From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The missing piece of the climate puzzle
In classrooms and everyday conversation, explanations of global warming hinge on the greenhouse gas effect. In short, climate depends on the balance between two different kinds of radiation: The Earth absorbs incoming visible light from the sun, called “shortwave radiation,” and emits infrared light, or “longwave radiation,” into space.
Upsetting that energy balance are rising levels of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), that increasingly absorb some of the outgoing longwave radiation and trap it in the atmosphere. Energy accumulates in the climate system, and warming occurs. But in a paper out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, MIT researchers show that this canonical view of global warming is only half the story.
In computer modeling of Earth’s climate under elevating CO2 concentrations, the greenhouse gas effect does indeed lead to global warming. Yet something puzzling happens: While one would expect the longwave radiation that escapes into space to decline with increasing CO2, the amount actually begins to rise. At the same time, the atmosphere absorbs more and more incoming solar radiation; it’s this enhanced shortwave absorption that ultimately sustains global warming.
“The finding was a curiosity, conflicting with the basic understanding of global warming,” says lead author Aaron Donohoe, a former MIT postdoc who is now a research associate at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “It made us think that there must be something really weird going in the models in the years after CO2 was added. We wanted to resolve the paradox that climate models show warming via enhanced shortwave radiation, not decreased longwave radiation.”
Donohoe, along with MIT postdoc Kyle Armour and others at Washington, spent many a late night throwing out guesses as to why climate models generate this illogical finding before realizing that it makes perfect sense — but for reasons no one had clarified and laid down in the literature.
They found the answer by drawing on both computer simulations and a simple energy-balance model. As longwave radiation gets trapped by CO2, the Earth starts to warm, impacting various parts of the climate system. Sea ice and snow cover melt, turning brilliant white reflectors of sunlight into darker spots. The atmosphere grows moister because warmer air can hold more water vapor, which absorbs more shortwave radiation. Both of these feedbacks lessen the amount of shortwave radiation that bounces back into space, and the planet warms rapidly at the surface.
Meanwhile, like any physical body experiencing warming, Earth sheds longwave radiation more effectively, canceling out the longwave-trapping effects of CO2. However, a darker Earth now absorbs more sunlight, tipping the scales to net warming from shortwave radiation.
“So there are two types of radiation important to climate, and one of them gets affected by CO2, but it’s the other one that’s directly driving global warming — that’s the surprising thing,”
…says Armour, who is a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.
Out in the real world, aerosols in air pollution act to reflect a lot of sunlight, and so Earth has not experienced as much warming from shortwave solar radiation as it otherwise might have. But the authors calculate that enough warming will have occurred by midcentury to switch the main driver of global warming to increased solar radiation absorption.
The paper is not challenging the physics of climate models; its value lies in helping the community interpret their output. “While this study does not change our understanding of the fundamentals of global warming, it is always useful to have simpler models that help us understand why our more comprehensive climate models sometimes behave in superficially counterintuitive ways,” says Isaac Held, a senior scientist at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory who was not involved in this research.
One way the study can be useful is in guiding what researchers look for in satellite observations of Earth’s radiation budget, as they track anthropogenic climate change in the decades to come. “I think the default assumption would be to see the outgoing longwave radiation decrease as greenhouse gases rise, but that’s probably not going to happen,” Donohoe says. “We would actually see the absorption of shortwave radiation increase. Will we actually ever see the longwave trapping effects of CO2 in future observations? I think the answer is probably no.”
The study sorts out another tricky climate-modeling issue — namely, the substantial disagreement between different models in when shortwave radiation takes over the heavy lifting in global warming. The authors demonstrate that the source of the differences lies in the way in which a model represents changes in cloud cover with global warming, another big factor in how well Earth can reflect shortwave solar energy.
###
The paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/47/16700 (open access)
Shortwave and longwave radiative contributions to global warming under increasing CO2
Significance
The greenhouse effect is well-established. Increased concentrations of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, reduce the amount of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) to space; thus, energy accumulates in the climate system, and the planet warms. However, climate models forced with CO2 reveal that global energy accumulation is, instead, primarily caused by an increase in absorbed solar radiation (ASR). This study resolves this apparent paradox. The solution is in the climate feedbacks that increase ASR with warming—the moistening of the atmosphere and the reduction of snow and sea ice cover. Observations and model simulations suggest that even though global warming is set into motion by greenhouse gases that reduce OLR, it is ultimately sustained by the climate feedbacks that enhance ASR.
Abstract
In response to increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2, high-end general circulation models (GCMs) simulate an accumulation of energy at the top of the atmosphere not through a reduction in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR)—as one might expect from greenhouse gas forcing—but through an enhancement of net absorbed solar radiation (ASR). A simple linear radiative feedback framework is used to explain this counterintuitive behavior. It is found that the timescale over which OLR returns to its initial value after a CO2perturbation depends sensitively on the magnitude of shortwave (SW) feedbacks. If SW feedbacks are sufficiently positive, OLR recovers within merely several decades, and any subsequent global energy accumulation is because of enhanced ASR only. In the GCM mean, this OLR recovery timescale is only 20 y because of robust SW water vapor and surface albedo feedbacks. However, a large spread in the net SW feedback across models (because of clouds) produces a range of OLR responses; in those few models with a weak SW feedback, OLR takes centuries to recover, and energy accumulation is dominated by reduced OLR. Observational constraints of radiative feedbacks—from satellite radiation and surface temperature data—suggest an OLR recovery timescale of decades or less, consistent with the majority of GCMs. Altogether, these results suggest that, although greenhouse gas forcing predominantly acts to reduce OLR, the resulting global warming is likely caused by enhanced ASR.
Note: This study was published in November 2014, but was not covered by WUWT then. Thanks to Dennis Wingo for bringing it to our attention.
Global warming climatology is based in part upon application of the reification fallacy. In particular, the abstract Earth on which there is “radiative forcing” is treated as if it were the concrete Earth on which concrete people live.
nothing new here
at all.
Poor crackpot..
nothing new
from you
evah !!! just
mindless yapping.
as I said, anger55….
You are
empty as
always,
crackpot.
