Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Over at the Notrickszone, there’s much buzz over a new paper entitled Molar Mass Version of the Ideal Gas Law Points to a Very Low Climate Sensitivity, by Robert Holmes. The Notrickszone article is headlined with the following quotation from the paper:
“In particular, formula 5 (and 6) as presented here, totally rules out any possibility that a 33°C greenhouse effect of the type proposed by the IPCC in their reports can exist in the real atmosphere.”
– Holmes, 2017
And here’s the abstract:
Abstract: It has always been complicated mathematically, to calculate the average near surface atmospheric temperature on planetary bodies with a thick atmosphere. Usually, the Stefan Boltzmann (S-B) black body law is used to provide the effective temperature, then debate arises about the size or relevance of additional factors, including the ‘greenhouse effect’. Presented here is a simple and reliable method of accurately calculating the average near surface atmospheric temperature on planetary bodies which possess a surface atmospheric pressure of over 10kPa.
This method requires a gas constant and the knowledge of only three gas parameters; the average near-surface atmospheric pressure, the average near surface atmospheric density and the average mean molar mass of the near-surface atmosphere. The formula used is the molar version of the ideal gas law. It is here demonstrated that the information contained in just these three gas parameters alone is an extremely accurate predictor of atmospheric temperatures on planets with atmospheres >10kPa. This indicates that all information on the effective plus the residual near-surface atmospheric temperature on planetary bodies with thick atmospheres, is automatically ‘baked-in’ to the three mentioned gas parameters.
Given this, it is shown that no one gas has an anomalous effect on atmospheric temperatures that is significantly more than any other gas. In short; there can be no 33°C ‘greenhouse effect’ on Earth, or any significant ‘greenhouse effect’ on any other planetary body with an atmosphere of >10kPa.
Instead, it is a postulate of this hypothesis that the residual temperature difference of 33°C between the S-B effective temperature and the measured near-surface temperature is actually caused by adiabatic auto-compression.
Dang … “adiabatic auto-compression” as a permanent energy source. Is it patented yet?
Please forgive my sarcasm, I just get tired of endless claims of endless energy … onwards. Here is a look at the various planetary atmospheres:
And finally, here is his math that leads to his mystery formula. From the paper:
Molar Mass Version of Ideal Gas Law Calculates
Planetary Surface Temperatures
The ideal gas law may be used to more accurately determine surface temperatures of planets with thick atmospheres than the S-B black body law [4], if a density term is added; and if kg/m³ is used for density instead of gms/m³, the volume term V may be dropped. This formula then may be known as the molar mass version of the ideal gas law. The ideal gas law is;
P V = n R T (1)
Convert to molar mass;
P V = m/M R T (2)
Convert to density;
PM / RT = m / V = ρ (3)
Drop the volume, find for density;
ρ = P / (R T / M) (4)
Find for temperature;
T = P / (R ρ/M) (5)
[VARIABLES]
V = volume
m = mass
n = number of moles
T = near-surface atmospheric temperature in Kelvin
P = near-surface atmospheric pressure in kPa
R = gas constant (m³, kPa, kelvin⁻¹, mol⁻¹) = 8.314
ρ = near-surface atmospheric density in kg/m³
M = near-surface atmospheric mean molar mass gm/mol⁻¹
Now, I agree with all of that. Well, other than the strange form of the last equation, Equation 5. I’d simplify it to
T =P M / (ρ R) (5)
But that’s just mathematical nitpicking. The underlying math is correct. That’s not the problem. The problem is where it goes from there. The author makes the following claim:
In short, the hypothesis being put forward here, is that in the case of Earth, solar insolation provides the ‘first’ 255 Kelvin – in accordance with the black body law [11]. Then adiabatic auto-compression provides the ‘other’ 33 Kelvin, to arrive at the known and measured average global temperature of 288 Kelvin. The ‘other’ 33 Kelvin cannot be provided by the greenhouse effect, because if it was, the molar mass version of the ideal gas law could not then work to accurately calculate planetary temperatures, as it clearly does here.
I’m sorry, but the author has not demonstrated what he claims.
All that Robert Holmes has shown is that the atmospheres of various planets obey, to a good approximation, the Ideal Gas Law.
… So what?
I mean that quite seriously. So what? In fact, it would be a huge shock if planetary atmospheres did NOT generally obey the Ideal Gas Law. After all, they’re gases, and it’s not just a good idea. It’s a Law …
But that says exactly NOTHING about the trajectory or the inputs that got those planetary atmospheres to their final condition. Whether the planet is warmed by the sun or by internal radioactivity or whether the warming is increased by GHGs is NOT determinable from the fact that the atmospheres obey the Ideal Gas Law. They will ALWAYS generally obey the Ideal Gas Law, no matter how they are heated.
And more to the point, this does NOT show that greenhouse gases don’t do anything, as he incorrectly claims in the above quote.
Look, we could start up ten million nuclear reactors and vent all their heat to the atmosphere. The planet would assuredly get warmer … but the atmosphere wouldn’t stop obeying the Ideal Gas Law. The variables of density and temperature and mean near-surface atmospheric molar mass would simply readjust to the new reality and the Ideal Gas Law would still be satisfied. You could still use his Equation 5 version of the Ideal Gas Law to calculate the temperature from the other variables, regardless of whether or not the atmosphere is heated by nuclear reactors.
So I’m sorry, but the underlying premise of this paper is wrong. Yes, planetary atmospheres generally obey the Ideal Gas Law, duh, why wouldn’t they … and no, that doesn’t mean that you can diagnose or rule out heating processes simply because the atmosphere obeys the Ideal Gas Law. They will always obey the law regardless of how they are heated, so you can’t rule out anything.
Best of another sunny day to everyone,
w.
MY USUAL POLITE REQUEST: When you comment, please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT so we can all understand what you have an issue with.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
You are looking at it the wrong way round.
If there is no atmosphere then all water evaporates with no energy needing to be added because the internal energy is sufficient.
If an atmosphere bears down on the water surface then the internal energy is not sufficient to maintain the original rate of vaporisation so the rate of evaporation slows down proportionately to the weight of the atmosphere.
It never stops completely as you point out but it progressively becomes a more energy demanding process.
Think in terms of the pressure of the atmosphere supplementing the intermolecular bonds so that more energy is needed to break them.
That comment was for Phil and Willis but is wrongly placed in the thread.
The molar mass form of the gas law IGL is T = pM/Rd
p = pressure, M = molecular mass, R = gas constant d = atmosphere density
The law applies to solar planet atmospheres, near to the surface
this tells us the energy flux from the sun is not the cause of T.
Only sufficient energy flux is needed to maintain the energy content of the atmosphere high enough so it is a gas.
T is caused by planet mass , atmosphere mass and molecular mass.
Planet mass causes pressure,
Atmosphere mass causes density
T is caused by mass and not by radiation flux.
So the question to Willis is, why would T=pM/Rd not apply at the top of his imaginary planet with an argon atmosphere? At the top of the atmosphere, the pressure must have dropped dramatically.
Regarding argon, when that atom is at the surface it’s excited by the energy from the surface and moves faster, increasing the temperature of the parcel of gas of which it’s a part, according to the kinetic theory of gas. As Willis has said, the argon at the surface is the same temperature as the surface; indeed, the entire atmosphere is the same temperature as the surface (or have I misinterpreted?) So– how? Conduction? But what is conduction doing, since I think we’ve already agreed that argon neither absorbs nor emits IR energy?
At the top of the atmosphere, what maintains the velocity of the argon atoms within a parcel of gas?
What I say that an atom of argon is “excited,” doesn’t that mean that it’s being affected by electromagnetic energy? How else would it get excited? How else would its velocity increase? How does it manage to hold onto that energy when it’s at the top of the atmosphere in a thinning atmosphere, farthest from the source of the electromagnetic energy?
These questions are meant to clarify my misunderstanding of Willis’ position.
Don132 February 10, 2018 at 5:36 am
So the question to Don is, WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO START QUOTING WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT? I have no idea why you believe that I think that the equation would not work at the top of an argon atmosphere. I said nothing of the sort.
w.
OK Willis, calm down. It seems to be implied by everything that you’ve said so far that temperature at the top of the argon atmosphere would be the same as at the bottom; I’ve quoted you on that before. If that’s so, then how, if T=pM/Rd? My apologies; you’ll note that all along I’ve been careful to quote what you’ve said and I wrongly assumed that the reference (above) would be obvious.
Here’s your quote on the GHG-free atmosphere again; although not the one I originally used, it says the same thing (Willis Eschenbach February 9, 2018 at 12:19 pm): “Heat will flow from the warmer air at the surface to the cooler air above. At the surface, this will set up a surface-atmosphere temperature difference, which means that heat will also flow from the surface to the atmosphere.
“Since the flow is spontaneous, and since the atmosphere CANNOT lose heat by radiation, heat will only spontaneously flow until the atmosphere is isothermal from the surface to the top.
And at that point, no further heat will flow either to or from the atmosphere.”
I think this is wrong; argon does emit electromagnetic energy (I looked it up) and so the parcel of atmosphere in which it resides must necessarily cool as the atoms lose kinetic energy. If argon cannot emit electromagnetic energy, then it can’t absorb it either, so the argon wouldn’t have heated up in the first place.
I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m trying to find out EXACTLY what you mean, which is more subtle than what you say. Or, conversely, I’m trying to find out exactly what I don’t understand.
A final word. You’ll note that I never said that you said anything! I simply asked why would T=pM/Rd in an isothermal atmosphere, and your answer could have simply been, “it would.” Then we could’ve moved on more efficiently. I’m trying to understand your position; I’m not trying to prove you wrong. For now, the idea of an isothermal GHG-free atmosphere makes no sense to me.
Don132 February 10, 2018 at 9:23 am
Don, I note that you finally have quoted what you are talking about. As a result, I’m much calmer.
You say:
Argon doesn’t emit in the thermal IR range, which is the range we’re discussing. We’ve been through this on WUWT before, which is why I said that if anyone wants to start up with this nonsense again, they need to produce a graph showing the absorption lines. I don’t give a rat’s patootie if you “looked it up”. Graphs, or it is just handwaving. I notice that sadly, you paid little attention to that so now we’re sidetracked with your ignorance.
Finally, you say:
Don, read my comment again. What did I ask for, in capital letters, for the third or fourth time?
A quote of what you were referring to.
Here was your comment:
The clear implication in that is that I said it would not apply. Otherwise, you’d simply ask “So the question to Willis is, would T=pM/Rd apply at the top of his imaginary planet with an argon atmosphere”. So I asked you to quote where I’d said it would not apply.
In any case, the answer to the question you didn’t ask is yes, the Ideal Gas Law applies always and everywhere (with the caveat that no gas is perfectly ideal).
And to return to the subject of this post, that’s why Robert Holmes’s claim is not true. He claims that you can show CO2 doesn’t affect temperature because the Ideal Gas Law works … but the IGL works whether or not the surface is getting extra energy from downwelling thermal IR.
w.
The radiation, on an instanious basis is whatever is there. I think it’s going to vary a lot daily. But what it has little impact on is how much water there is in the air. Most the land areas dry out after a few days without rain. And it seems over the oceans, it just doesn’t make much difference.
But land Min T is invariant to changes in co2, water vapor is far more important and larger.
The energetic state change for the millionth time acts as a regulator. And you see that with the correlation between min temp and dew point.
Willis, you are a bit quick to take offense when none was intended. Nevertheless, I apologize again.
Willis Eschenbach February 10, 2018 at 10:29 am: “Argon doesn’t emit in the thermal IR range, which is the range we’re discussing. We’ve been through this on WUWT before, which is why I said that if anyone wants to start up with this nonsense again, they need to produce a graph showing the absorption lines.”
Now you’re putting words in my mouth: I never said that argon absorbs or emits IR energy. I think you’re assuming my point before I even make it; patience, please. Yes, YOU are talking about IR energy, but right now I am not, and I was not, and there’s a reason for that and it ties into our problem with an isothermic atmosphere without GHGs.
I did request that you not call me “ignorant”? I’m asking easy, elementary questions that should be extremely easy to answer, and I really am digging into it because I want to see if everyone understands what they’re saying– including me, and including you. I think you should be careful with your name-calling.
You have not said how argon heats up in the first place. How? I know it doesn’t absorb or emit IR, but it doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is that ANY electromagnetic energy it absorbs will cause its kinetic energy to rise and hence the velocity of the atoms to rise and hence (if the electromagnetic energy is sufficient) the temperature of a volume of gas composed of those argon atoms to rise. If not, then how does argon heat up on the surface of your imaginary planet in the first place? And if argon absorbs, then it MUST emit.
Spectral lines of argon can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon
Abstract:
“…Presented here is a simple and reliable method of accurately calculating the average near surface atmospheric temperature on planetary bodies which possess a surface atmospheric pressure of over 10kPa.” (=100 mbar)
At the moment, I see no way to calculate the surface temperature as a function of latitude, longitude and time of year. Holmes, please refine your method.
Paul Berberich February 10, 2018 at 1:53 am
That’s fairly easy to do. All you need to do is to express the three variables (the average near-surface atmospheric pressure, the average near surface atmospheric density and the average mean molar mass of the near-surface atmosphere) as functions of lat/lon/elevation/time, and you can do a pretty good job of matching observed temperatures … which only proves that yes, the Ideal Gas Law works always and everywhere …
In this regard you might enjoy “The Temperature Field“.
w.
I agree. But you have to measure at least the near surface atmospheric density as functions of lat/lon/elavation/time. For Venus (surface pressure 92 bar) you should use a real gas law. Gas thermometers are not very easy to use.
“In this regard you might enjoy “The Temperature Field“.”
Thanks, I enjoyed it. 40°N,74°W (New York), January 2014, your method: 15 °C, HADCRUT 4.6 data 0,6°C.
P. Berberich February 10, 2018 at 7:24 pm
My friend, if you were to actually read the article, it is valid only for annual averages … you could do one month by month, but that’s not what I did.
w.
The expression PV = nRT describes the relationship between “stuffs” physical properties of P, V, n and T. There are some suggesting that atmospheric pressure somehow causes atmospheric temperature. Not so, but let’s explore the basic science just a little bit.
But first for something completely different, specific heat capacity which:
for liquid water is 1 Btu/(1 lb 1 F) and for air 0.24 Btu/(1 lb 1 F).
