Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
The CERES satellite dataset is a never-ending source of amazement and interest. I got to thinking about how much energy is actually stoking the immense climate engine. Of course, virtually all the energy comes from the sun. (There is a bit of geothermal, but it’s much less than a watt per square metre on average so we can ignore it for this type of analysis).
So let’s start from the start, at the top of the atmosphere. Here’s the downwelling top of atmosphere (TOA) solar energy for the northern and the southern hemisphere:
Figure 1. Top of atmosphere (TOA) downwelling solar energy. This is averaged on a 24/7 basis over the entire surface of the earth.
However, we don’t get all of that energy. Much of it is reflected back into space. So I took the CERES solar data and I subtracted the reflected solar. The reflected solar is the total upwelling sunshine at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) that has been reflected from the clouds, the aerosols, the soil, the plants, the ice, and the ocean. The TOA solar minus the TOA upwelling solar reflections is the amount of energy available to heat the planet. Here’s the amount of available solar energy around the world.
Figure 2. Map of the global distribution of average available solar energy. This is the solar energy remaining after albedo reflection of part of the incoming sunshine back into space.
Once I had the available energy, I subtracted out the seasonal variations. These are the changes that repeat year after year. Removing these repeating signals leaves only the small variations due to irregular changes in the amount of the reflections. (There is also a very small sunspot-related variation in the incoming solar of about a quarter of a W/m2 on a global 24/7 basis. It is included in these calculations, but makes no practical difference).
So here is the first look at how much energy is available to drive the great planet-wide heat engine that we call the climate, divided by hemispheres:
Figure 3. TOA solar and available solar after albedo reflections. Solar is about 340 W/m2, and about a hundred W/m2 of that are reflected back out to space.
Bear in mind that the amount of energy that enters the climate system after albedo reflections is a function of highly variable ice, snow, and clouds … and despite that, there is only very little variation over either time or space. Year after year, somehow the clouds and the ice and the snow all basically balance out, northern and southern hemispheres … why?
As you can see above, the available solar energy in two hemispheres are so near to each other that I’ve had to make the line representing the southern hemisphere narrower than that for the northern hemisphere so that you can see both. To see the two separately we need to zoom in close, as shown in Figure 4 below.
Figure 4. Available TOA solar energy after albedo reflections, northern and southern hemispheres.
Now, I noticed a few curiosities about this graph. One is that despite the great difference between the northern hemisphere (more land, lots of mid-and-high-latitude ice and snow) and the southern hemisphere (more ocean, little midlatitude land or ice or snow), the amount of average incoming energy is within a half a watt (NH = 240.6 W/m2, SH = 241.1 W/m2, black and red dashed horizontal lines)
Second, the two hemispheres generally move in parallel. They increased to 2003 – 2004, stayed about level to 2013 – 2014, and then increased again.
Third, there’s about an apparent lag between the northern and southern hemispheres. Now, I thought well, that makes sense … but then I realized that there is no annual signal left in the data. And I checked, there’s no six-month signal left in the data either. Not only that, but up until about 2011 the south moves before the north, but after that, the north is moving first. Again … why?
Gotta love the joys of settled science …
In any case, I then wanted to compare the variations in available energy with the variations in surface temperature. Now the CERES dataset doesn’t contain surface temperature. However, it contains a dataset of surface upwelling radiation, sometimes called “radiation temperature” because it varies as the fourth power of temperature. Figure 5 shows the monthly changes in TOA downwelling available solar radiation, compared to surface upwelling radiation.
Figure 5. Scatterplot, surface radiation temperatures (upwelling longwave radiation) versus TOA average available solar energy. Each dot represents the situation in a 1° latitude x 1° longitude gridcell, covering the entire planet. So there are 64,800 dots in the graph above.
So … what is happening in this scatterplot? Obviously, what’s happening depends on the temperature … and maybe more. To understand it, let me give you the same data, divided by hemisphere and by land versus ocean. To start with, here’s what might be the most revealing graph, that of the land in the southern hemisphere.
Figure 6. Scatterplot, southern hemisphere land-only surface radiation temperatures (upwelling longwave radiation) versus TOA average available solar energy.
On the right we have we have the southern parts of Africa and South America … and on the left, we have Antarctica. You can clearly see the different responses between what happens below and above freezing.
Next, here’s the land in the northern hemisphere.
Figure 7. Scatterplot, northern hemisphere land-only surface radiation temperatures (upwelling longwave radiation) versus TOA average available solar energy.
There isn’t anywhere in the northern hemisphere that the land gets as cold as Antarctica. In part, this is because the South Pole is land and the North Pole is water, and in part because much of Antarctica is a high elevation perpetually frozen plateau.
What all of this shows is that the response of the planetary surface to increasing solar radiation is in part a function of temperature. The colder the average temperature, the more the system responds to increasing solar radiation.
With that in mind, I took Figure 5 and calculated the slope of just the part of the world that on average is not frozen. Figure 8 shows that result.
Figure 8. As in Figure 5, and including the trend of the unfrozen parts of the globe.
Now, I found this to be a most curious graph. Here’s the curiosity. The greenhouse effect is the reason that the surface of the planet is warmer than we’d expect from simple calculations of the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth. This is because the greenhouse gases absorb the upwelling surface radiation, and when they radiate, about half of the radiation goes up, and half goes back towards the earth. As a result, the earth ends up warmer than it would be otherwise.
If the poorly-named “greenhouse effect” were 100% perfect, for every additional watt per square metre (W/m2) of sunlight entering the system, the surface would radiate two W/m2—one W/m2 from the sunlight, and one W/m2 from the downwelling radiation from the atmosphere. Based on the ratio of the incoming radiation and the radiation from the surface, we can say that the overall greenhouse multiplier factor of the perfect greenhouse is 2.0. (See my post The Steel Greenhouse for a discussion of this.)
Of course, in a real world, the multiplier factor will be less. We know what the long-term overall average multiplier factor for the planet is. We can calculate it by dividing the overall average upwelling longwave radiation from the surface by the overall average available solar energy. The average upwelling surface longwave radiation is 398 W/m2, and the average available solar energy is 240 W/m2. This gives a greenhouse multiplier factor of 398 / 240 = 1.66.
And that’s the curiosity because in Figure 8 the average multiplier factor is 0.72, well below 1.0. Because this multiplier is less than one, it would imply that the world should be much colder than it is …
How can we resolve this apparent contradiction? To me, it is evidence of something that I have said for many years. This is that the sensitivity of the surface temperature to the amount of downwelling radiation is not a constant as is assumed by mainstream climate scientists. Instead, it is a function of temperature. At temperatures above freezing, the surface upwelling radiation increases by about three-quarters of a W/m2 for each additional W/m2 of incoming solar radiation.
But when the earth is quite cold, such as is the case in Antarctica, the surface temperature is much more responsive to changes in incoming radiation. Here’s the situation in Antarctica:
Figure 9. As in Figure 8, but showing the situation in Antarctica
Note that this sensitivity is not a result of the land ice on Antarctica melting and changing the albedo. Almost all of Antarctica is frozen year-round.
Now, there is one other way we can look at this situation. We’ve looked above in Figures 5 to 9 at the long-term, basically steady-state situation shown by the average state of the 68,400 one-degree by one-degree gridcells that make up the surface of the planet. However, instead of the steady-state long-term average shown above, we can also look at how things change over time. Figure 10 shows the change in time of the anomaly in temperature over the period of the CERES satellite observations, as compared to the anomaly in average TOA solar energy.
Figure 10. Monthly surface longwave and TOA solar radiation.
You can see that other than the jumps in surface radiation due to the warm El Nino events of 2009/10 and 2016/17, there is a close relationship between available sunshine. A cross-correlation analysis (not shown) verifies that there is no lag between the changes in the solar input and the surface response.
We can also determine the nature of the short-term relationship between these two variables by using a scatterplot, as shown in Figure 11 below:
Figure 11. Scatterplot, monthly averages of available top-of-atmosphere available solar energy and surface upwelling longwave radiation.
As we would expect, the trend is smaller in the short-term data monthly changes shown in Figure 11 than the trend in the longer-term gridcell average data shown in Figure 8 (0.58 versus 0.72 W/m2 surface change per W/m2 solar input change).
CONCLUSIONS:
• Overall, the response of the non-frozen surface to increasing solar radiation is an average increase of about 0.7 W/m2 of upwelling surface radiation for each 1 W/m2 increase in available solar energy.
• Below freezing, this response increases with decreasing temperature, until at typical Antarctic temperatures of -20°C to -60°C the response is about 5 W/m2 for each 1 W/m2 increase in available solar energy.
• Per the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, the change in surface temperature corresponding to a 1 W/m2 change in surface longwave radiation ranges from 0.2°C per W/m2 at 0°C, to 0.16°C per W/m2 at about 30°C.
• Given a change of 0.7 W/m2 for a 1 W/m2 change in incoming solar energy, this would indicate a temperature change in the unfrozen part of the planet of from 0.11°C per additional W/m2 at 30°C, to 0.16°C per additional W/m2 at 0°C.
• The increased downwelling radiation estimated for a doubling of CO2 is 3.7 W/m2. Ceteris paribus, this would indicate that if solar radiation increased by 3.7 W/m2, we would see a temperature increase of 0.4°C to 0.6°C depending on the surface temperature.
• Finally, as a side note, the average change in TOA downwelling total solar irradiance (TSI) due to the change in sunspot activity is on the order of 0.26 W/m2 peak to peak (global 24/7 average). However, only 240/340 = 70% of this is available, the rest is reflected back to space. Given the relationship of 0.72 W/m2 surface change per each additional W/m2 of TOA available solar energy, and a maximum temperature change per watt of 0.16 °C per W/m2, this would indicate a maximum effect of 0.26 * 240/340 * 0.72 * 0.16 = 0.02 °C from that change in TOA solar radiation …
It’s a lovely evening here on our hill above the sea, a few clouds, cool air … I wish all of you the joy of this marvelous life.
w.
AS USUAL, I politely ask that when you comment on someone’s words, you QUOTE THEIR WORDS EXACTLY. This is a long and complex post, and misunderstandings are the bane of the intarwebs. The only way for the rest of us to be sure what or who you are talking about is for you to quote their words exactly.
DATA: This is all done with the CERES satellite TOA and Surface datasets, which are available here under the heading:
Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF)
Climate Data Record (CDR) of monthly TOA fluxes and consistent computed surface fluxes and clouds suitable for analysis of variability at the intra-seasonal, inter-annual, and longer time scales.
Willis, “If the poorly-named “greenhouse effect” were 100% perfect, for every additional watt per square metre (W/m2) of sunlight entering the system, the surface would radiate two W/m2—one W/m2 from the sunlight, and one W/m2 from the downwelling radiation from the atmosphere”.
That may be true but that is not what you would detect in CERES. CERES shows you what the surface has emitted minus what has been retained by the atmosphere plus what the atmosphere emits. In a perfect greenhouse, you would detect 1W/m2 (atmosphere retains the whole 2W/m2 and then radiates away only half of it outwards). Assuming equilibrium of course.
Absolutelty Willis, I think you were confusing me at least these. Though you don’t need that much to confuse me.
Except that the IPCC requires the next W/m^2 to increase the SB emissions of the surface by 4,3 W/m^2 in order to manifest the 0.8C rise claimed to arise. This requires GHG effects (which are the primary ‘feedback’ effects) to supply 3.3 W/m^2 to the surface for each W/m^2 of forcing.
The obvious absurdity is how can the next W/m^2 of forcing increase surface emissions by 4.3 W/m^2 while the last one only increased surface emissions by 1.6 W/m^2 (i.e. 600mw per W/m^2 of ‘feedback’).
I understood Willis’ chart on upwelling LW radiation to be indirectly ,measured by surface temperatures, not as a direct measurement of the LW radiation at the top of the atmosphere. And since the upwards LW radiation (340+) is much greater than the available incoming solar radiation (240+), it has to be representative of surface radiation and not just what the atmosphere emits to space after it absorbs what the surface emits. Otherwise, where did the extra 100 W/m2 come from?
But I am curious about this:
“. . . the amount of energy that enters the climate system after albedo reflections is a function of highly variable ice, snow, and clouds … and despite that, there is only very little variation over either time or space. Year after year, somehow the clouds and the ice and the snow all basically balance out, northern and southern hemispheres …”
This should not be the case. It makes me wonder whether the CERES satellites are really capturing what the climate scientists think they are.
Kurt May 6, 2018 at 12:33 pm
And yet it is the case. To me, the amazing symmetry and stability of the climate point strongly to thermoregulatory phenomena and homeostatic systems at all levels … see here for a scientific paper on the symmetry of the albedo.
w.
Very interesting paper you linked there, Willis. Also a great post.