Areosols = unknown question = pure guessery, even cooling claimed from erputions.
aerosols not so unknown – “Climate response to regional radiative forcing during the twentieth century” Shindell & Faluvegi, Nat Geo (2009)
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n4/abs/ngeo473.html
which translate:
“aerosols are poorly known, let’s use them as yet another parameter to have the elephant wiggle his trunk as we see fit, no one as enough data to object. “
You’re anotherbfaking hick if you claim much at all is understood regarding aerosols. Mosr of the same, believe ignorant ca ca like the atmosphere warms the e as rth, ang green house gases do so especially.
Utter, Conservation of Energy violating
pseudoscience.
Er… regardless of my poor phone syntax!
also, ‘Historical Sulfur Dioxide Emissions 1850-2000: Methods and Results,’ PNNL Jan 2004, PNNL-14537
https://www.pnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PNNL-14537.pdf
Googling titles of papers you haven’t read and posting the links to them doesnt make you look as clever as you might wish.
“Donohoe, along with MIT postdoc Kyle Armour and others at Washington, spent many a late night throwing out guesses as to why climate models generate this illogical finding before realizing that it makes perfect sense — but for reasons no one had clarified and laid down in the literature.
They found the answer by drawing on both computer simulations and a simple energy-balance model”
Golly…it sure is a good thing these brainiacs had so much time on their hands so they could set us straight.
But I am sure they had no doubt in their own ability to solve all the mysteries of climatology via late night musings and wild ass guesses. But with some computer simulations and a simple model tossed in to the mix…how the hell could they not!?
Glad they did not need to skip any late night gab fests and alcohol fueled sessions of random musings and do any actual observations of experiments…that crap is like actual work!
The solution is in the climate feedbacks that increase ASR with warming…
So you can’t have warming until you have warming?
Could he not have recorded on a windless day?
Measured haphazardly,
by government bureaucrats,
who WANT to show as much warming as possible,
our planet has remained in a 1 degree C. range,
excluding brief El Nino peaks,
for the past 137 years.
Delete the “adjustments” to the data,
that consistently ‘create’ more warming out of thin air,
and adjust for the fact that starting point thermometers in the 1800’s,
tend to read low,
and then we have been in approximately
a 0.5 degree C. range for the past 137 years.
That means it’s time to panic,
and ban all use of fossil fuels.
OMG — a 1 degree C. range in 137 years,
+/- 1 degree C. if you want to be honest,
about likely measurement errors.
Head for the hills.
Now!
Better yet, do everything government bureaucrats say without question.
They have computers way bigger than yours!
They have computer games .. er … models,
more complicated than any models YOU have.
How could government bureaucrats possible by wrong predicting the future climate?
They’ve been making predictions for 30 years
— over 40 years if you include the global cooling predictions in the 1970s.
That’s a lot of experience making predictions.
Have you been making predictions for 30 years?
And remember they have really big computers.
And some of them there bureaucrats even have PhDs.
How could they possibly be wrong?
Surely the theoretical basis of GW is not that it is like a blanket? A blanket works by reducing the amount of heat that we lose from our bodies which have an internal heat source keeping us “warmer” than we would have been without the insulating blanket but would never heat the body? GHGs don’t work as insulators only absorbers and re-emitters of LWR, they don’t slow down the release rate of heat from the earths surface.
I also find it staggering that anybody can claim that an ice cube or any numbers of ice cubes could warm a hot body like a pot of boiling water or a fire. How about reducing the rate at which they would cool? Total lunacy surely.
Surely what GHG theory claims is that I could make my house hotter by filling the loft with CO2 and putting ice blocks in front of the radiators?
Yes, an ice cube can radiatively warm a nearby boiling pot… in fact it has to, even if the effect is dwarfed by conductive/convective cooling. This is basically the same as the “cloudy sky at night” arguments… virtually every object emits thermal radiation, thus cloudy skies are warmer because there’s something in the sky to radiate — something colder than you, and yet it warms you! On clear nights, there’s nothing up there to radiate at you, so clear nights are colder than cloudy, even though the clouds are much colder than you.
More sophistry from a wannabe physicist. Cold heat conducting baths are not heaters. Not once nit ever, and when you figure that out you wont be hanging around with the likes of other sophists and fakes.
There’s no such thing as a cold bath that warms an object otherwise emitting to space in vacuum.
Steve Vertelli November 14, 2017 at 10:01 pm
More sophistry from a wannabe physicist. Cold heat conducting baths are not heaters. Not once nit ever, and when you figure that out you wont be hanging around with the likes of other sophists and fakes.
There’s no such thing as a cold bath that warms an object otherwise emitting to space in vacuum.
Suggest you look into igloos, you’ll be a lot warmer in one of them than just spending the night sitting on the ice in the arctic.
Or, ASR dominates the physics for reasons unrelated to GHG and the models are just wrong. That’s the much simpler and better evidenced conclusion.
Talldave2, surely the cloudy sky is reflecting heat back to the surface not absorbing and reradiating it.
I still don’t believe that a cold body can heat a warmer one. Heat can’t flow from cold to hot in the absence of work being done unless the second Law is incorrect. The material that I have read on Quantum mechanics seems to back up the second law in that the Quantum energy level of a particle in a body receiving a photon can’t be raised unless the energy level of the photon is higher.
Phil, the igloo is an insulator and the warmth is from internal heat sources such as bodies. If you’re saying that the ice warms the body by radiating heat to it then I reckon that is impossible as it breaks both the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
Can I heat my house with ice blocks, reflective shields in front of heat elements to reflect the heat back and warm it further, and Co2 in the loft to reradiate any heat entering the loft downwards back into the house.
Surely it is impossible to heat a body using energy that was initially emitted by the body?
Martin Mason November 15, 2017 at 7:25 am
I still don’t believe that a cold body can heat a warmer one. Heat can’t flow from cold to hot in the absence of work being done unless the second Law is incorrect. The material that I have read on Quantum mechanics seems to back up the second law in that the Quantum energy level of a particle in a body receiving a photon can’t be raised unless the energy level of the photon is higher.
Your knowledge of Thermo and spectroscopy is sadly lacking.
