One thing which struck me about the recent climate science hearing is how little attention was paid to Dr. John Christy’s demonstration of a flawed climate model prediction – the missing Tropospheric hotspot.
A flawed prediction does not automatically mean the models are totally wrong – but it is a strong indicator that something isn’t right.
Consider the primary observation. The world has warmed since the mid 1850s, and for the sake of argument lets assume that the world has warmed since the mid 1930s.
Given that warming, you could propose a number of different theories for the cause of that warming, for example;
1. Chaotic shifts in ocean currents or solar influences have influenced global temperature.
2. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have caused global temperature to rise
3. Gnomes are lighting fires under the polar icecaps.
All three of the theories proposed above can potentially explain the primary observation – the world is warming, and heating is more pronounced in polar regions.
How do you eliminate the incorrect theories?
The way you eliminate incorrect theories is to test other non-trivial secondary predictions. It is easy to create a theory which explains global warming – even my Gnome theory does that. What is more difficult is to create a theory which coherently explains other observable phenomena, or better still predicts observations which haven’t been attempted yet.
For example, there are simple tests for the presence of Gnomes lighting fires under the polar icecaps. You could dig holes and try to find the Gnomes. If you don’t find any Gnomes, you cannot conclusively prove they don’t exist – the Gnomes might be very good at evading attempts at discovery. But failure to find Gnomes, or failure to find evidence of extensive efforts to light fires under the polar icecaps, should allow you to conclude that the Gnome theory is very unlikely to be correct.
How do you test the Anthropogenic CO2 theory? Just as the Gnomes lighting fires theory predicts the existence of Gnomes and extensive fire pits under the polar ice caps, so the Anthropogenic CO2 theory predicts various observations.
We could simply wait 50 years and see if global temperatures go crazy, but it would be nice to know whether the theory is correct before we all cook. So we need a non trivial secondary observation which we can test here and now.
One of the key predicted observations of anthropogenic CO2 climate theory is the existence of an equatorial tropospheric hotspot.
The hotspot prediction is easy to understand. The atmosphere is thicker, reaches higher into space over the equator than the poles, due to centrifugal force of the Earth’s spin. Centrifugal force is greater at the equator than the poles, so air, including CO2, tends to pile up higher into space over the equator.
The equator also receives more sunlight.
If the buildup of greenhouse gasses is trapping significantly more heat, the effect on the atmosphere should be most pronounced where the sunlight is strongest and the greenhouse blanket is thickest.
But nobody has yet managed to unequivocally detect that predicted hotspot.
Various theories have been advanced to explain the missing hotspot.
For example one theory is the balloon measurements are not being analysed correctly, so the hotspot is there, but it is evading detection unless you properly homogenise the data.
In my opinion this theory is undermined by satellite measurements which confirm the un-homogenised balloon measurements. This confirmation of un-homogenised balloon measurements casts doubt on the data homogenisation process which led to the alleged detection of the hotspot.
Another theory I have seen mentioned is that the hotspot is there, but the effect is not pronounced enough to be detectable as yet. More plausible in my opinion than the instrument anomaly theory, but this proposition verges intriguingly close to an admission that anthropogenic global warming is not a big deal.
Whatever the reason, the absence of a pronounced hotspot is or should be as much of an embarrassment to the Anthropogenic CO2 theory, as the absence of fire pits and captured Gnomes is an embarrassment to the Gnome theory.
Does the absence of a tropospheric equatorial hotspot mean anthropogenic climate models are unequivocally wrong?
The answer is no.
There are plenty of examples of scientific theories which were slightly wrong, which didn’t fully explain observations, which were later found to be mostly right.
Newtonian gravity mostly explains the orbit of the planets, but some observations don’t match the theory. For example, Newtonian predictions of the orbit of Mercury do not match observations. Mercury is very close to the sun, much closer than the Earth. That close to a massive body like the Sun, Einstein’s General Relativity becomes important. Relativistic effects cause Mercury’s orbit to diverge from Newtonian predictions of what its orbit should be.
This deviation from theoretical predictions does not mean Newtonian theory is broken, in this case it simply means the Newtonian theory is incomplete. Unless you need extreme precision, for example when creating a global positioning satellite system, the tiny perturbations introduced by Einstein’s theory are not significant enough to worry about.
But a flawed prediction is not something which should be ignored. Sometimes when you don’t find any gnomes at the bottom of the garden, you should stop digging holes.