Since these ratios equal 1 they can be inverted without concern:
for water (1 lb 1 F)/1 Btu and for air (4.17 lb 1 F)/1 Btu.
What these ratios represent is this:
for every Btu of energy input to 1 lb of liquid water the temperature will rise 1 F or to 2 lb will rise .5 F or to 0.25 lb will rise 4 F or any similar combinations.
for every Btu of energy input to 1 lb of air the temperature will rise 4.17 F or to 2 lb will rise 2.085 F or to 0.25 lb will rise 16.68 F or any similar combination.
Because of air’s lower density 1 Btu causes a much greater variation in temperature.
Let’s consider a cubicular Block o’ Stuff, BoS, with the following physical parameters (For discussion purposes ONLY!): P = 14.7 psig, 29.4 psia & V = 100 cu ft & n (number of molecules proxied by 100 lb) and T = 60 F, 520 R with a specific heat of 0.24 Btu/lb F.
Let’s add 1,000 Btu to this BoS by placing it in a 350 F oven or on a propane BBQ grille or under a 500 W halogen work light or on the asphalt beneath the midday sun. The BoS system does not care about the source of the Btu’s, just that they cross the boundary.
How will we know 1,000 Btu has been added? Simple. At 10 Btu/lb (1,000/100) the temperature will rise 41.7 F to 561.7 R or an increase of 8%.
What does this have to do with PV = nRT? How does PV=nRT respond to this external forcing?
If PV holds constant then n must decrease by 8%. Install a pressure relief valve set at 14.7 psig which will then lift until 8 lb leaves the system and maintains the cosmic balance.
Suppose the “stuff” is dangerous (H2S) and n must remain constant. If the sides of the BoS are flexible, V expands to 108 cu ft and maintains the cosmic balance.
Suppose BoS is inflexible and V and n are both constant then P must rise by 8 % to 31.75 psia maintaining the cosmic balance.
Consider the ubiquitous classical piston and cylinder. Start with 100 cu ft, push the piston half way into the cylinder – V is now half, P must double. What does PV = nRT have to say about T? NOTHING!! Reversible, adiabatic compression means no increase in T.
Was working a contract assignment in Olathe and staying in Overland Park. I would maintain the Jeep’s tire pressures at 34 psig. When I checked the tire pressure at home found them at about 36 psig. Overland Park is about 800 feet, home 6,300. Baro in OP was about 14 psia, home about 12 psia. 2 psi Δ explained neatly by PV=nRT.
A few years back we bought a new Honda CRV and drove to Phoenix to visit son and new granddaughter. It was cool for Phoenix when we left, low 40’s and as we climbed north out of the valley up I-17 the TPM alarm popped on. Now I didn’t know all the bells and whistles, but learned that the TPM did not use valve stem sensors, but monitored the tire speed with the ABS. The sun rising on the east was heating the right side tires and per PV=nRT the slightly higher pressure on the east side expanded the tires slightly, slowed the relative rotation and triggered the alarm.
Back to the original BoS, but replace it with a 1978 Pacer wagon. (Actually owned one, drove it well over 100k, was a good car.) Let’s place a reflective windshield panel which reflects away 30% of the incoming solar energy (ISR), an “atmospheric” albedo, so to speak. Only 700 Btu make it into the Pacer (ASR) BoS and the temperature rises not 41.7 F, but only 29.19 F. How about that, the “atmospheric” albedo lowers the “atmospheric” temperature in direct contradiction of RGHE.
So, the atmosphere is not like a set of concentric opaque dull spheres (A really dumb comparison, btw.), but like a 1978 Pacer wagon with a reflective sun shade behind the windshield and the side windows opened a bit. As the sun rises the interior air and surfaces gradually warm, peak shortly after the sun does and then begins to cool as the sun sets. Once the sun sets, the interior air and surfaces lose heat to the surroundings through all the heat processes: conduction, convection, advection, latent (Nearby sprinkler system waters it some.) and radiation: aka Q=UAdT.
In fact, actual real NOAA hourly temperature data for soil/ground and surface/air temperature trends demonstrate EXACTLY that. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/qcdatasets.html)
The science is indeed settled, RGHE and CAGW are as indefensible as phlogiston, luminiferous ether and cold fusion.
Surgical hygiene, plate tectonics, dark matter, et. al. suffered rather harsh beatings by the “consensus” until being accepted.
Seems ironic you support Ridd while your site belie his science positions and behaves more like his corporate assailants.
BTW I have been hammering RGHE/CAGW since 1989 in parallel with an engineering career where I actually really applied these scientific principles to actual real scenarios so with 11 years you’re kinda late to the party.
“Consider the ubiquitous classical piston and cylinder. Start with 100 cu ft, push the piston half way into the cylinder – V is now half, P must double. What does PV = nRT have to say about T? NOTHING!! Reversible, adiabatic compression means no increase in T.”
nickreality65, how does your engineering career where you actually really applied these scientific principles to actual real scenarios explain the diesel engine PV cycle?
The impossibility of an isothermal atmosphere is the key issue.
If it isn’t isothermal then it is convective.
If it is convective then the gases cool from expansion as they rise along the density gradient so that GHGs are unnecessary to create a lapse rate.
What goes up must come down so at any given moment half the atmosphere is descending.
The energy needed to fuel constant overturning must reside at the surface and cannot be radiated out to space if the mass of the atmosphere is to remain suspended off the surface against the downward force of gravity. Something must provide the upward pressure gradient force that balances the downward force of gravity and that can only be ‘extra’ heat at the surface.
That is the reason for the temperature enhancement above S-B for a planet with an atmosphere.
The S-B equation is only valid for a planet with an atmosphere when viewed from space since it is only at the boundary with space that energy transfers are wholly radiative and the S-B equation is wholly radiative.
At a surface beneath an atmosphere non radiative energy transfers are occurring and S-B does not then apply.
Stephen 9:59am: “What goes up must come down so at any given moment half the atmosphere is descending.”
Tests show the convective thermals rising can be replaced from fluid at the surface temperature no descending column evidence. This has been pointed out to Stephen and ignored. Even a foundational meteorology paper showing there is very little PE available to be converted to KE in the planet atm. has been presented which Stephen ignores since if it doesn’t agree with Stephen’s imagination the paper must be wrong.
“The S-B equation is only valid for a planet with an atmosphere when viewed from space since it is only at the boundary with space that energy transfers are wholly radiative and the S-B equation is wholly radiative.
Then IR thermometers would not work in the convective atm. but they do and with good precision.
“Something must provide the upward pressure gradient force that balances the downward force of gravity and that can only be ‘extra’ heat at the surface.”
Only in Stephen’s fertile imagination, the rest of science uses observations and tests to determine the physics of meteorology.
Willis,
I tend to agree with Robert Holmes that IR absorbing gases have little effect on global temperatures other than the daily solar-insolation-caused disruption of stable atmospheric temperature profiles determined by ideal gas laws on a hypothetical planet with an otherwise inert atmosphere receiving a constant energy input.
However, I also agree with you that planets don’t radiate to space more energy than they receive.
So it is a question of what best explains planet surface temperatures, ideal gas laws, S-B theory, or some combination of both, such as Nikolov and Zeller’s Unified Theory of Climate.
The answer is elusory because of the impossibility of testing hypothetical planets.
Willis, is this quote of yours from “A Matter of Some Gravity” correct?
I don’t think that is the conclusion they draw from their theories/hypotheses.
I also object to your disagreement with Hans Jelbring’s gravitational hypothesis on the basis of Robert Brown’s “Refutation of Stable Thermal Equilibrium Lapse Rates.” Dr. Brown’s thought experiment assumes putting a conduit or shunt from the surface to the top of the cylinder will create a perpetual motion machine. Initially some energy transfer would occur taking advantage of the greater conductivity of the shunt. However, eventually the system will return to an equilibrium with a new temperature gradient adjusted for the new system’s overall conductivity.
Don132 February 10, 2018 at 5:36 am
The energy is indeed moved by conduction. Air, or any gas, conducts energy just like a liquid or a solid, except much slower.
The fact that the argon is not losing any energy over time, because it doesn’t radiate in the thermal IR region.
I don’t know what you mean by that term. In general it does NOT mean “Struck by thermal IR radiation.” Usually it means excited by a strong electromagnetic field, as in neon lights and Northern lights. We’re not discussing that. We’re talking about thermal IR.
See above.
It holds on to the energy because it cannot radiate it. I’m also unclear about the “source of the electromagnetic radiation”. If you mean the thermal IR from the surface, argon is totally transparent to thermal IR, doesn’t interact with it in the slightest.
Thanks, and my best to you,
w.
Thank you but IR energy is a distraction from the real issue, as I explain below. How does argon conduct energy? That is, what happens to argon when that gas gains heat?
Ummm, “above,” I guess comments got shifted around.
This is the crux of the matter as regards an isothermal atmosphere without GHGs:
Don132 February 10, 2018 at 1:40 pm: “[Willis has] not said how argon heats up in the first place. [except through conduction, but that’s not specific enough] How? I know it doesn’t absorb or emit IR, but it doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is that ANY electromagnetic energy it absorbs will cause its kinetic energy to rise and hence the velocity of the atoms to rise and hence (if the electromagnetic energy is sufficient) the temperature of a volume of gas composed of those argon atoms to rise. If not, then how does argon heat up on the surface of your imaginary planet in the first place? And if argon absorbs, then it MUST emit.”
Spectral lines of argon can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon
A temperature of a gas is due to the number of collision of the atoms or molecules of the gas.
In terms of quantifying, the number and mass of atoms, there average velocity, and in within
a volume of space- say, cubic cm or cubic meter. So in room and at room temperature, one has millions of atom in volume a of cubic cm colliding with each other at the speed of bullets.
Or in cubic meter one has about 1.2 kg of air, which like 1.2 kg of bullets stay within the cubic meter colliding with each other [and there are zillions of them]. And if somehow don’t change there average velocity and don’t reduce the mass, but make the volume there in small, they collide more and therefore are a higher temperature. And instead increase the volume, they collide less and are a lower temperature.
Gases aren’t warmed by radiation, nor are cooled were they radiate radiation, they have a temperature because they collide with themselves and other matter- matter in different states other than gas- liquids, solids, and I suppose plasma [so that’s the four states of matter].
So argon would warm because it hits something warmer- like a surface of planet warmed by sunlight. And liquids and solids are bonded into molecule structures which vibrate and if they vibrate too much they change state- ;liquid, then gas [which has no structure] though if hotter it changes in plasma which does have structural aspect [weird molecular structures- due to the ionize nature of plasma]..
Don132, February 10, 2018 at 2:11 pm:
If I’m understanding Willis’s hypothetical scenario correctly, Don, the argon would be heated solely by conduction from the surface without any radiative input from any source.
You could say that the argon “absorbs” heat from the surface by conduction wherever the surface is warmer than the bottom of the argon atmosphere in contact with it. Conversely, you could say that the argon atmosphere “emits” heat back to the surface by conduction wherever the surface is cooler than the bottom of the atmosphere. No radiative interactions are required for this to occur.
Correct.
Which is why convective overturning is critical.
Critical to what, Stephen? I’m not seeing the connection.
Critical to getting kinetic energy back to the surface again so as to raise surface temperature above S-B.
Stephen, wouldn’t that require the convection cycle to return more KE to the surface than it extracted from the surface at the beginning of the cycle?
Why?
The dry lapse rate is the same both up and down for a completely non radiative atmosphere.
Why did you suggest that your example would cool more than the dry lapse rate on the way up?
Your parcel would still be warmer than the surroundings at the top because the rising parcel cools at the same rate as the surroundings.
Stephen Wilde, February 11, 2018 at 10:03 am:
Because, according to standard physics, the S-B temperature of the global surface is the maximum possible temperature that insolation alone can support. Therefore, it would not be physically possible to achieve a higher global surface temperature (i.e. a “temperature enhancement”) except by the introduction of another energy-source to supplement the insolation. As far as I can see, your concept of “convective overturning” does not do that: it simply returns to the surface the energy that it had previously removed from the surface at the beginning of the cycle and thus leaves the net energy-content of the surface unchanged, still at the S-B temperature.
If you still think that convective overturning can produce a temperature enhancement of 33°K, or even 1°K, on top of the S-B temperature at the surface, I would be grateful if you would point out the source of original energy that must be hidden in it to supplement the energy of insolation, because I can’t see it at the moment.
Where did I suggest that? I don’t think I did.
I don’t think it matters where it is warmer or cooler than its surroundings if at the end of the cycle it is only giving back to the surface the same energy that it took from the surface at the beginning.
Ongoing convection is net zero but the first convective cycle following formation of the atmosphere was not net zero so you then constantly have an additional amount of KE arriving at the surface in addition to continuing insolation for as long as the atmosphere remains in place.
“Ongoing convection is net zero but the first convective cycle following formation of the atmosphere was not net zero so you then constantly have an additional amount of KE arriving at the surface in addition to continuing insolation for as long as the atmosphere remains in place.”
.
Correct.
Come on guys; we have a LOT of down-welling LW radiation to explain! Far more that the energy input from the Sun! Where do you think it comes from?
Get out your pyrgeometers!
Best not to mention pyregeometers or we will be side tracked. The radiative proponents are wrongly interpreting their output but that is for another day.
Stephen just can’t accept the youtube convection experiments, prefers to rely only on his imagination: “..so you then constantly have an additional amount of KE arriving at the surface”
The thermal KE from the warmed surface fluid is transported & conducted, dissipated at altitude as shown by experiment; very little if any of that initial thermal KE arrives back at the surface. The atm. at large is the same way, very little PE is available to be converted to KE but Stephen doesn’t understand, won’t accept basic meteorology papers when they differ with his imagination.
Not a gas. Not a sphere illuminated from a point source. Wholly inapplicable.
Stephen Wilde, February 11, 2018 at 2:12 pm.
Thank you, Stephen, for acknowledging that “ongoing convection is net zero”. I think that means it is not an original source of the extra energy that is required to elevate the surface temperature above the S-B level – i.e. you are admitting implicitly that ongoing “convective overturning” cannot be responsible for causing the surface temperature enhancement which you have invoked it to explain.
Furthermore, although the first convective cycle following the formation of the atmosphere probably was not net zero as you say, I don’t think we do “then constantly have an additional amount of KE arriving at the surface in addition to continuing insolation for as long as the atmosphere remains in place.”. According to standard physics again, such an additional amount of surface K.E. would gradually radiate away into space and decline until the surface-atmosphere system reached radiative equilibrium with its cosmic environment, whereupon that initial charge of surface K.E. would effectively be gone and unable to contribute appreciably to the elevation of the global mean surface temperature above the S-B level.