If we averaged the reaction to increased solar over the entire surface, (I don’t have a good area decomposiition of the globe wrt to the position of those temps.) but it would be interesting to see if the response worldwide was something like 1.4 wm/m^2 would then give a maximum world wide temp increase at approximately 1.5 degrees increase by weighted average over the and the tempurature it occured at.
The data is already a weighted average is it not?
Yes, sailboarder, I’ve used area-weighted averages throughout.
w.
The solar flux which matters is UV used to make and break ozone in the atmosphere and the UV absorbed into the oceans, which drives the oscillations, such as ENSO. Other wavelengths reinforce this high energy component.
And Willis, “The average upwelling surface longwave radiation is 398 W/m2”
I am very, very interested in knowing where this came from. If it were coming from TOA measurements by CERES it would mean that the planet is far from equilibrium, more energy out than in. Thanks a lot!
Nylo, it is from the CERES dataset … but it doesn’t indicate imbalance because a large percentage of the upwelling radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere. From there, about half is radiated upwards and half downwards, so no, there’s not a big imbalance.
w.
Thanks a lot Willis, but this is what I cannot understand. AFAIK CERES measurements are basically done from satellites at the top of the atmosphere. How do they know what happens between the surface and the atmosphere? How do they know what is it that the surface emits but the atmosphere traps?
Thanks, Nylow. The CERES data contains both measured and calculated datasets. These are the “TOA” and the “Surface” datasets referred to at the end of the post. The TOA datasets are measured. Once they have all of those TOA measurements, they are combined with other measurements to back-calculate the “Surface” datasets.
See here, here, and here for an exhaustive description of the entire process.
Best regards,
w.
Thanks a lot Willis. After reading your links I am left unconvinced about the validity of the 398W/m2 number, too much modelling around the actual measured values. However, 398W/m2 would be the radiation of a black body at a uniform temperature of 289.4K or roughly 16.3ºC. Which I can totally believe to be also true for a planet with the temperatures distriburtion that Earth has and at an average surface temperature of around 2-3 degrees less than those 16.3ºC. So the number totally passes my smell test. There are still some comparisons that I do not understand about your post, but I have to go now, more will come later. Thanks again.
Nylo, I’ve checked the surface upwelling radiation dataset extensively. What I’ve done is to convert it to temperature using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. Then I compared it to several other datasets—the gridded HadCRUT, HadICE, Reynolds satellite-based sea temperature, and the TAO moored ocean buoys. In all cases it has been within a degree or two. So I’m comfortable using it.
Best regards,
w.
“Once they have all of those TOA measurements, they are combined with other measurements to back-calculate the “Surface” datasets.”
It’s worse than that. There’s about a 4 watt bust in the CERES energy balance that is “balanced and filled”, “within the error bars” with ocean uptake.
As Mr. Mosher says, “Its…assumptions all the way down.”
The 398W/m2 figure is not the scope of this article, and yes, it is definitely wrong. Surface emissivity is about 0.92 over all (and 0.94 for water btw.). So it will be about 288^4 * 5.67e-8 * 0.92 = ~360W/m2.
The reason why climatologists prefer an exaggerated 390W/m2, or even 398W/m2 is that this is the only to even argue a GHE. Using the right figures (especially with regard to cloud forcing) will not leave you with any GHE at all. I’ll post the hole story below..
Leitwolf, maybe you don’t realize that even if you were totally correct about your 360W/m2 this would still prove that there exists a so-called GH effect. Otherwise the planet would be cooling, as the energy heating the planet’s surface only from the sun is lower than that.
First realize the Suns energy comes in much stronger than average, second it cools continuously under clear skies.
Lastly there is a lot of the 1,000 or so W/m^2 at the surface in the tropics that goes into evaporation.
Water vapor in this respect is a very large energy storage system, that envelops much of the planet.
I haven’t calculated a global average forcing(only specific lat values), so I have no opinion on what a global average number would be, just that when dealing with averages, you’re skipping over a lot of processes that exist in reality.
Sorry .. I did not find the time to explain it all as I promised. So let as look at where the GHE origninates from. We assume 390W/m2 (sic!) for surface emissions, and about 240W/m2 for solar input (at an albedo of 0.3), which means a difference of 150W/m2 or 33K respectively. For simplicity let us skip the slight variations of these figures.
So we have 150W/m2 of which 30W/m2 come from falsly assuming a surface emissivity = 1. If we except that emissivity = 0.92 we are left with 120W/m2 only.
Another 30W/m2 originate from clouds, according to the IPCC. In their AR5 they state clouds had an albedo effect of 50W/m2, downward emissions of 30W/m2 (=cloud GHE), and a net negative forcing of 20W/m2. That leaves 90W/m2 to be explained by GHGs.
Of course that IPCC statement is complete non sense.
a) they cut the albedo effect from 80W/m2 to 50W/m2
b) they skip the upward emissions, likely in a range of another 30W/m2
c) they claim a net negative forcing of 20/m2, but real weather data show that temperatures are higher with clouds than without.
Here is the evidence provided by the NOAA:
So it is 110W/m2 upward (23% + 9% of 342W/m2), NOT 50W/m2. Even if we held on to a net negative forcing of 20W/m2, we would need to assign 90W/m2 for downward emission/reflection. Correcting this “mistake” costs another 60W/m2 of the GHE (which now we must assign to clouds), and that leaves just 30W/m2 for GHGs.
These 30W/m2 are yet dubious, as they require a 20W/m2 negative net forcing of clouds, as named before. Since clouds definitely have a positive net forcing instead, there is nothing left over. Logically there is no GHE once we get the numbers right.
For me the most interesting information is in Fig.4. There is a great anomaly upwards of the solar radiation from 2016 onward. It happened at the same time; when we experienced the strongest El Nino following a baby El Nino right behind. And we are still waiting La Nina… I think that we have an explanation in Fig. 4. There has been an anomaly in the solar energy at the very same time inreasing the temperature effects of El Nino and delaying La Nina.
I reckon that many climate change scientists are not eager to publish this finding, because it shows that the Sun has a role in the climate change. I have noticed that at least in my country, the mass media do not talk about El NIno 2016 at all – it was simply the hottest year so far thanks to climate change caused by the mankind.
There’s a hockey stick!
But exactly how one ends up saying the Sun is causing an El Niño (‘has a role’)? I thought El Niño has nothing to do with variations of the Sun. If you’re saying the Sun without its variation causes El Niño, you could continue telling that the Sun causes pretty much everything else as well. Because it does. But the AGW is not about that. It is about how CO2 affects given we don’t magic the Sun, which causes all climate, away.
This sounds so elementary, I’m thinking I have a stroke of Dunning-Kruger. But really, I think blablablaically, it is wrong to say the Sun causes anything, unless we talk about the changes in the Sun. It doesn’t make sense to talk about what happens, for example, a pseudocyclical change in cloud coverage causing some temporally limited rush of warming, as something caused by the Sun.
Hugs May 5, 2018 at 11:29 pm
Thanks, Hugs. You have the causation backward. The sun is not causing the El Nino. Instead, the El Nino is causing changes in the clouds, which decrease the local albedo and allow in more sun.
w.
To go with Willis’s comment, remember an El Nino is a charge/discharge oscillation, they should happen faster which more incoming energy.
And of course the clouds are also subject to the effects of temp and pressure on the vapor pressure of water, and we do live on a water planet.
This got me thinking, wonder if there’s surface pressure data you can integrate into the mix, might find some interesting correlations.
Willis, your fig 10 shows a decline in available solar at the peak of El Nino episodes.
Hugs the sun is ultimately causing the El Nino via delayed discharge of upwelling solar absorbed energy that is always adding energy back into the air to augment the direct incoming solar effect on the air on a given day.
?dl=0
There are two basic types of El Nino in my book, solar cycle onset Nino under clearer skies high insolation at solar minimum, which is coming up next for us, and the top of solar cycle Nino(s) that are TSI level driven.
The clouds are driven via evaporation by temperature changes as Willis has shown before. The OHC however is responding to incoming solar:
The clouds are an after-effect not the main action, and whatever feedback is temporary.
Fig 17 indicates the effect of climate data record TSI (thick dark red), F10.7cm solar flux (blue), and v2 sunspot number (red) on 18 climate indices across 4 solar cycles, cross correlated in 12 year spans:
The incoming solar drives OHC, which drives the others. You can see the cycle onset Nino and the top of cycle TSI Nino(s) in the RSS WV plot. Low WV going into the minimum now is creatinggrowing drought.
‘Symmetry and balance’ will be achieved taking all that into account.
Oh jeez, I should wait until the effects of my first coffee kick in before posting. The figure above is Fig.18; Fig 17 below is the SC24 top cycle TSI impact on OHC that drove the 2015/16 El Nino:
?dl=0
Low solar activity ensures a weak hurricane season in the Atlantic and a weak La Niña.
aveollila: yes, and figure 10 showing the same plus the effect of El Nino. I can’t see why there is controversy regarding the substantial effect of increased (and decreased) available solar energy on temperature.
Also, because of the large upwelling response from frozen regions and the modest effect of an increase in solar from the rest of the planet – it’s no wonder that there is so much frustration in the team in trying to convince people of a clear human caused signal and why the general worry is perforce somewhere off into the future.
Because Leif says that the sun has NO impact.
And I think you should just accept that…because Leif is an ‘expert’.
Another comment. The anomaly in the solar energy is not due to the Sun’s avtivity increase accoring to TSI measurements. If so, then the ony explanation is the albedo change caused by the cloudiness change. Where is by the way the cloudiness data of the Earth since 2010? Is there anybody who knows?
Thanks, aveollila. The CERES data contains cloud information from 2000 to 2017. However, I didn’t use it in this post.
w.
The ISCCP data reports cloud information going back to the early 80’s.
Bloody masterful. Willis, I salute you.
And, for all love, ceteris paribus? Lord have mercy! We’re not dead yet.
However… I don’t see acknowledgement of the increase in outgoing LWR at the fourth power of the land temperature. This must moderate drastically any increase in land temperature, since the back-radiation is linear and partial.
Thanks for your kind words, Jim. The fourth power relationship comes in where I say:
The fourth-power is the reason that the change in temperature for a 1W/m2 change in radiation differs between 0°C and 30°C.
To calculate this, I use the derivative dW/dT of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. That equation is
W = sigma epsilon T^4
where W is radiation in watts/m2 and T is temperature in kelvins.
Taking the derivative, we get:
dT/dW = 16.2 / ((w)^(3/4))
for a value of 1 for epsilon (the emissivity). Yes, the emissivity of the earth is more like 0.96 or so, but for this kind of analysis, it’s usually taken to be 1.0.
Regards,
w.
PS—the full derivative if you want to include epsilon, the emissivity, is
dT/dW = 16.2 / (epsilon * ((W / epsilon)^(3/4))
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
This is only correct for the energy FLUXES. Almost the entire heat content (~temperature) of the earth does not come from the sun but is geothermally caused. The core, mantle and crust are NOT heated by the sun, let alone by the atmosphere. Same for the deep oceans, below the permanent thermocline.
The sun only slightly increases the heat content of the upper 10-20m of the crust and (mostly) the mixed surface layer of the oceans. That solar energy is lost again at the surface, heats the atmosphere and leaves at the TOA to space. At the TOA we have an energy balance, NOT a radiative balance at the surface.
(~20% of the solar energy directly heats the atmosphere, not the surface)
Earth is not a blackbody that warms from 0K to some radiative balance temperature. Earth has a temperature, and the sun slightly increases that temperature at the outer surface to reach our observed temperatures.
Role of the atmosphere is just to reduce the energy loss to space.
At 290K surface temperature without atmosphere we would lose ~400 W/m^2 directly to space.
Thanks to the atmosphere we only lose ~240 W/m^2 to space, and can maintain our surface temperatures.
Once you realize this the whole system makes sense, including the incredible stability of the system you often mention.
And what part does CO2 play in this ‘radiative balance’ ?
100% according to AGW theory, ie it swamps any solar effect, let alone the earth’s own internal temperature; so they say.
petroalbion May 6, 2018 at 12:31 am
A neglectable role, as is to be expected of a trace gas (0,04%) in an atmosphere that just slightly reduces energy loss to space.
It may even be a slightly negative role since CO2 absorbs solar IR, thus preventing this energy from reaching the surface.
Ben Wouters
I agree with both of your comments! Good points. I think that we know too little about the elephant in the room. For example, has anyone ever done measurements of T [W/m2] going down into different levels of a mine?
The change in the movement of earth’s inner core explains the cooling I noted here [South Africa} and the arctic melt.
I also agree with you that CO2 absorbs solar. There absorptions in the UV [which is how we can identify it on other planets], in the 1-2 and 4-5 um [ I used to measure CO2 in N2 at 4600A]
On a personal note: I had a class mate at the OLAN college [Holland] whose name was Ben Wouters. You would not happen to be that same person?