As for the theory that chaotic shifts in ocean currents or solar influences control the climate, the evidence for this seems to be a mixed bag.
Suggestions that the eleven year solar cycle affects climate are convincingly disputed by Willis. If the powerful eleven year solar cycle doesn’t do anything to the climate, why would longer solar cycles have any effect?
On the other hand, there appears to be growing evidence solar modulation of cosmic rays may have a significant effect on atmospheric chemistry.
In my opinion, the short answer is we simply don’t know what drives the climate. More research is required, without premature efforts to formulate policy around theories which clearly do not explain all the key observations.
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“All three of the theories proposed above can potentially explain the primary observation – the world is warming, and heating is more pronounced in polar regions.”
Not quite. Antarctica has not warmed at all. Not a whit. Another hole in the theory.
Some facts
Our current Quaternary ice age began 2,588,000 years ago and continues today, making it the world’s most recent period of glaciations.
Our Quaternary ice age encompasses a series of cold periods (glacials) and warmer periods (interglacials).
Within glacials there are warm periods and during interglacials cold periods. Our current global warm period may be one of these warm periods in our interglacial period.
Observations of Pleistocene shoreline features on the tectonically stable islands of Bermuda and the Bahamas have suggested that sea level during (MIS11) about 400,000 years ago was between 32 and 65 feet higher than it is today.
This suggests that both the Greenland Ice Sheet and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed during the protracted warm period while changes in the volume of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet were relatively minor.
The last interglacial period, Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e, was characterized by global mean surface temperatures that were at least 2 °C warmer than present. Mean sea level stood 13-20 feet higher than modern sea level, with an important contribution from a reduction of the Greenland ice sheet. Although some fossil reef data indicate sea-level fluctuations of up to 33 feet around the mean, so far it has not been possible to constrain the duration and rates of change of these shorter-term variations.
What does this mean? it shows that you are going to have sea level rise no mater what you do if you do not start a new glaciation.
Bond events are North Atlantic ice rafting events that are tentatively linked to climate fluctuations in the Holocene. Eight such events have been identified. Bond events the primary period of variability is now put at ~1,000 years.
List of last four Bond Events and the names of the intervening warm periods. i would not that the warm periods coincide with the growth of civilization and the Bond events coincide with death and the retreat of civilization.
No. Time (BP) Time Notes
Modern Warm
0 ≈ −0.5 ka ≈ 1500 AD Little Ice Age
Medieval Warm
1 ≈ −1.4 ka ≈ 600 AD Migration Period/ Dark Ages
Roman warm
2 ≈ −2.8 ka ≈ 800 BC Late Bronze Age collapse may have been triggered by drought in the
Eastern Mediterranean.
Minoan Warm Period
3 ≈ −4.2 ka ≈ 2200 BC Collapse of the Akkadian Empire and the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom.
There may be a tiny tropical hotspot that indicates a tiny role for CO2, but I think the problem is the overestimate of the role of radiation in the atmosphere. Texas Instruments publish a note on heat sink design that suggests that only if painted black can radiation account for 25% of cooling without forced airflow. It also suggests that forced airflow can increase cooling by a factor of 10. All of this is common sense.
Of course radiation is the overwhelmingly major, if not the only, way energy leaves the Earth but as I understand it very little radiation from CO2 is seen from space. This suggests to me that, being vastly outnumbered by other molecules that surround it, much of CO2’s absorbed energy is passed to its near neighbours.
A final point is that the so-called “enhanced greenhouse effect” is fundamentally a feedback loop only between temperature and water vapour. Above a critical global temperature, in which CO2 plays a vital role, whatever causes an increase in temperature will permit more water vapour to be held by the atmosphere, which in turn absorb more long wave radiation and raises the temperature further.
In the 60’s, in the absence of convection, clouds and the water cycle, it was shown that the water vapour positive feedback loop would result in a steady state surface temperature, of up to 80 deg C. That is nearer 15 deg C on average, suggests to me that CO2 is not the danger that some believe. As has been discussed here and elsewhere there is growing evidence that low CO2 permits ice ages and presents the real threat to human life through the dramatic reduction of photosynthesis.