In the case of Willis’s hypothetical ideal planet with a totally transparent argon atmosphere, I think it is assumed a priori that this initial charge of extra surface K.E. has already been radiated away and the planet is now in radiative equilibrium with its cosmic environment. In the case of the Earth, I think we can safely make the same assumption that the initial charge of surface K.E. has radiated away long ago, although the question of whether the planet can be considered to be in radiative equilibrium with its cosmic environment is currently open to dispute of course.
That initial slug of extra KE is constantly replenished by ongoing convection. If it were not so the atmosphere would fall to the ground.
Stephen Wilde, February 12, 2018 at 1:20 am:
No, it isn’t, Stephen. When the first atmospheric convection cycle came into existence as the atmosphere formed, the surface was boiling lava! The surface had so much K.E. that if it was still retained to this day as you are saying it is, the planet’s surface would still be boiling lava and the surface temperature would be in the 1,000’s of degrees Celsius.
Also, vertical atmospheric convection cycles do not normally replenish any of the K.E. that they extract from the surface. Rather, they tend to function as highly efficient heat-transport mechanisms that remove heat from the surface and deposit it higher in the atmosphere. Heat flows into the cycle at the bottom where the circulating air is warmed by the surface, and flows out of the cycle at the top where the circulating air is cooled by its colder surroundings. So the heat that is absorbed from the surface at the beginning of the cycle is not returned to the surface at the end of the cycle (because it has already left the cycle at the top) and the K.E. of the surface is not replenished as you say it is.
I don’t think so. The atmosphere would be sustained in its gaseous phase by on-going insolation. No additional support from residual primaeval energy would be necessary.
The lava heat was radiated to space by the surface. That primaeval heat is long gone but is nothing to do with my hypothesis.
The only heat I refer to is that which continues to be engaged in convective overturning to this day.
For a non GHG atmosphere there is no way of losing it to space other than by returning it to the surface again in convective descent. It then departs to space from the surface in the usual way but is replaced by continuing conduction from the surface.
It is indeed obtained from solar energy and is replenished from the surface and delivered back to the surface constantly in a never ending loop whilst the atmosphere still exists.
Without it the atmosphere would fall to the ground.
Stephen Wilde, February 12, 2018 at 5:31am:
I’m not following you. Did you not just say above, February 12, 2018 at 1:20 am, “That initial slug of extra KE is constantly replenished by ongoing convection.”? If, by “that initial slug”, you were not referring to the monstrous charge of kinetic energy that the first atmospheric convection cycle must have received from the primaeval surface at 1,000’s of degrees Celsius, to what were you referring exactly?
And if that vast “initial slug” is still being replenished to the surface today, why has the surface not been restored to its original temperature and still boiling?
This is not making any sense to me, Stephen.
Agreed.
I think you are overlooking conduction here. It might act more slowly than convection, but it does act. Also, I think convective descent could not occur in such an atmosphere at equilibrium. (Hence, no convection at all, in fact.) This is because no cooling could occur at the top of the atmosphere to make the air there contract to a greater density to enable it to sink.
I’ was simply referring to the energy conducted and convected from surface to air and back again to the surface when the first convective cycle closed the loop.
I was assuming a background surface temperature of 255K as per S-B and an additional component of 33K from the convective process.
If you read y complete narrative you should not be confused and I have linked to it several times in this thread already.
Stephen Wilde, February 12, 2018 at 12:24 pm:
But that would have been when the surface was still boiling lava.
I think those assumptions are wrong. Lava doesn’t boil at 255K.
Also, you cannot get an extra 33K “temperature enhancement” at the surface without introducing an extra energy-source to support it, as I’ve already pointed out above. Convection merely redistributes energy within the surface-atmosphere system and does not provide any more energy than insolation is already providing, so it cannot serve as the additional energy-source that your theory needs it to be to explain where the energy that supports the surface temperature enhancement is coming from – unless you are happy for it to violate basic physical laws like the 1st law of thermodynamics, of course.
I never said that I was confused. I said that your argument does not make sense to me.
Willis says,
All that Robert Holmes has shown is that the atmospheres of various planets obey, to a good approximation, the Ideal Gas Law.
… So what?
I mean that quite seriously. So what? In fact, it would be a huge shock if planetary atmospheres did NOT generally obey the Ideal Gas Law. After all, they’re gases, and it’s not just a good idea. It’s a Law …
T =pM/Rd is a law because it represents what happens. It is also a physical model.
It tell us that it does not matter how much energy is entering and leaving the system as long as there is enough to keep the system as a gas
They will ALWAYS generally obey the Ideal Gas Law, no matter how they are heated
Or how much, as long as it keeps the atmosphere as a gas
And more to the point, this does NOT show that greenhouse gases don’t do anything, as he incorrectly claims
More CO2 will change p,d and M. But as CO2 is only 0.04% even doubling that will have very little effect.
Is it T causes p/d or p/d causes T
Eschenbach says
sun, CO2 causes T
T causes p/d
Holmes says
sun and chemical history cause p/d
p/d causes T
I think the evidence supports Holmes
“sun and chemical history cause p/d
p/d causes T”
And, the earths rotation, with the atmosphere becoming a charge/discharge heat store, results in an overall 33C warming, the so called “greenhouse effect”. IE, the GHGs make no difference, other than the change in Molar Mass density.(0.03 C)
Whether an all Argon atmosphere for our earth could do the same is very doubtful in my mind, because I cannot imagine conduction, especially at night, being adequate to discharge that stored heat. Daytime winds might quickly warm the Argon atmosphere, thus cooling the earth.
sailboarder February 11, 2018 at 6:04 am
Heat storage capacity of the entire atmosphere is equal to that of 2-3 meter water.
Sun warms at least the upper ~120 meter of ocean.
http://www.oc.nps.edu/nom/day1/annual_cycle.gif
Seems to me the oceans are the major heat store for solar energy
Atmospheric heat obtained from the surface beneath rising columns of air is returned to the surface beneath descending columns of air.
Ben you said “Seems to me the oceans are the major heat store for solar energy”
I don’t think it matters what the heat store is. The 33C increase in GAT over a bare rock can be provided by any charge/discharge mechanism. That is the corollary of the authors rejection of the need for a GHG. The obvious conclusion is that “something else” provides the 33C. I think you are right, that the oceans are a massive heat capacitor taking away the hottest time of the day, and thus the prevention of earths maximum cooling rate. (T*4). In general then the “greenhouse effect” on any planet is not knowable without probes to determine the existence of heat charge/discharge features. If I recall, Willis used a moon probe or landing measurement data of the regolith to calculate the surface heat absorption/discharge ability. His moon AT calculations were remarkably accurate.
sailboarder February 11, 2018 at 4:21 pm
If we use the moon as our bare rock, its GAT is ~197K. Dayside temperatures are roughly radiative balance temperatures, nightside is way above radiative balance (~3K). So to explain why the GAT on Earth is ~90K higher than on our moon I don’t think the atmosphere will provide the answer. Imo we need to understand how the deep oceans can be some 70K warmer than GAT of the moon. Starting from there solar energy is perfectly capable of INCREASING the temperature of the surface layer of the oceans some.
All the atmosphere has to do is slow the energy loss to space, no warming of the surface and deep oceans required or possible.
Ben ” So to explain why the GAT on Earth is ~90K higher than on our moon I don’t think the atmosphere will provide the answer.”
That’s why I suggested that the author or his colleagues have another paper to write. If it even comes close to validating that Argon and our atmosphere gives the same warming of 33C.. that would be a blockbuster. If not..
Roger Clague February 11, 2018 at 4:44 am
Is it T causes p/d or p/d causes T
Eschenbach says
sun, CO2 causes T
T causes p/d
Sun and GHG causes T
P due to mass of atmosphere
V depends on T
M depends on composition which doesn’t change significantly
Holmes tries to hide the fact that V is one of the variables. Change the heat transfer properties of the atmosphere and the T will change and consequently the V will change.
Except that T does not change from the introduction of GHGs so V can be ignored.
“Except that T does not change from the introduction of GHGs..”
Proven false in numerous independent lab experiments.
Stephen Wilde February 12, 2018 at 1:37 pm
Except that T does not change from the introduction of GHGs so V can be ignored.
Not true, that’s your supposition, and of course it invalidates the ‘frollly’ argument based on his improper use of the IGL.
When what happens is we are dealing with mass in the gas phase, and the gas laws rule as even Willis admits, all else is fluff. Thoughties can never come near the empirical and tested facts, just blind rabbit holes. The only ones worth looking at at all are to remove governing factors one by one and figure what that does. Then things become obvious if still no substitute for the data we have. A lot of that came to us when JPL was run by a fellow Kiwi’ so no nonsense. Grin.
Argon would radiate, but as SW noted years ago, we might lose the atmosphere…. But it is irrelevant.Trumped by reality.
As per expts shown to Willis before, Argon radiates at similar power to CO2. That is admitted to be too little to matter, hence the false positive effect on water ghe claimed. Just tripe.
As pointed out several times here Argon does not radiate at all, you are mistaken.
“As pointed out several times here Argon does not radiate at all..”
If so, then Phil. has discovered what dark matter is made of – argon gas atoms! A note to PNAS would be helpful here Phil., to get the word out. Solves a lot of astronomy and cosmology questions.
Trick February 12, 2018 at 6:00 pm
?zoom=2
“As pointed out several times here Argon does not radiate at all..”
If so, then Phil. has discovered what dark matter is made of – argon gas atoms! A note to PNAS would be helpful here Phil., to get the word out. Solves a lot of astronomy and cosmology questions.
No need they already know that argon will not absorb wavelengths above EUV and despite your assertions to the contrary you’ve failed to produce any links to the data you claim exist. Here’s the actual data:
“they already know that argon will not absorb wavelengths above EUV”
Phil. now admits that Ar does radiate, counters his own assertion that Ar does not radiate at all. Ok, I then agree no PNAS article needed, Ar is not any longer Phil.s candidate for dark matter.
As I wrote above I’m not interested in re-spending the time re-litigating that Ar weakly radiates in the thermal IR from rotational and vibrational quantum jumps shown in experiments that were a research topic of the 1930s applying Planck’s earlier research in thermal radiation. Any actually interested party in the science can find the experimental research at the local college library up in the stacks just as I did. By allowing a research librarian to happily do their job.
PS: I will add a note Phil. does not give a ref. for his chart.
Trick February 13, 2018 at 6:17 am
“they already know that argon will not absorb wavelengths above EUV”
Phil. now admits that Ar does radiate, counters his own assertion that Ar does not radiate at all. Ok, I then agree no PNAS article needed, Ar is not any longer Phil.s candidate for dark matter.
I admitted nothing of the sort, I was referring to my earlier posts in the context of this discussion which was that argon does not radiate when illuminated with IR. As you know well since in the earlier comments you claimed that 1930s experiments said that it did so. Of course the only reference you gave was to an experiment using an electronic discharge not IR, tricky by name tricky by nature!
As I wrote above I’m not interested in re-spending the time re-litigating that Ar weakly radiates in the thermal IR from rotational and vibrational quantum jumps shown in experiments that were a research topic of the 1930s applying Planck’s earlier research in thermal radiation. Any actually interested party in the science can find the experimental research at the local college library up in the stacks just as I did. By allowing a research librarian to happily do their job.
And you won’t find any such papers. It’s not that hard to do and does’t require accessing the stacks of your library, just go to the Phys Chem section and take a look at Herzberg’s “Atomic Spectroscopy” as I told you before, and you’ll find that there are no rotational or vibrational levels to jump to!
PS: I will add a note Phil. does not give a ref. for his chart.
Well on my computer the reference shows up and I’ve actually linked to the numerical data from which it’s made before. That graph can be found in a number of places, I thought that one was a very good example.
Google ‘argon energy levels’ and you’ll get a bunch of them.
The one I showed came from here:
http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0038-23532011000600011
What it clearly shows is that the lowest excited state requires excitation by nearly 12 eV, not accessible by IR.
”I admitted nothing of the sort, I was referring to my earlier posts in the context of this discussion which was that argon does not radiate when illuminated with IR.”
A clarification/change from 1:39pm, you now use more precise language. Which has been experimentally proven inaccurate. You simply reach the green level of Willis’ pyramid again.
Your link does not contain the graph you claim unless it is one of the ref.s & googling “argon energy levels” does produce the chart you linked previously but, again, no ref. given.
I’m truly not interested in re-litigating experimentally determined rotational and vibrational monatomic Ar thermal IR lines (weak intensity, long photographic exposure times) as it took 1-2 weeks effort to find the original research in the college library stacks the first time and I gave you the cites once before, they are not on the ‘net that I could find at the time as they were from the ~1930s. It is your loss not looking them up & reading to discuss them then & not mine as I learned from reading the specialist experimental papers & specialist text passages citing them.
Search this site, find the original discussion if interested in learning & discussing. Been there, done that.
–And here’s the abstract:
” Abstract: It has always been complicated mathematically, to calculate the average near surface atmospheric temperature on planetary bodies with a thick atmosphere. Usually, the Stefan Boltzmann (S-B) black body law is used to provide the effective temperature, then debate arises about the size or relevance of additional factors, including the ‘greenhouse effect’. Presented here is a simple and reliable method of accurately calculating the average near surface atmospheric temperature on planetary bodies which possess a surface atmospheric pressure of over 10kPa.”–
….
–Dang … “adiabatic auto-compression” as a permanent energy source. Is it patented yet?
Please forgive my sarcasm, I just get tired of endless claims of endless energy … onwards. Here is a look at the various planetary atmospheres:–
It doesn’t say it’s energy source.
And not many people think greenhouse effect is energy source, either.
And no one has predicted a planet’s average temperature by using the the greenhouse effect theory, but this “adiabatic auto-compression” idea is used, but as said, it’s called lapse rate.
If you know temperature at certain elevation, the air temperature decrease as you go higher and increase if go lower in elevation.
When the Mediterranean Sea Dried Up Five Million Years Ago — ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090211122529.htm
which is called Messinian salinity crisis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_salinity_crisis
It known that at bottom of dried up basin that air temperatures would be hotter, and there is
evidence of this high air temperature.
