Personal Note: Dr. Gray was in the process of writing up the results discussed below when he passed away in 2016. Before he died, he asked us to compile his figures and preliminary text into a paper to be posted online. We have attempted to maintain his writing style and the tone that we think he would have wanted to convey. Dr. Gray studied tropical meteorology for over 50 years (Klotzbach et al. 2017, available below), and we believe that his views on this important topic should be heard. Please note that the views of this paper are Dr. Gray’s and may not be our own personal views on climate change. Barry Schwartz, Phil Klotzbach and Sarah Gray
Flaws in Applying Greenhouse Warming to Climate Variability
By Bill Gray (Professor Emeritus, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University)
Edited by: Barry Schwartz (retired from NOAA), Phil Klotzbach (CSU) and Sarah Gray (Univ. of San Diego)
1. Introduction
There is little controversy that the earth has experienced a warming trend since the mid 19th century with an acceleration of this warming from the mid-1970s to ~2000. Following a hiatus in global warming for about 15 years, the globe began warming again around 2014, associated with the El Niño that developed around that time. What is in dispute is whether these periods of warming are the result of changes to the earth’s energy balance due to a) human addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, b) natural variability of the climate system, or c) a combination of both factors.
The idea that the earth’s climate can be altered by addition of greenhouse gases is known as the greenhouse theory and is depicted in Fig. 1. Of most concern is the addition of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) to the earth’s atmosphere as a result of the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. This theory has been the subject of debate since its introduction by Joseph Fourier in 1824.
Fig 1. The Greenhouse theory of global warming (after Trenberth 2009).
Climate sensitivity is complex and involves much more than the state of radiation balance and greenhouse gases. The globe’s climate system is in a close state of energy balance. A global radiative average imbalance of 1 Wm-2 (or 0.3%) of the difference between the continuous solar radiation impinging on the earth and infrared energy being fluxed to space can bring about significant climate changes if this small energy imbalance were to persist over a period from a few months to a year or two. The critical argument that is made by many in the Global Climate Modeling (GCM) community is that an increase in CO2 warming leads to an increase in atmospheric water vapor resulting in more warming from the absorption of outgoing infrared radiation (IR) by the water vapor. Water vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas present in the atmosphere in large quantities. Its variability (i.e., global cloudiness) is not handled adequately in GCMs in my view. In contrast to the positive feedback between CO2 and water vapor predicted by the GCM’s, it is my hypothesis that there is a negative feedback between CO2 warming and and water vapor. CO2 warming ultimately results in less water vapor (not more) in the upper troposphere. The GCMs therefore predict unrealistic warming of global temperature. I hypothesize that the earth’s energy balance is regulated by precipitation (primarily via deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convection) and that this precipitation counteracts warming due to CO2.
1. CO2 observations and exaggerated global warming predictions
Continuous measurements of atmospheric CO2 which were first made at Mauna Loa, Hawaii in 1958 show that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen since that time.
The warming influence of CO2 increases with the natural logarithm (ln) of the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration. With CO2 concentrations now exceeding 400 parts per
million by volume (ppm), the earth’s atmosphere is slightly more than halfway to containing double the amount of CO2 from the 280 ppm CO2 amounts in 1860 (at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution) [(ln 400/280) = 0.357 in 2016 versus (ln 560/280 = 0.691) when CO2 doubles near the end of this century].
Given this increase in CO2, we have not observed the global climate change we would have expected to take place. Assuming that there has been at least an average of 1 Wm-2 CO2 blockage of IR energy to space over the last 50 years and that this energy imbalance has been allowed to independently accumulate and cause climate change over this period with no compensating response, it would have had the potential to bring about changes in any one of the following global conditions.
- Warm the atmosphere by 180°C if all CO2 energy gain was utilized for this purpose – actual warming over this period has been about 0.5°C, or many hundreds of times less.
- Warm the top 100 meters of the globe’s oceans over 5°C – actual warming over this period has been about 0.5°C, or 10 or more times less.
- Melt an average amount of land-based snow and ice so as to raise the global sea-level by about 6.4 meters. The actual rise has been about 8-9 cm, or 60-70 times less. The gradual rise of sea-level height has been only slightly greater over the last ~50 years (1965-2015) than it has been over the previous two ~50-year periods of 1915-1965 and 865-1915 when atmospheric CO2 gain was much less (Church et al. 2008)
- Increase global rainfall over the past ~50-year period by 60 cm.
- Large and important counterbalancing influences to CO2’s energy addition must have occured over the last 50 years to negate most of CO2’s expected climate change if CO2 gain were the only influence on climate variability. Similarly, this hypothesized
- CO2-induced energy gain of 1 Wm-2 over 50 years must have stimulated a compensating response which acted to largely negate energy gains from the increase in CO2.
Read the entire paper, which is well worth your time, but too long to present here in entirety. PDF, open access – here: https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/bill-gray-climate-change-1.pdf
Additionally, there was a recent tribute paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, that covered decades of Dr. Gray’s work. Also open access:
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/klotzbach-et-al-2017-1.pdf
Thanks to Dr. Philip Kloztbach for selecting WUWT to publish this.
Thank you….
I can’t imagine
a better tribute
to Dr. Gray
than completing
his final paper.
Like all real climate scientists
he faced an uphill battle,
and unjustified character attacks,
but contributed a lot.
Real science.
Not the fake climate science
of wild guess predictions
of a coming global warming catastrophe,
that will never come.
http://www.elOnionBloggle.blogspot.com
Why are they measuring atmospheric CO2 at the summit of the largest active volcano on earth? Isn’t there the possibility of CO2 outgassing skewing the data?
Short answer – they know which way the wind blows.
Better answer, read https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/04/under-the-volcano-over-the-volcano/
What about the other three, plus any undersea volcanoes on top of Lo’ihi, which are putting CO2 into the ocean some of which must escape into the atmosphere around Hawaii?
So askith: Sandy In Limousin – January 19, 2018 at 1:41 am
Sandy, the Mauna Loa Observatory is situate in the “pristine air” at an altitude of 11,135 feet above sea level, thus the CO2 measurements recorded there only have to compensate for any detected outgassing of CO2 by the Mauna Loa volcano.
At lower altitudes, the constantly varying H2O vapor (humidity, clouds, fogs, etc.) really screws up any attempt of correctly measuring atmospheric CO2 ppm.
icisil
That is not the only Earth monitoring station. You get nowhere arguing or assuming that the CO2 measured in Hawaii is higher than elsewhere.
One monitoring station in at Cape Point, near Cape Town. The wind is strongly from the south east. There are no volcanoes between South Africa and Antarctica. The readings concur.
Also measured at South Pole Station, American Samoa and Barrow, AK, confirming the same trend.
They only measure CO2 levels at night, when air is subsiding and pushing off-shore breezes. So not only are we measuring CO2 in air 11,000 feet above sea level, that air has descended from many thousand feet higher in the atmosphere every night. And trade winds bring is fresh air from perhaps 250 miles away every day.
The signature of increasing CO2 greenhouse warming, is increasing upper tropospheric temperatures, resulting in increasing Downwelling Longwave Radiation (DLR). It is the DLR (the perpendicular reemitted orange arrow in the diagram above) that warms the surface.
Only one problem. The increasing tropospheric temperatures and the increasing DLR have never been detected. And if there is no increasing DLR, there is no increasing greenhouse warming. Thus the whole AGW theory has been falsified.
If anyone can find a graph of increasing DLR, please let me know.
R
ratellis
A few dozen more small “adjustments”
and everything will be in order.
DLR = Dimwitted Logic Regurgitated
Asking for proof of more would just be asking for more straw to stuff the scarecrow.
Well, that was a risky reply for here, but I did it anyway. Go ahead, scold me.
(asking for proof). As far as I know there is no such proof, but the feverish alarmists are always saying ‘of course there is…’ (but not providing any proof). So I would genuinely be interesting in reviewing any so called evidence.