The quantum energy of a molecule can be raised from its current level to a higher energy level if the energy of the photon is equal to the energy difference between the two levels. That does not mean that the body the photon originated must be at a higher temperature than the receiving body, quite the contrary! For example CO2 at 300K will absorb a 666cm-1 photon, such a photon could come from a blackbody at 310K or 190K, either would be absorbed.
Phil, the igloo is an insulator and the warmth is from internal heat sources such as bodies. If you’re saying that the ice warms the body by radiating heat to it then I reckon that is impossible as it breaks both the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
The heat loss from a body at 37ºC in an igloo will be proportional to (310^4-273^4) whereas out in the open at -30ºC it will be proportional to (310^4-243^4), so you’ll be warmer in the igloo.
Can I heat my house with ice blocks, reflective shields in front of heat elements to reflect the heat back and warm it further,
Only if the ice is warmer than the previous background.
and Co2 in the loft to reradiate any heat entering the loft downwards back into the house.
Surely it is impossible to heat a body using energy that was initially emitted by the body?
No it’s quite possible, for example the Osram Decostar Energy Saving Halogen MR16 51S bulb uses a dichroic filter to reflect IR back to the filament which heats it to a higher temperature thus increasing the proportion of visible emitted. This results in increased efficiency.
Phil, I’m a process engineer and my knowledge of QM is, as you say, not great. The statement I made above is what I have interpreted from books such as Schrodinger’s Cat and Quantum reality. As it supports the 2nd Law I assumed it was possibly correct.
The dichroic filter in Halogen lamps, to the best of my knowledge, filters out visible light to feed forward from the lamp increasing its efficiency. The IR from the filter is fed out from the back of the lamp to cool the bulb not to heat the element.
Whatever I try I can’t see that you can transfer heat from a cold body to a warmer body and that AGW has to contradict the 2nd Law. Warming a body with no additional heat input, as AGW necessitates, surely breaks the 1st law. GHG’s don’t create heat, trap heat or act as insulation so how? It seems to me (of course I can be corrected) that the most important function of GHG’s is to cool the atmosphere below the temperature it would be without and that H2O is by far the most important in this respect. It seems to me that they form part of a wonderful self regulating system that has kept the planet at essentially constant temperature over millions of years even with CO2 levels 20 times higher than current and are not the bogey man that the warming industry claims.
When I look at what determines surface temperature and lapse rate, these can be calculated accurately with no reference to atmospheric back radiation only heat from the warmer sun, gravity and density of the atmosphere. How is this possible if heating by back radiation in the troposphere is significant in any way.
WattsUpWithThat, that we cannot C/P an interesting Comment to a File. Martin, your observations are relevant. My opinion is that Chasing the Co2 tail is misguided. Black Carbon, Soot and Particulate are being ignored. I have swept the 1″ thick Soot from the top of a new Electrostatic Precipitator under construction because the Utility Owner ran an older coal fired boiler with their Precipitators Shut Down during the night. The Grey Ash is the same I see on the pictures of Greenlands Ice Cap and the Glacier River Reversal from the Yukons Lake Kluane to the Gulf of Alaska. I don’t know the Status of Coal Fired Power Plants in China, as too whether they have installed the latest E/P technology. The Older Coal Facilities in the US East Coast are NoT up to Par and possibly the Airflow follows the Warm Gulf Stream Current towards Greenland. These pictures were taken before the Fort McMurray forest fire that increased Ozone levels in the Eastern Seaboard of which their local Industrial Emittors were accused of producing before the Satellite Pictures were examined showing the forest fire smoke Plume from Alberta blowing over the NE States of the US.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/…/why-greenland-dark-snow-should-worry-you«
Gerald
that link you gave does not work?
Martin Mason November 18, 2017 at 3:44 am
Phil, I’m a process engineer and my knowledge of QM is, as you say, not great. The statement I made above is what I have interpreted from books such as Schrodinger’s Cat and Quantum reality. As it supports the 2nd Law I assumed it was possibly correct.
I would suggest college level textbooks on ‘Radiation Heat Transfer’, those by Hottell are good.
The dichroic filter in Halogen lamps, to the best of my knowledge, filters out visible light to feed forward from the lamp increasing its efficiency. The IR from the filter is fed out from the back of the lamp to cool the bulb not to heat the element.
The ones I’m talking about pass the visible to the outside but reflect the IR back to the element and cause it to heat thus producing a greater proportion of visible. The stable operating condition allows at a higher temperature with less current and therefore greater efficiency. Remember you’re continuously providing electric current.
Whatever I try I can’t see that you can transfer heat from a cold body to a warmer body and that AGW has to contradict the 2nd Law. Warming a body with no additional heat input, as AGW necessitates, surely breaks the 1st law. GHG’s don’t create heat, trap heat or act as insulation so how?
Well you’re providing continuous input and recycling back some of the output. The light bulb element would lose a certain amount of heat to the surroundings and would establish a steady state temperature by balancing the electrical input and the heat loss. Recycle some of that heat loss and the filament will operate at a higher steady state temperature at a lower current.
GHGs operate in a similar manner the earth is being continuously heated by the sun and achieves a steady state when radiative losses balance input. Introduce a GHG and some of the IR destined for space is absorbed by the GHG which in the lower troposphere for example thermalizes the energy into the atmosphere so a higher steady state is reached when the balance is reestablished.
Phil:
On the concrete Earth, it is not true that “the earth is being continuously heated by the sun and achieves a steady state when radiative losses balance input. Introduce a GHG and some of the IR destined for space is absorbed by the GHG which in the lower troposphere for example thermalizes the energy into the atmosphere so a higher steady state is reached when the balance is reestablished.” It is on the abstract Earth that this is true. By making reference to the abstract and concrete Earth by the ambiguous term “earth” you make application of the equivocation fallacy.
Terry Oldberg November 18, 2017 at 8:28 pm
Phil:
On the concrete Earth, it is not true that “the earth is being continuously heated by the sun and achieves a steady state when radiative losses balance input. Introduce a GHG and some of the IR destined for space is absorbed by the GHG which in the lower troposphere for example thermalizes the energy into the atmosphere so a higher steady state is reached when the balance is reestablished.”