And I would say that such air temperature would be highest air temperature found anywhere and any time on earth- and occuring in a glacial period. Unless there times with a deeper dried up basin. We talking +70 C or much warmer the highest air temperature recorded in Death Valley California, 56.7 C in 10 July 1913.
Anyhow having a dried out sea, isn’t an energy source, it’s just the result of lapse rate or “adiabatic auto-compression”.
And it’s realized that the heated air comes from warmed regions around the basin- or heated air occurs at higher elevation than basin floor.
And I would say the same thing occurs with Venus- the air is heated at level of the Venus clouds.
Oh, re: “no one has predicted a planet’s average temperature by using the greenhouse effect theory”
Earth’s average ocean surface temperature is about 17 C and average land surface temperature is 10 C. The greenhouse effect theory didn’t predict this.
Stephen Wilde February 11, 2018 at 7:44 am
DALR (dry rate) is ~9,8K/km.
So while the rising air cools 9,8K during its ascend the static atmosphere at 1 km is 6,5K colder.
Here stops this rising parcel.
My slip up.
You were using the dry rate and the average rate. The difference is due to water vapour but we are discussing a non radiative atmosphere without water vapour. In that case the dry rate is all that matters.
Stephen Wilde February 11, 2018 at 10:46 am
Huh? Convection stops when the atmosphere is thermally stable. In general, this occurs most nights. So the stopping of convection is quite common.
Next, in my proof, conduction from the surface to the atmosphere as well as convection both cease once the atmosphere is at the temperature of the surface. After that, there is no ∆T anywhere to drive conduction or convection.
No, that’s just your fantasy. Willis has never seen your request until this very comment.
If your question regards my proof as to how convection is prevented, it is prevented by the evolution of an isothermal non-GHG atmosphere. That non-GHG atmosphere cannot lose energy by radiation.
As a result, if the atmosphere started out colder than the surface, it will gain energy from the surface by conduction/convection until there is no longer any vertical thermal gradient.
At that point, both conduction and convection would cease permanently.
I suspect that your confusion is that you think that the lapse rate is inherent in the atmosphere. It is not. Read “Refutation of Stable Thermal Equilibrium Lapse Rates” for a clear explanation of why.
The short explanation goes like this. Imagine a very tall perfectly insulated sealed pipe containing air. IF the lapse rate (decrease of temperature with altitude) exists as an inherent feature of the final steady-state condition of the air inside the insulated pipe, then there would be a permanent temperature difference between the air at the bottom and the top of the pipe.
And if that were so, we could use a heat engine to extract work from that permanent temperature difference … but that is a perpetual motion machine which we know is impossible.
Regards,
w.
I agree that convection ceases when an isothermal condition exists. Technically, conduction could still flow transferring heat in a steady state situation.
However, I don’t think Prof. Brown’s “Refutation of Stable Thermal Equilibrium Lapse Rates” can be used as definitive proof of an isothermal atmosphere. His thought experiment assumes the pipe from the surface to the top of the cylinder will continue to transfer heat indefinitely. Initially some energy transfer would occur taking advantage of the greater conductivity of the pipe. However, the system will return eventually to an equilibrium with a new temperature gradient adjusted for the new system’s overall conductivity.
Chic is correct.
Willis: ”Read (the link) for a clear explanation of why.”
See the integral of eqn. 5 in the link. T(z) is taken out from under the dz integral without explanation. Thus, T is assumed constant over z (as is M,g,R).
Then the conclusion eqn. 6 is said to describe a gas that is: “2. In thermal equilibrium. There is no thermal gradient in the gas to drive the conduction of heat.”
Of course there is no thermal gradient, that simply follows from the earlier assumption T was constant over z in the integration!
”And if that were so, we could use a heat engine to extract work from that permanent temperature difference…”
No, you could not. The entropy is maximized at that point & can no longer be increased, there is no possibility of running a heat engine. If you drop in a silver wire, you have added entropy which will proceed to increase until a higher maximum entropy is reached. The heat engine will then stop & still exhibit a lapse T(z) as Chic writes. This was proven in Bohren 1998 Chapter 4.4. Top triangle on Willis’ pyramid.
“However, I don’t think Prof. Brown’s “Refutation of Stable Thermal Equilibrium Lapse Rates” can be used as definitive proof of an isothermal atmosphere. His thought experiment assumes the pipe from the surface to the top of the cylinder will continue to transfer heat indefinitely. Initially some energy transfer would occur taking advantage of the greater conductivity of the pipe. However, the system will return eventually to an equilibrium with a new temperature gradient adjusted for the new system’s overall conductivity.”
Silver is good conductor, but taking about conducting over hundreds of meter and with low temperature difference. Or forget a silver wire, a silver cylinder encasing the gas would be problematic in terms conducting much heat over a 10 meter distance. But if you could have magical material, it seems the result would a better average or uninform molecular velocity- rather than higher temperature
better answer: one could make the air column, not effected by gravity, as much. Or a solid silver pole would conduct heat better than having silver cylinder filled will air. But filling with air could save cost of using solid silver.
I think you could have similar thing happening with water vapor- it’s improving or nullifying the effect of gravity. So maybe silver and wet air could get something like 3 or 4 C per 1000 meter.
Or a metal temperature isn’t affected by gravity, though conic shape of metal transfers less heat via conduction,
“As a result, if the atmosphere started out colder than the surface, it will gain energy from the surface by conduction/convection until there is no longer any vertical thermal gradient.”
So the conduction/conduction would stop during the night and begin again in day, as per what you said: “Convection stops when the atmosphere is thermally stable. In general, this occurs most nights. So the stopping of convection is quite common.”
And would stop “forever” when hottest part of day wasn’t hot enough to cause conduction/convection.?
Because the air was too warm to continue to warm even at hottest part of the day
And roughly speaking, in clear day and when sun at zenith, on Earth surface ground temperature is about 70 C and air temperature is about 50 C.
Then air stays at 50 C and ground cools during the night?
Now I would say is that ground conducts/convects heat to atmosphere when ground is warmer than air, and ground is warmest near noon, but if air was 50 C, then by around 4 pm, sun wouldn’t heat ground higher than 50 C, so it couldn’t warm air.
Or if you don’t have warm air, one doesn’t need to wait until night.
And on earth one could have cloudy days where sunlight doesn’t warm the ground.
With no greenhouse gases, one would always have clear days- unless it was dust storm or a volcanic eruption.
So anyhow, without greenhouse gases, the tropics would have an average air temperature of about 50 C as compared to our tropics of 26 C?.
Wouldn’t colder air of rest of world cool the 50 C tropics so that it could warm up, again- thereby warm up rest of the world’s air temperature by some amount?
“I suspect that your confusion is that you think that the lapse rate is inherent in the atmosphere. It is not. Read “Refutation of Stable Thermal Equilibrium Lapse Rates” for a clear explanation of why.”
What is inherent is density gradient of the gases of an atmosphere.
And if average velocity of the gases is the same in column of air then air will
warmer at bottom of column as compare to top and this is due to gravity and the weight
of the gases.
And mass of gas could be 1.2 kg per cubic meter and weight of 1000 meters is 1200 kg
though there is density gradient when vertical, so might be 1.2 at bottom and 1.1 kg per
cubic meter at the top and reduction by about 10% of mass of gas molecules that makes the air
temperature colder at higher elevation. Or KE = 1/2 mass time velocity squared.
KE is kinetic energy but it also air temperature [air temperature is solely kinetic energy].
Or standard .atm:
0 meters : 15 C and air density is 1.225 kg per cubic meter
1000 meter 8.5 C and air density is 1.112 kg per cubic meter
And if air wetter than standard atm there would less difference in temperature
and if air was drier, that standard there would more difference in temperature
So if have sealed cylinder with nitrogen only and was 1 km long and had 1.2 kg of N2
per cubic meter, and went from being level with ground to be vertical to ground.
The gas would increase in temperature, increase in pressure and increase in density
at bottom, and would decrease temperature, pressure and density at the top.
And if let pressure at bottom, out, until psig of 0, you get the dry lapse rate, so if 15 C at bottom
then its about 5 C at the top..
Willis:
“Huh? Convection stops when the atmosphere is thermally stable. In general, this occurs most nights. So the stopping of convection is quite common.”
Only when the surface cools faster than the air to form an inversion layer. That layer is quickly broken down by insolation the next day and convection resumes so that is not a useful example.
Insolation is always uneven so convection cannot be prevented. No atmosphere around a sphere illuminated from a single sun can ever become thermally stable, or do you have a better suggestion?
“And if that were so, we could use a heat engine to extract work from that permanent temperature difference … but that is a perpetual motion machine which we know is impossible.”
That is not correct any more than power from a water wheel is perpetual motion.
If one could power anything from ongoing convection then one would simply be drawing energy from the ongoing flow of solar energy through the system and the vigour of convection would decline infinitesimally thus observing conservation of energy.
Furthermore an isothermal atmosphere could never be in hydrostatic equilibrium.
“Furthermore an isothermal atmosphere could never be in hydrostatic equilibrium.”
Come on Stephen, read up on meteorology, the standard Earth atm. has the stratosphere isothermal for about 9-10km of z height and for the most part in hydrostatic equilibrium.
Observations show that you can have an isothermal layer within an atmosphere in hydrostatic equilibrium because equal and opposite lapse rate slope adjustments are made elsewhere by convective changes.
Anyway, that isothermal layer is caused by radiative ozone flattening the lapse rate slope but the radiative theory says radiative gases create the lapse rate slope so you have a problem there.
No problem Stephen. The lapse rate above tropopause goes to zero as the stratosphere gases including O3 absorb radiation from above thus that fluid is warmed from above (convection ceases) NOT warmed from below by surface radiation, convection and conduction as in the troposphere.
The argument is over: the gravitationists have won, and Frolly has demonstrated this through an irrefutable argument: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/06/ideal-gases/comment-page-1/#comment-2741567
It’s no use arguing from your paradigm to counter what Frolly has laid out; we all try to reason things out from our paradigms, but in this case there is simply nowhere for you to turn: you’ve been defeated through a simple and elegant logic. That logic was I was looking for in the first place when I took on trying to understand what everyone was saying in this discussion.
The gracious thing would be for Willis and Anthony to admit this and to remove the Holmes paper from the “bad science” category.
Signed,
A Logician
Agreed.
Frolly has reduced it to its simplest elements but to understand WHY and HOW you need to read my step by step narrative:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2017/06/15/stephen-wilde-how-conduction-and-convection-cause-a-greenhouse-effect-arising-from-atmospheric-mass/
Anthony really should remove the ‘bad science’ label or make it clear that he is referring to Willis’s critique.
Trick February 11, 2018 at 1:34 pm
The rising fluid does NOT warm the ambient fluid: Adiabatic assumption.
When the rising fluid reaches its max height, its density (~temperature) is equal to that of the surrounding fluid. The excess energy collected at the surface has been spent in expanding against the surrounding fluid during ascent. Nothing left to warm ambient fluid.
The adiabatic assumption for gases (NOT liquids) is actually that the rising parcel cools at the same rate as the surroundings so that the temperature differential remains all the way to the top unless an inversion layer is reached along the way.
Once at the top the parcel is pushed to one side by warmer air coming up from below until the flow from below no longer supports it whereupon it sinks back to the surface and gets back to the surface with the excess energy intact.
Thus it never warms the ambient gases but it does warm the surface when it gets back down to it.
What gets taken from the surface adiabatically gets returned to the surface adiabatically.
Stephen Wilde February 12, 2018 at 6:59 am
Sorry, but this shows you have no clue what atmospheric convection actually is.
Suggest to start with eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate
(forget the greenhouse nonsense someone sneaked in)
I assure you that is correct for the pure adiabatic process after stripping out all confounding factors. There is nothing in your link that say otherwise.
For an argon atmosphere it would be the pure process.
Anyway, just apply logic. Since the surroundings cool at the same rate as the parcel of gas then how would the temperature differential change?
“The rising fluid does NOT warm the ambient fluid: Adiabatic assumption.”
Only for a fluid parcel that doesn’t rise (not buoyant) on its own Ben, a parcel on the DALR or if moist MALR. The convection process depends on the warmed fluid being buoyant in the gravity field, rising while dumping off avg. internal kinetic energy until it cools to upper fluid ambient T & stops rising. This process warms the fluid above the rising convection columns. The surface fluid as experimentally shown moves in beneath the rising columns at surface ambient to a major extent, descending columns are not generally observed in nature, only in Stephen’s imagination.
Stephen Wilde February 12, 2018 at 9:12 am
Don’t know where you got the impression that rising air cools at the same rate as the temperature in the surrounding air decreases with altitude.
Average from many temperature profiles is ~6,5 K/km (Standard Atmosphere). The DALR is ~9,8 K/km.
The release of latent heat reduces the DALR to the MALR as long as latent heat is available.
So no, the internal temperature of rising (or sinking) air changes independently of the surrounding (static) air.
We were discussing the raw adiabatic assumption free of other factors such as water vapour. The average in ascent is less than the dry rate because water vapour releases latent heat of condensation. However, in so far as that latent heat release sends convection higher the energy involved in uplift is fully recovered in the subsequent descent because of the greater lapse rate in descent so the effect of water vapour nets out to zero.
The raw adiabatic assumption is as I said.
Trick February 12, 2018 at 5:06 pm
Yes, but the rising air does not use internal kinetic energy to rise. It is pushed up by the pressure of the air below as long as the parcel is not at the correct height given its density (~temperature)
The internal kinetic energy is is not lost to the surrounding air, the temperature reduces since the parcel expands into the lower pressure of the surrounding air.
“The internal kinetic energy is is not lost to the surrounding air, the temperature reduces since the parcel expands into the lower pressure of the surrounding air.”
For the adiabatic parcel which is NOT buoyant. It sits still.
The convecting fluid parcels in the video that are rising convective columns are warming the surroundings in the videos at the expense of losing internal kinetic energy i.e. cooling diabatically. When they equilibrate T with surroundings T they stop ascending.
Ben is confusing adiabatic expansion with diabatic convective rising columns of parcels.
Trick February 13, 2018 at 4:34 pm
Obviously one of us is confused. I’m confident it’s not me.
See eg http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints2/501/
or http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/atm_phys.html
The assumption is that rising (or sinking) parcels do so adiabatically. Otherwise the simple -g/Cp would obviously not be possible.