R
Some warming by increasing CO2 follows from general principles of energy conservation, given that CO2 infrared absorption lines exist in the radiated spectrum from Earth. Any absorption line means that radiated energy at other frequencies must be higher than they would be otherwise, to maintain a total energy output equal to the total energy input. Something must be hotter than it would be otherwise, and the none-some-more principle implies rising temperatures … unless energy balance is achieved by greater reflection of light, or by storage of energy elsewhere, e.g. heat in the ocean.
How much delay or retention is caused by one extra molecule in every ten thousand, radiating in every direction at every altitude? That is the sceptic’s question.
And what feedback systems exist which might mitigate any warming? And to what extent?
After all these questions are answered I would ask why so much of mainstream climate science is populated by activists, Socialists and opportunistic fraudsters? Michael Mann and his vast array of co-conspirators.
Or, if the result of the energy is to increase convection and wring out more water vapor at high altitude. This would then reduce the energy absorbed in the water vapor absorption lines. This is what Miskolczi found in the NOAA radiosonde data from 1948 to present.
cr, that reply does not account for energy taking the path of least resistance. That is by multiple convective paths. Eighty percent of which are by water vapourising to a gas with half the density of air. Massive uplift to to zone of free radiation, and capable of far more work than it has to do here…..
“Only one problem. The increasing tropospheric temperatures and the increasing DLR have never been detected. And if there is no increasing DLR, there is no increasing greenhouse warming. Thus the whole AGW theory has been falsified.
If anyone can find a graph of increasing DLR, please let me know.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14240
http://postmyimage.com/img2/995_Tropospheretrends.png
Toneb, your problem is that increase is only in the CO2 absorption bands. When you look at all IR bands, as Gero/Turner 2012 did, you find no increase to total DWLWIR. In fact, they found some decreases. This is explained by Dr. Gray.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
(nice cherry pick in that last graph, toneb)…
“Toneb, your problem is that increase is only in the CO2 absorption bands. When you look at all IR bands, as Gero/Turner 2012 did, you find no increase to total DWLWIR. In fact, they found some decreases. This is explained by Dr. Gray.
Sorry to burst your bubble.”
I may have missed it, but I can find no reference to the Gero/Turner 2012 thing.
On Scholar I found this …
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00007.1?download=true
Which is just notes on a talking shop.
Not a paper with observational results.
Also that 10year observational study I have linked was for atmospheric CO2.
What atmospheric constituent that absorbs/radiates in the terrestrial IR bands has decreased in quantity, such that total DWIR has not increased ?
I can only think of WV/H2O.
I link a study above that shows that atmospheric H2O has increased – so the obvious thing would appear to not be the answer.
“nice cherry pick in that last graph, toneb)…”
Cherry-pick?
LOL
If you want to call a graph showing the full range of Tropospheric temperature data series (from the cold outlier UAH V6.0 to the warmest NCEP reanalysis) a cherry-pick….. I’d like to see a graph that really was. LOL AGAIN
(2016 isn’t a cherry pick?)…
The images on the right are modelled, not real.
It took the 5 year to tease out 0.2 m/w2 which almost certainly came from the El Nino.
They did no partial period checks, like say to 2008.
What caused the NON-warming to 2008, then the rapid warming to 2010, then the drop again to 2012
There is absolutely ZERO correlation between this statistically “extracted” tiny CO2 forcing, and the actual temperatures.
It is a NON-SCIENCE paper.
But you are NOT a scientist, toneb, so we would not expect you to see the fatal flaws in the paper.
They can talk about the ghg effect all they want. It’s a long stretch for them to say the green house effect equals higher surface temps. (theorize all they want, but a theory is but a theory)…
Toneb, here is Gero/Turner 2012. You must have looked real hard.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2011JCLI4210.1
“The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-yr period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but it is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant “
Here’s the more recent paper by Feldman et al which shows direct observational evidence of increased DLR due to CO2.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/25/almost-30-years-after-hansens-1988-alarm-on-global-warming-a-claim-of-confirmation-on-co2-forcing/
Instead of crying that this is impossible, we should be embracing the results. The amount of warming from this is so small as to be insignificant. Guestimated from graph of just under 0.2 w/m2 and run through SB Law at 15 Deg C, we arrive at a temperature increase over 10 years of…. wait for it…. shiver in antici….pation…
0.05 degrees. Be still my beating heart.
Hit them over the head with their own science. Every additional ppm of CO2 has less effect than the one before it, and the ones before it had… nada. A hundred years of the same increase will be less than half a degree. Science. Quote it. Use it. The actual science says what the actual science ALWAYS said if you could get someone to sit down and do the math… nothing much to worry about.
oops, just under 0.3 w/m2, not 0.2.
Well, Gero and Turner have been measuring radiation like here
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/2011JCLI4210.1
but what was the paper in 2012?
David, that report from 2015 only goes to 2011 and was pretty much pulled apart at the time, especially by the Ceres data.
David, double your 0.05C for TCR (and triple it for ECS)…
“(2016 isn’t a cherry pick?)…”
Just the latest available data.
And as most of the various series are there, including your favorite cold outlier UAH (not forgetting V6.0) what’s the problem – the trend would barely be touched in one year out of 20.
“It took the 5 year to tease out 0.2 m/w2 which almost certainly came from the El Nino.”
No it certainly wouldn’t take 5 years to lose an EN effect.
It’s effect is to inject moisture into the atmosphere (why the AMSU exaggerates the warming), whereby it warms by LH release.
FYI WV has a lifetime of around of 10 days in the atmosphere before being precipitated out.
The cooling following an EN follows very quickly as SST’s drop away – as can be seen by how UAH trop temps behaved following the ’98 EN …
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_December_2017_v6.jpg
Their data was taken in clear-sky conditions.
Also read the paper (full)
http://asl.umbc.edu/pub/chepplew/journals/nature14240_v519_Feldman_CO2.pdf
Methods:
“We analysed spectra collected
exclusively during clear-sky conditions, as identified by the absence of clouds in all
of the coincident ARSCL masks.”
Also the only way to get a forcing is via a line-by-line radiative transfer model.
https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/6687/2013/
“The time series of this forcing at the two locations—the Southern Great Plains and the North Slope of Alaska—are derived from Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer spectra together with ancillary measurements and thoroughly corroborated radiative transfer calculations. “
Tone, That’s what I’ve been trying to explain, while there is an increase in co2 spectrum, there will be an equal reduction in the power output of water vapor, attempting to limit temp drop under clear calm skies to near dew point.
There’s a 35W/m^2 change here to compensate for 3.7W/m^2 estimate increase from co2.
(iow, nice cherry pick)…
afonzarelli January 19, 2018 at 8:19 am
David, double your 0.05C for TCR (and triple it for ECS)…
Care to explain how TCR or ECS could be larger than the Stefan Boltzmann equilibrium calculation? If you can, congrats, you just invented perpetual motion.
A C Osborn January 19, 2018 at 4:24 am
David, that report from 2015 only goes to 2011 and was pretty much pulled apart at the time, especially by the Ceres data.
An assertion without evidence is just an assertion. As for data, it isn’t capable of pulling anything apart, that would require an analysis of the data. Please back up your assertion via links to the analysis you are referring to.
Toneb claims: “The cooling following an EN follows very quickly as SST’s drop away – as can be seen by how UAH trop temps behaved following the ’98 EN …”
The difference is Bjerknes feedback. It happened in 1998, it did not happen in 2016. This is what pushes much of warm El Nino left over water back into the PWP. Without that effect the warm water hangs around and continues to feed the tropical air. We also had El Nino conditions for another 3.5 months in 2017 and you have a clear and perfectly natural explanation for the warmth.
We are now seeing the trade winds pick up with the current La Nina. However, it doesn’t look very strong. Should provide a little cooling though.
Hi David, it’s called feedbacks… And i’m only giving the (unsubstantiated) claim of agw theory. If feedbacks are negative, then we don’t even get your measely 0.05C. i think the ice ages are proof positive that ECS is nowhere near 3C (as well as a good indicator that ECS is near zero)…
Sorry Tony, but that is data from just two sites. The CERES satellite data, backed up by the TAO buoy data, shows no increase in DLR whatsoever.
Ralph
In fact the upper tropical troposphere has been gently cooling for the last 35 years, according to NASA. The proposed hotspot not only has never been found, but the region where it is supposed to be is cooling.