Really, what part of that statement do you disagree with and then then explain this:
http://lasp.colorado.edu/~bagenal/3720/CLASS5/EarthBB.jpg
Phil:
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify..The concrete Earth spins on its axis and orbits the sun. Thus the concrete Earth does not approach steady state.
gerald l commented – “Black Carbon, Soot and Particulate are being ignored.”
no they’re not. at all.
see any ipcc ar.
ps: those last two factors are cooling, not warming.
Global warming occurs even though IR not trapped – because like all the numpties they believe that the greenhouse effect is due to “heat trapping” which is a simplistic childish dumbed-down models for the newspapers and not one for any real scientist.
What actually happens is that the radiation from the atmosphere occurs FROM CO2 molecules, and the average temperature of these gives you the average temperature of outgoing IR.And that in turn is related to the average height – and that to the density of CO2. So, the more CO2, the higher up in the atmosphere and the lower the average temperature of CO2 being emitted.
And like putting on a coat – if the coat resists heat – the temperature on your outer surface is lower.
Now, this isn’t too complex I hope and even Anthony Watts might be able to understand it (if he wasn’t so resistant to new ideas). So, why does the stupid ignorant model of “heat trapping” remain? The answer I think is that if you work out the actual change of e.g. a 0.65C increase in temperature … it amounts to a 100m rise in the average level from which radiation leaves the planet. That isn’t scary – because it means the total change we’ve seen – amounts to moving 100m down a hill. Which when you put it in that term make the whole issue of CO2 look about as overblown as you can get. And it also tells us that increases in CO2 can’t possibly cause a “runaway” greenhouse effect – because a change in CO2 leads to a very content stasis. You’re going from one stable condition to another.
So, the reason the alarmists don’t tell the public what is really going on is because if people like Anthony Watts actually understood and told the public – the whole scam would look so ridiculous that the alarmists would be the laughing stock of the whole world.
Just to add – the .65C rise comes from the lapse rate. That sets the drop in temperature FROM the surface. So the temperature of emission is Surface-Temp – h x lapse-rate.
And if on average the height rises so that the relative temperature from the surface drops by 0.65C, in order to regain stability – which occurs when the average temperature is that needed to emit all the incoming solar that is absorbed, the surface temperature must increase by 0.65C.
Phil. says
A blackbody at 300K emits 26.8522 W/m2/sr between 13 and 17 microns
Henry says
I find it unbelievable that an intelligent person like you, Phil, who frequents wuwt, apparently still believes that man made global warming due to [more] CO2 is true.
There is no man made warming. Global warming due to man made ozone destruction was in fact more probable to me [as more UV coming through would heat the oceans – now there is mass – ] but you were not convincing to me on the last thread about that either.
#
now we know that besides the absorption of CO2 in the 14-15 um range where earth emits, we also have a few absorptions of the CO2 0-5 um where the sun emits, namely in the UV range – which is how we are able to qualitatively and quantitatively establish its presence on other planets –
and we also have absorptions 1-2 um and 4-5 um.
##
To prove that CO2 also cools the atmosphere follow the green line fig. 6
bottom
http://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/disksite/library/turnbull06a.pdf
(this radiation came from the sun, bounced from earth back to space, went to the moon, and was picked up again on earth)
So now, Phil, what I need to see from you to prove to me that man made warming is true, is a balance sheet, showing me exactly how much cooling in W/m2/sr (4 decimals is fine!) the CO2 causes 0-5 um (where the sun emits) and how much warming it causes 14-15 um (where the earth emits, the 4 decimals is good!)
Thanks!
Hint : my own analysis of daily data of 54 weather stations balanced on latitude show there is no room for any man made warming…
henryp November 16, 2017 at 9:58 am
Phil. says
A blackbody at 300K emits 26.8522 W/m2/sr between 13 and 17 microns
Henry says
I find it unbelievable that an intelligent person like you, Phil, who frequents wuwt, apparently still believes that man made global warming due to [more] CO2 is true.
I’m not sure why you think this is relevant to my comment on blackbody radiation.
now we know that besides the absorption of CO2 in the 14-15 um range where earth emits, we also have a few absorptions of the CO2 0-5 um where the sun emits, namely in the UV range – which is how we are able to qualitatively and quantitatively establish its presence on other planets –
and we also have absorptions 1-2 um and 4-5 um.
These are in the near IR not the UV.
##
To prove that CO2 also cools the atmosphere follow the green line fig. 6
bottom
http://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/disksite/library/turnbull06a.pdf
(this radiation came from the sun, bounced from earth back to space, went to the moon, and was picked up again on earth)
That emission came from the stratosphere (via the moon), the emission from lower in the atmosphere was already absorbed and thermalised.
So now, Phil, what I need to see from you to prove to me that man made warming is true, is a balance sheet, showing me exactly how much cooling in W/m2/sr (4 decimals is fine!) the CO2 causes 0-5 um (where the sun emits) and how much warming it causes 14-15 um (where the earth emits, the 4 decimals is good!)
Thanks!
At the TOA with CO2 removed for a surface temperature of 300K in the tropics the emission is 329.7 W/m^2 according to Modtran. Including CO2 (400 ppm) gives an emission of 298.5 W/m^2 so that means that the CO2 removed 31 W/m^2 (~10%). If the surface temperature is allowed to change to give the same output we get a temperature change of 6.5ºC. The absorption of solar radiation by CO2 is negligible since the absorption bands are in the tail region of the solar spectrum.
Phil.
You are not paying attention much. I said there were absorptions in the UV and in the 1-2 and 4-5 um
here, you can see how water and CO2 chews away the incoming sunshine.
The water cuts out quite lot does it not? Are you sure the net effect of H2O is that of warming rather than cooling?
Remember that incoming solar is 5500 K and outgoing is only 300 K or less. So, to my mind, the 1-2 and 4-5 um absorption of CO2 causing deflection of 5500K cuts out much more energy than it traps your energy 14-15 um from earth of 300K.
Is that not logical for you?
That is why you must produce a balance sheet….
henryp November 17, 2017 at 6:39 am
Phil.
You are not paying attention much. I said there were absorptions in the UV and in the 1-2 and 4-5 um
I was reading very carefully, you said:
” we also have a few absorptions of the CO2 0-5 um where the sun emits, namely in the UV range – which is how we are able to qualitatively and quantitatively establish its presence on other planets –
and we also have absorptions 1-2 um and 4-5 um.