Anyway, for those interested, here is a summary of my investigations:
http://breadonthewater.co.za/2018/05/04/which-way-will-the-wind-be-blowing-genesis-41-vs-27/
Ben Wouters May 6, 2018 at 2:32 am
Sorry, Ben, but this is not true. CO2 and water vapor, the two major greenhouse gases (GHGs), are the reason that the earth’s temperature is well above what would be expected from black-body calculations.
HOWEVER, once the Earth’s temperature reached the current steady-state condition, the effects of variations in GHGs, or variations in forcing from any source (e.g. volcanoes, solar), are immediately counteracted by changes in clouds, thunderstorms, dust devils, cyclones, the El Nino/La Nina pump, the PDO, and oceanic circulations.
As a result, at present we have a very stable earth, and we are in absolutely no danger of overheating from any projected increase in CO2.
w.
PS—your argument that CO2 can be ignored because of its small concentration (0.04%) is not valid. Consider the amount of ozone in the atmosphere (also about 0.04%), and the huge effect it has in the absorption of the UV rays that would otherwise fry us. Or consider how much ricin it takes to kill a human being … 0.002% of your body weight.
The fact that something is small does NOT mean that we can safely ignore it.
Willis
I agree 100% with your PS statement.
But you have not proven in any way that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming rather than cooling.
[remember that the closed box experiments do not show the amount of energy being back radiated by CO2]
Willis
to clarify what I said, I hope you caught this comment?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/05/symmetry-and-balance/comment-page-1/#comment-2809000
Willis Eschenbach May 6, 2018 at 8:58 am
First the black-body calculations:
Willis Eschenbach May 6, 2018 at 7:15 pm
The sun is only shining on half the sphere at any time, so we need to divide by 2 to get the average flux per m^2. The dark side receives no sunlight so, its radiative balance temperature is 0K
(~3K if you want to consider Cosmic Background Radiation)
This gives ~680 W/m^2 average flux giving an average RADIATIVE balance temperature of ~331K.
Darkside 3k, so average radiative balance temperature for a blackbody receiving 1360 W/m^2 TSI is (331K + 3K)/2 = 162K
Rotation has no effect since no heat storage is specified for a blackbody.
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/15/6044.full
Applying albedo the black-body temperature for earth is ~150K and for the moon ~160K.
The day side temperatures of the moon are close to radiative balance temperatures (with some lag).
The night side is much warmer than radiative balance.
The reason the moon is ~40K warmer is some geothermal flux creating a “base” temperature of ~40K and some heat carried to the night side from the hot day side
The reason the Earth is ~140K warmer than radiative balance is that the deep oceans have a temperature of ~275K, fully created by geothermal energy. The sun only increases the surface temperatures some 15k above this temperature. The oceans also carry a lot of solar energy from the day side to the night side.
Every molecule / atom of the atmosphere needs to have a certain energy that matches the height it is at since the atmosphere is in hydrostatic equilibrium against gravity. How it receives this energy is not relevant. (radiation, collisions, convection, evaporation)
CO2 plays a minor role in this distribution.
Ben
excellent response!
henryp May 6, 2018 at 6:00 am
The Geothermal Gradient is pretty well known imo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient
Here is a nice example of different crust temperatures:
A deep South African mine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TauTona_Mine
I’m a Dutchman, but the OLAN college doesn’t mean anything to me. So probably not.
Ben
Many thanks for your all of your insightful answers and information. I figured that a lot of energy from earth must be released by volcanic activity into the water of the atlantic- and pacific oceans. Your comment on this made a lot of sense to me and is like part of a piece in a puzzle.
I figured that you must be Dutch, like me, and I recall now that Ben Wouters was always scoring higher than I did in the tests…so I am pretty sure you must be somehow related – what with the same name and all that. We are talking 1972 here, in Arnhem, so perhaps that shows a light on whether that could be anyone you are related to?
Ben has hit the nail on the head. This myth unfortunately still continues to bubble on in climate science.
The reason why the Earth’s temperature is well above than expected is because of the oceans energy content warming all the planet. If it didn’t, during the night time temperatures would plummet well below zero centigrade on all the planets surface. Just water vapor alone is not enough to keep temperatures high enough and CO2 has no chance. This can easily be compared between a desert and marine climate in the tropics and polar desert with a marine polar climate. The high water vapor in the atmosphere are only because of the oceans.
The Greenhouse effect is really The Ocean effect because without it the planet would be much colder.
Back-radiation also becomes an idea from a set of myths when really it is just energy loss from the planets surface at a much reduced rate slowed down temporary. Clouds slow energy loss to the atmosphere and don’t increase energy like in these wrong back-radiation diagrams. Relative humidity increases at night cooling the air temperature so Back-radiation has nothing to do with it.
Energy content between long-wave and shortwave are hugely different and can’t be compared anywhere near equally.
Ben writes:
“The sun is only shining on half the sphere at any time, so we need to divide by 2 to get the average flux per m^2. The dark side receives no sunlight so, its radiative balance temperature is 0K
(~3K if you want to consider Cosmic Background Radiation)
This gives ~680 W/m^2 average flux giving an average RADIATIVE balance temperature of ~331K.
Darkside 3k, so average radiative balance temperature for a blackbody receiving 1360 W/m^2 TSI is (331K + 3K)/2 = 162K”
I get 331.3K + 3K over 2 is 167.15K
Add the residual subsoil heat on the dark side (/2) and you get the real lunar temperature. So nothing to do with it’s slow rotation, it’s rotation makes it warmer.
“The day side temperatures of the moon are close to radiative balance temperatures (with some lag).”
True, the sunlit side of the Moon is near to being in radiative balance with insolation.
Yogi Bear May 10, 2018 at 11:56 am
I assume you used 1366 W/m^2 for TSI, I used 1360.
I think geothermal also plays a role. The Hermite receives no sunshine at all, yet its floor temperature is ~25K. The flux Willis mentions nicely agrees with a 25K surface temperature.
The lat89 winter temperature seems to stabilize at ~40K after ~130 earth days without sunshine.
Agree, the coldest situation is no rotation (or no heat storage)
Matt G May 7, 2018 at 12:32 pm
Sorry missed your comment.
Would be very interested in data showing warm(er) water sinking to below the permanent thermocline.
One example is the Mediterranean Outflow Water, but this sinks only to ~800 -1300 meter.
The Thermohaline Circulation is driven by cold dense water sinking to the ocean floor , mostly around Antarctica (AntArctic Bottom Water) and the return flow by the geothermal flux warming this water at the ocean floor.
My bad, the sunlit side also receives the 3K background, so 168.65K.
And I haven’t allowed for albedo on the sunlit side.
I really like your data analysis. I did have a comment though:
According to one of your link responses to Nylo, the CERES data plots their nested grid:
https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/science_information.php?page=CeresGrid as 44,012 sections. I am assuming they are approximating somewhat equal surface areas. You had however mentioned 68,400 grid cells. It changes nothing in your analysis (so probably just a nitpick).
Thanks, Derek. On the same page it says:
This is their output data that I’m using.
w.
I apologize. I missed that section
“Here’s the downwelling top of atmosphere (TOA) solar energy for the northern and the southern hemisphere:”
How could this figure be meaningful given the immense difference between the equator and the poles?
So could someone please tell me:
How, and where is this measured?
What form is this energy in, as it travels through the vacuum of space before it encounters the gases at the top of the atmosphere ?
Isn’t heat generated in the ozone layer…does Ceres photograph this too?
Answers on a postcard please….
Charles, it is an area-weighted average of the 32,400 1*x1° gridcells that make up each hemisphere. It travels through space as photons. Heat is generated wherever it is absorbed. CERES, as far as I know, does not directly measure absorption in the atmosphere.
w.
Did I get that right the poles radiate much more than they receive and the equatorial regions receive more than they radiate.
Little wonder that open ocean as a substitute for sea ice is a massive energy pump.
We have seen the equatorial iris effect and we now see the polar pump to the greater universe and yet we still hear the words tipping point etc. ITS BUFFERED A LOT.
Bill Treuren May 6, 2018 at 1:12 am
Indeed.
w.
I’m trying to keep up here. Any surface radiates based on its temperature, regardless of latitude but the insolation is much less at high latitudes, so on balance the poles radiate more than they receive. That much seems right to me. But how do you conclude that the open sea radiates more than sea ice?
The only answer I can come up with is that the surface of the sea ice may be colder than or at least no warmer than 0°C, since that is its melting point, but the open sea surface may be warmer than 0°C due to ocean currents transporting heat into the polar region from warmer seas. The open sea has a much lower albedo than ice, but even with an albedo of zero, it won’t matter much because there is so little insolation at the poles. The extra heat absorbed is still less than the effect of radiation loss from a warmer surface?
Is that correct?
Wiki tells me that when you mention the iris effect, that is probably Richard Lindzen’s theory that warmer ocean temperatures in the tropics lead to less high cirrus cloudiness, allowing more IR to escape to space?
So what I think all this is saying is that earth’s climate is homeostatic. Each perturbation triggers effects that resist the change rather than triggering a runaway positive feedback. Unless anybody doubts that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, I don’t really see how they could believe in the possibility of a tipping point that leads to runaway heating. It would certainly have happened by now. We know that there was much higher CO2 in the ancient atmosphere at both warmer and cooler temperatures than today. If a little extra CO2 today risks runaway heating, how did we avoid becoming Venus’ twin when CO2 was at 2500 ppm?
Does anybody know what the warmist excuses are to explain this away? They must have something since we know that their theories are non-falsifiable.
What is being left out is radiance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiance
In full summer in the polar regions on earth the sun remains visible for 24 hours but it’s at a low angle on the sky horizon of around 23 degrees however in winter there is no sun it’s permanent dark. The problem isn’t open sea radiates more than sea ice it is that in winter there is no sunlight to reflect because of the axial tilt it is in darkness. The ice wouldn’t be there in the quantities it is if the tilt didn’t exist.
You can’t really use the same simplification for both situations 🙂
For interest what makes this even tricky is that angle varies locally in the discussion above we considered a flat surface. Stick a pole in the ground which is at right angles and the face area of the pole sees a totally different angle. You see this with the moon which has an axial tilt of 88 degrees and craters at the south polar region may be in permanent darkness or light which makes it interesting to study.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_south_pole
All this is nice Willis. Really.
But, the science of climate is a lost cause until the political warfare can restore balance back to the Science (big S) and the science (little s) of studying earth’s climate. The charlatans at NOAA, NASA, Science mag, Nature mag have the reins (big S). The NSF under Obama (Holdren) has ensured little s tows the line. Gone are the Judith Curry’s from academia. A few remain, to be sure, at redoubts like UAH. They fight the good fight in a hostile academic world.
Trump and Pruitt have the US govt, but too many career hucksters like Gavin Schmidt, and Ben Santer remain untouched to work the Deep State corruption we see.
First, the US must solve the political problem. Screw up the political system, and nothing else matters, not even scientific truths you try to uncover with satellite data. Stalin and Lysenko showed that science is easily manipulated by political forces of the Left. G Schmidt, Ben Santer, Kevin Trenberth, and a host of academics all corruptly ignore the results you show, because they depend on politicians like Barack Obama to declare, “The science is settled” while they receive their paychecks, ala the taxpayers, and head to their next conference to speak and receive an award. That is how junk science is done… sadly.
WordPress once again ate my post.
#shadowbanned
Joel, nobody gets shadowbanned here. If someone is banned, which is very infrequent, it’s because of repeated violations of site policy, and they are notified publicly.
In any case, I dug your comment out and approved it. Not sure why your comment was nixed, but I dug it out of the trash and posted it. Remember that all the moderation here is done by a dedicated group of volunteers all around the world, and who have my thanks. Sometimes errors are made, but there’s no shadowbanning.
w.
Something ate three of my posts yesterday.
https://youtu.be/8kDXADYUgqk
As with many of these videos the Sound Engineers have to be heard and thus ruining the soft articulation of facts. How about close caption the words at the base of the picture so se all can appreciate the science. Or is it just me?
The spoken words are part of the original recording. Text captions worked very poorly on vinyl.
Carbon Bigfoot
…..As with many of these videos the Sound Engineers have to be heard and thus ruining the soft articulation of facts. How about close caption the words at the base of the picture so se all can appreciate the science. Or is it just me?…..
No Sir! Me too.