I do hope you’re not one of the many people who believe that -g/Cp has anything to say about the temperature profiles of our atmosphere.
”The assumption is that rising (or sinking) parcels do so adiabatically.”
Only for deriving g/Cp. A parcel actually rising (buoyant) or descending (heavier than surrounding fluid) as shown in the convection videos is not on the g/Cp slope, they are diabatic. Parcels exactly on the g/Cp slope aren’t buoyant or too heavy, as they are virtually moved along the slope so any virtual displacement for these parcels is assumed ideally adiabatic. No real process is adiabatic and the videos are real processes.
g/Cp slope is derived from assumptions the instantaneous parcel being at the same temperature and the same pressure as its surroundings so it is neutral stable, neither buoyant nor too heavy.
Trick February 14, 2018 at 8:13 am
No. The assumption is that the rising parcel adjusts to the pressure of the surrounding air (NOT the temperature) and thus increases its volume, doing work in expanding. This results in the cooling rate of -g/Cp.
The adiabatic assumption holds since air is a lousy conductor, the volumes involved are large and the time span of the process is small.
Stephen Wilde February 13, 2018 at 1:03 pm
The adiabatic assumption includes the release of latent heat by condensation. The WV content of a rising parcel is a given from the moment a parcel starts is ascent.
For a simple summary:
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints2/501/
More elaborate:
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/atm_phys.html
But here’s the thing: if we start relying too much on the how and why then we start getting into arguments over the how and why– this is amply demonstrated above. Then each person starts arguing from their self-consistent paradigms and the result is a mess, frankly. If we can stick to the logic of the arguments insofar as this is possible and just try to get clear about what we’re saying, then we’re much more likely to find out what and where our errors are.
If we want to defend our paradigms we can do that until we’re blue in the face, and since our paradigms are (hopefully!) internally self-consistent, we make perfect sense to ourselves and to those who share our paradigm. And we get nowhere. Surprise!
Frolly has cut through all this with Occam’s razor. His argument has great clarity. Here it is stripped-down even more:
Major premise: GHGs raise the temperature of an atmosphere significantly.
_______________________________
Minor premise: We have a formula derived from the IGLs that can predict the temperatures of all atmospheres reasonably accurately.
Minor premise: We have two identical planets except that one has GHGs and the other does not.
Minor premise: The formula derived from the IGLs gives the same temperature for both planets.
_______________________________
Conclusion: Either the IGL are false, or else GHGs do not raise the temperature of an atmosphere significantly.
The conclusion is irrefutable, unless one of the minor premises is refutable.
Signed, an (ignorant) Logician
Once again I placed my comment in the wrong place. This was a reply to Stephen Wilde February 12, 2018 at 5:46 am: “Frolly has reduced it to its simplest elements but to understand WHY and HOW you need to read my step by step narrative….”
“Conclusion: Either the IGL are false, or else GHGs do not raise the temperature of an atmosphere significantly.”
Add: If GHGs do not raise the temperature, then earths 33C “greenhouse effect” is due to the atmospheric damping the cooling, leading to a warmer earth. Argon would do the same, as Entropy is always maximized.
sailboarder: why complicate what’s already a simple, elegant, and powerful argument? All you need is what Frolly stated.
True, but the layman, especially politicians, will only understand the latter.
“All you need is what Frolly stated.”
Well, and NASA measuring the various density(z) for each planet used by Frolly to compute P=density*R*T. Nothing new or novel in what Frolly has essentially back calculated, the IGL is useful tool for atm. fluids. I wouldn’t call it bad science, just non-useful science.
It is certainly bad science to claim as Frolly does that “there can be no 33°C ‘greenhouse effect’ on Earth” and that “near-surface temperature is actually caused by adiabatic auto-compression.” The NASA measured density(z) would contain those effects.
Since NASA hasn’t measured exoplanet density(z) the top post process can not be used to find exoplanet T(z). However using radiative balance at the exoplanet orbits both T(0) and to a certain extent T(z) are readily estimated.
Trick February 12, 2018 at 5:23 pm:
“Well, and NASA measuring the various density(z) for each planet used by Frolly to compute P=density*R*T. Nothing new or novel in what Frolly has essentially back calculated, the IGL is useful tool for atm. fluids. I wouldn’t call it bad science, just non-useful science.”
Nice try, Trick. The temperature of earth has been directly measured, and all you need is that one example that Frolly/Holmes laid out to prove the theory of GHG warming wrong.
Who was it that said you only need one experiment to prove a theory wrong? In this case, it was an experiment in the logic of the claim that GHGs warm an atmosphere. That logic failed utterly and completely. Either the gas laws are wrong, or greenhouse gases don’t warm an atmosphere: there is no escape from that conclusion.
The problem as I see it is that the radiative paradigm has captured our imaginations and allegiance but it’s apparently only a small part of the story of how our atmosphere works. People who have lived with this paradigm don’t want to give it up, and they don’t have to; they just have to put it in its proper place. Still, even that’s a big step.
“Either the gas laws are wrong, or greenhouse gases don’t warm an atmosphere: there is no escape from that conclusion.”
These are both correct Don, the science is well tested. All Frolly did was use NASA neasured density in his calculations which he obtained from the listed ref.s. Frolly would not have been able to make the calculations with data if NASA hadn’t been there first using the same IGL formula – shown in his listed ref.s.
Trick February 13, 2018 at 6:02 am:
“All Frolly did was use NASA measured density in his calculations which he obtained from the listed ref.s.”
OK, just use PV=nRT and results are still very close.
I doubt that the science is “well-tested,” as you say. I suspect that the only thing that has happened is that answers have been found that confirm the paradigm used.
Those bullet points have been clear to some of us for a long time.
In order to get it across to others it has been necessary to go messily into the how and why and as for that my narrative is the only step by step description I have ever seen.
Unfortunately there are many who just do not accept that which you now accept.
No, Stephen. All you need are the bullet points. Nothing else is needed. The details are merely details that MUST follow the basic logic.
We’re having trouble with this because people have abandoned logic and instead defend paradigms.
Sadly the bullet points haven’t worked thus far. Hopefully they might in future but there is one huge mountain to climb against the establishment view.
Most people do not trust bullet points unless backed by a plausible narrative. They already get too much in the way of bullet points in marketing efforts on a daily basis.
It’s not about bullet points. It’s about people opening their minds, stop defending paradigms, and listening to the facts and the logic: the stuff they supposedly teach in college.
I don’t disagree. That is what should happen. What are you going to do about it?
I’m doing it right now.
Good, keep at it. I’m ten years in 🙂
Don132 February 12, 2018 at 12:37 pm
Couldn’t agree more. The whole idea that our atmosphere (low density, low temperature, low heat storage capacity) can INCREASE the surface temperatures (and thus the deep oceans and maybe even the increasing temps in the crust?) by whatever mechanism is bizar.
Don wrote: “Minor premise: We have a formula derived from the IGLs that can predict the temperatures of all atmospheres reasonably accurately.
Minor premise: We have two identical planets except that one has GHGs and the other does not.
Minor premise: The formula derived from the IGLs gives the same temperature for both planets.
_______________________________
Conclusion: Either the IGL are false, or else GHGs do not raise the temperature of an atmosphere significantly.
Don, your formula depends on pressure and density. The density of a planet’s atmosphere is not a fundamental property of a planet*.
The pressure at various altitudes in various atmospheres is determined by the weight of the gas overhead. That is fundamental.
The density of various atmospheres is determined by BOTH temperature and pressure according to the IGL.
n/V = P/RT.
What controls temperature? Radiation! More precisely, irradiation by the sun, planetary albedo, and planetary emissivity. (We can define the effective emissivity for a whole planet in terms of surface temperature, to a avoid the complications of dealing with the emissivity of semi-transparent gases whose temperature varies with altitude.) In the long run, the temperature will change until incoming and outgoing radiation are equal (since outgoing radiation is determined by planetary temperature).
Imagine a very simple model for a parcel of atmosphere: a cylinder with a movable piston filled with some of that atmosphere. The piston is pushing on the gas with the same force/area = pressure as found at the surface or any other altitude. Move the cylinder to outer space. Increase the force on the piston, the volume shrinks, the gas warms and the density of the gas increases. Decrease the force and everything returns to original state. Now send the cylinder 10X further away from the sun. What happens? The cylinder radiates more thermal IR than it receives from the sun as SWR. Keeping the same force/area on the piston, what happens? The temperature drops, the volume drops and the density increases. Now move the cylinder to interstellar space. The force pushing on the piston hasn’t changed, but the temperature has dropped to 3 K.
Clearly, pressure doesn’t produce temperature. Right?
Pressure is set by mass and gravity. Temperature has no effect on pressure because however much the atmosphere expands or contracts the weight bearing down on the surface stays the same. That is why a piston analogy is not appropriate.
Pressure controls density by packing molecules closer together.
Densely packed molecules can conduct energy from the surface more readily and so density controls the amount of energy that the atmosphere will take from the surface and recycle back to the surface via convective overturning.
That affects temperature.
The surface temperature above S-B is set by mass, gravity and insolation acting via conduction and nothing to do with radiation.
DWIR is simply a by product of radiative material spread along the lapse rate slope and has no additional surface heating capability because its effect is already included in the lapse rate structure. That is why there need be no separate term for radiative capability within the gas laws and why the standard atmosphere works without involving radiation.
Frank February 12, 2018 at 12:30 pm:
“Don, your formula depends on pressure and density. The density of a planet’s atmosphere is not a fundamental property of a planet.
“The pressure at various altitudes in various atmospheres is determined by the weight of the gas overhead. That is fundamental.”
No argument with that, although I’m curious why density isn’t a property of an atmosphere?
“Clearly, pressure doesn’t produce temperature. Right?” I don’t think anyone is claiming this in just the way you state it! Your thought-experiment works but is missing the point.
What’s the point? The point is that you have no more room to maneuver; Frolly has stated an irrefutable logic. You can argue from your paradigm all you want to and assume that back-radiation warms a planet, but then you’re arguing from your paradigm and not from the facts and the bold, and perhaps cruel, logic.
The problem is that we get lost in our paradigms. Of course our paradigms are self-consistent! But when simple logic tells us our paradigm is wrong, we have to admit it or else abandon reason. If we abandon reason then we can all go around yelling at each other about how right we are– and of course we are! It says so from the paradigm through which we’ve been looking all these years!
— Stephen Wilde
February 12, 2018 at 1:06 pm
Pressure is set by mass and gravity. Temperature has no effect on pressure because however much the atmosphere expands or contracts the weight bearing down on the surface stays the same. That is why a piston analogy is not appropriate.–
One can say if increase global temperature from say 10 to 40 C, it doesn’t effect pressure- other than addition of water vapor. If increase amount of gas, it increases atmosphere mass which increases pressure- minor unless temperature is boiling oceans.
But on regional scale [rather then global] warmer air create weather, called high pressure systems.
But otherwise, roughly pressure is set by mass and gravity
–Pressure controls density by packing molecules closer together.
Densely packed molecules can conduct energy from the surface more readily and so density controls the amount of energy that the atmosphere will take from the surface and recycle back to the surface via convective overturning.
That affects temperature.–
That’s true with dry land surface, but Earth’s surface is mostly covered with water, and it rains on the 30% of Earth’s land surface.
For example if had much higher pressure than earth’s pressure, the ground surface and air surface temperature would closer to each other. Or they are rarely around the same temperature- unless the ground is wet. So in desert on could have the sand temperature around 70 C and air could be 40 to 50 C. Whereas with ocean surface temperature of about 30 C, with have surface air temperature of about 30 C.
–The surface temperature above S-B is set by mass, gravity and insolation acting via conduction and nothing to do with radiation.–
Yes but most of Earth has little to do with S-B. Or if the ocean had something to do with S-B it would have surface temperature as high as 70 C.
–DWIR is simply a by product of radiative material spread along the lapse rate slope and has no additional surface heating capability because its effect is already included in the lapse rate structure. That is why there need be no separate term for radiative capability within the gas laws and why the standard atmosphere works without involving radiation.–
Yeah.
DWIR doesn’t warm the surface, nor evaporate water. Think about it, if evaporated water we would have no clouds. The significant of DWIR is related to it’s possible reduction of heat leaving earth, and it’s fairly minor effect. Or it’s so small we can’t measure an increase in global temperature due to an increase in CO2 levels.
Don132 and others: If you have an open mind, you can SEE WITH YOUR OWN EYES the basic concept of thermogravity fail.
Molecular dynamics calculations allow chemists to visualize the motion of molecules by applying Newton’s Laws of Motion to them. A molecular dynamics teaching tool for the behavior of gases can be found online at:
http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/md/InteractiveMD.html
This program includes the ability to turn gravity on and off. If you play with the parameters, you can have a box of gas molecules moving randomly in the absence of a gravitational field. The density is uniform. The speed of each molecule is color coded, the temperature is the average of these colors. There is no temperature gradient in the box. Turn on gravity and what the average molecule fall and speed up. The molecules near the bottom of the box are moving faster, a temperature gradient exists. But only temporarily. Within a few seconds, you will see the density gradient remain and the temperature/kinetic energy gradient vanish. Why? Because collisions transfer kinetic energy vertically. That is called thermal diffusion. Gravity doesn’t create a temperature gradient.
… unless you have only a few molecules in the box that collide only rarely. Then a kinetic energy gradient exists due to changes in potential energy. And it also does so in the Earth’s upper atmosphere above about 100 km (the turbopause). Unfortunately, when molecules are not colliding frequently, they don’t have a stable mean kinetic energy – and temperature is undefined.
The collective properties of a large collection of colliding gas molecules can not be determined by simple reasoning about KE and PE. We all know that expanding gases cool, but conservation of KE and PE can’t explain that phenomena. It doesn’t explain entropy. PdV and TdS are forms of energy that emerge only from large groups of colliding molecules. This collective behavior of large groups of colliding molecules is studied in a branch of physics called statistical mechanics.
This site will also let you watch the expansion of a gas. Do it with a few molecules and the kinetic energy remains constant. Do it with many, and the average kinetic energy drops. Large groups of colliding molecules DO NOT follow your intuition, even though the molecules in this simulation are following Newton’s laws of motion!!!!
Warning. These gas molecules are not hard sphere. They have a Leonard-Jones 6-12 field that makes molecules stick together slightly when they are close, but repeal when they get too close. This produces van der Waals attraction between molecules, allowing the gas condense and solidify when it gets too cold. This is a “non-ideal gas”, the molecules have a volume and intermolecular forces. When hotter, the non-ideal behavior is negligible. (Water molecules in our lower atmosphere occasionally stick together as you see here.)