My opinion is: -The theory of the greenhouse is correct. The small beauty mistake for the AGW theorists is, however, that the greenhouse windows has upwards, as well as downwards. In other words, the earth has powerful thermostats that hold the greenhouse Terra (which would be without the supposed increase through human activities) within a tolerable temperature range. There are at least four of these potent thermostats which are able to balance the climate of today much better than it did in the earth’s past (and even then, at any time since green plants have the regime on the earth, the earth’s climate never exited the living area upwards, but depending on time and area downwards)
The first and most powerful thermostat is the quantity of the liquid water present, which is due to the dumping of heat and saline water (the saline water comes from the evaporation areas of the earth and is heavier although it should be lighter because of the elevated temperature). This dumping is effective and reverses heat for centuries in the deep sea, already for physical reasons (pressure, cold water and more) The lift areas are few compared to the area and dept of the oceans. In addition, water also regulates the energy balance of the atmosphere. Contrary to the widespread view that water is the most powerful greenhouse Gas, it possesses powerful negative forcing. Just think of tropical convection, in which the water transfers excess heat from the troposphere into the stratosphere, where a completely different radiation pattern prevails, but also the transition from the liquid to the solid form, in which heat is released, however, but after that a huge quantity of energy, which is passed from the equator to the poles, is emitted into the universe during the months of snow cover and centuries of ice cover. Here, the axis of the earth and in consequence thereof the polar night and radiation of snow and ice cover work together. If this were not the case, the earth would have long been a damp steaming hothouse. Even if there were only amphibians and ants living here. This does not change if the ice cover of the Arctic is to be reduced to only six months. Even then a huge amount of energy is radiated to the North Pole and the surrounding areas, quite certainly even more than before.
The second powerful thermostat results inevitably from the last sentences. The ice surface of the South Pole is so high, which will, away from all the fears of the melting-off behavior of the Antarctic Peninsula, guarantied a live for ten thousand years of this ice block. It is often swarmed that the Antarctic is decoupled from the rest of the weather by the southern current, the giant southern ocean, with the resultant surrounding low-pressure areas. This is, however, the most wrong interpretation of all possibilities, because cyclones are responsible for the exchange of air masses. Even more effective than meridional weather conditions, where the exchange often takes place in height only. Cyclones thus provide for the northward transport of cold air near the ground and at high altitude. In addition, there are studies from which the theory of the greenhouse gas CO2, which operates everywhere else, is swept to the contrary because of the high altitude of the Antarctic atmosphere and the ozone hole. CO2, as well as in the stratosphere, ensures better radiation in the high of Antarctica.
The third powerful thermostat is the continuous current of warm air below the tropopause to the poles, which in turn leads to the conclusions of the first thermostat.
The fourth powerful thermostat is the same effect, through which also CO2 and all other gases of the atmosphere are mixed. This effect consists in the eternal cycle of the series of high and low pressure areas and the resulting formation of winds and storms all over the world, which in many places, above all in the middle latitudes, are also reinforced by the Coriolis force. This sequence of the high and low pressure regions leads to a mixing of colder and warmer air layers in the vertical direction, the fronts of the low pressure areas also in horizontal. Therefore, it is completely absurd to make comparisons between Venus as a greenhouse planet and the earth. Somewhere in Venus history, there was so much atmosphere that the pressure on the surface became so great that this compensation could no longer take place. Nothing like this is to be expected in the Earth’s atmosphere. All chemical and physical conditions are missing.
The “tropical hotspot” is a negative feedback in global warming caused by convection and water vapor feedback, which I’m sure all “deniers” like me believe would happen.
See
http://www.elic.ucl.ac.be/textbook/chapter4_node7.html
for clarification. Since radiation LEAVING the atmosphere must ultimately equal radiation ENTERING the atmosphere if everything is in balance, rather than straight lines, that negative lapse rate feedback must ultimately curve in to meet the original lapse rate output.
The measurements go back to 1979.
the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 337.1 ppm in 1979 when measurements began regarding lapse rates.
With a current balance of 400 ppm,
ln (400/337.1)= 0.17108
If Dr Antonio Ollila is correct,
-https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/17/on-the-reproducibility-of-the-ipccs-climate-sensitivity/
the change in RF should be
RF = 3.12 * ln(CO2/CO2 original) or 3.12* 0.17108 = 0.534 watts
From Trenberth’s figures, we currently get about 396 watts per square meter surface radiation.
(396.534/396)^0.25 = 1.000337, or an increase in average temps from about 288 K to about
288.097K over a period of 38 years. The “hot spot” is probably real, but lost in “measurement error” since the effect is so small.