Regards
Bahamamike
Published on May 18, 2011
Maximum distance from the sun: 94 million 537 thousand miles
Minimum distance from the sun: 91 million 377 thousand miles
Mean distance from the sun: 92 million 957 thousand and 200 miles
Mean Orbital velocity: 66000 miles per hour
0rbital eccentricity: 0.017
Obliquity of the ecliptic: 23 degrees 27 minutes 8.26 seconds
Length of the tropical year: equinox equinox 365.24 days
Lenght of the sidereal year: fixed star fixed star 365.26 days
Length of the mean solar day: 24 hours and 3 minutes and 56.5555 seconds at mean solar time
Length of the mean sidereal day: 23 hours and 56 minutes and 4.091 seconds at mean sederial time
Mass: 6600 milion milion milion tons
Equatorial diameter: 7927 miles
Polar diameter: 7900 miles
Oblateness: one 298th
Density: 5.41
Mean surface gravitational acceleration of the rotating earth: 32.174 feet per second per second
Escape velocity: 7 miles per second
Albedo: 0.39
I am a fan of Vangelis but I forgot about this track. Thanks for linking to it. I’ll have to get out my Vangelis albums and sound tracks for Blade Runner and Cosmos and listen to them again.
My estimates of CS are under 0.5C/doubling, I’ll accept we got nearly the same answer.
What would be an interesting test is, if you could split the above freezing area into tropics and extratropics and see if there’s a shift between them.
A lot of surface energy in the tropics goes to evaporation, that is returned to space in the extratropics. I wonder if that shows up here as well.
If the poorly-named “greenhouse effect” were 100% perfect, for every additional watt per square metre (W/m2) of sunlight entering the system, the surface would radiate two W/m2—one W/m2 from the sunlight, and one W/m2 from the downwelling radiation from the atmosphere. Based on the ratio of the incoming radiation and the radiation from the surface, we can say that the overall greenhouse multiplier factor of the perfect greenhouse is 2.0.
On the face of it this looks like multiplying the sun’s energy by 2. This of course can’t be right. If all the photos coming in at the first pass were reflected, that means that they deliver zero energy to the earth. So it the atmosphere now reflects all these returning (first return) photons back down to earth’s surface (now the second time) – what would be different about the second landfall than the first? Nothing. 100% would be reflected again. And then reflected again – 100% again – by the atmosphere.
And so on ad infinitum. All the incoming light is endlessly reflected between the earth’s surface and the iron sky. With no energy absorbed in either earth or atmosphere. And thus the temperature of both would be absolute zero.
Am I missing something?
Yes,You described it in the wrong way. The reflected sun insolation reflects back from the air, from the clouds and from the surface. It does not go back and forward for ever. About 30 %of all the insolation is reflected from the Earth ever having any warming effect and travelleng back into space for ever.
I do not think that can be quite true, even the radiation refelcted from cloud tops has passed through the Atmosphere and must warm some Atmospheric atoms/molecules, similarly those reflected are also impacting on the atmosphere on their way out to space.
Warming the Atmosphere as they do also slows the heat loss to space does it not?
**I do not think that can be quite true, even the radiation refelcted from cloud tops has passed through the Atmosphere and must warm some Atmospheric atoms/molecules, similarly those reflected are also impacting on the atmosphere on their way out to space.**
Very little of the incoming solar radiation is absorbed. Most of th warming occurs when the solar radiation is absorbed by land or water.
philsalmon May 6, 2018 at 3:30 am
Phil, it’s not multiplying the energy by 2. The greenhouse effect does the same thing that a thermos bottle (vacuum flask) does. It slows the energy loss from the system.
Consider a transparent thermos bottle. In the shade it will take up some stable temperature based on the surroundings. But if you put it into the sun, it will get very, very hot. Is the sun’s energy “multiplied”?
No, the heat loss is just slowed down, so the interior of the vacuum flask ends up warmer than it would be without the vaccum.
See my post “The R. W. Wood Experiment” for further discussion. Along the same lines, I discuss the physic of the poorly-named “greenhouse effect” in The Steel Greenhouse post linked to in the head post, as well as “People Living in Glass Planets“.
Regards,
w.
Thanks!
If the poorly-named “greenhouse effect” were 100% perfect, for every additional watt per square metre (W/m2) of sunlight entering the system, the surface would radiate two W/m2—one W/m2 from the sunlight, and one W/m2 from the downwelling radiation from the atmosphere. Based on the ratio of the incoming radiation and the radiation from the surface, we can say that the overall greenhouse multiplier factor of the perfect greenhouse is 2.0.
On the face of it this looks like multiplying the sun’s energy by 2. This of course can’t be right. If all the photos coming in at the first pass were reflected, that means that they deliver zero energy to the earth. So it the atmosphere now reflects all these returning (first return) photons back down to earth’s surface (now the second time) – what would be different about the second landfall than the first? Nothing. 100% would be reflected again. And then reflected again – 100% again – by the atmosphere.
And so on ad infinitum. All the incoming light is endlessly reflected between the earth’s surface and the iron sky. With no energy absorbed in either earth or atmosphere. And thus the temperature of both would be absolute zero.
Am I missing something?
~50% of all absorbed photons get reradiated upwards and ~50% go back downward. So eventually all those original photons make it back to outerspace as lost heat . In the meantime the temperature goes up a little to compensate for increased IR that doesnt make it back out immediately. I have calculated that a doubling of CO2 would absorb enough photons to raise the temp by 0.4C hardly anything to worry about
Different sensitvity at South pole is due to ozone being isolated by polar vortex. This is not seen in North. Check how low the tropopause is and warming at 500 hPa. Ozone warming reduces clouds and allows more surface heating bu Uvv etc. All this and more is at. https://reality348.wordpress.com.
But it takes time to read and all too easily dismissed by conventional thinking prejudice. Are you up to it?!!???
Isn’t there also another reason why the Antarctic reacts the way that it does and that is a lack of atmospheric moisture?
The Dry Desert areas should also show a differnt reaction.
Good observation..and the point of raising ozone….what do you think causes moisture to dissapear??
Willis,
Thanks for providing the CERES info in a clear and concise manner. I think your work reinforces the conclusions of Lord Monckton, et al., regarding the basic assumptions adopted by mainstream climate science and offers an explanation regarding the response you have highlighted. Mainstream climate science apportions the entire climate feedback to non-condensing greenhouse gases instead of apportioning them between condensing, primarily water vapor which is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas, and non-condensing gases. In areas above freezing with abundant water, water vapor contributes to the greenhouse effect to a much greater degree than the non-condensing gases. In freezing climates the feedback response due to water vapor would be much less and therefore the relative response to changes in downwelling radiation would much more direct.
Correct Ron, where its dry the noncondensing GHG’s help maintain temps, but do a very poor job compared to WV.
For the rest of the world WV sets the tone.
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/observational-evidence-for-a-nonlinear-night-time-cooling-mechanism/
Macha May 6, 2018 at 3:59 am
I would have been up to it until you got all snarky and insulting. Next time keep a civil tongue in your head and ask politely, you’ll get much better results. When you ask a man to read up on your ideas, insulting him at the same time is counterproductive …
w.
Reading back I can see why you felt that way. Was not meant as a personal insult, more a challenge to open mindedness.. and link is also not to my idea…its a link to another climate observer. I’ll endeavour to do better.
Thanks for the clarification, Macha. I went to look at the article, and it was paywalled. I did find the underlying Arosa ozone data, I’ll look at it …
… a couple hours elapse …
OK, I looked. Your paper says:
I’m sorry, but that is special pleading. The ozone levels are closely tied to the temperature, but the causation goes the other way. The Arosa ozone varies strongly according to the seasons, going from an April peak of 368 dobson units down to a October trough of 281 DU …
As a result, it is clear that the temperature is driving the ozone levels, and NOT the other way around.
w.
Not nitpicking, Willis, but when you said this: “On the right we have we have the southern parts of Africa and South America …” – did you mean northern parts instead? Just asking. The southern parts are not as warm as the northern parts, per that heat map, that’s all.
On another note, It seems to me that it’s plain – from everything that is posted on WUWT about this warming cycle – that without the warming, insolation, and heat reflected back to the surface, we’d still be in a glacial maximum. Or maybe I’m misreading it all?
Just as an aside, three years in a row, we’ve had chilly springs. This one has been the latest yet to start trees leafing out. They finally did at the end of April. Please bring back the heat. I had to run the furnace again this morning, because of the chill. My gas company loves me, but I’d prefer to build up a credit on my monthly budget plan payment. Cheers!
Sara.
The cold is permanent since it is already globally cooling. Next year it will be worse.
http://breadonthewater.co.za/2018/05/04/which-way-will-the-wind-be-blowing-genesis-41-vs-27/
Henryp, no tornadoes in the US southwest (e.g., Oklahoma) and finding them clustered in the southeastern US is a sign of something. Something is definitely stirring.
I just hope it won’t be too hard on the Greenbeans and CAGWers, don’t you? (Snorrtt!)
Sara May 6, 2018 at 4:57 am Edit
Thanks, Sara. The two hemispheres split both South America and Africa very unevenly. The northern hemisphere gets the deserts and the tropics. The southern gets all the way down to 45 south or so. So on average the southern parts are cooler than the northern parts.
If you mean what would it be like without greenhouse gases, hard to say, because water vapor is a GHG … and if there’s no water vapor, that means no water … and that means no ice and no glaciers.
But one thing’s for sure—it would be dang cold …
w.
During the most extreme Snowball Earth intervals, global average temperature has been estimated at -50 degrees C. At such times, the whole earth would be akin to the polar deserts, with very low water vapor levels in the air. Cold also means dry.
Water vapor is becoming an issue, isn’t it? If there isn’t a high enough level in the air, there is nothing to reach the dew point, and that means moisture evaporating out of the ground, which is damaging.
I don’t know how it’s measured, but it seems to be rather volatile locally, e.g., high at night and too low (30% or less) during the day. This is NOT a good sign. Your lawn can begin to die in the space of two days, and your garden can fail to grow at all.
Keep putting this info on the blog, Willis. The more we know, the better.
“Given a change of 0.7 W/m2 for a 1 W/m2 change in incoming solar energy, this would indicate a temperature change in the unfrozen part of the planet of from 0.11°C per additional W/m2 at 30°C, to 0.16°C per additional W/m2 at 0°C.”
Not forgetting that changes in incoming solar energy would not be equal at the poles and the tropics.
I get different graphs using CERES data:
Are the lower latitudes missing from the Southern hemisphere in the graph above?
These complete graphs cover S 89.5 degrees through N 89.5 degrees at 1 AU.
No clue why that is, Jones. It shows that the average is 390 W/m2 or so, and nobody I know of makes that claim.
w.
My problem seems to be with linear integration over what is actually a spherical surface. Removed my “CERES” graphs.
This is a CERES graph from the website:
jonesingforozone May 6, 2018 at 1:10 pm Edit
Yes, it is necessary to area-average the data. The CERES graph agrees with mine.
w.
Fixed the integration problem.
Used ellipsoidal values generated by the military-grade calculator at https://msi.nga.mil/msisitecontent/staticfiles/calculators/degree.html.
The CERES zonal flux values specified by the series -89.9, -88.5, …, 89.5 thus integrated:
This is identical to the global flux values (does not require integration):
Then, the graph for the Northern and Southern zones is:
This is the graph of the longitudinal lengths given latitude:
The whole post ignores convection. From Judith Curry’s blog we have this:
“Back radiation … does not control the surface temperature.”
I highly recommend Dr. Curry’s above linked post. It shows how our understanding of the ‘greenhouse’ evolved.
If you read between the lines, Curry’s post also gives a clue about what the satellites are actually measuring. For a thorough examination of how CERES gathers data and how that data is processed, we have this link. The figure at the top of the paper gives an idea of the complexity of the process.
Willis’s Figure 11 gives negative values for “Surface Upwelling Radiation”. It’s based on calculated values and is unphysical. Similarly, the values for Average Surface Radiation and Average Available Solar Energy are already highly processed as well as being based in part on the same measurements. By the time we get to Willis’s calculations the error bars are going to be pretty big.
Dr Curry is wrong about that, Tmin sets the days clear sky temperature, and back radiation from water vapor in the middle of the night regulates Tmin to dew point.
It’s all nonlinear rate control via WV feedback.
https://micro6500blog.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/observational-evidence-for-a-nonlinear-night-time-cooling-mechanism/
How do you explain Mars, Venus, Triton, and Titan? The temperature of rocky planets is explained, as a good first approximation, by downwelling solar radiation and surface pressure. link It’s mostly about lapse rates.
This doesn’t change that really.
It changes how surface temps are distributed as you go poleward, but doesn’t alter the average.
But if you don’t buy that pressure and solar define surface temps, and it really is a ghg effect, this defines how Tmin is regulated once its warm enough to start the water cycle. So since the water cycle is running, the CS to co2 doubling is a fraction of the Planck response.
What it doesn’t support is high CS values.
And I have looked at CS based on seasonal forcing and that’s what drives my <0.5C/doubling value.
Picture the difference between deserts and the tropics. Deserts represent the noncondensing GHG's only, or pressure/solar vs GHG's with WV.