A box is not a sphere and insolation needs to be added because it is the flow of insolation through the system that prevents the temperature gradient from vanishing. Not an adequate analogy.
Wilde wrote: “A box is not a sphere and insolation needs to be added because it is the flow of insolation through the system that prevents the temperature gradient from vanishing. Not an adequate analogy.”
None of which has the slightest thing to do with this demonstration. The demo shows that “turning on” gravitational field, causes:
1) the average gas molecule falls, converting PE to KE and higher temperature.
2) this produces a density and temperature gradient.
3) the density gradient remains, but the temperature gradient dissipated through collisions despite the continued presence of the gravitational flied.
Gravity – and the pressure/density gradient it produces – does not produce a permanent temperature gradient in a gas.
The ability to run these demonstrations with a few molecules or many rapidly colliding molecules shows simple KE+PE considerations apply to a few molecules (a situation where temperature is undefined), but not bulk gases, where PdV work becomes important and TdS.
So now “insolation” is necessary? If so, that heat produces an unstable lapse rate in the lower atmosphere where GHGs prevent thermal IR from escaping to space as fast as heat is provided by the sun. That is the conventional theory of why a -g/Cp lapse rate exists.
Frank February 12, 2018 at 1:09 pm:
“Molecular dynamics calculations allow chemists to visualize the motion of molecules by applying Newton’s Laws of Motion to them. A molecular dynamics teaching tool for the behavior of gases can be found online at:”
I love that tool! Thanks for the link.
But, if I turn up the gravity (there’s a “x10” box to check) it shows me the exact opposite of what you claim. I may be misinterpreting this. The molecules congregate on the bottom half of the box. Even if the temperature of the molecules remains the same, the upper half of the box must be cooler than the bottom.
If you want to convince us, break it down to the very simplest concepts that a ninth-grader would understand. Then apply logic.
Frank February 13, 2018 at 12:13 am
Not sure if we’re on the same page here. Conventional theory about -g/Cp lapse rate has always been and still is that this lapse rate is ONLY applicable for for parcels moving vertically in an environment that is in Hydrostatic Equlibrium and that the process is adiabatic.
Frank wrote: “If so, that heat produces an unstable lapse rate in the lower atmosphere where GHGs prevent thermal IR from escaping to space as fast as heat is provided by the sun. That is the conventional theory of why a -g/Cp lapse rate exists.”
Ben commented: “Not sure if we’re on the same page here. Conventional theory about -g/Cp lapse rate has always been and still is that this lapse rate is ONLY applicable for for parcels moving vertically in an environment that is in Hydrostatic Equlibrium and that the process is adiabatic.
We have two processes that can control temperature in the atmosphere: Radiative equilibrium and convection (which I like to call buoyancy-driven convection because it depends on density).
In a simple “gray atmosphere” with equal optical density at all wavelengths, temperature increases linearly with optical density as you travel from the TOA to the surface. That means that the temperature increases exponentially (like pressure) as you approach the surface. There are estimates that the surface of the Earth would be about 340 K without convection – ie with pure radiative equilibrium.
However, we both appear to agree that the atmosphere is unstable toward convection when the lapse rate is above g/Cp. Therefore, when radiative equilibrium produces an unstable lapse rate, convection moves heat aloft until the lapse rate is stable. This is called radiative-convective equilibrium and was first describe by Manabe in the 1960’s. That changed our focus from surface energy balance (how much does DLR increase with rising GHGs?) to a focus on what happens at the TOA (why much does radiative cooling to space slow due to rising GHGs?).
It is interesting to contemplate what would happen as GHGs were added to an atmosphere that started with very little. At first, there wouldn’t be a need for convection. Then, when the exponential lapse rate reachs a critical slope of -G/Cp, convection would start, but only for a short distance until radiative cooling through the thinner atmosphere was adequate to remove all of the heat provided by SWR.
Don: You might try Volume 10,000, 1000 molecules, no gravity and T =1.5 (which seems to give roughly equal numbers of all four colors (which is indicative of speed). I use a time step of 0.001 s (the most accurate) and a steps per frame from 1-5 (when I want to watch carefully) to 100+ when I want the system to reach a steady state quickly. The temperature is adjusted coarsely by faster and slower and delicately by -1% and +1%. Pause the simulation. Turn up the gravity to 0.05 and resume the simulation at a slow frame rate. You can pause at any time. Beginning at about 20 s, you will see a deficit of yellow (faster moving) molecules near the top and a lot more yellow molecules near the bottom that have been accelerated by gravity (thermogravity). A density gradient has also developed. At about 40 seconds, the yellow colored molecules begin rising due to collisions from below. Yellow molecules reappear in the top half of the box by 60 second. Then turn up the frame rate to see what sort of steady state develops. Note that the temperature has risen to 2.2 as the average height of the molecules has fallen and some PE is converted to KE. So there are more yellow molecules and fewer blue ones. (The size of the box and the strength of the gravity determine how much PE gets converted to KE). To my eye, the fraction of yellow molecules at all heights appears to be the same, but I haven’t done a proper experiment and tried to collect data (which is possible).
Now put only 10 molecules in the box. Crank up the temperature to 100 briefly to equilibrate. Then return to T = 1.5. In this situation, the molecules are faster moving in the lower half of the box and slower moving in the top. As those who believe in thermogravity predict.
Temperature is defined (as the mean kinetic energy) only for a large collection of frequently colliding molecules. The temperature of a single molecule is meaningless – it constantly changes, Given the Boltzmann distribution of molecular speeds, the speed of any particular molecule doesn’t tell you its temperature, the mean kinetic energy of its neighbors. (So if a photon was emitted by one molecule and absorbed by a second, it can go from a faster-moving molecule to a slower moving one – or vice versa – because molecular speed is not temperature) When energy is entering or leaving a system much faster than it can be shared among colliding molecules, you no longer have a Boltzmann distribution of molecular speeds – or a well defined temperature. In our simulations, when PE is converted to KE with 10 molecules, collisions aren’t frequent enough to keep a Boltzmann distribution of molecular speeds. However, with 1000 molecules, no molecule fall very far between collisions. In the atmosphere at 1 atmosphere pressure and 288 K, molecules travel about 30 molecular diameters between collisions. The PE to KE change if motion is vertical is something like 10^10 less than the mean kinetic energy of a gas molecule. This simulation has a gravitation field massively stronger than on Earth to you can visualize the effect of gravity in a box that is less than 100 molecular diameters in size. So certain aspects of this simulation aren’t realistic.
Expansion is the phenomena that most clearly shows that collections of rapidly colliding molecules (with pressure and temperature) behave differently than a small number of infrequently colliding molecules. Pause a simulation and expand the box from 50×50 to 100×100. If you do this with 10 molecules, the temperature remains the same. With 250, it drops. When dealing with a small number of gas molecules that collide infrequently (between collisions with the walls), the only thing that is important is KE. When dealing with a large number of molecules that collide frequently with each other between collisions with the walls, other factors become important. I’d like to tell you that PdV work causes the temperature to drop, but that isn’t accurate. The gas isn’t pushing against any force as it expands so it doesn’t do any work. PdV work applies to a reversible expansion, not a “free expansion”. The temperature drops because of the increase in entropy (TdS). For systems with colliding molecules, KE, rotation, vibration, PdV and TdS are all important components of energy. Thermogravity consider only KE and PE.
Good luck.
Frank February 14, 2018 at 1:05 am
Thank you for your detailed discussion. I think that if we can sort out what you’re saying this will do a great deal to clarify the argument we’re having.
My first technical problem is that I don’t get how to adjust T, temperature.
I’ve attempted to follow your steps but as indicated I seem to be missing something. But let me tell you what I do see.
Settings:
Number of atoms=1000
Box size = 80
Gravity = 0.05
Time step = 0.018
Steps per frame= 50
Atom color by speed
I conceive of the box height as the same as the height of the troposphere; I see no reason why I can’t do that. So the bottom of the box is the surface and the top is the tropopause. There is no mistake that the atoms congregate on the bottom 1/2 of the box. According to the gas laws, the top, which has fewer atoms/less pressure, must be colder, and it doesn’t matter if the proportion of faster moving molecules at the top is the same as the proportion of faster moving molecules at the bottom.
We have a gravity-induced temperature gradient, no?
What am I missing?
Frank February 13, 2018 at 9:54 pm
Not sure what you mean with radiative equilibrium. To me it exists when incoming radiation heats a surface to such a temperature that it radiates the same amount as it receives. On the moon (day side) we have more or less radiative balance temperatures, reaching ~400K on the equator just after noontime.
On earth we do not have radiative balance, but we do have an energy balance. Incoming solar and outgoing radiation at TOA closely match.
That would be called Absolute Instability. Even dry air convects.
Normally it takes condensation (latent heat release) for convection to continue to considerable heights.
I could use some sparring/help in formulating my ideas about the temperatures on earth. I think I have a solid explanation how the Earth GAT can be ~70K higher than lunar GAT.
If you’re willing to hear me out, my email is “ben at wtrs dot nl”
Ben commented: “Not sure what you mean with radiative equilibrium.”
You examples were correct. To apply these principles to an atmosphere, see:
https://scienceofdoom.com/2010/08/08/vanishing-nets/
frolly February 11, 2018 at 2:07 pm
I believe Frank answered most of your questions.
The surrounding air is NOT ccoling with increasing altitude. The lapse rate I gave of 6,5 K/km is a temperature PROFILE, a “measurement” of the state of the atmosphere.
see eg. http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html
Frank February 11, 2018 at 9:32 pm
I agree with what you wrote upto and including “In practice, rising parcels of air follow the DALR until the lifting condensation level (LCL) and the SALR (saturated ALR) above.”
The 6,5 K/km is the lapse rate for the Standard Atmosphere, afaik the average of a lot of temperature profiles at mid latitudes.
Not sure where the dry descending would come from.
The (moist) potential temperatures are just calculated values, NOT the result of atmospheric processes, to be better able to compare the ACTUAL temperatures in an atmosphere. They also give an indication of the groundtemperature required for convection to reach a certain altitude.
Also for oceans potential temperatures and an adiabatic lapse rates are used.
To predict the possibility of serious convection imo CAPE is better suited.
http://www.tornadochaser.net/capeclass.html
Very nice:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/anim=off/overlay=cape/winkel3
Ben asked: “Not sure where the dry descending would come from [that leads to an average lapse rate of 6.5 K/km].
I’m not sure I fully understand that either. In the convective towers of tropical thunderstorms (and summer thunderstorms in the mid-latitudes), turbulent horizontal mixing introduces dry subsiding air into the moist convecting core. The grid cells of AOGCMs are too big to model this phenomena and use an “entrainment parameter”. The entrainment parameterization in AOGCMs has the biggest effect of all parameters on climate sensitivity (up to 1 degC). However, I don’t fully understand this process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrainment_(meteorology)
If you consider the Hadley circulation, rising and descending air masses are not close enough to mix. Nevertheless, the descending branch – which is so dry that it should have a lapse rate of 9 K/km – isn’t 90+ K warmer when it descends more than 10 km to the top of the boundary layer. I assume there is some horizontal mixing here also.
I never meant to say the average lapse rate was ABOVE 6.5 K/km. You can see average soundings for various locations (and the US standard atmosphere) at the link below:
http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
Ben complains: “The (moist) potential temperatures are just calculated values, NOT the result of atmospheric processes, to be better able to compare the ACTUAL temperatures in an atmosphere.”
Yes. These values tell you what the temperature for every parcel would be at the surface after accounting for PdV work and release of latent heat. When the moist potential temperature rises with altitude, the lapse rate was not determined by convection. If moist potential temperature falls with altitude, the atmosphere is unstable towards buoyancy-driven convection.
You’ve both got lost in the small scale detail.
If you look at a synoptic pressure map you will see the entire atmosphere divided into high and low pressure cells with isobars around them.
High pressure is above about 1000 millibars and the cells contain air spiralling downwards.
Low pressure is below about 1000 millibars and the cells contains air spiralling upwards.
The stratosphere upwards works differently but there is convective overturning in the stratosphere via the Brewer Dobson Circulation. It is likely to be present higher up as well but the air is too thin for us to have discerned it.
And looking at the synoptic pressure UK Met office map for today 0700 2/12, there is lotsa’ area where p=1000mb. So NOT ALL the globe is high or low pressure at any given time. No ascending or descending spiraling area! I will let Stephen guess the percentage of the globe not high or low pressure in the manner he imagines.
Pressure is only 1000mb exactly below the isobar lines for that pressure. The volume involved is therefore infinitesimal.
“The volume involved is therefore infinitesimal.”
Ok, go a 3 feet or a meter beyond the isobar perpendicular, on either side only very, very small, very slight change in p, then multiply by the length of the isobar. Not so infinitesimal. The point is Stephen, that there are large volumes of not very high or low pressure and these can not be ignored as you do. They are large volumes with ignorable spriraling (Stephen term). These are called calm days and nights at the surface.
Frank February 12, 2018 at 11:48 am
The air sinking in the high pressure areas of the Hadley Circulation sinks very slowly (10s meters/hour.)
The adiabatic assumption isn’t valid on these timescales. In long lasting High pressure areas you may see a lapse rate that approaches the DALR.
To make sure, the Hadley Circulation is not driven by convection in any way.
Thanks Ben. I don’t have much feel for rates of ascent and subsidence (except that the net flux must be zero). 10 m/h is 240 m/d. 40 m/hr is 1 km/day. A week or two to come down.
Water vapor remains in the air for an average on 9 days between evaporation and precipitation (5 days in the tropics). However, it could be spending most of that time traveling to a convecting region, not ascending.
I left you guys to sort this out and started writing another paper, but then saw you all lose your way going down Willis’s rabbit-holes.
Glad to help out!
1000Frolly aka Robert Holmes
Thanks for that, Frolly!
Great Physicists can sometimes do thoughties well, because of the breadth and depth of their understanding. This means they can see the pitfalls and unintended consequences. The rest of us, NO! Rabbit holes at best, Alice in Wonderland. Brett
I think I have resolved the conundrum around DWIR and downward convection by considering the gas laws.
Both are separate means by which the atmosphere returns energy to the surface having acquired the energy during the initial formation when the atmosphere was lifted off the surface against gravity.