I thought the “hot spot” was supposed to be caused by warming and not necessarily man-made CO2-caused warming?
I did consult the experts. /sarc
https://www.skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot.htm
graphicconception:
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are the real experts on the tropispheric ‘hotspot’.
i refer you to my above post at here for summation, explanation, quotation from, and link to what the IPCC says.
Richard
If I understand this issue correctly, the missing hot spot is important because it speaks to the heat transport across the atmosphere directly, quite independent from the variations of surface temperature.
Too much attention has been paid, by both sides, to the question whether or not there is a pause, or which temperature record is best etc. It is clear that temperatures vary spontaneously, and staring at them won’t let us tell apart natural and man-mad variation.
The real test of the CO2 hypothesis is in observing the heat transport properties of the atmosphere. These changes should be observable regardless of natural temperature variation, pauses, El-Ninos etc. This is where the hot spot comes in. Its being AWOL is the most direct and solid proof that the CAGW hypothesis is wrong.
It is in Man’s nature to dislike “not knowing” and to deny the existence of unknowables. this is particularly manifest in those who are dimwitted or whose egos cannot accept any notion of lack of expertise. The crime takes place when some of these individuals combine their lack of humility with an opportunity to take the spotlight on themselves. Al Gore ring a bell? Michael Mann? It’s a long list. Mediocrity masquerading as Saviour!
John Worrall, I, for one, would be much more receptive to your article if, in the following, as extracted from your article, you would use the word “hypotheses” instead of “theories”. After all, I believe, as do many others, that scientifically speaking, practically all of our notions regarding the “cause of that warming” are just that: notions, which remain unproven at this time. [Yes, below I added the capitalization.]
Therefore, certainly, as such, these notions are neither “laws”; nor are they “theories”; rather, they are hypotheses … which may or may not be true.
“Given that warming, you could propose a number of different THEORIES for the cause of that warming, for example;
1. Chaotic shifts in ocean currents or solar influences have influenced global temperature.
2. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have caused global temperature to rise
3. Gnomes are lighting fires under the polar icecaps.
All three of the THEORIES proposed above can potentially explain the primary observation – the world is warming, and heating is more pronounced in polar regions.”
Eric,
For someone who had said just previously that…
… the jump from ‘unequivocal detection’ to conclusively ‘missing’ seems a little rash.
You say “More research is required”. I agree, for worthwhile pursuits like “medical research”. As for climate, we will adapt, as we always have.
Troposphere temperature is controlled by the Sun. Solar EUV makes Ozone in the Ozone layer. The Sun is quiet now, so less Ozone [half-life of about a year] lower temperature. We will watch the Planet cool as this Solar minimum progress.
Well a) it’s more than likely that any hot air is quickly redistributed by wind and b) Dr Nir Shaviv is a hell of a lot more convincing about solar influences than Willis as you can read for yourself at his own blog here; http://www.sciencebits.com/reply-eschenbach
>The hotspot prediction is easy to understand… CO2, tends to pile up higher into space over the equator.
Well, it is not that easy to understand. It is not that CO2 tends to pile up, but that water vapor tends to pile up. It is the water vapor according to CAGW theory that will cause the hotspot. CO2 has only a minor contribution.
According to CAGW theory, any warming from whatever cause will cause more water vapor in the air. This increase in (absolute) water vapor will provide a positive feedback. Further, this increase in water vapor will not result in more clouds or alternatively, increases in clouds will be of the type that helps to trap escaping heat from earth.
Note: even if gnomes (ocean currents, solar, whatever) are causing warming, the water vapor theory which is part of CAGW theory would predict a Tropical Upper Tropospheric hotspot.
The missing hotspot doesn’t falsify AGW, but it falsifies CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming). It takes the “C” out.
I thought they found it?
http://www.iflscience.com/environment/climate-meme-debunked-tropospheric-hot-spot-found/
The question is not “if they found it.” This is a quantitative issue: is the hot spot as strong as predicted by the models? Christy’s point is that it is not.
Griff,
Those are simply artifacts of homogenizing “data”, without any physical reality. Without statistical and graphical “tricks”, there could be no consensus “climate (anti-)science”.