“Picture the difference between deserts and the tropics. Deserts represent the noncondensing GHG’s only, or pressure/solar vs GHG’s with WV.”
micro, that is a great concise way to demonstrate your point.
commieBob,
A quick read of the link you provided on the CERES processing should dispel anyone’s belief that this is settled science. Notably, there is (or at least was) disagreement on how to even take the measurements.
However, as I have argued previously [ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/12/why-albedo-is-the-wrong-measure-of-reflectivity-for-modeling-climate/ ] I believe that the CERES data only provide a lower bound on the total amount of light reflected from Earth. That is, the “upwelling” is principally surface-normal specular reflections and diffuse reflectance. The oblique (high angle, or near-glancing) specular reflections from water (or wind-swept ice) are not captured. Thus, “The reflected solar is the total upwelling sunshine at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) that has been reflected from the clouds, the aerosols, the soil, the plants, the ice, and the ocean.” is essentially only retro-reflections and NOT total reflections!
commieBob May 6, 2018 at 6:08 am Edit
No, it doesn’t “ignore convection”. It includes all of the natural processes. What I’ve done is compare incoming solar with the resultant surface temperature change AFTER radiation, conduction, convection, evaporation, transpiration, advection, and all other changes.
Figure 11 shows an anomaly about the mean of both values, in order to allow us to compare them directly. Any anomaly about the mean perforce contains negative values. This does NOT make it “unphysical” as you seem to think.
And while the surface upwelling radiation is calculated, I’ve compared it to the HadCRUT temperature data, the UAH MSU temperature data, the Reynolds satellite sea temperature data, and the TAO moored ocean buoy data. In all cases it agrees very closely with the other datasets … as one example of my comparisons, here’s a latitudinal comparison of HadCRUT and CERES for the period of the CERES dataset, Mar 2000 to Feb 2017.
As you can see, other than at the poles where the HadCRUT data is almost entirely interpolated, there is very good agreement between the two.
w.
By “interpolated”, you mean made up to make alleged warming look “worse” than it really is.
Very interesting post Willis, thank you! The above graph (T Avg. by Latitude: CERES/HadCRUT4) is striking. Am I interpreting it wrong or is that good evidence for poor interpolation for HadCRUT4 pole data?
Joseph Murphy May 7, 2018 at 6:46 am
I’d say “yes”, but it’s hard to tell, because the CERES creators say don’t trust the CERES data at the poles … however, I note that at the South Pole itself, the CERES data and the HadCRUT data agree, and that’s the one place that HadCRUT has actual polar data …
w.
Now can someone explain why there’s global warming on Mars? There’s no SUVs on Mars, and Mars increased temps too
But isn’t there a Tesla on the way? 😉
LOL…..that one made me laugh!
Is the CO2 already increasing on Mars, too?
“This is because the greenhouse gases absorb the upwelling surface radiation,…”
Just curious – wouldn’t they also absorb down welling radiation?
Some of the Sun’s energy is indeed absorbed before it gets to the ground.
The big deal is that CO2 absorbs energy at specific far infrared (ie. long) wavelengths. Most of the Sun’s radiation is ultraviolet, visible light, and near infrared (ie. shorter) wavelengths. The ultraviolet is largely absorbed by ozone before it reaches the ground. Not much is absorbed by CO2 because most of the Sun’s radiated wavelengths are too short.
When the Earth radiates back to space, it does so at long wavelengths. (longer = colder, shorter = hotter) CO2 absorbs some of the energy at particular long wavelengths. Most of the energy leaving the Earth is unaffected by CO2. Most of the absorption is by water vapor. Here’s a good illustration.
It’s important to understand that the Earth radiates to space pretty much all the energy that it absorbs from the Sun. It doesn’t accumulate or lose a lot of energy long term. Even if atmospheric gasses absorb outgoing radiation, it means that the energy will move up the atmosphere and radiate to space at a greater altitude.
In other words, atmospheric absorption is just a delaying process.
CommieBob
I am sure you donot understand our arguments.
For proof that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine, see here:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/644/1/551/64090.web.pdf?request-id=76e1a830-4451-4c80-aa58-4728c1d646ec
They measured the re-radiation from CO2 as it bounced back to earth from the moon. So the direction was sun-earth-moon -earth. Follow the green line in fig. 6, bottom. Note that it already starts at 1.2 um, then one peak at 1.4 um, then various peaks at 1.6 um and 3 big peaks at 2 um. It all comes back in fig. 6 top.
This paper here shows that there is absorption of CO2 at between 0.21 and 0.19 um (close to 202 nm):
http://www.nat.vu.nl/en/sec/atom/Publications/pdf/DUV-CO2.pdf
There are other papers that I can look for again that will show that there are also absorptions of CO2 at between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um.
We already know from the normal IR spectra that CO2 has big absorption between 4 and 5 um.
So, to sum it up, we know that CO2 has absorption in the 14-15 um range causing some warming (by re-radiating earthshine) but as shown and proved above it also has a number of absorptions in the 0-5 um range causing cooling (by back-radiating sunshine). This cooling happens at all levels where the sunshine hits on the carbon dioxide same as the earthshine. The way from the bottom to the top is the same as from top to the bottom. So, my question is: how much cooling and how much warming is caused by the CO2? How was the experiment done to determine this and where are the test results?
“The increased downwelling radiation estimated for a doubling of CO2 is 3.7 W/m2.”
It’s not a downwelling radiation. It’s OLR at TOA. Not equivalent
“this would indicate that if solar radiation increased by 3.7 W/m2, we would see a temperature increase of 0.4°C to 0.6°C depending on the surface temperature.”
It’s not TCR or ECS since it’s not TOA fluxes.
Willis,
Let me test my understanding here. Your conclusions are a bit opaque to me, no doubt my flaw.
I think that you are saying that this is evidence that for a doubling of CO2, with all other things being equal, we should expect no more than a 0.6°C increase in surface temperature in the coldest regions, 0.4°C in the warmest. The significance of that would be that the CAGW orthodoxy claims we would see 3°C or at least 1.5°C for a doubling of CO2.
Is that the correct take-away?
If so, it seems that an 8-fold increase in CO2 from the current 410ppm to 3280ppm, or a doubling, then a doubling again, and then a further doubling, would increase surface temperatures by about 1.8°C in the coldest regions, and 1.2°C in the warmest. The penguins would enjoy a heat wave from -30°C up to -28.2°C, melting nary an ice cube. In the tropics, a 30°C day might become a 31.2°C day. And even then, in the tropics a little more cloud cover will form from the increased evaporation, potentially reducing the rise (an example of not all things being equal).
Yep.
w.
Oh, where to start?
There is not 240 SW available at the surface, only 160 because of the reflection + maybe 40 indirectly as LW, first absorbed by the atmosphere, 200 total. Then the energy transport from the surface is more like 500, evaporation included. So, Gain=500/200=2.5 not 1.66
And this is only the beginning…
lgl May 6, 2018 at 7:50 am
There are many ways to measure gain in the system. On the input side you could look at the gain from TOA solar, from TOA solar after albedo reflections, or from TOA solar after albedo reflections and atmospheric absorption. On the output side you could look at total radiation, only radiation which is absorbed by the atmosphere, total radiation plus sensible heat, total radiation plus sensible and latent heat.
I picked one combination. You may want to pick another. I encourage you to do so, and come back with your results and graphs written up for us to examine and discuss.
w.
Well, I don’t have your skills, nor your tools, and don’t know where to find the latent heat during CERES period, so I have used another dataset. http://virakkraft.com/Net_SW-vs-Total_Up_surface.pdf
lgl May 6, 2018 at 1:14 pm
lgl, I started to replicate that and I realized that you have the same variable in both the numerator and the denominator. You’ve shown absorbed solar at the surface versus “LWup+Latent+Sensible”, which is the total energy lost from the surface.
But in a steady-state condition, total surface energy lost must equal total surface energy gained … and total surface energy gained is the sum of absorbed solar and absorbed longwave ± advection.
So what you are showing is absorbed solar over (absorbed solar plus absorbed longwave ± advection) … generally, I try to avoid including the same variable in the numerator and the denominator. It leads to an apparent relationship where none may exist, and tends to produce straighter lines …
Best regards, and if you produced that graphic I’d say you do have skills and tools …
w.
PS—the CERES data doesn’t contain a latent heat or a sensible heat loss dataset.
And because Total_up=Total _absorbed the amplification of the solar input is Total_up over Solar_absorbed OR Total_absorbed over Solar_absorbed. Doesn’t change the fact that the amplification is around 2.5
lgl May 6, 2018 at 3:27 pm
I say again:
Next, regarding your graph, here’s the issue. Suppose I set x to uniform random numbers from 0 to 100, with “uniform” meaning that they are picked at random from within that interval.
Next I set y to 100 random normal numbers with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 10. You’ll agree that there is no relationship between the two groups of random numbers x and y.
Now let me do what you did, and plot (x + y) against x … or in your case, (total longwave absorbed + total solar absorbed) versus (total solar absorbed). Here’s the R computer code and the result:
x = runif(100, 0, 100)
y = rnorm(100, sd = 10)
plot(x + y ~ x)
As you can see, despite the fact that there is absolutely no relationship between the two groups of random numbers x and y, graphing them that way gives the strong impression that such a relationship exists.
And this is what you’ve done in your graph.
w.
Doesn’t matter. I have plotted the initial or “raw” input versus the resulting input, and that is the amplification.
This is probably over your head, but, the Trenberth cartoon is just fundamentally meaningless. Stefan-Boltzmann applies to direct radiation, not to averaged radiation. Dividing 1366 W/m2 by 24/7 renders any subsequent Stefan-Boltzmann calculation physically MEANINGLESS.
Just because some piker at NASA does it too, don’t drink the Kool-Aid, it is not real. What really happens is far more complex. Averaging radiation by 24/7 is not what the Sun does, and is not what the atmosphere does, not even close.
“This is because the greenhouse gases absorb the upwelling surface radiation, and when they radiate, about half of the radiation goes up, and half goes back towards the earth. As a result, the earth ends up warmer than it would be otherwise.”
When CO2 absorbs LWIR it immediately thermalizes it, except high in the atmosphere where pressure is much lower.
The logarithmic effect of CO2 is essentially saturated at concentrations far below the 400 ppm we have today. CO2’s significant effect is at the TOA, where it increases the altitude at which the atmosphere can radiate freely to space, thus decreasing the temperature at which the atmosphere radiates freely, thus increasing the heat content of the atmosphere. The magnitude of this effect has never been successfully calculated.
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
Michael Moon: When CO2 absorbs LWIR it immediately thermalizes it, except high in the atmosphere where pressure is much lower.
Surely that could do with some elaboration. The amount thermalized must be a monotonic function of pressure — is that function known? And is it, as I suppose, monotonic? How “high” in the atmosphere must one ascend to find the region where more than 25% is radiated? Though not dense, there is a lot of CO2 from that level upwards. And if that level is not too cold, there is a lot of H2O from that level upwards as well.
Michael Moon May 6, 2018 at 7:52 am
Sorry, stopped reading your comment right there, although the reason why I did so appears to be over your head …
w.
Yeah I started to quote the same words and was going to ask how Mr Moon thinks there could be any hope of discussion after that lead in. But it seemed like a waste of time.
Well, to be fair, most of the atmosphere is over our heads.
Mostly.
I have mentioned this flaw in the Trenbeth cartoon once or twice before, but it seems to be the Zombie Graph, unkillable. Anyone on here who uses this flawed concept of averaging the incident radiation on the Earth’s surface and then using this average in a calculation involving Stefan-Boltzmann has demonstrated his or her ignorance of physics. S-B uses the fourth power of temperature, so dividing the flux by 4 and back-calculating a resultant temp is unPhysical.
Michael Moon May 6, 2018 at 4:14 pm
Huh? Yes, S-B uses the fourth power of temperature, but unlike temperature, flux is conserved. So we can indeed average the flux and convert that to an average temperature. What you cannot do is average temperature and convert that to a flux …
I also don’t understand your objection to dividing the (presumably solar) flux by 4. The earth intercepts the sun over an area equal to a circle the size of the earth that is perpendicular to the sunlight. But we are interested in the average solar flux per unit area of the earth’s surface. The area of intersected sunlight is πR^2, and the area of the earth is 4πR^2. So we need to divide the TOA perpendicular sunlight (~1360 W/m2) by 4 to give the average flux per unit area of the surface (~340 W/m2).
Finally, accusations that just about everyone but you is demonstrating their “ignorance of physics” is not the way to get people to listen to you. I stopped reading your previous comment when you claimed that your undeniable genius was “probably over my head” and haven’t looked at it again. And I almost didn’t answer this one because of your further claims that you are so much smarter than everyone. It does NOT further your cause …
w.