The amount of energy required in the formation is set by atmospheric mass and the strength of the gravitational field at any given level of insolation.
In order to stay in hydrostatic equilibrium an atmosphere must return energy to the surface at precisely the same rate that energy is taken from the surface otherwise it will upset the radiative balance with space and be lost.
It does not matter whether that return is effected by DWIR or downward convection because the gas laws ensure that they are mutually exclusive and not additive.
For a non radiative atmosphere all energy must be returned to the surface in downward conduction at the end of the descent phase of the convective overturning cycle.
For a radiative atmosphere some is returned by DWIR and the amount returned by downward conduction drops accordingly.
The reason is related to density at the surface.
If DWIR is present then it contributes to surface heating above S-B but in doing so it expands the air near the surface and reduces density. Reduced density causes the efficiency of conduction to drop so that the vigour of convection declines and less energy is then returned to the surface in the descent phase. DWIR causes a weakening of the vigour of convection instead of raising surface temperature.
The net effect is that the surface temperature enhancement above S-B stays exactly the same as before.
Instead of a non GHG atmosphere being isothermal the truth is that it is radiative gases that cause an atmosphere to trend towards the isothermal state by reducing the need for convective overturning. A non GHG atmosphere actually has the most vigorous convection.
“In order to stay in hydrostatic equilibrium an atmosphere must return energy to the surface at precisely the same rate that energy is taken from the surface otherwise it will upset the radiative balance with space and be lost.”
Not observed. Sure there are windy days. Please explain where the energy would come for the atm. molecules to hugely speed up to escape velocity and “be lost”.
“For a non radiative atmosphere all energy must be returned to the surface in downward conduction at the end of the descent phase of the convective overturning cycle.”
Descending columns are not observed in the real convecting atmosphere and there are large areas of observed calm days/nights at the surface.
“to surface heating above S-B…surface temperature enhancement above S-B..”
Has never been observed. What is always observed is surface thermometer T exactly at S-B.
I’m not sure why I persist, but I’ll give it another shot.
The Idea Gas Law allows you to calculate any of the variables involved … but only if you know the other variables. It works at all times and all places. So as Robert Holmes points out, it works for the globe as a whole, and it also works at the South Pole.
HOWEVER, the ability to calculate the atmospheric temperature using the ideal gas law does not allow us to say anything about how the atmosphere got to that temperature. For example, the IGL says that the South Pole and the global surface have different average temperatures.
But it can tell us NOTHING about why the temperatures are different, or why the temperatures are what they are.
For example. The world as a whole is mostly warmed by the sun. However, at the poles, there is more warming coming from the tropics by way of the ocean and the atmosphere than there is coming from the sun.
So here’s the important question.
Can we tell from the South Polar version of the Ideal Gas Law how much of the polar heat is coming from the sun and how much is coming from the movement of heat from the tropics?
Of course not, don’t be daft. From the Ideal Gas Law, we can calculate atmospheric temperature, but we can’t tell anything about WHY the atmosphere is the temperature that it is. The South Pole could be heated by the sun or by horizontal movement of heat, but we can’t tell one thing about that from the IGL.
Similarly, from the Ideal Gas Law we cannot tell whether the earth is warmed by internal radiation, by the sun, or by the sun with the aid of greenhouse gases. We can tell NOTHING about how it was warmed from the IGL.
Here’s another example. It seems that Jupiter and the Earth are warmed in different ways, because Jupiter is still collapsing gravitationally and gets some portion of its heat from the inside. Can we determine how much is heat from Jupiter’s core is added to Jupiter’s solar input by using the Ideal Gas Law?
Of course not. Not possible. Nor can we determine from the IGL how much additional energy the Earth gets from CO2, for the same reason. The IGL can tell us what the temperature is, but not WHY the temperature is what it is.
Which is why I’ve called Robert Holme’s work “Bad Science” … it’s built on a total misunderstanding of what the IGL can and cannot do.
w.
“The IGL can tell us what the temperature is, but not WHY the temperature is what it is”
Can it tell us the change in GAT due to a doubling of CO2, given that CO2 does not create heat, but assists in maximizing entropy.
Willis, I believe you are once again assuming that which you wish to prove. You are assuming that the IGL can’t tell us how an atmosphere warms in order to prove that the IGLs tell us nothing about how an atmosphere warms. Asserting it’s so doesn’t prove that it’s so. Your arguments are valid up to a point, and that point is where you attempt to refute the irrefutable argument that Holmes has laid out.
However, even if we can’t tell how an atmosphere warms according to IGL, as you claim, we can still use the IGL in an argument to prove that earth isn’t warmed by GHGs. Holmes has used the IGL to assist in his argument. His minor premises, which I have laid out, are irrefutable. It’s as simple as that! If the minor premises are true, the conclusion must be true. So, what do you want to do? Your choice is that you can abandon the IGLs or you can abandon the GHG theory. What will it be?
You must remove Holme’s work from the “bad science” category. That’s the only honorable thing left to do.
If the atmosphere is to remain in hydrostatic equilibrium a planet must shed all energy received which is in excess of that which comes in from space.
So, if it is receiving a proportion of its heat from the inside then it must radiate to space what comes from space PLUS the heat from inside otherwise the atmosphere could not be retained. It will permanently radiate more than comes in from space. That is fine as long as that heat from inside is an additional energy source. However S-B would not apply because the S-B equation does not include a term for heat emanating from the interior. It only deals with what comes in from space.
If one applies that principle to heat from GHGs then one is treating those GHGs as an additional energy source and again the planet would permanently have to radiate out more than it receives. It clearly does not.
In fact those GHGs are simply recycling radiated or conducted energy originally received from space up and down within the atmosphere and that energy does not leave otherwise there would be no extra kinetic energy at the surface above S-B to hold the weight of the atmosphere off the ground against gravity and to fuel ongoing convective overturning.
Whether it is radiation up and down or conduction up and down doesn’t matter because the two processes are mutually exclusive and not additive as I explained above.
One cannot treat heat from GHGs as an additional energy source in the way you suggest.
The solution is set out in my above post at February 12th 2018 at 6.29 pm.
Actually, I have just shown how you can accommodate both the IGLs and the radiative theory on the basis that the downward conductive and radiative flows are mutually exclusive and not additive by virtue of the effect of DWIR on air density at the surface.
wildeco2014 February 13, 2018 at 3:48 am:
“Actually, I have just shown how you can accommodate both the IGLs and the radiative theory on the basis that the downward conductive and radiative flows are mutually exclusive and not additive by virtue of the effect of DWIR on air density at the surface.”
Whatever that means! But seriously, what I should have said is that according to the logic Holmes has laid out in his E1, E2 thought experiment, you can’t say that the IGL is correct and at the same time say that the theory of significant radiative warming of the atmosphere by GHGs is correct.
Don,
Have you read my post at 6.29pm on the 12th ?
I am clearly saying that radiation from GHGs cannot warm the surface to a point any higher than it would be warmed in any event by the operation of the Ideal Gas Law in a non radiating atmosphere.
Stephen Wilde February 13, 2018 at 5:14 am:
“Have you read my post at 6.29pm on the 12th ?
I am clearly saying that radiation from GHGs cannot warm the surface to a point any higher than it would be warmed in any event by the operation of the Ideal Gas Law in a non radiating atmosphere.”
OK. Can you condense it into maybe a few sentences? You make me work too hard to understand what you’re saying, and right now I’m just plain tired. Simplicity and clarity of expression. You’re bombarding me and I have to stop and think about every little thing. Make it so a bright ninth-grader can understand.
No, you’re not “clearly saying” anything! Sorry. I think you’re probably right but I have to wade through too much to get there. Break it down, see what’s essential for your audience to understand your point, and throw out the rest.
wildeco2014 February 13, 2018 at 3:42 am:
Are you replying to me? If so, what’s your point? If not, then please address your comment to whoever it is you’re replying to.
”If the atmosphere is to remain in hydrostatic equilibrium a planet must shed all energy received which is in excess of that which comes in from space.”
Not at all. Today measurements show our planet is not shedding all energy received over decadal time periods which is in excess of that which comes in from above the surface by about 0.6W/m^2. And yet the atm. remains to a great extent in hydrostatic equilibrium. Stephen dreams about atm. science; Stephen doesn’t bother with observations, measurements or tests. Or have the expertise to read basic meteorology papers.
”otherwise there would be no extra kinetic energy at the surface above S-B”
There is no constituent KE in temperature above S-B, the KE in thermometer temperature is at S-B, all the time.
”One cannot treat heat from GHGs as an additional energy source in the way you suggest.”
This actually is true; the sun warms the surface above 255K as GHGs are added from near zero to natural amounts up to the observed global avg. thermometer temperature 288K.
”the downward conductive and radiative flows are mutually exclusive and not additive”
Yes, they are independent processes. Their energy IS additive by conservation of energy thru 1LOT.
Clearly, added radiation from GHGs enable the sun to warm the surface to a point higher than it would be warmed in any event by the operation of the Ideal Gas Law in a much weaker-radiating atmosphere.
Don132 February 13, 2018 at 5:08 am
Of course you can. Under your assumption, the IGL should be able to tell us how much of Jupiter’s heat comes from the interior … can it do that?
NO!
w.
Willis Eschenbach February 13, 2018 at 10:06 am:
Of course you can [say that both IGL is correct and that GHG theory is correct]. Under your assumption, the IGL should be able to tell us how much of Jupiter’s heat comes from the interior … can it do that?”
I never said it could, or claimed that it has to! And neither has Holmes/Frolly. There is no necessity for the IGL to say where the heat came from.
BUT … in the context of the E1,E2 experiment that originated from Reverend Badger and that Frolly set forward here, the IGL is telling us where the heat could NOT have come from.
OK, I don’t know much about physics– granted. But this stuff is basic logic! You have nowhere to turn; there is no way out of the conclusion. The ONLY way you can get out is by showing that one of the three minor premises is false:
Major premise: GHGs raise the temperature of an atmosphere significantly.
_______________________________
Minor premise: We have a formula derived from the IGLs that can predict the temperatures of all atmospheres reasonably accurately.
Minor premise: We have two identical planets except that one has GHGs and the other does not.
Minor premise: The formula derived from the IGLs gives the same temperature for both planets.
_______________________________
Conclusion: Either the IGL are false, or else GHGs do not raise the temperature of an atmosphere significantly.
If you want to refute Frolly/Badger’s/Stephen’s, etc., argument, then you must refute one of the minor premises. Focus on that. If you can’t refute one of the minor premises, then graciously accept that you’ve been arguing from a paradigm that MUST be false. Since the logic has been laid out it should be vigorously attacked to test it, BUT let’s not venture off trying to prove it wrong by bringing in what the argument says nothing about.
Badger’s argument (i.e., Frolly’s argument, first proposed by Reverend Badger) says:”these non-greenhouse gases [of E2] will be designed and mixed in such a way, that E2’s atmosphere possesses exactly the same measured atmospheric pressure, density and molar mass on the near-surface as E1 does.”
There is no way out!
“Minor premise: We have a formula derived from the IGLs that can predict the temperatures of all atmospheres reasonably accurately.”
Then do so for an object that NASA has not yet measured the density(z). Using only IGL. The top post referred paper is careful to only choose objects where the density(z) has been measured by a probe and T(0) found from inputting known density and pressure into IG in the paper’s ref.s..
“Minor premise: We have two identical planets except that one has GHGs and the other does not.”
Where? What planets?
“Minor premise: The formula derived from the IGLs gives the same temperature for both planets.”
IGL would not do so. The avg. density(0) would be different even if avg. pressure and Rspecific are the same.
Trick February 13, 2018 at 6:08 pm:
Trick, you’re not following the argument closely so at this point I’m not going to respond. I may be forced to respond in the future, and if so, I will.
Read Frolly/Badger’s argument again carefully, and then read my outline of the argument carefully.
Exactly Willis, that’s why it’s called an equation of state, it relates the state variables, P, V, T, & n, says nothing about how they get to that state. Need a different one for the lower Venusian atmosphere because the IGL doesn’t work so well there.
True, Phil, and it’s not at all clear why this idea is so hard to get across.
w.
It’s hard to get across because you’re arguing from a paradigm that is internally consistent but has fatal flaws, that’s why.
Agreed Willis, too many don’t understand the IGL I guess?
Try a lab scale experiment.
Two identical insulated cylinders, each containing an electric heater, and each sealed by a weighted piston which is free to move up or down.
Pressurise both with the same gas at the same pressure and the piston will be at the same height so P1=P2, V1=V2, M1=M2, T1=T2 thus satisfying the IGL.
Now heat one of the cylinders to T’1, the volume will increase to V’1 but P1 and M1 remain the same such that: P1V’1=RT’1 thus satisfying the IGL.
Redesign the experiment so that the gas in each cylinder contains a GHG and set it up in exactly the same way again you’ll get exactly the same P,V,T relationship, pass the appropriate IR through one of the cylinders and the temperature and volume will increase exactly as before.
The same is true for the atmosphere, change the energy balance of the atmosphere and T and V will change appropriately, while at all times IGL is obeyed.
Forcing the volume to be invariant as Holmes does is a violation of the IGL which is why his analysis is flawed.
Phil. February 13, 2018 at 11:59 am
Agreed. However, you then say …
I didn’t see anywhere that Holmes forced the volume to be invariant. To me the error is the claim that the IGL somehow “predicts” what the temperature will be.
The IGL is
PV = nRT
R is a constant. So if we know any three of the four variables, we can calculate, not predict but calculate the fourth.
What Holmes did mathematically is legit. He’s recast the IGL in terms of molar mass and density, vis:
PM = ρRT
This doesn’t force volume to be invariant, it just recasts it in different variables.
Holmes’s problem isn’t the math. It is the subsequent claim that somehow the IGL can magically show how much of the temperature is from the sun and how little is from GHGs. Can’t be done. As you point out the IGL is an “equation of state”, and can tell us NOTHING about how it got to that state.
Whether the incoming energy that got the atmosphere to that temperature is from the sun, from nuclear reactors, from GHGs, from the collapse of the core as with Jupiter, or from cosmic rays is simply not determinable from the Ideal Gas Law, as Holmes incorrectly asserts.
w.
OK Willis, but he implies that it’s constant in his example.