The two you explicitly mentioned were IR, there are no significant CO2 absorptions in the UV.
here, you can see how water and CO2 chews away the incoming sunshine.
The water cuts out quite lot does it not? Are you sure the net effect of H2O is that of warming rather than cooling?
Why are you changing the subject, you only mentioned CO2 in your original question?
Remember that incoming solar is 5500 K and outgoing is only 300 K or less. So, to my mind, the 1-2 and 4-5 um absorption of CO2 causing deflection of 5500K cuts out much more energy than it traps your energy 14-15 um from earth of 300K.
Is that not logical for you?
No it’s completely illogical, the total area under the solar curve at TOA should equal the area under the outgoing curve (and should be in wavenumber not wavelength).
That is why you must produce a balance sheet….
I did but for some reason you appear to have changed the question.
henry commented – “So now, Phil, what I need to see from you to prove to me that man made warming is true, is a balance sheet, showing me exactly how much cooling in W/m2/sr”
there are many such
proofs
Philipona+ GRL 2004: https://is.gd/ePKTwX
“Measurements of the Radiative Surface Forcing of Climate,” W.F.J. Evans, and E. Puckrin
http://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm
ftp://ftp.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/pub/smcd/spb/lzhou/AMS86/PREPRINTS/PDFS/100737.pdf
Feldman+ Nature 2015: https://is.gd/vIWMxr
others: http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/papers-on-changes-in-olr-due-to-ghgs/
After reading the comments I have come to the conclusion
that the causes of climate change are not “settled”.
A real model of climate change could not be built —
perhaps hundreds of models could be built,
each representing a different theory?
The science is not settled.
Perhaps it will never be settled.
Until it is settled, I will rely on that popular philosopher Robert Zimmerman,
who once sang:
“You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows”.
Well, I don’t need a scientist
to tell me the climate has barely changed in the past 50 years,
and the only change I’ve noticed here in Michigan,
living in the same home for 30 years, and just four miles
south for seven years before that,
is slightly warmer nights,
especially winter nights.
Subterranean Homesick Blues
by Bob Dylan
“Johnny’s in the basement, mixin’ up the medicine
I’m on the pavement, thinkin’ about the government
The man in the trench coat, badge out, laid off
Says he’s got a bad cough, wants to get it paid off
Look out kid, it’s somethin’ you did
God knows when, but you’re doin’ it again
You better duck down the alleyway looking for a new friend
The man in the coon-skin cap in the pig pen
Wants 11 dollar bills – you only got 10
Maggie comes fleet foot, face full of black soot
Talkin’ that the heat put plants in the bet book
Phone’s tapped anyway
Maggie says “The Man, he say”
They must bust in early May, “Orders from the D.A.”
Look out kid, don’t matter what you did
Walk on your tip toes, don’t try No-Doz
Better stay away from those that carry around a fire hose
Keep a clean nose, watch the plainclothes
You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows
Oh, get sick, get well, hang around a ink well
Hang bail, hard to tell if anything is gonna sell
Try hard, get barred, get back, ride rail
Get jailed, jump bail, join the Army if you fail
Look out kid you’re gonna get hit
By losers, cheaters, 6-time users
Hangin’ round the theaters
Girl by the whirlpool’s looking for a new fool
Don’t follow leaders, a’watch the parkin’ meters
Oh, get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance
Learn to dance, get dressed
Get blessed, try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don’t steal, don’t lift
20 years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift
Look out kid, they keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole, light yourself a candle
Don’t wear sandals, try avoid the scandal
Don’t want to be a bum, ya’ better not chew gum
The pump don’t work ’cause the vandals took the handle
Climate Models are basically like the dictum:
“The map is not the territory”. (A.Korzybski)
phil.
I think you are being deliberately confusing?
I said there were areas of absorption of the CO2 molecule in the UV , meaning 200 – 300 nm
we use these wavelengths areas in the UV to determine its presence on other planets, both qualitatively and quantitatively. You can google it?
Amazing, is it not, that our instruments can even pick up the deflection caused by CO2 on other planets….
AND, in addition, we have the 1-2 and 4-5 um, which is near infra red and infra red respectively.
I remember that I used the 4.6 wavelength to determine the concentration of CO2 in nitrogen.
[The instrument ‘s sensors pick up the [amount of ] deflected light if you bombard it with a beam of 4600 nm]
now you also say:
‘the total area under the solar curve at TOA should equal the area under the outgoing curve (and should be in wavenumber not wavelength).’
I think you refer here to the graphic representation used by Mr Turner:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/13/study-we-have-the-global-warming-physical-process-backwards/#comment-2665856
but, like I told you before, that representation is convenient to explain something, but outgoing from earth is totally out of proportion with that of coming in from the sun. The sun is blasting away 5500K and earth is 300K max. So, to understand the proportion you have to divide the area under earth by 5500/300 and understand how dinky we are…..
If you don’t get this, you will never understand why most of us here are saying that the net effect of more CO2 is probably zero or even rather slight cooling, seeing it deflects a certain proportion of sunshine away from earth.
AGW due to [man made] ozone destruction would have been a more distinct possibility to me but my own various evaluations of results of global T and even ozone measurements in Arosa suggest a natural process. The window [of UV warming the oceans} TOA is open and closed as God [nature] wants it, and there is nothing you or me or anyone can do about it….if it were not so you and I would not be alive today. You don’t just ‘get’ the weather. It was created.
Best wishes,
Henry
henryp November 18, 2017 at 2:41 am
phil.
I think you are being deliberately confusing?
I said there were areas of absorption of the CO2 molecule in the UV , meaning 200 – 300 nm
No I’m straightening out your errors! There is no absorption above 205nm, that is on the tail of the emission spectrum of the sun and also is the region of the spectrum where O2 and O3 absorb strongly.
we use these wavelengths areas in the UV to determine its presence on other planets, both qualitatively and quantitatively. You can google it?
Amazing, is it not, that our instruments can even pick up the deflection caused by CO2 on other planets….
Only if they’re sited outside the atmosphere!
AND, in addition, we have the 1-2 and 4-5 um, which is near infra red and infra red respectively.