It is amazing that this does not slow the global warming crowd down in the slightest. They forge ahead and simply do not talk about that part of their failed science; they move on to some other piece of fabricated junk science.
Indeed.
Toneb linked an article, where by some sort of data torturing, they found the hotspot despite the cooling. The trick was to lower expected temperature.
He was very happy of this.
“In fact the upper tropical troposphere has been gently cooling for the last 35 years, according to NASA. The proposed hotspot not only has never been found, but the region where it is supposed to be is cooling.
It is amazing that this does not slow the global warming crowd down in the slightest. They forge ahead and simply do not talk about that part of their failed science; they move on to some other piece of fabricated junk science.”
No the tropical troposphere hasn’t been cooling (citation from NASA please) – the stratosphere yes, as it should from AGW theory.
http://cdn.iopscience.com/images/1748-9326/10/5/054007/Full/erl510711f1_online.jpg
Not amazing as we know the world is warming (by whatever method) and any sort of driver would cause a “tropical hotspot”.
Did it ever occur that it is extremely hard to attriubute due to the non-research quality of radiosondes?
They are one use only instruments.
They are meant for gathering synoptic weather data where calibration within tenths is not required. And do not have the accuracy tolerances required for easy attribution. Similarly Sat temp sensors have to contend with the cooling signal above in the Strat.
But still it has been found…..
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/5/054007/meta
“Temperature trends in the updated data show three noteworthy features. First, tropical warming is equally strong over both the 1959–2012 and 1979–2012 periods, increasing smoothly and almost moist-adiabatically from the surface (where it is roughly 0.14 K/decade) to 300 hPa (where it is about 0.25 K/decade over both periods), a pattern very close to that in climate model predictions. This contradicts suggestions that atmospheric warming has slowed in recent decades or that it has not kept up with that at the surface.”
Toneb,
As a lukewarmer, I agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that has contributed to some of the beneficial warming the past century.
You must be aware that since its ability to warm is logarithmic. The next increase in CO2 of 100 parts per million will not cause nearly the same amount of warming or forcing as the last increase of 100 ppm. We must rely on positive feedbacks for the majority of the projected warming as the forcing from increasing CO2 gets tuckered out.
That requires alot of speculative assumptions, including those related to clouds which are unknown.
What I do know with certainty is that the last 4 decades featured the best weather/climate for most life on this planet in the last 1,000 years(since the Medieval Warm Period that was this warm globally) and the law of photosynthesis is not speculation and increasing CO2 will continue to green the planet and boost world food production.
So what if the increase in CO2 showed a small increase in forcing?
Please tell me about all the bad things that happened. The small and weakening forcing that was measured does not verify didly on speculative global climate models other than that amount of lessening effect(on forcing/warming) from each added molecule of beneficial CO2.
Sorry Tony, but that is data from just two sites. The CERES satellite data, backed up by the TAO buoy data, shows no increase in DLR whatsoever.
Ralph
Sorry Tony, the original data showed no warming whatsoever. They had to adjust it, to find any warming.
Quote:
We present an updated version of the radiosonde dataset homogenized by Iterative Universal Kriging (IUKv2), now extended through February 2013, following the method used in the original version (Sherwood et al 2008 Robust tropospheric warming revealed by iteratively homogenized radiosonde data J. Clim. 21 5336–52).
Torture the data enough, and it will confess what you want…
Ralph
I wonder how many CAGW brethren consult the flight details on their airplane trips and wonder why – at a cruising altitude of 35,000 ft – the air temperature is -50ºC to -60ºC?
Everyone of us suspected all along that precipitation from clouds is the key point of the falsity of AGW. A real greenhouse doesn’t have precipitation from clouds.
Tonality
A real greenhouse has CO2 enrichment
to rough;y 1,000 ppm.
There’s irony in that sentence somewhere!
Look forward to reading this paper. Sounds like a version of the Eschenbach tstorm hypothesis. Also Closely related to Lindsen’s Adaptive infrared iris hypothesis. Judy Curry and I did a double posting on that back in 2015 when Mauritsen and Stevens paper came out showing that adding an adaptive iris mechanism to a climate model lowered its sensitivity by more than a third.
And, observational ECS ~1.65 can be computed from the Bode feedback model (or equivalently from Moncktons equation) by setting cLoud feedback to zero and ~halving the IPCC water vapor feedback (wvf). ECS=3==> f=.65. CO2 alone = ~1.2. IPCC says WVF alone is 2x CO2 or 2.4. So f 0.65= wvf 0.5 + clouds 0.15. Wvf 0.25 + clouds 0 ==> ECS 1.6.
ristvan January 18, 2018 at 1:14 pm
Once you realize that the temperature of the deep oceans is completely caused by geothermal energy (first of all during their creation and then maintained by geothermal flux plus all kinds of magma eruptions) and that the entire atmosphere is kept in hydrostatic equilibrium against gravity it should be clear that the atmosphere is not warming the surface but that the surface is warming the atmosphere (plus ~20% solar directly heating the atmosphere) .
Given the hydrostatic equilibrium the atmosphere is in, it is practically impossible for a trace gas like CO2 to have a noticeable influence, so Climate Sensitivity is very close to zero.
BW, you have a long way to go to prove your tectonic assertion. I could counter easily with lots of data, but suggest you go first in establishing a acientific basis for your assertion. Temp of deep oceans is near the pressure/salinity determined minimum, and is regulated by sea ice formation atbthe surface far above. You got othr geothermql data, bring it on.
Once you realize that the temperature of the deep oceans is completely caused by geothermal energy
Geothermal flux at surface is less than 1/10th of a w/m2. Even allowing for say (to be ridiculous) two orders of magnitude higher at ocean bottom than at surface, the oceans bottoms would be frozen solid. In fact if they were “completely” caused by geothermal flux, they’d be close to absolute zero. Perhaps poor wording on your part? Otherwise the assertion is completely unreasonable.
In my opinion there is a lot of speculation underpinning these exchanges.
We have a lot yet to learn and understand, but there is no reason to presume that the deep ocean would be close to absolute zero on a geologically active planet such as Earth. All we know is that the oceanic crust (basaltic) is more dense but far less thick than the continental crust (granitic), and is nearer to the Asthenosphere. We have no idea how warm the surface of the sea bed would be if we could theoretically drain the oceans.
The fact that we speculate that there are ice covered liquid oceans on other rocky bodies in our solar system that receive next to no solar irradiance suggests that it is far more difficult for a liquid to reach temperatures close to absolute zero on geologically active bodies.
That said, there are other factors at play that prevent the deep oceans form cooling and replenish energy.
deep ocean temperature is fully explained by the physical fact that water at maximum density is not solid (as most chemicals are), but liquid, close to freezing temperature. And this is produced at sea surface in polar areas. As long as there will be freezing seas, they will send down enough of cold, saline, maximum density water to fill the bottom of the ocean. Then, whether it cools or warms, this water will have diminishing density and it will move up.
ristvan January 18, 2018 at 4:21 pm
Not so much “other geothermal data”, more “accepted geothermal data”, but I believe to have the mechanism that explains why the temperature of the deep oceans is so high. (~275K, already 20K above the infamous 255K)
Incoming solar increases the temperature of the upper ~200-500m of the oceans. This energy is transferred to the atmosphere and then lost to space.
A typical temp. profile looks like this:
http://www.oc.nps.edu/nom/day1/annual_cycle.gif
Resulting in:
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/earthguide/diagrams/woce/
Let’s assume the 3 degree layer (dark blue colour) is the top of the deep oceans where the sun has had no influence on the temperature. Roughly 90% of the oceans surface has (much) higher temperatures than the deep oceans, and makes it impossible for bottom warmed water to reach the surface, except at high latitudes. Cooled water at high latitudes will sink towards the ocean floor (eg AntArctic Bottom Water) where it is warmed by the geothermal flux of ~100mW/m^2. These two mechanism create the thermohaline circulation, transporting bottom warmed water to high latitudes where it can transfer its energy to the atmosphere.