My understanding is that the tropical tropospheric hot spot is predicted because global warming is expected to increase absolute humidity, which decreases the lapse rate, which makes the mid-troposphere warmer relative to the ground than it otherwise would be (and makes the ground a bit warmer, too). Hence the predicted “hot spot” in the troposphere. I thought pretty much everyone (except Dan Miller) agreed on that.
Here’s a Left-wing source (SkS):
https://www.skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot.htm
Here’s a Center-Right source (WUWT):
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/22/study-tropical-hotspot-fingerprint-of-global-warming-doesnt-exist-in-the-real-world-data/
Google finds much more info:
http://tinyurl.com/hcr58wa
We live in such a partisan world in politics and politicized global science agendas that fact checking even key points and claims behind the policy inertia is ignored. Hello?
On the last round the world flight of Concorde it traversed the Pacific. Although the distances between airports are larger with nothing in between but open ocean Concorde was able to cover these distances because the atmosphere at altitude over the equator is colder than northern latitudes and cold air is better for engine and wing efficiency. There was no mention at all of warm air or hot spots: The key conversation is around 12:00
“For example, Newtonian predictions of the orbit of Mercury do not match observations. ”
It’s even worse than that., I didn’t realize until recently (became curious after Liu’s book) that all the orbits are in reality essentially unsolvable n-body problems. We can only calculate the orbits by making certain assumptions (planar relationships, ignore certain masses) that are not absolutely true but don’t change the answers enough to matter for anything we’re doing.
For an explanation of what probably actually causes global warming, please see my new book, “In Praise of Carbon,” https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N7ZXTID, or see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/10/interesting-climate-sensitivity-analysis-do-variations-in-co2-actually-cause-global-significant-warming/.
BTW, if that postulated hotspot actually existed, wouldn’t it need to be warmer than Earth’s surface in order to warm that surface with back radiation? If it weren’t warmer, then the most it could do would be to retard the rate of cooling of Earth’s surface, not so? According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, an object (i.e., Earth’s surface) can’t be warmed by another object (i.e., the troposphere) that’s cooler than itself.
To warm the surface, all it needs to do is be warmer than whatever is behind the hot spot. Any net increase in incoming radiation will cause a warming.
Well, no, thanks, but it doesn’t, because it’s not really credible. First, there’s no real evidence that radiation carries energy (i.e., “photons”). If it did, there would be a problem, as energy is mass-equivalent, and radiation, which we know to be massless, travels at the speed of light, so if energy traveled with radiation, it would become infinite, which is of course not the case. Furthermore, energy can only be detected by material sensors, which have mass, therefore there’s no mass-independent way of detecting energy in radiation. It’s far more likely that electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is simply an energyless frequency field, and that energy is generated when that field strikes matter. This doesn’t violate the first law of thermodynamics, BTW, because that law applies only to thermally isolated systems, which Earth and Sun are clearly not. This has the benefit of defining energy as an inseparable property of matter, reflective of its acceleration, in rotations, vibrations, transitions, and ionizations, rather than having a whole different kind of energy associated with radiation. This is consistent with the fact that all energy terms contain a mass term, or are expressible in dimensions that contain a mass term without multiplication by a dimensional conversion factor. This also renders unnecessary the distinction between photons and heat that you refer to. Heat is simply the acceleration of charged particles of matter responding resonantly to an incident EMR frequency field. Now, as to atmospheric “heat” raising Earth’s surface temperature, no; as there are no “photons” back-radiated by CO2 in the atmosphere, just EMR of certain infrared frequencies, that EMR must have frequencies equal to or greater than those of the matter of Earth’s surface in order to induce resonant accelerations in such matter. As back-radiation, the original radiation must have come from Earth itself, so the back-radiation can’t have a higher frequency than that which is absorbed by the CO2 above it. Finally, it’s obvious that an object, such as Earth, or an apple, can’t heat itself with its own radiation, because if it could, then material objects would spontaneously heat up until they would vaporize in a puff of smoke! Thankfully, this doesn’t happen. Microwave ovens, BTW, work on the principle of synchrotron radiation, which is a whole different thing.
“The blanket can warm you, but only to the level of your own body heat of 98.6 oF”
That would only be true if you were dead. Since you’re not, you’re constantly producing about 100W of energy. If you are perfectly insulated your temperature will continue to rise until you die, here in the real world you will reach a new equilibrium somewhere warmer than you currently are.
No evidence that photon’s carry energy????
