear that you find this discussion “boring”, Bindidon, but I think that is probably the result of your own lack of mental engagement with its contents rather than of anything in the contents themselves. I have read all the comments in this thread and I haven’t seen anyone put simple doubt on the same level as a scientific falsification. Certainly, I have not done that.
You say:
Bindidon, you have presented me with two proposed ways of verifying the IPCC’s formula for radiative forcing from CO2 and I have pointed out how they are both fundamentally flawed. And now your answer to that is to suggest that I should “deeply go into the material” and “start learning” as though I need to know more about the subject than I do already. Very well then, maestro, please tell me what, specifically, I need to learn that will enlighten me as to me how your proposed verifications are not fundamentally flawed after all and how the IPCC’s formula actually has been verified in truth and reality. Otherwise, I at least will think that you are just blowing smoke to hide your own ignorance and lack of an honest scientific argument.
Thanks for this personal information. I appreciate that the intellectual discipline of your work was exacting and that you appreciate the critical importance of rigorous verification before a product can be sold to the public. But that is precisely the problem that I am seeing with the IPCC’s formula for radiative forcing from CO2, i.e. that has been sold to the public without its having been rigorously verified first.
(PS: Sorry, this is a repeat post, as I put it in the wrong place above originally.)
TimTheToolMan on February 24, 2017 at 10:53 pm
RP has already demonstrated that CO2’s naive “view” of opacity of the atmosphere is much greater than reality.
Sorry, T³M: RP didn’t demonstrate anything. He was supposing a lot of things without any reference to a scientific paper.
And one thing still remains on the table: the fact that in his comment ‘RP on February 19, 2017 at 2:55 pm’ he manifestly did not feel any necessitiy to account for the atmosphere’s vertical opacity. His calculation there looked like a calculation for the Moon.
T³M, I would for example better understand criticisms on the formula I found in ‘globalwarming.info’, or on work dome in 1998 by Myhre et al., if those were all based not on personal meaning, but on references to real work, e.g.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/E&E_21_4_2010_08-miskolczi.pdf
But that good job I have read too, and was nevertheless far more impressed by the answer to the paper found two years ago in a specific ‘Science of Doom’ page:
https://scienceofdoom.com/2011/04/22/the-mystery-of-tau-miskolczi/
A recall: SoD is fully acknowledged by persons like Judith Curry.
Also of interest there:
https://scienceofdoom.com/2010/07/17/the-amazing-case-of-back-radiation/
https://scienceofdoom.com/2010/10/24/planck-stefan-boltzmann-kirchhoff-and-lte/
etc etc etc.
Bindidon writes
RP clearly placed an upper bound on the downward radiative flux produced by the entire atmosphere and it was way less than the naive view of CO2’s impact based on opacity alone (assuming your referenced paper was correct – Well I say “paper” with an implicit assumption of peer review but I really mean book).
There was nothing fundamentally wrong with his calculation or logic as far as I could see but perhaps you noticed something?
In that sense RP did address the issue of opacity. His calculation doesn’t care what “happens” in the atmosphere whether by opacity or otherwise, his calculation says that the net effect cant be bigger than…his calculation. Reality is that CO2’s impact on downward radiative flux can be expected to be much less than water vapour’s impact so not only is fa no bigger than 0.4 its probably very much smaller than 0.4 in reality.
There is some really important meaning behind what RP did if you care to think it through.
Bindidon, February 25, 2017 at 2:20 pm
You wrote:
That is not true. I demonstrated explicitly how your mathematical derivation of the IPCC’s formula for radiative forcing from CO2 (from http://www.globalwarmingequation.info/eqn%20derivation.pdf ) is fatally flawed in my reply to you on February 19, 2017 at 2:55 pm (here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/18/stokes-and-the-somehow-theory-of-ocean-heat/comment-page-1/#comment-2431466 ).
I did not suppose anything that had not already been supposed by the author of the derivation up to the point where the flaw appears. Also, I did not need to reference any other scientific papers in order to explain that flaw and it would have been superfluous and distracting for me to have done so.
I have already explained to you (on February 22, 2017 at 4:31 am, here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/18/stokes-and-the-somehow-theory-of-ocean-heat/comment-page-1/#comment-2433992 ) that in my view the atmosphere’s vertical opacity is irrelevant to the flaw in the derivation of the IPCC’s formula that I was discussing. You have yet to give any reasons for implying that it is relevant.
What I calculated there was the magnitude of the fraction of the Earth’s outgoing surface energy-flux that is recycled by its atmosphere. The Moon does not even have an atmosphere, let alone one that recycles its outgoing surface energy-flux. Therefore, I think my calculation could not have been more unlike the Moon!
TimTheToolMan on February 26, 2017 at 3:47 pm / RP on February 26, 2017 at 4:29 pm
I don’t wonder at all about these two comments. When the one commenter writes
There’s plenty of room for scepticism there.
instead of
There’s plenty of room for scientific contradiction there.
and the other one writes
Also, I did not need to reference any other scientific papers in order to explain that flaw and it would have been superfluous and distracting for me to have done so.
then I’m afraid that the discussion is definitely moving into a blind-alley. Sound skepticism, in my opinion, requests for an other approach.
It will be a bit hard for a person having no deeper phys/math education to grasp what is behind such a lot of equations, but I now really want to understand what is correct here.
So I will start with:
Chamberlain, J.W., 1978. Elementary, Analytic Models of Climate: I. The Mean Global Heat Balance
and
Chamberlain, J.W., Hunten, D.M., 1987. Theory of Planetary Atmospheres: An Introduction to their Physics and Chemistry.
and will try to find other similar sources.
P.S. I aplogise for the little Moon sarcasm, due to the lack of considering things like optical thickness, atmospheric window closure etc. That our good old Moon hasn’t any atmosphere I think I remember.
solarpower__540x405.jpg
Solar power yes, the other, no.
Oops, @5:32pm wouldn’t paste. One of those beautiful photos where a day’s winter sun could not melt frost in shade by backradiation. No such trouble in the open. Familiar to most countryfolk out of the Tropics.
“…Here, Nick confirms that the sun is the heat source, but skates over the mechanism saying it’s “just trivial arithmetic“. We’ll do some of the arithmetic in a while, and see if it’s trivial…”
Of course it’s trivial. He’s the king of all things trivial. When it comes to a skeptical posts, his critiques tend to focus on things like wording.