The deep oceans have been cooling down for the last ~85 million years, so apparently this mechanism is almost balanced, with the cooling effect slightly overriding the warming effect.
During that time the geothermal flux alone has added at least 50 times the entire Ocean Heat Content to the deep oceans.
To explain the very high deep ocean temperatures around 85 mya we should look at large magmatic events like the Ontong Java one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontong_Java_Plateau
These magma eruptions come on top of the more or less balanced warming/cooling by the geothermal flux and are imo a good explanation for high ocean temperatures.
1 million km^3 magma carries enough energy to warm ALL ocean water ~1K when cooling down.
I posted these ideas here:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/ben-wouters-geothermal-flux-and-the-deep-oceans/
and
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/ben-wouters-geothermal-flux-and-the-deep-oceans/
davidmhoffer January 19, 2018 at 12:00 am
Basic conduction says otherwise. If we switch off the sun the oceans would freeze over from the surface. Assuming a geothermal flux (GF) through the crust of 100 mW/m^2 the surface would cool down to around 40K or so to radiate away this energy (no atmosphere). Below 3-4 km ice we would still see liquid water at eg 275K heated by the GF through the crust.The ice layer providing the insulation to slow the flux from the heated water to the surface.
More or less like Lake Vostok.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok
Assuming a geothermal flux (GF) through the crust of 100 mW/m^2
So you are ASSUMING a flux at ocean bottom 1,000 TIMES as much as the flux at surface.
davidmhoffer January 19, 2018 at 11:04 pm
Not sure where you get the 1000 times from.
Widely used numbers for the average geothermal fluxes are 65 mW/m^2 for continental crust and 101 mW/m^2 for oceanic crust. Makes the Oceanic flux ~1,5 times higher than the continental flux.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient#Heat_flow
Maybe you need to read up on the use of prefixes?
Ben Wouters January 19, 2018 at 7:04 am
In this post two identical links. First one should be:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/ben-wouters-influence-of-geothermal-heat-on-past-and-present-climate/
Ben Wouters,
In skimming your comment, I misread. You indeed cited 100 mW/m2 which I read as 100 W/m2. Hence my confusion.
However, your 100 mW/m2 is the same as the 1/10 W/m2 that I cited. Which brings us back to my original assertion. If the temp at ocean bottom was solely due to geothermal, 1/10 W/m2 would barely keep it above absolute zero.
davidmhoffer January 20, 2018 at 10:27 am
The only other available energy source is the sun, and its influence doesn’t reach below ~500m. What other energy source besides geothermal do you propose that could change the temperature of the deep oceans?
For the ocean floor to transfer the 100 mW/m^2 geothermal flux to the deep ocean water its temperature must be slightly higher than the temperature of the deep ocean water. Where does your “barely above absolute zero” come from?
What causes the temperature of the the liquid water of Lake Vostok under ~4km of Antarctic icecap?
What other energy source besides geothermal do you propose that could change the temperature of the deep oceans?
I don’t have to propose an alternate energy source. In order to substantiate your claim you have to show that:
a) there are no other energy sources possible, and;
b) that the energy source you propose as the sole energy source is of an appropriate magnitude to support the temperature of the deep ocean.
You’ve done neither.
davidmhoffer January 21, 2018 at 8:41 pm
I’ve shown a typical annual temperature profile and a cross section of the 3 ocean basins:
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/earthguide/diagrams/woce/
Both show that whatever the source of warming from above its influence doesn’t reach below roughly 1000m. This is also what physics tells us. Solar energy doesn’t penetrate deeper than 100m, and almost all solar energy is absorbed in the upper 10m of ocean water.
Warm water doesn’t sink into colder water, and the highest salinity is near the surface.
Besides solar energy no other energy source is currently in operation that warms the surface of the oceans..
b) that the energy source you propose as the sole energy source is of an appropriate magnitude to support the temperature of the deep ocean.The oceans were probably (close to) boiling hot when they came into existence since they were sitting on (mostly) bare magma.
The sun creates an impenetrable surface layer for water warmed at the ocean floor, except at (very) high latitudes. 100 mW/m^2 is enough to warm the average ocean column 1K every ~5000 years.
Since the deep oceans have been cooling down for the last ~85 million years, my conclusion is that the warming at the ocean floor is offset by the cooling at high latitudes.
Large magmatic events like the Ontong Java one (~100 million km^3 magma) carry enough energy to warm ALL ocean water substantially. (100K in the case of the Ontong Java one since 1 million km^3 magma can increase the temperature of ALL ocean water ~1K.)
See the two posts above I linked to.
We have no idea how warm the surface of the sea bed would be if we could theoretically drain the oceans.
This is an intriguing idea. Would it be possible to devise an experiment where a honeycomb of hexagons spanning a few meters is covered by/embedded in a much larger sheet of well material with great insulation property and ‘unrolled’ on the ocean floor, trapping the water inside? Would the insulating property above be good enough to divine an accurate measure of heat from below?
I’m guessing the MSM will turn a blind eye to this, or spin it some negative way.
Many skeptical scientists are older since
they were smart enough not to risk
their careers being a “skeptic”.
To the leftists, Mr. Gray’s death
means only one thing:
One less scientist
to character attack.
And many of the older skeptical scientists got their education when the curricula were more rigorous.
Newer scientists have been trained in the plethora of institutions set up by governments at the instigation of the core group of CAGW scientists. The “outreach” has been phenomenal, from CRU, Potsdam, NCAR, Tyndall et al, there are related institutions all over the world, singing from the same hymn sheet, hence the “consensus” that “all climate institutions agree.”
A good example of this is the Potsdam “invasion” of Australia:
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2015/04/german-greenshirts-parachute-parkville/
“Melbourne University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) have formed a Melbourne-based joint graduate body called the Australian-German College of Climate & Energy Transitions. It has 16 multi-disciplinary PhD students, none pondering the 18-year halt to atmospheric warming.
This is yet another climate institute or centre in academia, one of hundreds interlocked throughout the Western world (at least a dozen are in Australia, the ANU alone boasting five varieties). It’s a lucrative industry for normally funding-starved academics.
Key Potsdam figures are:
Malte Meinshausen; PIK director Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber; deputy director Ottmar Edenhofer (also College supervisor); and member Stefan Rahmstorf (also College supervisor).”
Absolutely Pop, the warm side always wins, and I don’t see things changing anytime soon.
IMHO the reasons are simple
1. It’s political and little to do with science and more to do with optics. Governments can increase revenues via carbon taxes in order to save the world…win win.
2. Academic climate scientists are funding dependent and find it necessary for their livelihoods to infer large climate change from a negligible effect estimated in tenths of a degree.
3. Fear sells. The media has dumbed down the message to sound precise and unquestionable which a lay public accedes to with the help of peer pressure from a popular academic consensus.
Eventually, hopefully wisdom will dictate and someone will slay this hobgoblin (the man-made humidification apocalypse nudenick) and these folks can get back to work at the things that really do need fixing.
I can only be optimistic.
I’m guessing the MSM will turn a blind eye to this
Don’t be silly. Turning a blind eye would imply they are deliberately looking away and ignoring the facts. What you’re thinking of is eyes glazed over due to incomprehension followed by the question “so we’re all going to die?”. You can respond no, but they’ll revert to “but the science says” to which you can reply “this IS the science”. You’ll be rewarded by that glazed eye look and then… “yeah… so we’re all gonna die”.
Thank you all for publishing this – a good man and a great man…
Best, Allan
Oh dear. I had high hopes but then saw the dreaded Trenberth loom into sight with its numerical radiative flux intensities treated as if they were a conserved quantity with the ability to use simple arithmetic addition and sign it according to up/down. Very sad start, is it worth me even bothering to read the paper ? (because if the same faulty thinking is within it I think I am going to pass).
Badger you have to state a hypothesis before you falsify it.
Ian you (and everybody else) have to understand what the numerical value of radiative flux intensity actually represents, how you can treat it where there are different sources (at different temperatures), what the direction (vector) means and the relevance to the S-B equation BEFORE using it in any kind of diagram (or cartoon).