Well said Michael.
t’s finally dawned on me that Willis is always ‘averaging’ things that cannot be ‘averaged’ and mis-describing things then ‘measuring’ them (like the PLANET Earth as a black body…chortle) then wheeling out a few formulae which don’t much apply and then applying some meaningless ‘derivatives’ and producing a fuzzy looking graphs.
But let me leave you with these fascinating and useful facts….
Did you realise for example that the average height of a male human being is 5′ 9″ and 3/4?
Or that the global average temperature of a cup of coffee is 152˚F?
it is hardly fair to level that accusation at willis given he is only using the “data” provided by the “experts”.
charles nelson May 6, 2018 at 2:04 pm
Charles, you are revealing yourself a vicious, underhanded person. I specifically asked you to QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS you are discussing. Instead, you uncap your electronic pen and start spreading your uncited, unreferenced, slimy excrement around in the futile hope that some of it will stick to me.
Bad news, Charles … it’s your excrement, and it only sticks to you.
Either grow a pair, man up, and quote EXACTLY what you think I did wrong, or go bother some other website. Those kinds of sleazy unsupported nasty accusations are not appreciated here.
w.
PS—A friendly word of warning. Michael has little understanding of what can and cannot be averaged … believe him at your own risk.
Scatter plots representing how the planet responds to solar forcing are very revealing. The plots you have shown here are nearly identical to those I’ve produced from the ISCCP data. Most interesting is identifying what is linear to what, specifically that surface BB emissions are far more linear to total solar forcing then the surface temperature is. Many more scatter plots can be found here:
http://www.palisad.com/co2/sens
Each link points to a different scatter plot.
Willis Eschenbach, thank you for another enlightening essay.
How well is the reflected light sampled and measured? I am thinking of the light that “glances” off the N and S pole regions and off the oceans right after sunup and right before sundown, and likewise on land when the land is snow-covered. It isn’t reflected back “up” reversing the direction of the rays striking the surface.
matthewrmarler May 6, 2018 at 8:41 am
Thanks for the kind words, Matt, always good to hear from you. As you point out, measuring the albedo is difficult. A satellite can only measure what is reflected back at the satellite, not what is reflected into space at other angles. As a result, a complex algorithm is required to derive an accurate figure. There’s a good description of some of the algorithms and issues here.
Best regards,
w.
Thank you for the link.
Hi Willis,
In establishing your “perfect greenhouse” number of 2 you state, “This is because the greenhouse gases absorb the upwelling surface radiation, and when they radiate, about half of the radiation goes up, and half goes back towards the earth.”
It was my understanding that most of the energy absorbed by the greenhouse gasses is transferred to the non-greenhouse gasses by conduction, not re-radiated in any direction. This then results in a physical transport of the energy upward through conduction and convection where at top of atmosphere greenhouse gasses would facilitate the outgoing radiation.
Thus an increase in greenhouse gasses at bottom of atmosphere would increase the transfer of energy to the non-greenhouse gasses and at top of atmosphere it would increase the rate of energy transfer back to the greenhouse gasses for out radiation with an increased conduction/convection component in the middle. It is not obvious to me what the net effect of that process would be but it seems that the number for a “perfect greenhouse” should be substantially less than 2.
Your thermostat theory of tropical storms would tend to say that you also believe that conduction/convection are major players in the greenhouse. Why should they be ignored here?
Thanks, John. A “perfect greenhouse” is an abstraction that cannot exist in a real atmosphere. The only real example would be the “steel greenhouse” I described in my post of the same name.
As to the tropical storms, they are not ignored. Instead, they are among the main reasons why the surface response to increasing sunlight is so small.
w.
Doesn’t the temperature of Antarctica occasionally dip below the freezing point of carbon dioxide? What happens then? Does it “snow” out of the atmosphere and collect on the surface?
Good question, Mark. There was a discussion of this here on WUWT a while back, hang on … OK, it’s here.
TL;DR version?
No.
w.
My calculations per doubling of CO2 is 0.4C difference. This is based on total energy specific heat content of all the gases in atmosphere. I have submitted paper to Anthony Watts.
Alan
provide us with the link to your study?
I know A@ is very strict and your study / paper might not get published.
Upwelling Surface Longwave Radiation
Available Solar Energy After Albedo Reductions
Willis, as the quintessential average joe, i’ve yet to come across the above terminologies. i have heard of the terms Outgoing Longwave Radiation and Absorbed Solar Radiation. Are these terms (OLR & ASR) essentially the same as the terms that you’ve presented? (yes, no, maybe so?)…
Thanx for all your hard work and dedication. i noted your absence in a couple recent solar threads. (i assume that the preparation of this post is the reason why?) It’s quite a piece…
No and no. Outgoing longwave radiation is measured at the top of the atmosphere. Upwelling surface radiation, sometimes called “USR”, is measured at the surface.
Absorbed solar radiation is also measured at the surface. On the other hand, available energy after albedo reflections is measured at the TOA.
As to not posting on the solar threads, it’s partly because of this post, partly because I’ve had house guests, and partly because I get tired of the recurrent abuse I get on solar threads …
w.
PS—my intention is to write for what I call the “scientifically interested layman”, which sounds like your average joe …
i may be wrong, but i could believe this essay of yours is more than capable of being written up and submitted to a journal willis.
bitchilly May 6, 2018 at 3:34 pm
The problem is that if I want to write in the dense, long-paragraph, gothic black-letter style of scientific papers, I feel like I have to grab an icepick and give myself a frontal lobotomy. Then I remember the old saying that goes “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy” and it goes downhill from there …
On a more serious note, I am interested in affecting the course of the scientific discussion regarding climate, and this blog is where a good chunk of that conversation takes place. This post will be read by interested scientists on both side of the question within a few days of me writing it, and it is not paywalled.
Compare that to the impact of publishing this in some relatively obscure scientific journal … I say obscure since a) it’s hard to get skeptical ideas published in the big journals, and b) I have no credentials of any kind, and for unknown reasons the jounals seem to care about that. Well, I do have credentials: a Ham Radio License (H44WE), an Openwater I, Openwater II, and Rescue Diver’s certificate, a Coast Guard Inshore Captain’s License, and the like … but curiously, in the modern scientific world such practical things seem to mean nothing.
And in the arena of scientific credentials, I took exactly two college science classes, Introduction to Physics and Introduction to Chemistry … not impressive.
Now, if there’s someone out there with a PhD who wouldn’t mind doing the writing and sparring with the reviewers, I’d be glad to pair up with them and give them first author position … I worked before with Dr. Craig Loehle on that basis and it came out fine.
Regards,
w.
Willis
Your available solar energy (240 W/m^2) is equal to the absorbed solar radiation. At TOA, available solar energy is 342 W/m^2. At surface, it’s less than 240 W/m^2 due to absorption of the atmosphere
“I get tired of the recurrent abuse I get on solar threads …”
Illegitimi non carborundum est.
P.S. Another great post, keep up the good work.
point taken willis. keep up the great work.
Willis, fig 4 strikes me as perhaps the most significant finding. There is no reason the hemispheres should be in balance. But they are. This points to new science.
This would also be an interesting check to apply to climate models.
Indeed, ferd. See here for Peter Webster’s paper on the subject.
w.
Just one of the many ways in which the GIGO GCMs don’t do clouds. “Parameterization”, ie making stuff up, simply doesn’t cut it.
WOW!
This N-S symmetry is a Big Deal. As is the fact that climate models do not have this symmetry.
Frankly this symmetry calls the entire calls the entire radiative theory of surface temperatures into question.
For this symmetry to exists there MUST be a higher controlling mechanism over and above the radiative process.
In effect this symmetry is like the wobble in a planets orbit that signals there is an as yet undiscovered body.
This symmetry is not predicted by the climate models. Moreover it should not exist under current theories of climate.
This symmetry is STRONG evidence that CO2 is NOT the climate control knob. Something else is regulating climate and the N-S symmetry is its signature.
WOW. A very big deal!
“This is because the greenhouse gases absorb the upwelling surface radiation, and when they radiate, about half of the radiation goes up, and half goes back towards the earth. As a result, the earth ends up warmer than it would be otherwise.
If the poorly-named “greenhouse effect” were 100% perfect, for every additional watt per square metre (W/m2) of sunlight entering the system, the surface would radiate two W/m2—one W/m2 from the sunlight, and one W/m2 from the downwelling radiation from the atmosphere. Based on the ratio of the incoming radiation and the radiation from the surface, we can say that the overall greenhouse multiplier factor of the perfect greenhouse is 2.0. (See my post The Steel Greenhouse for a discussion of this.)”
William Happer mentioned how an activated CO2 molecule is extremely slow to re radiate, as compared to giving up its energy to adjacent water vapor, N2, O2, molecules through collisions(thermalization) That means that convection immediately takes over. However, through collisions, and packets of captured radiant energy, the CO2 molecule can again collect enough energy to re radiate. The process repeats. These radiant/thermal energy transfers are buzzing near instantaneously.
I puzzle over how a doubling of CO2 in our mixed gas atmosphere can change the temperature profile to the degree that we can measure it.(As I understand it, a change to the dry lapse rate has not in fact been measured) I currently think the ideal gas law is most informative for thick mixed gas atmospheres, while the steel greenhouse is not.
Willis says…Or consider how much ricin it takes to kill a human being … 0.002% of your body weight.
The fact that something is small does NOT mean that we can safely ignore it.
What a weary and ignorant argument…
If I was safely and happily consuming ….0,0018% of my body weight in Ricin…do you think the extra little bit would kill me?
Really?
Charles,
Weary and ignorant? Why would you say that?
I don’t know if the quoted number 0.002% of body weight is an accurate number for ricin lethal dose in humans, but obviously it refers to the average response by some percentage of humans and not a certain result at an exact dose. If 50% of humans would die after ingesting 0.002% of body weight in ricin, then you would certainly not be happily consuming 0.0018% (or 90% of the dose that kills humans 50% of the time). You would probably recover, but you would be very sick. An extra little bit would increase your probability of dying. At some point there would be an amount that nobody would survive. Unless you have a genetic mutation that allows you to metabolize ricin that is.
One can see “strange attractor” shapes in many of the scatterplots…..
Poor Mr. Feht is going to accidentally click on Willis’s article, see the dreaded “Eschenbach” name, and BE FORCED to click the back button in revulsion — an utter waste of precious time and energy.
Another day ruined for the man.
Thanks Willis. Thanks a lot.
“Now, I found this to be a most curious graph. Here’s the curiosity. The greenhouse effect is the reason that the surface of the planet is warmer than we’d expect from simple calculations of the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth. This is because the greenhouse gases absorb the upwelling surface radiation, and when they radiate, about half of the radiation goes up, and half goes back towards the earth. As a result, the earth ends up warmer than it would be otherwise.”
How exactly can that even remotely be true? We have an atmosphere. Radiation is not the only way it can absorb energy to be warmed. It warms through conduction when the air passes over the heated ground. It then rises, taking that added energy into the atmosphere. Having that atmosphere all by itself is going to increase the temperature at the ground surface.
No. It all boils down to how much energy enters the earth (AND it’s atmosphere) and how much leaves the earth (AND it’s atmosphere). This can only happen through radiation. Conduction and Convection can move energy through the atmosphere so it can make some places warmer than they would otherwise be (e.g. the poles) and vice versa but convection and conduction cannot ADD energy to the earth’s surface and the atmosphere overall.
Like it or not, the most likely explanation for the earth’s average surface temperature of around 15 deg C (rather than -18 deg C) is the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect impedes the flow of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) so that incoming solar radiation is greater than OLR. This means the earth continues to warm until OLR reaches equilibrium with incoming solar radiation.
As Willis notes it is claimed this equilibrium is reached when the earth’s surface is emitting 398 w/m2 compared to about 240 w/m2 solar giving a multiplier effect of 1.66. The effect of doubling CO2 will according to MODTRAN reduce OLR at the top of the atmosphere by 3.7 w/m2. To maintain equilibrium this would require the surface flux to increase by about 6 w/m2 (3.7 x 1.66) which leads to the NO FEEDBACK surface temperature increase of about 1 deg C.
No. Convection and evaporation rule the surface-to-atmosphere heat transfer.
edimbukvarevic May 7, 2018 at 11:43 am
I have several problems with that graphic. First, it claims that the total amount reflected by albedo is 119 W/m2. This disagrees with every reference I’ve seen. CERES puts total reflection at 99 W/m2, a significant difference.
More importantly, the diagram shows only a total of 173.4 W/m2 entering and leaving the surface (57.8 W/m2 radiated to space, 20.4 W/m2 absorbed directly by atmosphere, 30.6 W/m2 convection and turbulence, and 64.6 W/m2 latent heat).