I remember that I used the 4.6 wavelength to determine the concentration of CO2 in nitrogen.
[The instrument ‘s sensors pick up the [amount of ] deflected light if you bombard it with a beam of 4600 nm]
Most unlikely that you used Rayleigh scattering most likely absorption.
now you also say:
‘the total area under the solar curve at TOA should equal the area under the outgoing curve (and should be in wavenumber not wavelength).’
I think you refer here to the graphic representation used by Mr Turner:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/13/study-we-have-the-global-warming-physical-process-backwards/#comment-2665856
but, like I told you before, that representation is convenient to explain something, but outgoing from earth is totally out of proportion with that of coming in from the sun. The sun is blasting away 5500K and earth is 300K max. So, to understand the proportion you have to divide the area under earth by 5500/300 and understand how dinky we are…..
Absolutely not, the flux of solar irradiance must equal the IR losses from the TOA otherwise the planet would either boil or freeze over very rapidly! I wasn’t referring to that graph, rather your statement that the light at 5500K must dwarf that from the earth at 300K.
If you don’t get this, you will never understand why most of us here are saying that the net effect of more CO2 is probably zero or even rather slight cooling, seeing it deflects a certain proportion of sunshine away from earth.
If that’s what you base your understanding on then you need to get up to speed with the science.
Phil.
actually it is you that does not understand. Take the subject of spectrophotometry:
you say the light gets ‘absorbed?’ and then what? We had these arguments before/
alas, it is perhaps good I get back in here and that we get on to this subject because it is important for knowing.
we have substances that ‘absorb’ light so we can measure its concentration. Absorption has to do with the condition of the molecule.. it has some room to take in some photons. The end result is what we used to call extinction…
We put a beam on the solution of certain wavelength without the substance and measure the transmittance after it has gone through and we have 4 standard solutions that each make a different transmittance so we can make a concentration curve. In the case of CO2 we use the 4.6 um wavelength on the sample.
Now a good question: if the light beam is going through and is becoming extinct on the opposite side due to the presence of the substance, where is the light [of that wavelength] that we have not stopped coming through, going?
Now, Phil is one of the people who thinks that it simply ‘disappears’ as heat inside the sample. Obviously this cannot be true. Many times I have left the meters running for many hours at same wl and same cuvette and nothing has exploded.
No. The light that becomes extinct is going back, exactly 62,5% in the direction where it came from and the rest is scattered in all other directions. You can actually see this happening if you have a substance in solution that has absorption in the visible spectrum by opening the cuvette holder whilst measuring.
So, more CO2 in the air will also put more sun light of 1-2 and 4-5 um back to space [during day time]. So, more of it helps [also] in cooling the atmosphere. On this point, Phil seems simply in denial…
Note that the heat of a plate exposed to the sun goes down if the humidity goes up. This is because water vapor has also strong absorption in the near infra red.
so,the best way that I can describe on what I see is happening is that once the fotons have been absorbed the molecule starts acting like a mirror at this wavelength where absorption takes place.
henryp November 18, 2017 at 3:28 pm
Phil.
actually it is you that does not understand. Take the subject of spectrophotometry:
you say the light gets ‘absorbed?’ and then what? We had these arguments before/
alas, it is perhaps good I get back in here and that we get on to this subject because it is important for knowing.
Yes it’s about time that you understood it properly rather than your pseudo-elastic scattering model.
In the case of CO2 we use the 4.6 um wavelength on the sample.
Now a good question: if the light beam is going through and is becoming extinct on the opposite side due to the presence of the substance, where is the light [of that wavelength] that we have not stopped coming through, going?
Now, Phil is one of the people who thinks that it simply ‘disappears’ as heat inside the sample. Obviously this cannot be true.
Really, “cannot be true”!
What happens in the case of the 4.6 micron band is that the asymmetric stretch is excited. That vibrational mode with its associated rotational structure has two possible fates: it can re-emit in any direction thereby greatly reducing the transmission (the 62.5º that Henry quotes is fiction), or it can thermalize with the surrounding gases. Which predominates depends on the pressure, at atmospheric pressure thermalization is the more likely.
Many times I have left the meters running for many hours at same wl and same cuvette and nothing has exploded.
Why would it, the amount of energy in the spectrometer light beam is minuscule (and you’re not testing CO2 in a cuvette).
“Infrared spectroscopy is the study of how molecules absorb infrared radiation and ultimately convert it to heat. By examining how this occurs, we will not only learn about how infrared radiation is absorbed, but we will also learn about molecular structure and how the study of infrared spectroscopy can provide information about the structure of organic molecules.”
http://www.umsl.edu/~orglab/documents/IR/IR2.html
So, more CO2 in the air will also put more sun light of 1-2 and 4-5 um back to space [during day time]. So, more of it helps [also] in cooling the atmosphere. On this point, Phil seems simply in denial…
Quite right, it doesn’t happen.
Phil.
here I show you that it happens exactly like that,
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/disksite/library/turnbull06a.pdf
sunlight specific to the absorption bands of CO2 between 1-2 um can be picked up via the moon coming back to earth. Follow the green line fig 6 bottom and fig 7.
the way that radiation went: sun-earth-moon-earth.
In the introduction of the paper CO2 gets specifically mentioned.[strong]
You can use your books, but the way I explain it is that in the absorption regions the molecule starts acting like a little mirror, sort of, the strength of which depending on the amount of absorption taking place. The molecule being or acting like a sphere, it can be calculated that 62,5% goes back in the direction where it came from.
so to sum it up, we have the CO2 deflecting energy away from earth: absorptions in the UV, near IR and IR . I have proven this to you now. [e.g. we can pick up the deflected near IR light from the CO2 via the moon]
We also have some absorption in the 14-15 um sending some energy back to earth.
So, where is your balance sheet showing me that the energy trapped by CO2 on earth is more than the energy back radiated to space?
henryp November 18, 2017 at 8:45 pm
Phil.
here I show you that it happens exactly like that,
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/disksite/library/turnbull06a.pdf
sunlight specific to the absorption bands of CO2 between 1-2 um can be picked up via the moon coming back to earth. Follow the green line fig 6 bottom and fig 7.
the way that radiation went: sun-earth-moon-earth.