This is physics. NOTHING to do with hypotheses. If you don’t start with the correct understanding of ALL the physics relating to atmospheric science then any conclusions reached are likely to be pure BS and bear no relation to the reality.
There is unfortunately a very poor understanding of electromagnetic radiation in atmospheric science, people seem generally to be quite obsessed with the ficticious “photon” as if it were a real particle of zero mass but carrying finite energy. Fiction and nonsense are for children, adults should just concern themselves with real physics and a proper understanding of the real world.
I recommend a visit to your local secondhand bookstore to snap up those text books from the 1950’s or earlier which contain the truth of the matter.
Reverend Badger
I am with you on the criticism of the chart from Trenberth but it serves a useful purpose. This cartoon of the energy flows is valuable because it shows something on the bottom left that is not discussed in the radiation budget on the rest of the frame: the 168 W/m^2 that is “absorption solar radiation” collected by the surface. It states that the surface is directly heated by the insolation and gives a value for it. Right next to it is drawn an IR path going out in which all 168 leaves the heated surface by IR transmission. “Radiation is converted to heat energy causing emission of IR…”
That does not represent anything close to reality. The incoming solar energy does indeed heat the surface and I will not quibble with the 168 W value. It is close enough for argument’s sake. But not all that energy is converted to IR and re-radiated into the atmosphere. No way.
A substantial portion of that heat is transferred (mass convection) to the atmosphere involving no radiation at all. A hot surface heats the air. Simple as that. Suppose the amount of heat transferred in this manner is half, or 84 W/m^2 convected to the air at ground level. Anyone looking across a hot parking lot can see the heat causing light to shimmer in the rising thermals. That rising heat is not radiative, it is convective with a small radiative component. There is no convective heat flow shown in Trenberth’s cartoon at all.
Let’s see if the Author agrees with my proposed heat transport mechanism:
“I hypothesize that the earth’s energy balance is regulated by precipitation (primarily via deep cumulonimbus (Cb) convection) and that this precipitation counteracts warming due to CO2.”
He agrees. He says that deep cumulonimbus convection moves a great deal of energy. This is part of the thunderstorm heat regulation hypothesis. Convective heat transfer transports energy in the form of water vapour (that condenses high above the surface releasing masses of heat) and by thermals rising without radiating ‘all that energy’ anywhere. How can I say that? Because the heat transferred by the rising air currents is not transported only by hot CO2 molecules, it is 99.5% transported by nitrogen and oxygen and argon. In other words, the transfer of heat upwards by convection provides nearly no opportunity for CO2 and water vapour to radiate much of the energy in all directions, up or down because those gases are not radiative to any meaningful extent in the IR wavelengths.
So there is a great deal of embedded heat and water vapour gas phase-change heat sent to high altitude without being involved in the IR process described in the cartoon, which is just wrong, incomplete, misleading, partial.
Next, and even more importantly than that faux pas, is the situation where there might be no greenhouse gases at all. With no GHGs in the atmosphere, the same process of surface heating by incoming insolation would proceed, and the air would be heated, and it would rise, and it would reach some height. But without water vapour, it would not release evaporative heat, and it would not cool by radiation of IR because, in the absence of GHGs it simply could not do so! The implication here is powerful: if a GHG-free atmosphere does not cool by IR radiation, what then will the equilibrium temperature be?
The article claims that adding CO2 to the atmosphere increases global temperatures about 1 degree per doubling. Really? How then can that same atmosphere, without GHG’s be warmer that it is with them? Their argument is fundamentally defective.
The article provides that 1 Watt/m^2 could heat the atmosphere by 180 C over the selected period. What then would the temperature rise be if it were instead 84 Watts/m^2 heating an atmosphere with no GHG’s? The answer is >15,000 degrees. At some point, of course, the hot atmosphere would heat the ground enough at night to radiate the equivalent of the incoming insolation and it would stabilise at some temperature far above the current 15 C.
Using only the information presented in this paper, and pointing out the error in Trenberth’s cartoon, it can be demonstrated that there is no assurance at all that doubling CO2 would lead to a 1 degree C rise in temperature, and further, that without any GHG’s at all, the air would be heated, net, by perhaps 84 W/m^2 rather than the paltry 1 Watt proposed in the analysis for a GHG-containing atmosphere.
It may be possible that the radiative cooling effect of continuously adding GHG’s would initially be a very strong cooling, the temperature might fall to some inflection point and thereafter rise again as the gas concentrations increased. But the idea that having no GHG’s in the atmosphere would result in a cold atmosphere is silly. It is contradicted by the “168 W absorbed” note from Trenberth. It is contradicted by radiative physics, and it is contradicted by observations.
An atmosphere without GHG’s is heated mightily by the surface yet cannot cool by radiation. Full stop. Convective heat transfer bypasses much of the lower atmosphere where the “back-radiation” is supposed to be having its deleterious effects. The glaring omission of the direct heating of air by the warmed surface draws our attention to the possibility that adding water vapour, at best, only warms from some modest value similar to the current paradigm, because in its complete absence, the air temperature would be far higher than it is now.
Good thinking – now check your work (explanation) by applying it to Venus. Does it still all look right for the 99.5% (ish) CO2 case, do all the figures “compute”?
Yes it applies to Venus. The same error is made about Venus as is made about Earth. The claim that an atmosphere is heated only by IR is a non-starter. So what follows? That it is heated by IR and convective mass transfer (newbies: I didn’t name it that – it is what it is called). So if an atmosphere is transparent to IR (no GHG’s) then only the surface heating remains.
Heated by the surface and unable to cool by radiation of IR, the Venusian atmosphere would become exceedingly hot, with a ground-to-TOA temperature profile consonant with a lapse rate. Having no way to cool the hot surface save by heating the atmosphere even further, the surface temperature would rise and its IR emission flux would eventually equilibrate. It would be exceedingly hot.
Adding CO2 to the atmosphere (and water of course) would permit the atmosphere to cool by IR radiation. The clouds would block the solar insolation from reaching the surface and you get what we observe today.
That global temperatures throughout a billion years of Earth’s history hasn’t varied more than a couple of percent K up or down is basically the logical starting point that a thoughtful scientist would have relied on in his deliberations on whither climate.
He would have known that colossal collisions with bolides that literally shook the planet to the core, spilled trillions of tonnes of its 1000 C subcrustal magma onto the surface, boiled portions of it’s oceans, vaporized water to supersaturation of it’s atmoshpere, filled with it with poison gases and exterminated 90% of species of life was countered and corrected by the planets own mechanisms.
With a head start like those disasters, there was no runaway tipping points associated with these huge wrenches off its equilibrium. There are two axioms I draw from this and a prognostication that any reasonable thinker would have to consider:
Axiom 1: the earth will continue to react with negative feedbacks to any action that would move it away from its long term band of variability, to restore this position.
Axiom 2: Considering the Earth’s powerful restorative response to the colossal energy of the worst intrusion into the planet’s thermal regime, mankind does not and will not command a measurable fraction of the might needed to cause other than a temporary puny scar, quickly healed, on a very localized area of the planet- a fleabite on an elephan’s rump. And let me add that no terrible existential prediction has ever come to pass.
Hiroshima- terrible stuff indeed, but in less than a year radiation had returned to background and they simply rebuilt. Chernobyl created aanxiety across all Europe and beyond and a bleak future. The exclusion zone is now the Serengeti game park of Europe. Oh the destructors keep massaging the meta data and google obfuscates objective searches to preserve the hysterical meme but the mutants crippled by radiation have long since been eaten up by wolves! Babushkas now in their 90s have been gathering mushrooms, berries and picking wild green vegetables there for 30 years.
Prediction: With rapid greening of the planet and burgeoning harvests, with peak population a few decades away, with abundant cheap energy and bountiful mineral and biological resources, and with the ingenuity of humankind, prosperity and peace and a natural death of Malthusian dogma that is the sustenance of the ugly totaliites is not many decades away.
+ 4,6*10^9 🙂
A million points for a very precise explanation of the fears and exaggerations that have filled our MSN for decades.
“… when CO2 doubles near the end of this century].”
560 ppm will (assuming present trends remain) be reached sometime between 2075-2087.