Sheesh
“The blanket can warm you, but only to the level of your own body heat of 98.6 oF”
The only reason why this is true is because the body is self regulating, when it takes less energy to maintain 98.6, the body starts using less energy.
Try the same thing with a light bulb that produces pretty much the same amount of energy regardless of the temperature of it’s environment. In that situation you will find out that the more insulation you put around the light bulb, the hotter the light bulb gets.
PS: Retarding the rate at which energy leaves, is the same thing as warming.
Wo-wo! No way! Consider you under a non-electric blanket. The blanket can warm you, but only to the level of your own body heat of 98.6 oF. If you want to be warmer than that, you have to use an electric blanket. Ergo, back-radiation of heat can’t warm a surface to a temperature higher than that of the surface. To do that, an additional source of heat input is required.
You really need to study up on biology and physics.
The body has a regulation mechanism built in. The reason why the blanket doesn’t warm you above body temperature is that the body starts using less energy and hence producing less heat when the environment around it warms.
David Bennett Laing:
You say:
No. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says
I suspect your problem is that you are confusing thermal radiation with heat. Radiation consists of photons that are not heat but may be converted to heat energy if absorbed by a substance.
Some of the thermal radiation from the upper troposphere reaches the Earth’s surface (directly or indirectly) and is absorbed by the surface where it is converted to heat so it raises the surface’s temperature.
Please think of a microwave oven where its radiative emitters provide radiation which is absorbed by the food to be cooked so the food warms to much higher temperatures than the emitters: similarly, radiation re-emitted from the atmosphere heats the Earth’s surface.
I hope this explanation helps.
Richard
Crikey! That needs moderation!? I cannot imagine why.
Richard, I suspect it is your name that triggers moderation, not the text of your comment. Consider it a mark of distinction 😉
Good to see you back on here.
R,
Since you, sir, are of the English persuasion and of a generation close to the unpleasantness of WWII, the Big One, might I mention that the microwave source for ovens is a cavity magnetron, the device, in the guise of “centimetric radar” which helped to win the Battle of the Atlantic, fought to keep Britain from starving and to make a build up of Allied forces on your misty isles sufficient to liberate the enslaved continent of Europe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron
Ironically, a German, active in WWII radar development, had been granted the patent on the cavity magnetron in 1938.
Well, no, thanks, but it doesn’t, because it’s not really credible. First, there’s no real evidence that radiation carries energy (i.e., “photons”). If it did, there would be a problem, as energy is mass-equivalent, and radiation, which we know to be massless, travels at the speed of light, so if energy traveled with radiation, it would become infinite, which is of course not the case. Furthermore, energy can only be detected by material sensors, which have mass, therefore there’s no mass-independent way of detecting energy in radiation. It’s far more likely that electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is simply an energyless frequency field, and that energy is generated when that field strikes matter. This doesn’t violate the first law of thermodynamics, BTW, because that law applies only to thermally isolated systems, which Earth and Sun are clearly not. This has the benefit of defining energy as an inseparable property of matter, reflective of its acceleration, in rotations, vibrations, transitions, and ionizations, rather than having a whole different kind of energy associated with radiation. This is consistent with the fact that all energy terms contain a mass term, or are expressible in dimensions that contain a mass term without multiplication by a dimensional conversion factor. This also renders unnecessary the distinction between photons and heat that you refer to. Heat is simply the acceleration of charged particles of matter responding resonantly to an incident EMR frequency field. Now, as to atmospheric “heat” raising Earth’s surface temperature, no; as there are no “photons” back-radiated by CO2 in the atmosphere, just EMR of certain infrared frequencies, that EMR must have frequencies equal to or greater than those of the matter of Earth’s surface in order to induce resonant accelerations in such matter. As back-radiation, the original radiation must have come from Earth itself, so the back-radiation can’t have a higher frequency than that which is absorbed by the CO2 above it. Finally, it’s obvious that an object, such as Earth, or an apple, can’t heat itself with its own radiation, because if it could, then material objects would spontaneously heat up until they would vaporize in a puff of smoke! Thankfully, this doesn’t happen. Microwave ovens, BTW, work on the principle of synchrotron radiation, which is a whole different thing.
For some reason, my lengthy reply to your comment posted three comments above. Sorry for that!
David Bennett Laing::
I suggest that you try to publish your complete revision of radiative physics in the formal literature so it has a chance of gaining traction.