However, the Stefan-Boltzmann blackbody temperature corresponding to 173.4 W/m2 is -38°C, or if we assume an average emissivity of 0.95 it’s -35°C … and we know that is not the case. The globe is not frozen solid.
Where is the problem? The problem is that this is an analysis of how the globe would look if there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There is no acknowledgment of any downwelling longwave radiation absorbed by the earth. It is ignored completely. That’s why in this diagram the surface of the planet is well below freezing—because a major component of energy entering the surface is ignored.
In short, this is a diagram of an imaginary earth, one without greenhouse gases, and as such, it has little to do with the actual planet … plus, they’re just plain wrong about the albedo.
Regards,
w.
Willis, I picked that graph from wikipedia and didn’t check the numbers. I kinda liked it because it’s an energy flow diagram, in which the width of the arrows is shown proportionally to the flow quantity (Sankey diagram). Now that you point it out, I see that it indeed shows that the reflected solar is 119 W/m2. Other budgets claim around 100 as you say.
Regarding your second point, it shows the net radiative heat exchange between the surface and the atmosphere – it doesn’t ignore anything. Like this one:
All the references show that convection and evaporation rule the surface-to-atmosphere heat transfer.
Here the radiative surface-to-atmosphere heat transfer is around 18 W/m2 (358.2 – 340.3) and the non-radiative is around 105 W/m2.
edimbukvarevic May 7, 2018 at 3:54 pm
Thanks for the two new graphics, edim. However, the upper one is just as bad as your first graphic. Look at the total amount of energy both entering and leaving the surface. In your new diagram (the upper of the two) it is 173 W/m2 entering and 173.4 leaving the surface … but if that were true the surface temperature would be -38°C … sorry, amigo, but that one is junk too.
On the other hand, although the lower of your two new graphics does show the downwelling radiation to the surface, it suffers from another flaw—it is not energy balanced.
According to that one, the atmosphere (including clouds) radiates 200 W/m2 upwards and 340 W/m2 downwards …
It is essentially the Kiehl/Trenberth diagram. One of the first things I noticed when I started studying the climate was that the K/T diagram was unbalanced. Upon further study, I realized that you need a minimum of two thermally isolated atmospheric layers to have a balanced system, so I calculated the flows necessary to make that work. Here’s Trenberth’s diagram …
You can see that in his the atmosphere does NOT radiate the same amount upwards and downwards.
And here is mine …
Note that it is balanced at all levels. Energy in equals energy out, and for the atmospheric levels, emission upwards equals emission downwards.
Finally, you started out by saying:
However, this is not true. Radiation moves almost four times the energy from the surface to the atmosphere as do convection and evaporation. You are confused by net energy, but net energy is not how the surface loses energy. It loses energy by radiation (~ 400 W/m2) as well as by conduction & convection (about 100 W/m2).
On the other side of the ledger the surface gets more than twice as much energy from downwelling longwave radiation (340 W/m2) as it does from the sun (160 W/m2).
Note that on average, this means the planet receives about half a kilowatt per square meter of radiant energy … go figure.
My best to you.
w.
Willis,
It is not junk – it shows the energy (heat) flows. Radiative heat transfer is radiation from the warmer surface minus the radiation from the colder surface.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation#Radiative_heat_transfer
“In your new diagram (the upper of the two) it is 173 W/m2 entering and 173.4 leaving the surface … but if that were true the surface temperature would be -38°C … sorry, amigo, but that one is junk too.”
This is junk. Why would it be – 38 °C? It can be (almost) anything. 173.4 W/m2 is not thermal radiation from the surface according to S-B. It is total heat transfer from the surface to atmosphere and space. The surface still radiates according to S-B (~398 W/m2).
“You can see that in his the atmosphere does NOT radiate the same amount upwards and downwards.”
The atmosphere does not have to radiate the same amount upwards and downwards. Why would it? It has to radiate upwards to space what it gains from the surface (mostly non-radiatively) plus what it absorbs directly from the sun.
The Earth’s surface gets its heat from the sun (around 165 W/m2), it radiates directly to space around 40 W/m2, the rest it transfers to atmosphere, mostly by non-radiative means (around 105 W/m2) and around 20 W/m2 by thermal radiation.
You are confused by the atmospheric radiation to surface (back radiation) – it is NOT a heat input to the surface. Its origin is the surface itself.
Regards.
edimbukvarevic May 7, 2018 at 5:57 pm
Thanks, edimbukvarevic, So … here’s your diagram;
Your claim is that in this diagram the surface is radiating at ~398 W/m2. Since according to the same diagram the surface is receiving only 173 W/m2 total, I fear that dog won’t hunt … it cannot be radiating 398 W/m2 and only receiving 173 W/m2. Not possible.
It has to because of simple physics. The radiation is not directional. It is emitted in all directions, with about half going upwards and half downwards.
Hang on. Above you correctly said that the surface transfers some 398 W/m2 of energy to the atmosphere by radiation. Now you say it only transfers 20 W/m2 to the atmosphere by radiation. You were right the first time. Again you are confusing energy flows with heat flows.
Well, if you wish to be pedantic, its origin is in the sun.
And while it is not a heat input to the surface, it is an ENERGY input to the surface of about 340 W/m2. If you trouble to look at your second graphic above, you’ll see the energy flow that you claim doesn’t exist as a big red arrow pointing at the surface …
To be clear: the surface receives about half a kilowatt per square metre of energy. About 160 W/m2 of this is radiation from the sun. About 340 W/m2 of this is radiation from the atmosphere.
Since the system is in steady-state, the surface also loses about half a kW/m2. About 400 W/m2 is lost by radiation, and about 100 W/mw is by sensible and latent heat.
As is shown in your second graphic above …
w.
John
I think Willis claims the effect of doubling CO2 will be +1 degC all feedbacks included (perhaps without the very slow ice sheet adjustments)
Willis,
Doesn’t your two-layer atmosphere diagram here contradict this from the head post:
“Of course, in a real world, the multiplier factor will be less” (than 2)?
The atmosphere acts more like a multi-shell steel greenhouse than a single-shell. (except absorption <1 in each shell)
Willis,
“Your claim is that in this diagram the surface is radiating at ~398 W/m2. Since according to the same diagram the surface is receiving only 173 W/m2 total, I fear that dog won’t hunt … it cannot be radiating 398 W/m2 and only receiving 173 W/m2. Not possible.”
Of course it’s possible. It’s radiating according to its temperature (and emissivity). The atmosphere is also radiating according to its temperature and emissivity back at the surface. This back radiation needs to be subtracted from the surface radiation to get the (net) radiative heat transfer at the surface. Add the non-radiative fluxes and it all balances out.
“It has to because of simple physics. The radiation is not directional. It is emitted in all directions, with about half going upwards and half downwards”
I am not sure what you’re claiming. What the atmosphere radiates looking up from the surface and what it radiates looking down from the TOA does NOT have to be the same amount.
“Hang on. Above you correctly said that the surface transfers some 398 W/m2 of energy to the atmosphere by radiation. Now you say it only transfers 20 W/m2 to the atmosphere by radiation. You were right the first time. Again you are confusing energy flows with heat flows.”
It only transfers around 20 W/m2 to the atmosphere beacause it radiates around 40 directly to space and the atmosphere radiates back around 340.
Roughly, 400 – 340 – 40 = 20.
edimbukvarevic May 8, 2018 at 2:44 am
It’s most assuredly not possible in a steady-state condition. If an object radiates more energy than it is receiving, it will cool. If as you claim it is radiating more than twice what it is receiving, it will cool very rapidly. Simple physics.
Since the earth is in generally a steady-state condition, the surface on average cannot be radiating more than it is receiving.
w.
Willis, heat (or energy) fluxes are balanced at the surface. Radiative fluxes are not and do not have to be, because there is convection and evaporation. Roughly:
165 = (400 – 340) + 85 + 20
165 = 60 + 85 + 20
The surface absorbs around 165 W/m2 solar. The cooling fluxes are around:
60 W/m2 radiative heat exchange (400 – 340) and only 20 W/m2 is to atmosphere, the rest (40 W/m2) is radiated directly to space,
85 W/m2 evaporation and
20 W/m2 convection.
edimbukvarevic May 7, 2018 at 11:43 am
You didn’t read (or understand) my comment. I made the point that convection and conduction move energy through the atmosphere. HOWEVER, convection and conduction cannot ADD energy to the atmosphere.
That can only be achieved by increased solar radiation or a reduction in OLR. Greenhouse gases reduce the flow of OLR to space.
John, it was your point that convection only move energy through the atmosphere and that it cannot add energy to the atmosphere that made me reply. That statement is wrong. Convective surface-to-atmosphere heat flux adds roughly as much energy to the atmosphere as the radiative one (LWIR). Evaporation from the surface adds roughly five time as much.
But that’s just moving energy around. You need to think of the climate system as a whole – i.e. oceans, surface, atmosphere …etc. Solar energy enters at the Top of the Atmosphere (TOA) and leaves at TOA.
Without greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, energy would be radiated directly to space from the surface. Greenhouse gases impede the flow form the surface which means that incoming energy from the sun will be greater than Outgoing radiation (OLR) to space. This means the surface and lower atmosphere will warm (basic thermodynamics) until Incoming = Outgoing.
The fact that energy is also moved around by conduction and convection is not really that relevant to this process. Energy can only be emitted to space by radiation. Greenhouse gases do play a role in the rate at which energy is lost to space.
The non-condensing ones, play a very minor part, as Deserts show.
What sets Tmin, is dew point, and that’s independent of the non-condensing GHG’s, and that’s why CS is much lower than estimated by most.
It occurs to me that the curve you perceived in your data. . . .5w/m2 per 1w/m2 in Antarctica and the .72w/m2 per 1w/m2 in the unfrozen areas of the globe is reflecting the effect of convection, particularly the global convective cells transferring heat to the poles thus there is not much of a lapse rate at the poles so convection is severely limited at the poles while the additional 1w/m2 at mid latitudes and the equator are going to convect strongly and move more heat to the poles. Nothing fancy just heat doing what heat does.
seems to maybe an interesting correlation between net available solar energy in figures 4 and 10 and ENSO over the years, which you noted. Would maybe make sense after albedo, but I am a bit puzzled over what that could have to do with TOA incoming. . . .is figure 10 correctly described?
I don’t know whether the satellite is picking that number or it is calculated. To get 239.7 w/m^2 you need a TSI of 1370. The NOAA TSI as of 1.22.2018 going back to 1985 as no higher than 1363/1364 with most of the readings between 1360 to 1362. At 1360 the calculated W/M^2 is 238.
Then are you assuming the orbit of the earth makes no difference in the calculation? It does when when I do the numbers.Are you using calculus to obtain an instantaneous value? And where? The S-B is too simple for that. It appears that it requires a static situation. Are you assuming TSI is an average at TOA or is it selected at some point. If it’s 1370 w/m^2 at perihelion then at aphelion it’s 1291 w/m^2. (1291 x (1-a)/4 = 226 w/m^2.
At whatever number you use the difference is about 4 C.
rishrac May 6, 2018 at 9:32 pm
I don’t understand that. This is exactly why I ask people to QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS THAT YOU ARE DISCUSSING. As far as I can tell, you’re the first person to mention 239.7 W/m2 … what does it represent, and how is it related to total TSI? Here’s what I’ve been using, direct from the CERES TOA datasets:
> local_tsi = round(getweightedmean(solar),2); local_tsi
[1] 340.03
> reflections = round(getweightedmean(toa_sw_all),2); reflections
[1] 99.17
> available_energy = round(getweightedmean(solar – toa_sw_all),2); available_energy
[1] 240.87
> total_tsi = local_tsi * 4; total_tsi
[1] 1360.12
Regards,
w.
You don’t recognize this formula… ( 1370 x (1-a))/4 = 239.7 w/m^2. Which the next formula for black body radiation is (239.7)/(5.67 x 10-8) and the 4th root = 255 K. This is unfamiliar to you?
I have not seen any TSI that varies from 1370 w/m^2 to 1291 w/m^2. And that is the inverse power formula relating to the orbit of the earth. Are you telling me that the 4 C drop at aphelion is averaged? Or that the 1370 is averaged? Of course it’s really about 1360 w/m^2 which brings down the black body radiation to (1360 x (1-a))/4 = 238 w/m^2. So, (238)/(5.67 x 10-8) 4th root = 254.5 K. They’ve cooled the past and warmed the present. It’s a moving wave.
That 4 C drop causes climate changes that can not be averaged. And because of that, co2 responds to temperature.