{(560 – 410)/2.4 (+/-0.2)} + 2018 = 2080 best est.
It doesn’t work like that. There will not be enough carbonaceous fuel available in that period of time, and the sinks play havoc with that forecast as they expand in capacity. It is unlikely the CO2 level can reach 525 ppm by the time peak coal is reached in 2070-2080.
I have read the whole paper and I like it.
A few items that point to CO2 not controlling the Climate apart from the chalenge to the “physics”.
1. Compare the graph of Annually-averaged 300mb relative humidity for the tropics to the graph of Cloud cover in that area as it relates to Surface Temperatures, the RH & Clouds go down as the Temp & CO2 go up. The opposite of AGW theory.
2. His theory predicts the increase in Outgoing IR that has actually been measured.
“the RH & Clouds go down as the Temp & CO2 go up. The opposite of AGW theory.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/32/11636.full
Upper-tropospheric moistening in response to anthropogenic warming
Chung, Soden, Sohn, Lei Shi
“Water vapor in the upper troposphere strongly regulates the strength of water-vapor feedback, which is the primary process for amplifying the response of the climate system to external radiative forcings. Monitoring changes in upper-tropospheric water vapor and scrutinizing the causes of such changes are therefore of great importance for establishing the credibility of model projections of past and future climates. Here, we use coupled ocean–atmosphere model simulations under different climate-forcing scenarios to investigate satellite-observed changes in global-mean upper-tropospheric water vapor. Our analysis demonstrates that the UPPER TROPOSPHRIC MOISTENING OBSERVED OVER THE PERIOD 1979–2005 cannot be explained by natural causes and results principally from an anthropogenic warming of the climate. By attributing the observed increase directly to human activities, this study verifies the presence of the largest known feedback mechanism for amplifying anthropogenic climate change.”
(my caps).
“cannot be explained by natural causes”
The old argument from IGNORANCE.
and toneb falls for it every time.
Name ALL the natural causes, .. known and unknown.
We are all waiting for the list, toneb. !!
If you don’t know ALL the possible natural causes, then it really is an IGNORANT, ANTI-SCIENCE argument.
“Here, we use coupled ocean–atmosphere model simulations”
ROFLMAO !!!
That know nothing about clouds and a so far off with temperatures that it is farcical.
positive Amo Signal, PDO signal, the El nino balance,… all events that blurt up the moisture and oh yes sorry Toneb that moisture also goes into the upper troposphere. then there are the outflows of tropical cyclones… Sorry those aren’t dry neither….
The claims of this paper disagree with the observations.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericRelativeHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
Tone B
I read the PNAS stuff from time to time and I just cant help thinking of it as its mnemonic. The material is what comes out of the mnemonic.
I always assumed from your posts you were a long way from them geographically. I must have been mistaken.
Wayne From Oilberta.
Toneb, using a paper that “Models” over actual values measured.
“Toneb, using a paper that “Models” over actual values measured.”
You must have missed where it said….
“Our analysis demonstrates that the UPPER TROPOSPHERIC MOISTENING OBSERVED OVER THE PERIOD 1979–2005 cannot be explained by natural causes and results principally from an anthropogenic warming of the climate. “
“I always assumed from your posts you were a long way from them geographically. I must have been mistaken.”
?
Complexity of systems means CAGW models are collages of black boxes where little to nothing is known. Like mesosphere. Or virga contribution to sensible conduction . Missing carbon?
As an amateur, I read the paper and said “Seems reasonable” to myself. I’d be interested to read an opposing opinion from someone with an appropriate qualification in atmospheric physics.
Any takers?
I’ve been quoting this work for several years. I have a version of Dr. Gray’s work open in my browser as we speak. I now refer to it as Gray’s hypothesis and the negative feedback from convection that he describes as Gray feedback. It is all based on very simple physics and supported by the observational data.
The only response I get from true believers when I explain it is denial. Since it doesn’t appear in a peer reviewed journal they discount it immediately.
For those wanting a more detailed description of this work.
http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/gray2010_heartland.pdf
Yes, and his theory aligns with the measured data!
This post also highlights a feeling I’ve had for some time, that both sides are going out of their way to avoid discussing the Pan Evaporation Paradox.
I think it is because they all have a dog in the game. The data is disruptive because the cause doesn’t have to be explained for the damage to be done and a number of precious theories have been struck a mortal blow!
And it doesn’t matter where it is measured – wet or dry, desert or tropics, the trend has been down for 68* years to date!
*For 50 years(1950-2000) the trend was sharply down, before a slight recovery 2000-2010 but sharply down again since then(Back to the near lowest levels of 1993).
Evaporation pan observations in South African on farms (1600 stations) report no change in the past 100 years.
Gary Pearse January 18, 2018 at 2:34 pm
That is one of the most cogent compendiums for our planet’s climate that seems never to be considered by the so-called climate “scientists. Without delving into the “science” of the climate, these events, among many not enumerated, gives the lay-person ideas that can actually be thought about and duly questioned.
When I think about those historical “planetary catastrophes” , why didn’t our planet boil over??????
Maybe adding 200-300 parts per MILLION is quite negligible to our climate, but indeed a boon to our flora and fauna.
“CO2 warming ultimately results in less water vapor (not more) in the upper troposphere. The GCMs therefore predict unrealistic warming of global temperature.”
But less water vapour in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere would allow increased penetration of solar near infrared into the mid-lower troposphere and warm it. And where’s the evidence that it’s the result of ‘CO2 warming’? it could be a negative feedback to reduced solar forcings.
Thank you for this access Anthony. Big thanks to Dr. Phil K and his associates also.
I hope many folks actually download and read this compelling paper. It is worth it. It certainly induced some forcing and feedback on thoughts on this subject for me 😉
Thanks from me as well, the paper is ultimately just the articulation of a hypothesis, but the preamble is very insightful.
Figures 2 and 3 were an eye-opener for me, and figures 4, 5, and 8 make for a beautiful rebuttal of (those specific) climate models!
Not necessarily the case. Assuming a climate sensitivity of 3C and using the current atmospheric CO2 concentration of 407 ppm, we would expect to see warming of about 1.6C since 1880, rather than the ~ 1.0C observed. However, this figure represents ‘equilibrium’ climate sensitivity (ECS); the temperature we’d expect to see after the dust settles, so to speak. Given thermal lag of the oceans, etc, ECS would not be expected to be reached for several decades after the peak in greenhouse gas concentrations. So it’s too early to conclude that we have not seen the warming we would have expected.
The warming we have seen since 1880 corresponds to a transient climate response (TCR) sensitivity of about 1.8C. But just back-casting like that may be too simplistic a way of calculating it. IPCC AR5 concluded with high confidence that several tenths of a degree of potential warming was offset by the reflective impact of sulphate emissions since the latter half of the 20th century, for example.
Talk of expecting a warming of 180C by now, or of over 5C warming of the oceans was never predicted by anyone and amounts to just nonsense, I’m afraid.
One problem with that, 75-80% of the increase in CO2 has been since WW2.
Which is why those in control of the data have reduced the temperatures from those days by over 0.5C.
otherwise we have a massive increase in CO2 and virtually no increase in Temperature during that period.
BEST publish their raw data for the land only component of their global dataset here: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Global/Raw_TAVG_complete.txt
According to the raw data, up to May 2017, the global warming trend since 1946 (end of WWII) is +0.184C/dec; a total warming of just over +1.3C. That compares to the ‘quality controlled’ rate over exactly the same period, of +0.174C/dec, or just under +1.3C. The trend since 1946 is warmer in the raw data than it is in the BEST processed data.
I also looked at the 5 years from Jan 1946 to Dec 1950 to see if they had, as you claim, “reduced the temperatures from those days by over 0.5C”. The average temperature in the processed BEST data 1946-1950 is -0.03C; in the raw data over the same period it’s -0.02C. So the processing led to a reduction of 0.01C between 1946 and 1950, or about 50 times less than you suggest.
I was not talking about BEST data.
Don’t you find it even slightly odd that NASA/NOAA admit to lowering the their raw data by over 0.5C with their adjustments, but BEST Unadjusted data matches it without adjustments?