In the introduction of the paper CO2 gets specifically mentioned.[strong]
I suggest you look at the graph again, what it shows is that the earthshine returning from the moon is deficient in the CO2 bands, thus showing that the earth’s atmosphere absorbs in those bands.
You can use your books, but the way I explain it is that in the absorption regions the molecule starts acting like a little mirror, sort of, the strength of which depending on the amount of absorption taking place. The molecule being or acting like a sphere, it can be calculated that 62,5% goes back in the direction where it came from.
so to sum it up, we have the CO2 deflecting energy away from earth: absorptions in the UV, near IR and IR . I have proven this to you now. [e.g. we can pick up the deflected near IR light from the CO2 via the moon]
No you’re misreading the data that’s not what’s happening, it’s a reflectance spectrum.
Phil.
Note that the report says:
the resulting spectrum was fitted with a simple model of the reflectivity of Earth.
In other words, what is shown in the graph is what earth is reflecting into space, not absorbing, i.e. the graph shows a part of earth’s albedo, including that what is reflected into space by the H2O, CO2, O3 and a few other gases notably CH4…ca. 0.5 % in total. The rest of the atmosphere is mostly permeable to all types of radiation, including the re-radiation from the GH gases e.g. the 14-15 um from the CO2.
You are really just avoiding the question posed by me? Do please explain to me and to all of us in your own words as to why you believe the net effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere is that of warming, rather than cooling? We love to hear your theories from your books.
henryp November 19, 2017 at 6:24 am
Phil.
Note that the report says:
the resulting spectrum was fitted with a simple model of the reflectivity of Earth.
In other words, what is shown in the graph is what earth is reflecting into space, not absorbing, i.e. the graph shows a part of earth’s albedo, including that what is reflected into space by the H2O, CO2, O3 and a few other gases notably CH4…ca. 0.5 % in total. The rest of the atmosphere is mostly permeable to all types of radiation, including the re-radiation from the GH gases e.g. the 14-15 um from the CO2.
The measured spectrum was fitted using the following:
“The first stream reflects from the planet’s surface at 0 km altitude, the second stream reflects from a cloud layer with a top at an adjustable height (here 4 km), and the third stream reflects from a cloud at a high altitude, fixed at 10 km. The relative proportions of each stream are adjusted in a least-squares fit to the full reflectance spectrum.”
This does not include your fictional reflection into space by gases!
The measured spectrum shows zero reflection at the strong absorption band of CO2 at ~2 micron for example.
The reflections from the clouds and the surfaces are filtered by the absorption bands of the atmosphere above them which is shown by the ‘holes’ in the spectrum which coincide with the absorption peaks in the spectra of the various gases shown in the figure.
You completely misunderstand what that paper is showing you.
You are really just avoiding the question posed by me? Do please explain to me and to all of us in your own words as to why you believe the net effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere is that of warming, rather than cooling? We love to hear your theories from your books.
I already answered this, you have ignored it.
Phil.
the report concludes:
From the clear-air and cloud fractions required in our model to fit the data, we would also conclude that the planet has a dynamic atmosphere. Thus, the spectral albedo could be expected to show slight changes with time
It is about earth’s albedo? Do you know and understand what it is?
There is a big difference between solar irradiation TOA and what arrives at sea level…
I put it to you that you have only presented a sheet as to radiation trapped on earth by GHG’s [like you showed just now to Terry] but you have not presented any knowledge from your books as to how much radiation is deflected off from earth by each of the GHG’s. Your continued denial that such a process occurs [which is similar to the process of the heat entrapment that you do think is happening ]
is quite pathetic.
henry – ghgs do
not “deflect” ghgs.
this is fundamental to the
understanding of what’s going
on.
henry wrote –
“but you have not presented any knowledge from your books as to how much radiation is deflected off from earth by each of the GHG’s.”
ghgs do not “deflect” radiation.
this is fundamental to
understanding what they
actually do.
Phil, as an intelligent person you surely must admit that the science isn’t settled and that the events predicted from the models and the warming industry are just not happening. Sceptics are absolutely correct to question the consensus science when it appears to be bereft of anything to support it in the real world.
Martin Mason November 18, 2017 at 3:08 am
Phil, as an intelligent person you surely must admit that the science isn’t settled and that the events predicted from the models and the warming industry are just not happening. Sceptics are absolutely correct to question the consensus science when it appears to be bereft of anything to support it in the real world.
The science I have been talking about is settled, and when people like Henry produce some theory which is totally at variance with the facts I will point out the flaws. Some will realize their mistakes, Henry doesn’t and just ignores them when they are pointed out. Hopefully others reading here will see that Henry is wrong.
Phil, there is your position and the equally credible one that you have been propagandised by warmism and the sceptics are correct. As AGW theory and the predictions from it remain completely invalidated by data from the real world, I’m going for the sceptic side every time. When I see the warmist industry being correct in any way then I will revise my opinion but at the moment there isn’t a shred of evidence to show that the AGW theory and the tragedies that must unfold from it have any credibility in the real world. The science is anything but settled.
Martin
In proper technical English, a model is “invalidated” when an attempt at cross validation fails.Today’s climate models are insusceptible to cross validation as the statistical population underlying the model does not exist. The IPCC has invented the alternative to cross validation that it calls “evaluation.” To “evaluate” a climate model one compares projections from the model to a selected global warming time series. The time series is necessary but a statistical population is not. Climatologists act as if unaware of the fact that a statistical population is required if the model is to supply a would be regulator of Earth’s climate with information. Information is required for regulation.
Martin Mason November 19, 2017 at 3:51 am
The science is anything but settled.
I suggest you address the science which I have been addressing here not some political issues. Henry has some made up theory that says that absorption works by back reflecting 62.5% of the light rather than exciting molecular vibrations and rotations. Says that CO2 absorbs in the UV where it does not, that there is much more solar radiation striking the earth than there is IR leaving it, etc.
Apparently you would rather believe such junk science rather than real science because it fits with your political view.