Consider; two very Earth-like rocky planets with Earth-like atmospheres orbiting at the same distance (1AU) from the Sun. We provide one with an atmosphere identical in every way to the present Earth’s; let this planet be E1. Now the other planet E2, is going to be identical in every way to E1 except for the composition of the atmosphere. The atmosphere of E2 will be very similar to E1’s atmosphere but will contain no greenhouse gases. It will be an almost identical mixture of the same gases as E1, but these non-greenhouse gases will be designed and mixed in such a way, that E2’s atmosphere possesses exactly the same measured atmospheric pressure, density and molar mass on the near-surface as E1 does.
Clearly the existing greenhouse gas hypothesis for Earth predicts that E1 should have a much higher (33K?) surface temperature than E2 because of its greenhouse gases. The hypothesis presented here, using formula 5, predicts that both planets will have identical temperatures. Notably, the predicted temperature figure for both planets, calculated from formula 5, is the same temperature as that predicted by the greenhouse gas hypothesis for the planet with the greenhouse gases, E1.
By doing this he forces the two atmospheres to have the same density and temperature and therefore the same volume and n. It’s a fake example. A realistic example would be two identical non GHG atmospheres to one of which a potent GHG would be added, P and M remain the same but T increases and therefore density and volume change to follow the IGL. His thought experiment sounds plausible at first blush but he’s forced an impossible situation.
Phil
The problem that you and Willis have is that the non GHG planets will have a temperature higher than S-B without having any GHGs involved. By your argument that should not be the case.
You then say that adding a GHG would raise the temperature even further.
If that were the case then the IGL calculation would be wrong, but in reality it never is.
You really do have to choose. Either the IGL is wrong or the radiative theory of gases is wrong. No way out as Don says.
The reason GHGs fail to raise the temperature further than that which the IGL predicts is that convective adjustments neutralise radiative imbalances:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~hhuang38/mae578_lecture_06.pdf
It occurs to me that there are 2 cases where the radiative “greenhouse” effect need not be included as a parameter in a model:
– An atmosphere transparent to thermal radiation, about which many rabbit holes have been explored above.
– And an atmosphere practically opaque to thermal radiation, which represents real planetary bodies, including Earth, completely neglected in the above discussion I’ve seen. In such a “saturated greenhouse”, convection and allied processes dominate heat transfer in the troposphere.
I argue that both cases are subject to adiabatic lapse rate, but that invokes subtleties of thermodynamics in a potential field, neglected in undergraduate physics classes. The chief difference I see between the two cases is where in the atmosphere is in radiative equilibrium with deep space.
Phil. February 13, 2018 at 1:18 pm:
“A realistic example would be two identical non GHG atmospheres to one of which a potent GHG would be added, P and M remain the same but T increases and therefore density and volume change to follow the IGL.”
PLEASE STOP ASSUMING WHAT REMAINS TO BE PROVED IN ORDER TO PROVE WHAT YOU WANT!
And yes, I’m shouting because it’s so obvious that this basic circular reasoning mistake is being made over and over. Stop.
The paradigm that says that GHGs raise the temperature of earth is wrong. That paradigm is internally consistent but fails a basic test of logic, which test steps outside of the paradigm and subjects it to a test of consistency with known and certain facts. So far the reality of this test (which has been stated in different forms by different people) has been glossed over by those who are defending the paradigm because they simply don’t want to give up the paradigm. Stating the problem in bare-bones logic (hopefully) allows us to see it clearly, and makes it much more difficult to ignore.
Willis Eschenbach February 13, 2018 at 12:34 pm:
“Holmes’s problem isn’t the math. It is the subsequent claim that somehow the IGL can magically show how much of the temperature is from the sun and how little is from GHGs. Can’t be done. As you point out the IGL is an “equation of state”, and can tell us NOTHING about how it got to that state.”
I’ve already stated why what you say doesn’t matter in the context of the argument, but you’re ignoring it: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/06/ideal-gases/comment-page-1/#comment-2742979
Errors in logic will lead you down rabbit holes. Be careful.
The ONLY way to refute Badger/Frolly’s argument is to refute a minor premise. You are avoiding that harsh truth.
Don132 February 13, 2018 at 1:43 pm
Phil. February 13, 2018 at 1:18 pm:
“A realistic example would be two identical non GHG atmospheres to one of which a potent GHG would be added, P and M remain the same but T increases and therefore density and volume change to follow the IGL.”
PLEASE STOP ASSUMING WHAT REMAINS TO BE PROVED IN ORDER TO PROVE WHAT YOU WANT!
The earth is in a state of radiative balance, it’s basic heat transfer and thermodynamics. If you change the transparency of the atmosphere the temperature must change.
And yes, I’m shouting because it’s so obvious that this basic circular reasoning mistake is being made over and over. Stop.
And the obvious error in Holmes analysis of the two similar planets indicates he doesn’t apply the IGL correctly. If the temperature of the atmosphere is changed for any reason the volume must change and any atmosphere within the range of the IGL will obey it, but applying it in the constant volume form is incorrect.
The paradigm that says that GHGs raise the temperature of earth is wrong. That paradigm is internally consistent but fails a basic test of logic, which test steps outside of the paradigm and subjects it to a test of consistency with known and certain facts.
Which test is that? If you restrict the the heat loss from the planet then the temperature must increase until a balance is reached.
Stephen Wilde February 13, 2018 at 1:26 pm
Phil
The problem that you and Willis have is that the non GHG planets will have a temperature higher than S-B without having any GHGs involved. By your argument that should not be the case.
That would contravene thermodynamic laws,it is not the case.
You then say that adding a GHG would raise the temperature even further.
If that were the case then the IGL calculation would be wrong, but in reality it never is.
No it would not, an increase in the T would necessarily increase V (and therefore density) and the IGL would balance.
No it would not, an increase in the T would necessarily increase V (and therefore density) and the IGL would balance.
Should be …and therefore reduce density).
Phil. February 13, 2018 at 4:35 pm:
“The earth is in a state of radiative balance, it’s basic heat transfer and thermodynamics. If you change the transparency of the atmosphere the temperature must change.”
Except that it doesn’t. That is what the logical test was. You are assuming that if the transparency of the atmosphere changes then the temperature must change, and you use this to prove that if the transparency of the atmosphere changes then the temperature must change.
The “test” is blatantly obvious. It’s a logical test, but it’s based on known and certain facts which so far no one has refuted, and those facts constitute the three minor premises in the argument I laid out, with which I’m assuming you’re familiar. If the minor premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. It doesn’t matter what you believe about radiative gases, it doesn’t matter what the transparency of the atmosphere is, it doesn’t matter what theory you’re using, it even doesn’t matter what evidence you’re using: it simply cannot be true. Your paradigms, your facts, your evidence, must be wrong. That’s the brutal logic of the argument; if you want to refute it, you MUST refute one of the minor premises. There is no other way.
You cannot assume you’re right in order to prove you’re right, and the beauty of logic is that it prevents us from doing this. Yet I see this being done over and over by people who I assume are knowledgeable and accomplished scientists.
Don132 February 13, 2018 at 5:07 pm
Phil. February 13, 2018 at 4:35 pm:
“The earth is in a state of radiative balance, it’s basic heat transfer and thermodynamics. If you change the transparency of the atmosphere the temperature must change.”
Except that it doesn’t. That is what the logical test was. You are assuming that if the transparency of the atmosphere changes then the temperature must change, and you use this to prove that if the transparency of the atmosphere changes then the temperature must change.
No I don’t.
However Holmes compares two planets with identical atmospheres except that one contains a GHG, he then assumes that density, molar mass and P are the same in those two atmospheres therefore the temperature can not change. That is circular reasoning because if the temperature changed the density would also change, but he has already precluded that by his assumption.
Phil. February 13, 2018 at 5:49 pm:
“However Holmes compares two planets with identical atmospheres except that one contains a GHG, he then assumes that density, molar mass and P are the same in those two atmospheres therefore the temperature can not change. That is circular reasoning because if the temperature changed the density would also change, but he has already precluded that by his assumption.”
You need to bone up on what a circular argument is. It’s no wonder everyone is so confused if they can’t even tell one when they see one!
Am I really talking to scientists? This is scary.
Don132 February 13, 2018 at 5:58 pm
Phil. February 13, 2018 at 5:49 pm:
“However Holmes compares two planets with identical atmospheres except that one contains a GHG, he then assumes that density, molar mass and P are the same in those two atmospheres therefore the temperature can not change. That is circular reasoning because if the temperature changed the density would also change, but he has already precluded that by his assumption.”
You need to bone up on what a circular argument is. It’s no wonder everyone is so confused if they can’t even tell one when they see one!
Whatever you want to call it it’s a logical error on Holmes’s part and invalidates his two planet argument.
He claims that changing heat transfer to the atmosphere will not change the temperature of an ideal gas atmosphere which is nonsense.
Phil. February 13, 2018 at 6:36 pm:
“Whatever you want to call it it’s a logical error on Holmes’s part and invalidates his two planet argument.
He claims that changing heat transfer to the atmosphere will not change the temperature of an ideal gas atmosphere which is nonsense.”
And you’re assuming that changing the GHG content of the atmosphere will change the temperature! See what you’re doing? You’re not allowing the logic of the argument to proceed but are instead inserting your assumption along the way! You can’t assume that which you BELIEVE is true in order to prove you’re right.
Holmes has not assumed anything; he has proved it. You, on the other hand, are assuming that you’re correct! Anyone can win an argument that way.
Willis,
If the atmosphere is to remain in hydrostatic equilibrium a planet must shed all energy received which is in excess of that which comes in from space.
So, if it is receiving a proportion of its heat from the inside then it must radiate to space what comes from space PLUS the heat from inside otherwise the atmosphere could not be retained. It will permanently radiate more than comes in from space. That is fine as long as that heat from inside is an additional energy source. However S-B would not apply because the S-B equation does not include a term for heat emanating from the interior. It only deals with what comes in from space.
If one applies that principle to heat from GHGs then one is treating those GHGs as an additional energy source and again the planet would permanently have to radiate out more than it receives. It clearly does not.
In fact those GHGs are simply recycling radiated or conducted energy originally received from space up and down within the atmosphere and that energy does not leave otherwise there would be no extra kinetic energy at the surface above S-B to hold the weight of the atmosphere off the ground against gravity and to fuel ongoing convective overturning.
Whether it is radiation up and down or conduction up and down doesn’t matter because the two processes are mutually exclusive and not additive as I explained above.
One cannot treat heat from GHGs as an additional energy source in the way you suggest.
The solution is set out in my above post at February 12th 2018 at 6.29 pm.
Willis Eschenbach
February 13, 2018 at 2:15 am
Similarly, from the Ideal Gas Law we cannot tell whether the earth is warmed by internal radiation, by the sun, or by the sun with the aid of greenhouse gases. We can tell NOTHING about how it was warmed from the IGL.
The question is not how the Earth warmed.
The question Holmes asks is what is the cause of T
They are not the same question
Eisenbach assume T is caused by energy flux, such as sun, internal, CO2 in atmosphere. It is not.
Energy flux is needed to produce the gas state.
The history of the planet ( emissions , reactions, collisions) creates pressure and density
The causer of T is the ratio of pressure to density, p/d.
p is energy density ,
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/press.html
d is mass density,
d/M is number ( of molecules ) density
T is caused by energy density / number density.
The amount of CO2 does not affect this.
Should be Eschenbach not Eisenbach
Willis,
You are a bit of a donkey – but I like you. You cannot see the obvious, that the thought experiment has revealed GHG cannot cause net warming in the troposphere – unless the IGL is wrong.
Maybe I will try another tack.
You stated this;
.
“Similarly, from the Ideal Gas Law we cannot tell whether the earth is warmed by internal radiation, by the sun, or by the sun with the aid of greenhouse gases. We can tell NOTHING about how it was warmed from the IGL.”
.
That statement is incorrect.
We can learn something about what caused a change in temperature from the MM version of the IGL, by the changes which must occur in the three gas parameters – under a known set of inputs.
For example, let’s say we instantly add to the E1 (Earth’s current) atmosphere, 0.03% of a non-GHG mixture with an average molar mass of 44, and a density ~60% higher than air.
This quantity is 100% known; we know it’s molar mass, we can estimate pretty well how this addition will change the averages of the three gas parameters, as I did in the paper.
And the net change in atmospheric temperature then comes directly out of this in formula 5.
There is NO reason to suppose that the addition of 0.03% of CO2 instead, could have an ‘anomolous’ effect, and multiply the above changes caused by the non-GHG up to 100-fold, as the IPCC claims. The reason is that the MM version of the IGL makes NO DISTINCTION between gases, and cares only about how their addition changes the averages of pressure, density and molar mass…
frolly February 13, 2018 at 2:29 pm
Willis,
You are a bit of a donkey – but I like you. You cannot see the obvious, that the thought experiment has revealed GHG cannot cause net warming in the troposphere – unless the IGL is wrong.
Maybe I will try another tack.
You stated this;
.
“Similarly, from the Ideal Gas Law we cannot tell whether the earth is warmed by internal radiation, by the sun, or by the sun with the aid of greenhouse gases. We can tell NOTHING about how it was warmed from the IGL.”
.
That statement is incorrect.
We can learn something about what caused a change in temperature from the MM version of the IGL, by the changes which must occur in the three gas parameters – under a known set of inputs.
For example, let’s say we instantly add to the E1 (Earth’s current) atmosphere, 0.03% of a non-GHG mixture with an average molar mass of 44, and a density ~60% higher than air.
This quantity is 100% known; we know it’s molar mass, we can estimate pretty well how this addition will change the averages of the three gas parameters, as I did in the paper.
Such a change will not effect the energy balance of the planet, but adding the same amount of a GHG will.
So let’s increase the insolation by 10%, the Temperature will go up and the density will go down so that the IGL will still be obeyed.
The IGL does not solely control the conditions of the atmosphere you must simultaneously solve the energy transfer equation.
Frolly/Holmes: another clear explanation! How many more will it take?
Phil is continually assuming that which remains to be proved. He’s apparently unaware of this elementary logical error.
Don132 February 14, 2018 at 4:05 am
Frolly/Holmes: another clear explanation! How many more will it take?
Phil is continually assuming that which remains to be proved. He’s apparently unaware of this elementary logical error.
You’re mixing me up with Holmes, he’s the one who said take two identical planets, one with a transparent atmosphere and one with a GHG atmosphere, assume they have the same atmospheric temperature, that proves there’s no GHG effect!