It is also Land Only Data and therefore not comparable to NOAA, GISS, HADCRUT, UAH or RSS Global Data.
Bottom line, DWR, is that the warming since the LIA is so small (and within the range of natural variability) that no one yet really knows what’s going on…
I would like to see an accurate natural variables climate model . Till that is done and proven accurate overlaying a trace gas who’s abundance greens the earth is rather pointless .
The massive increases in CO2 since the industrial age and growing use of fossil fuels has proven not to be the canary in a coal mine while climate models grossly overstating actual warming and only achieved disproving the hypothesis .
All that huff and puff , billions spent and tens of thousands of premature deaths due to fuel poverty from an overblown scam . What a tragedy , what a waste .
Biased MSM coverage is now on full display as the illegal spying on USA citizens is covered up
by the fifth estate and most of the MSM . It now makes the climate con make much more sense .
Had Hillary won none of this criminal activity would have seen the light of day .
President Trump was right and the gators don’t like it .
An interesting paper.
There are two fundamental flaws in the IPCC hypothesis:
1) The definition of Radiative Forcing (RF) does NOT comply with the first law of thermodynamics, in that an energy flux (1.6 Watts/sq.m) passing between two thermodynamic systems MUST result in an increase in energy state in the recipient system, but the definition precludes that. (see AR4 & 5 WG1)
2) The purported energy flux resulting from back radiation from GHGs does NOT comply with the second law of thermodynamics, in that for any energy flux to pass from a lower state system to a higher state system a source of outside energy is required, which is NOT available in the back radiation situation described by the IPCC.
These two flaws have created a great deal of confusion in the scientific community and has thus created the Satanic CO2 Meme which has gone viral in political circles.
Sadly mere observation of the chaotic climate system will not reveal these flaws unless the mindset of this Meme is changed and returned to comply with thermodynamic law. However Dr. Bill Gray’s article does go some way in this direction, which is to be commended.
Is there anyone out there willing to challenge this view?
Cognog2 wrote: “Is there anyone out there willing to challenge this view?”
Sure. Photons and molecules do not obey the 2LoT. They have no temperature, which is proportional to the mean kinetic energy of a large group of rapidly colliding molecules. The molecules that emit and absorb an individual photon do not have a temperature, nor any way to assess the temperature of their neighbors. The photon carries no information from the emitting molecule to the absorbing molecule about the temperature of the molecule that emitted it or its neighbors. Individual molecules and photons are obeying the laws of QM, not thermodynamics.
Temperature is only defined for large groups of colliding molecules. QM tells us photons will be both directions, but more will travel from hot to cold than cold to hot. The NET FLUX is heat flow, and it is always from hot to cold.
The same thing is true for collisions between individual molecules: Sometimes a collision transfers kinetic energy from slower-moving molecule to faster-moving one, but the opposite happens more often. If slower-moving molecules never transfer kinetic energy to faster-moving ones, then eventually all molecules will be moving at the same speed and there will be no Boltzmann distribution of molecular speeds. No Brownian motion – which EInstein was awarded a Nobel prize for explaining.
As for radiative forcing, it involves the flux to space and it is impractical to measure the rise in interstellar temperature produced by slowing down the rate at which thermal infrared escapes to space.
This post says: “Assuming that there has been at least an average of 1 Wm-2 CO2 blockage of IR energy to space over the last 50 years and that this energy imbalance has been allowed to independently accumulate and cause climate change over this period with no compensating response, it would have had the potential to bring about changes in any one of the following global conditions.”
“Warm the top 100 meters of the globe’s oceans over 5°C – actual warming over this period has been about 0.5°C, or 10 or more times less.”
Whoever wrote this section (it doesn’t come from Professor Gray’s manuscript), isn’t distinguishing between radiative forcing and radiative imbalance. The IPCC says radiative forcing is currently about 2.5 W/m2 vs pre-industrial. However, the current radiative imbalance is only 0.7 W/m2 (according to ARGO). And that imbalance has been widening over the last 50 years. The imbalance today isn’t 2.5 W/m2 is because the earth is now emitting an additional 1.8 W/m2 of LWR – because it is warmer. So the radiative imbalance going into these calculations is at least 2-fold too big.
According to my calculations, a 1 W/m2 radiative IMBALANCE is capable of uniformly warming a 50 m mixed layer of the ocean and the atmosphere at an INITIAL rate of 0.2 degC per year, which is consistent with the calculation above. However, assuming any radiative forcing remains constant, this radiative imbalance will shrink as the planet warms.
If climate sensitivity is 3.7 K/doubling = 3.7 K/3.7 W/m2 = 1 K/W/m2 = 1 W/m2/K, then: 1) The planet will reach a steady state after it warms only 1 degC. 2) When it is 1 degC warmer, it will be emitting 1 W/m2 more LWR and the radiative imbalance will be zero. 3) If the initial warming rate persisted for 2.5 years, the planet then would be 0.5 degC warmer and therefore emitting 0.5 W/m2 more LWR, cutting the initial imbalance and warming rate in half. Within about a decade, the imbalance will be approaching 0 W/m2 and temperature will be approaching a steady state 1 degC warmer. IT IS CRAZY TO IMPLY THAT A RADIATIVE IMBALANCE REMAINS CONSTANT FOR 50 YEARS AND THAT WARMING DOESN’T EFFECT THE RADIATIVE IMBALANCE IS CRAZY. (I doubt Professor Gray made this mistake.)
If ECS were 1.8 K/doubling = 2 W/m2/K, then steady state warming would be 0.5 degC from a 1 W/m2 forcing. In that case, the initial warming rate will be cut in half in only 1.25 years and steady state will be approached twice as fast.
The problem Frank with this
Is it’s wrong. It implies some kind of steady state on a daily basis.
The premise that a co2 increase causes warming is dependent on everything else being the same. It’s not.
Their whole model of is wrong or deliberately blind.
Water vapor is a huge capacitor, that’s charged during the day, and created in bulk in the tropics, and at night there are 2 cooling profiles, and the second directly provide negative feedback to increases warming during the cooling cycle.
What ppl don’t get is most places equilibrium is not with the surface, but the lower troposphere WV.
And it controls temps with pressure, temp and TPW setting dew point. Co2 has little impact to this.
CS <0.5°C/doubling
And measured sensitivity to insolation is <0.02°F/W/^2 in the extratropics.
Micro6500 wrote: “it’s wrong. It implies some kind of steady state on a daily basis.
The premise that a co2 increase causes warming is dependent on everything else being the same. It’s not.”
I believe you are incorrect. Since I’ve calculated how long it will take at an initial rate to reach a new steady state and explained how the rate of approach to a new steady state depends on climate sensitivity and the narrowing radiative imbalance, it should be obvious that I am not assuming a steady state always exists. It takes about a decade for the atmosphere and mixed layer to approach a new steady state in response to a sudden forcing. However, I did forget to mention that heat will gradually be transported below the mixed layer into the deeper ocean, further slowing the approach to steady state. As long as that heat flux is significant compared to the forcing, temperature rise will continue. However, if forcing stabilizes at 6 W/m2 and the deep ocean has warmed enough so that only 0.3 W/m2 are being transported below the mixed layer, we should be 95% of the way to a new steady state. That’s close enough IMO to call it steady state.
Micro6500 writes: “What ppl don’t get is most places equilibrium is not with the surface, but the lower troposphere WV.”
Climate sensitivity is determined by how TOA OLR and reflected SWR change with surface temperature. If they increase 1 W/m2 per 1 K of surface warming, then ECS is 3.7 K/doubling. If they increase 2 W/m2/K, ECS is 1.8 K/doubling. If they increase 3.2 W/m2/K (in other words, if Planck feedback is the only feedback or the others cancel), ECS will be 1.2 K/doubling.
The temperature-dependent change in the flux across the TOA controls the change in vertical fluxes with warming elsewhere in the atmosphere. Saturation vapor pressure rises 7%/K, which would be about 6 W/m2/K increase in convection of latent heat. However, the surface flux can’t rise 6 W/m2/K IF the flux through the TOA is rising only 1-2 W/m2/K. The extra heat will build-up in the upper troposphere and shut down convection.