Martin Mason commented – “Phil, as an intelligent person you surely must admit that the science isn’t settled and that the events predicted from the models and the warming industry are just not happening”
“The First Climate Model Turns 50, And Predicted Global Warming Almost Perfectly,”
ethan siegel, forbes, mar 15 ’17
link – https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/03/15/the-first-climate-model-turns-50-and-predicted-global-warming-almost-perfectly/#6a442ea96614
Friend
Please enlighten us with the results of your own research as to why you believe AGW is true
Can I ask the moderators why a comment of mine above is awaiting moderation? I can’t see anything controversial in it.
[Of course you can. There is no comment of yours waiting anywhere that I can see. That’s it. Sorry. . . mod]
Thank you, two comments showed on my screen as awaiting moderation and I wondered why that’s all. Sometimes I do go OTT and just wondered if I’d done so.
The IPCC climate models lack the statistical population that underlies them, an indication that the reification fallacy is being applied. To “reify” is to treat an “abstract” object as if it were a “concrete” object. For modern global warming climatology, the abstract object is the Earth of the Greenhouse effect. The abstract Earth exhibits “radiative forcing” but the concrete Earth (the one on which we live) does not exhibit radiative forcing. It seems to climatologists as though the concrete Earth exhibits radiative forcing because reification is part of what a climatologist does..A climatologist is a Platonist rather than being a scientist. .
Very interesting to see that Laser cooling is given as an example of heat being transferred from a low temperature body to a high temperature body. I don’t believe that this is true, the cooling isn’t effected by heat transfer from anything to anything.
As I understand it the laser cooling relies on the atoms emitting radiation which must be absorbed somewhere. In the case of Rubidium 85 it gets cooled to 150 microK I would assume that those absorbers are at a higher temperature than that?
Phil, like your lamp, the laser transferring from cold to hot isn’t actually what really happens. I reckon that heat doesn’t flow from cold to warm at any level or at any time. Can you actually show proof that this can happen as I can’t find it other than on warmist sites.
Martin wrote – “I reckon that heat doesn’t flow from cold to warm at any level or at any time”
all objects emit radiation in all directions. why wouldn’t
it impact on whatever other object is out there,
regardless of its T?
Crackers, radiation can flow in all directions but heat only in one and that is from warm to cold. Radiation isn’t heat. Photons of a low energy level (e.g., CO2) will flow to a warmer body but unless the photons have the energy to raise the energy level of the warm body they will not be absorbed. All photons are not equal and I believe that if heat (as against radiation) only flows from warm to colder at the real world level this has to be true at the quantum level.
Martin: radiation
is heat.
Phil.
the report concludes:
From the clear-air and cloud fractions required in our model to fit the data, we would also conclude that the planet has a dynamic atmosphere. Thus, the spectral albedo could be expected to show slight changes with time
It is about earth’s albedo? Do you know and understand what it is?
There is a big difference between solar irradiation TOA and what arrives at sea level…
I put it to you that you have only presented a sheet as to radiation trapped on earth by GHG’s [like you showed just now to Terry] but you have not presented any knowledge from your books as to how much radiation is deflected off from earth by each of the GHG’s. Your continued denial that such a process occurs [which is similar to the process of the heat entrapment that you do think is happening ]
is quite pathetic.
it is not me ignoring, it is you.
Crackers, radiation transfer isn’t heat transfer. A “photon” arriving at a receiver can be absorbed and re-emitted (raise the temperature of the body), reflected (without raising energy level) or transmitted (pass through). Unless the photon has come from a source with a higher energy level it won’t be absorbed. This is simplistic I know but heat (even if you call it net heat) only flows from a warmer body to a colder body, if this is so (and the laws of thermo and real life say it is) then heat can’t flow from a cooler body to a warmer body, in turn this means that a cooler body can’t heat a warmer body. This seems to be so blindingly obvious that I’m sure I must be missing something.
crackers345
[can I call you ‘friend’? I don’t like crackers. I love my dogs and I hate crackers.]
Anyway,what is the significance of your number 345?
Like the sun, the earth is also a radiating body. The only difference is that we have ca. 12 hours a day of sunshine and 24 hours of earthshine. Now< I am not going to repeat here what I have told your friend phil. to prove to him that GHG's do deflect radiation off from earth just like earth's radiation is send back to earth by some of the GHG's. If you like, you can go through my comments on this thread and the argument I have with him.
I will tell you that I love my dogs and I also love my big 4 x 4 truck. I also like to go up the hills and take my dogs for a stroll. I am also a strong believer, so you can imagine feeling a bit guilty about my diesel consumption. That is when I started to investigate your so called AGW…
here is my final report on that.
Concerned to show that man made warming (AGW ) is correct and indeed happening, I thought that here [in Pretoria, South Africa] I could easily prove that. Namely the logic following from AGW theory is that more CO2 would trap heat on earth, hence we should find minimum temperature (T) rising pushing up the mean T. Here, in the winter months, we hardly have any rain but we have many people burning fossil fuels to keep warm at night. On any particular cold winter’s day that results in the town area being covered with a greyish layer of air, viewable on a high hill outside town in the early morning.
I figured that as the population increased over the past 40 years, the results of my analysis of the data [of a Pretoria weather station] must show minimum T rising, particularly in the winter months. Much to my surprise I found that the opposite was happening: minimum T here was falling, any month….I first thought that somebody must have made a mistake: the extra CO2 was cooling the atmosphere, ‘not warming’ it. As a chemist, that made sense to me as I knew that whilst there were absorptions of CO2 in the area of the spectrum where earth emits, there are also the areas of absorption in the 1-2 um and the 4-5 um range where the sun emits. Not convinced either way by my deliberations and discussions as on a number of websites, I first looked at a number of weather stations around me, to give me an indication of what was happening:
The results puzzled me even more. Somebody [God/Nature] was throwing a ball at me…..The speed of cooling followed a certain pattern, best described by a quadratic function.
I carefully looked at my earth globe and decided on a particular sampling procedure to find out what, if any, the global result would be. Here is my final result on that:
Hence, looking at my final Rsquare on that, I figured out that there is no AGW, at least not measurable.
Arguing with me that 99% of all scientists disagree with me is fruitless. You cannot have an “election” about science. You only need one man to get it right…..
henry – ghgs don’t “deflect” —
they absorb and emit.
big difference.
Crackers, they can reflect and transmit too without raising the energy level.
co2 doesn’t “reflect.”