I admit that your ideas fail to convince me because the existing theories of radiation have practical applications that are used. However, if you think your ideas have merit then it can be argued that you have a duty to advance them.
I add that I have some experience in these matters. I believe I am the only individual who has produced his own system (hardware and software) for quantitative energy dispersive analysis of X-rays (QEDX) and I know I am the only person in Europe to have done this. (I consider my algorith is still the best that has been developed for the ZAF correction required by the Au layer on the detector crystal.) The wavelenghts differ but the fundamental physics are the same for QEDX and the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
Richard
richardscourtney:Thanks. I’m leery of the “formal [i.e., peer-reviewed] literature,” because of its conservative nature and its tendency to discourage innovation in science. This is especially true in this case, since I’m making arguments that are contrary to Albert Einstein and to QED, which are well-established, and any reviewers qualified to pass judgment on my arguments are certainly well-funded and career-dependent upon the correctness of accepted theories. Therefore, I’ve chosen instead to enlighten posterity (ha-ha) with my ideas in a book “The Real World, a Synthesis” (https://www.amazon.com/Real-World-Synthesis-Featuring-Critical-ebook/dp/B01ERXVQ8K or https://www.amazon.com/World-Synthesis-David-Bennett-Laing/dp/1520440197/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=). That said, I do try to keep an open mind, and if you have “practical applications” that are inconsistent with my conclusions, I’d be grateful if you could send them along. My address is davidlaing@aol.com. Tx!
Gloateus:
Now this dub-thread is effectively over I am responding to your off-topic comment because the matter is both amusing and interesting.
Propaganda concerning adoption of centimetric radar by the RAF in WW2 induced the urban myth that eating carrots improves ability to see in the dark. This explanation of the myth’s origin includes
Richard
Eric
You don’t need to go further than radiative physics to explain the hotspot prediction.
The enhanced greenhouse effect postulates an increase in IR photons arriving at the surface. This is sometimes described as “blocking” or absorption and re-radiation of OLR due to accumulation of CO2 or other greenhouse gases as the increase comes from within the atmosphere. The detailed arguments of feedbacks and others don’t really add anything significant to this basic point.
Regardless of the detail, more IR photons coming from a mass is an indicator that the mass has increased in temperature. This is a principle of the operation of some temperature measuring instruments,
We can conclude that the enhanced greenhouse prediction of more IR arriving at the surface must be due to increased temperature aloft. This is a testable prediction, but it can be refined.
The inverse-square law can be simplified by recognising that mass within the atmosphere radiates upwards and downwards. The surface layer can be characterised by upward-only radiative flux. For a given increase in temperature at the surface layer due to radiative flux from within the atmosphere, there must be a larger increase in temperature aloft compared to the surface.
This refines the prediction. There is some additional (minor) detail about geometry and why the maximum effect is above the equator. But the conclusion is reached: the predicted hotspot pattern (or even just the main features of the pattern) gives us a test for the enhanced greenhouse effect.
Today, there is no confirmation of this pattern. In the days of pre-post-normal science, we may have called this “falsification by data”.
The signal-to-noise argument is an acknowledgement that there is no evidence to support the enhanced greenhouse effect.
‘Most of the warming has occurred in Earth’s coldest air masses, at night, during winter.’
David, this is largely an artifact of using minimum temperature as a proxy for night time temperatures. What has happened is reduced lowlevel clouds, mostly from reduced aerosols has resulted in more early morning sunlight reaching the surface causing earlier and higher minimum temperatures, especially at higher latitudes in winter. when there is a longer period od low incidence sunlight.
And note the prediction that higher minimum temperatures will be correlated with earlier minimum temperatures.
Various theories have been advanced to explain the missing hotspot.
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the hotspot does not exist and cannot exist because it would require a change to the lapse rate, which is a result of gravity and circulation, not of GHG.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
“One of the key predicted observations of anthropogenic CO2 climate theory is the existence of an equatorial tropospheric hotspot.
“But nobody has yet managed to unequivocally detect that predicted hotspot.”
IMO, one of the most important pieces of the “global warming” aka “climate change” aka “climate disruption” debate … the missing ‘Hot-Spot’.
Dr David Evans wrote an excellent piece on the missing “hot spot” back in 2008:
“No Smoking Hot Spot”
(The Australian)
https://climatism.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/the-missing-hot-spot/
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“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” – Albert Einstein