The control point is radiation crossing the TOA. If too much heat crosses the TOA, the upper atmosphere will cool and convection will increase. If too little, the opposite will occur. Your diurnal cycle involving water vapor is irrelevant to these controlling forces. The temperature of the upper troposphere doesn’t change appreciably between night and day. Net radiative cooling is about 1 degK/day and negated by convection that develops whenever the lapse rate is unstable.
Most people don’t realize that the TOA can’t emit an addition 6 W/m2 per K of surface warming. Emission in the upper atmosphere depends on the local temperature, which controls surface temperature via the MALR. When there is more CO2 and water vapor high in the atmosphere, the average photon needs to be emitted from higher to escape to space. Higher means colder, which means fewer photons until the local temperature rises. To prevent 6 W/m2/K of latent heat from leaving the surface, overturning of the atmosphere slows and relative humidity in the boundary layer increases, slowing evaporation. The IPCC models are not capable of properly modeling convection or the drying of the atmosphere with altitude, so there is no reason to believe they get any of the key processes correct.
But if you have the physics of what is happening here wrong, this is wrong before you even start.
If you do not understand how the rate changes, and what is changing to cause it to change by the minute, your assumptions are wrong.
I don’t understand the graph in your post, but have seen other examples from you of nighttime cooling limited by condensation once 100% RH is reached. This is irrelevant to me.
The big picture for climate is radiation transfer across the TOA and how much temperature change is needed to restore a steady state after a perturbation like rising GHGs. The physics (mostly convection) that distributes that heat WITHIN our planet is responsible for different climates in different locations. Those physical principles (MALR, for example) will remain the same, though absolute humidity could rise.
I grew up in coastal California, where night and morning fog (marine boundary layer clouds) had a massive impact. If you woke up to no fog on a summer morning, it would reach the high 80s F. If it burned off by 10 am, the high would be about 80 F. If it didn’t burn off at all, barely 70 F. Dew on the grass many mornings, but no rain in the summer. Less fog as summer developed. Interconversion of sensible and latent heat was critical to this local climate. Moving north and south along the Pacific coast produces slightly different patterns. Rising GHGs might perturb different locations in somewhat differently.
However, we are concerned with GLOBAL warming – the big picture. Temperature control for the planet starts with radiative fluxes across the TOA and flows to the surface through the lapse rate: MALR in the tropics, slightly less than MALR elsewhere in regions not well mixed by vertical convection. The amount of heat that can be moved from the surface to higher in the atmosphere (where it can escape radiation) is limited by the need for an unstable lapse rate to move that heat! Clouds and precipitation are the produced by rising air masses. (A few places (like coastal California) have clouds that are not the result of rising air masses and create a deal deal of uncertainty for modelers.)
Your obsession (too negative a word, sorry) with a tiny bit of heat being converted into latent heat for a few hours every night in one location doesn’t effect this big picture. It may indeed explain why night time lows are higher than they would be otherwise. If you are dealing with effects associated with marine boundary layer clouds, then they are extremely important to the energy flux across the TOA because they reflect SWR without reducing the upward flux of LWR.
Then you’ll never get it.
What happens at toa is controlled in the atm column, and the surface.
What that shows is from the surface there is not a lot of differential temperature in the morning after the rate of cooling has slowed, as compared to sunset.
The optical window open except for TPW, it is always dumping energy to space, 20-30W/m^2, but it varies based on dew point. That sets AM temp, then insolation as modulated by weather sets max temp.
This varies in the extratropics as the angle of the Sun change, with the length of day changing, comes a known change in insolation.
This modulation sets how much radiation reaches toa. This, regulated output is what you’re looking at, I’t just follows dew point, which is mostly driven by the Sun, but there are many delay channels (one reason the idea of an imbalance is nonsense).
Gotta go.
Obsession is okay, it overturns the entire apple cart. They have you snipe hunting with the rules they laid out.
Micro6500 wrote:
I focus on the climate feedback parameter – how much do LWR and SWR radiative flux across the TOA change with Ts. Units are W/m2/K. The reciprocal is climate sensitivity K/(W/m2), except that the IPCC converts W/m2 to doublings of CO2. The climate sensitivity parameter is the sum of LWR feedbacks (Planck, WV, LR, and cloud LWR) and SWR feedbacks (cloud reflection and surface albedo). If one knew the climate feedback parameter, one can predict the temperature change at steady-state associated with any forcing.
You mentioned the optical window. Let’s consider only radiation traveling directly from the ground to space through the atmospheric window. Just considering window wavelengths, the effective emissivity is about 0.05 (or a little higher): W = eoT^4 = 0.05*o*288^4 = 20 W/m2. dW/dT = 0.27 W/m2/K. (Bigger than I thought!) Therefore, for every degK the ground increases in temperature, 0.27 W/m2 more escapes through the window and the TOA. This is unchanged by water vapor feedback, lapse rate feedback, ice-albedo feedback, and cloud feedback except for changes in the percentage of the sky covered by clouds.
So what happens if dew or frost condenses on the ground and raises its temperature slightly for a few hours in the morning? Climate models probably don’t handle this problem correctly. If the ground is a few degK warmer after GW, are these weaknesses of AOGCMs going to make a big difference. Not if the relative humidity stays roughly the same so that the same amount of dew or frost condenses.
You maybe focused on the atmosphere near the surface. Once heat is in the lower atmosphere near the surface, when it is emitted by GHGs in the atmosphere, that emission is concentrated in wavelengths that are easily absorbed. The atmosphere is pretty opaque at those wavelengths. So vertical transfer there depends mostly on convection.
During the seasonal cycle, the LWR escaping through the TOA increases 2.2 W/m2/K according to CERES. That includes LWR directly from the surface and from the atmosphere. If I accept this answer, I can forget about all of the details that produce this result, including those that fascinate you.
Figures 2 and 3 of Professor Gray’s incomplete manuscript may have some problems. Radiative transfer calculations show that a doubling of CO2 would cause an instantaneous reduction in TOA OLR of 3.7 W/m2, but also an 0.8 W/m2 increase in DLR. (The difference is warming the atmosphere.) Professor Gray assumes that both convection and radiation will increase in the current proportion to carry an additional 3.7 W/m2 from the surface to the atmosphere. Because the atmosphere (where DLR reaching the surface is emitted) is warming at the same rate as the surface, the increase in upward emission of LWR from rising temperature is nearly negated by the increase in downward LWR. Then rising CO2 is adding 0.8 W/m2 to the downward flux and rising absolute humidity is adding more. Exploring with MODTRAN suggests rising surface temperature produce negligible net increase in radiative cooling.
Figure 3 suggests that rising surface temperature will “push” more heat into the atmosphere. As discussed above, this won’t have with radiation. And convection of latent heat can only occur as fast as the upper atmosphere can radiatively cooling. Heat isn’t “pushed up” from the surface, it is “pulled up” by an unstable lapse rate. If emission from the upper atmosphere rises at a rate of 1 or 2 W/m2/K, then increase heat flux from the surface by convection must rise at the same rate. Saturation vapor pressure rises 7%/K and so will latent heat (6 W/m2/K), but not if overturning of the atmosphere continues at the current rate. However, if 6 W/m2/K more heat can’t escape to space as radiation, overturning of the atmosphere will slow. This is how AOGCMs produce high climate sensitivity: overturning of the atmosphere slows, relative humidity near the surface rises (suppressing evaporation), and upward and outward transfer of heat rises by only 1 W/m2/K.
Professor Gray says the earth’s natural thermostat is evaporation and precipitation. However, that natural thermostat can’t function if the heat it removes from the surface can’t escape fast enough to space from the upper troposphere. Planck feedback is -3.2 W/m2/K, but rising absolute humidity reduces this value. Cloud LWR and SWR feedback also effect the net increase in radiative cooling across the TOA.
If, you just look at the average atm, for a fraction of a second, you will not see what I think MODTRAN would detect.
What you (royal you) have to do is run it sequential over a 24 hr cycle, with a range of sample atm’s with different amounts of water.
This should show water vapor regulating surface temps via latent heat being released late at night from cooling water vapor.