In fact it was on this site last year or the year before the TSI was being reported monthly. And never ever was there a drop in TSI to reflect the orbit. In fact it has been discounted as the “orbit is nearly perfectly round and is not important “
rishrac May 8, 2018 at 4:51 pm Edit
If you had quoted the formula I would have recognized it. OR if you had said what the 239.7 represented it would have been clear. Since you did neither, don’t blame me because your writing is opaque …
I have no clue what this means. I certainly didn’t say TSI varies from 1370 W/m2 to 1291 W/m2. In fact, it varies from 1406 to 1316 over the course of the year, with an average of 1360 W/m2.
QUOTE MY WORDS, YOU HOCKEY PUCK? Where did I say something about a 4°C drop?
What “1370” are you referring to? You are the first person in this thread to mention 1370, so why are you asking me about it?
I’m using the CERES figures. I gave them to you above. I have no idea what you are babbling about. Who cooled what past? Certainly not the CERES data …
Again, WHAT 4°C “drop” are you on about?
Again, I have no idea what or where you got that quote. You just pull this stuff out of your fundamental orifice and expect us to recognize it … bad news, rishrac, nobody out here can read minds or tell where some random quote came from. Cite your claims and quotes, explain your numbers. At present, you are making no sense at all, and that is on YOU, not on me.
w.
PS—Measurements of TSI are often adjusted to reflect what they would be if the orbit were perfectly circular. It’s the only way to see the tiny variations in the TSI. Otherwise these tiny variations would be swamped by the ~90 W/m2 peak-to-peak annual variation in TSI. Obviously, you didn’t know that. Now you do.
Nope, hadn’t thought of that, thanks.
This site has daily tsi info, it does vary a reasonable amount, not sure if its 4C worth or not.
https://www.pmodwrc.ch/en/home/
It’s what I use to calculate station insolation. I calculate a unit value based on station lat, and then I can swap in whatever has the best solar, I use this, but since it’s of limited length(all of the space based ones are of course), I also average it, and use that for dates prior to the start of the series. Basically I produce two station insolation sets, one with the average, the other with only the average, no mixing of average and actual.
At the south, the stratosphere is near the Earth’s surface.
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/zt_sh.gif
At Concordia Station, only -68 C.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/antarctica/concordia-station/ext
If anyone here had a FLIR camera I would have some work to be done. I found this sweet video on taken in Austria on youtube. Since date and time are provided, I could even determine surface temperatures at that place (5-10°C). Of course they were not interested in climatology, rather they just wanted to show their product.
What I’ve found is that when surface air temps are about 50°F, zenith temps are near -40°F. That lines up with this video. And clouds of any kind increase that temp. High thin ones a little, thick cumulus clouds return temps only 20 or 30°F cooler than surface temps. I routinely see clear sky temps 90° – 100°F colder than the surface.
What I want to see a FLIR video of the sky in the middle of the night when the cooling rate drops to near zero.
I expect to see it go from frigid to lighting up from water vapor latent heat being released.
Well that is the interesting question. We are missing any information on the altitude of these clouds. Probably they are relatively low, but even if they were just 1000m above the soil, they would be warmer than they should be. So is it IR emitted, or IR reflected???
If you have a chance to look at higher level opaque clouds, that cloud answer the question. Their emissions will sink according to their altitude and falling temperatures, but terrestrial IR reflected would stay quite stable. I would bet, that an opaque cloud at altitude will appear warmer in FLIR than it can be.
I’ve been “looking” with an 8u-14u ir thermometer for a few years now, and I presumed it was some of each(but good question), but they are always cooler than the surface, and all get cooler the higher/thinner they are.
I’ll have to try and see about looking at some opaque cloud temps. But I think I would have to compare thin vs thick clouds at the same altitude.
But finding any comparable clouds would be a first step.
Willis,
“This gives a greenhouse multiplier factor of 398 / 240 = 1.66.
And that’s the curiosity because in Figure 8 the average multiplier factor is 0.72, well below 1.0. Because this multiplier is less than one, it would imply that the world should be much colder than it is …
How can we resolve this apparent contradiction? To me, it is evidence of something that I have said for many years. This is that the sensitivity of the surface temperature to the amount of downwelling radiation is not a constant as is assumed by mainstream climate scientists. Instead, it is a function of temperature. At temperatures above freezing, the surface upwelling radiation increases by about three-quarters of a W/m2 for each additional W/m2 of incoming solar radiation”.
This is an interesting finding, but I think that you are reading wrongly into it, or too much into it. While I totally agree that sensitivity is very likely dependent on the temperature, keep in mind the procedence of your data. The “adding of 1 extra W/m2 of available solar”, in your data, means actually moving to an area closer to the ecuator. It is not like if in the same area you suddenly increase the strength of solar energy. We all know that our planet’s radiation balance may or may not be in equilibrium as a whole, but it certainly is NOT in balance regionally. The tropical area is a clear net absorber and the poles are net emitters. This means that there is a great deal of heat being transported from the tropics to the poles, every second of the day. Your 1W/m2 increase of solar energy by moving closer to the ecuator comes together with an increase of how much heat the atmosphere and oceans are removing from the area and taking it further away towards the poles, it is an energy that depends a lot on the latitude. IF, to say something, in the new region with 1 more W/m2 of solar energy the oceans and atmosphere are removing 0.5W/m2 extra energy, then you are left with only 0.5W/m2 actual increase that would trigger the 0.72W/m2 response, meaning that the factor would be greater than one, not smaller. I have no idea what the actual numbers are, but for sure the effect exists and you are kind of ignoring it. It is NOT the same thing than what happens when you increase incoming energy by increasing GHGs in a given place, where you can assume that the ammount of energy taken away by atmosphere and oceans towards the poles stays the same.
I don’t know how to better explain the idea, I hope you understood what I mean. Best regards.
This is where all that stored energy in water vapor comes in, its stored until air temps near dew point, and then its released to replace the energy leaving the surface, as it’s trying to stop air temps from falling anymore than it has.
This is a very nonlinear process, and changes the rate of temp change at night. This process stops the temps from falling a lot more.
At this site, on this night in Australia it stopped ~18°F of additional of cooling.
micro6500, I am afraid we are talking about completely different phenomena. You are talking about how much temperatures change due to the radiation of energy or lack of incoming radiation. I am talking about the energy that moves away from some area due to the circulation of atmosphere and oceans and the fact that the air/water entering is hotter/colder than the air/water exiting. Willis’s initial calculation of the 0.72 factor assumed that the only thing that changed as he moves from one area to another in terms of energy are the incoming solar energy vs the outgoing longwave radiation, but this is not true, different areas have different ammount of energy loss/gain due to the movement of water and air into and out of such regions.
Fair enough. Thanks for clarifying.
Nylo May 7, 2018 at 2:00 am
Nylo, see Figures 10 and 11, which show the same result (multiplier far less than 1) as the earlier Figures. In 10 and 11 we are indeed changing the strength of solar energy as you want.
And the agreement of those two ways of looking at it adds credence to the earlier Figures.
Best to you, as always,
w.
Thanks Willis. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t the 0.58 trend of figure 11 the wrong way to read things? I mean, you are saying that a watt per square meter of solar seems to cause 0.58 watts per square meter of surface radiation, when we know that the causality goes the other way round with El Nino events: changes in surface temperatures trigger changes in available solar energy (by modifying cloud cover). The delay between the two could be the reason why you see a weak positive correlation instead of negative.
In addition, given that we know that El Nino is initiated by a modification of air currents and reduced upwelling of colder waters, we can safely assume that temperature variations in El Nino are mostly caused by changes in how much heat is being transferred from the ecuator to somewhere else, be it the poles, or in this case, to the bottom of the ocean. By inhibiting cold water upwelling it is temporarily reducing the temperature difference between the water that enters the area and the water that leaves the area. The thing is that if the change in available solar energy is not the only thing that is changing in the energy balance, then it is not correct to assume that it is the only thing triggering the change in surface emissions.
Best regards.
Have you read this one: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2014RG000449 . Very interesting paper coming to very similiar conclusions and a test of GCM: ” …models fail to produce the same degree of interannual constraint on the albedo variability nor do they reproducethe same degree of hemispheric symmetry.”
Symmetry is not compatible with the LIA being a northern hemisphere only climate feature.
Did any climate theory predict hemispheric symmetry? If so it needs to be dusted off and moved ahead of the radiative transfer theory.
ferdberple
my results of analyses of 54 weather stations shows no warming in the SH.
interesting paper frank. thanks for the link. some strong claims in there for a period of monitoring that doesn’t even cover quarter of a pdo or amo.
Did any climate theory predict hemispheric symmetry? If so it needs to be dusted off and moved ahead of radiative transfer.
Willis or someone else competent and with the time willing to take on this question.
I’ve followed the “greenhouse” series by Willis, beginning with “The Steel Greenhouse”, “Glass Planet”, and finally the current “Symmetry and Balance”. While reading through the excellent debates following the “Symmetry…” discussion and the relationships to ENSO, PDO, AMO, etc., I made the links with present topics I am teaching in my Physical Science and Environmental Science classes ( I am a HS teacher) about heat transfer.
I began thinking about the annual pulses of cold saline waters into the deep oceans during each hemisphere’s alternating winters. What I lack is a firm grasp or even a broad estimate of the volume of water that will be cooled enough during the northern and southern hemispheres winters that sinks to the abyss, flows generally toward the equator and displaces the warmer surface waters poleward.
Is there enough variability involved in this process on an annual timescale to significantly effect the strength of the ENSO cycles by the equatorial upwelling strength?
I eyeballed the 3 to 5 years leading up to the 2015/16 big El Nino, as the thought of the massive expansion of Southern Ocean sea ice occured during those years prior to the rapid reduction in sea ice in more recent years, and noted that there was correlation to the increase in sea ice and the ramp up to the strong El Nino.
There also appears to be some correlative trends around the ’98 El Nino.
What do you see when the actual data is tortured into its confessions?
PRDJ May 7, 2018 at 9:17 am
Interesting question. We have data on the AMOC, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current. It has a normal flow on the order of 17 sverdrups (1 Sv = 10^6 m^3 per second), with annual variations of a couple of sverdrups. This is about half a million km3 per year.
By comparison, the volume of the Atlantic Ocean is about 310 million km3 … so the annual flow involves only on the order of a tenth of a percent of the Atlantic volume. There’s a good discussion of this here.
There is some comparable data for the Pacific. Meinen & McFadden say zonal warm water transports during El Nino events are on the order of 15-25 Sv. Meridional Ekman transports are on the order of 30 Sv.
Finally, the total ice melted in the Arctic each year is about 10 million square km. Figuring an average ice thickness on the order of 1.7 m, that gives us about 17,000 km3 of fresh water from melted ice each year. Assume it gets mixed at say three to one with salt water as it sinks, that’s about 50000 km3 per year. That’s an annual flow of a couple of Sv.
In addition, however, as the ice freezes it squeezes out the salt. The resulting salty water also sinks and moves toward the equator. No idea how big this movement is.
Regarding the size of the Pacific deepwater currents, I find this:
SOURCE (paywalled), and see also here.
Hope this helps,
w.
W., an erratum. I believe the unit of measure is a Sverdrup (Sv)= 1 million cubic meters per second. Sievert is a measure of radiation( which I think you know.) Cheers.
Thanks, Richard, moving too fast. Fixed.
w.
PRDJ May 7, 2018 at 9:17 am
Suggest to watch this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpFryXQbVEA
The whole documentary is fascinating. From ~35 mins on Antarctica is discussed, including the formation of AntArtic Bottom Water.
Since a number of people have agreed with Ben’s incorrect analysis above, I thought I’d respond in a new thread. Ben says:
Rotation has no effect? I’m sorry, but unless you are going to average the sun over the entire surface, rotation absolutely has an effect.
Not. Things are nowhere near that simple. See the link at the end of this comment.
Here are the day/night swings of the moon, along with the blackbody temperatures if we average over the entire surface. There’s a full discussion of the graphic here.
Per Ben’s calculation the daytime temperature should be 59°C, but it is over 90°C. And the night-time temperature per Ben should be -113°C, but in fact it is about -190°C.
This is total nonsense. The geothermal heat flux of the moon was measured during the Apollo mission, viz:
Anyone who believes that a heat flow of 14 – 21 milliwatts per square metre (0.041 to 0.025 W/m2) will heat the surface by forty degrees as Ben claims shouldn’t quit their day job …
IF the temperature of the oceans were ~ 275K maintained by geothermal heat, it would also have to be losing the same amount of heat. Per the S-B equation and assuming an emissivity of 0.96, that means it would be losing through radiation/sensible heat/latent heat a total of 310 W/m2.
And that, of course, means that it would have to be continually supplied with 310 W/m2 from geothermal heat.
So how much geothermal heat comes out of the earth? From the geology department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, we have:
This is about four times the corresponding figure for the Moon, as the Earth’s interior is more active. Here’s the same calculation from George Mason University
A similar figure, sixty milliwatts instead of eighty. I find values for global average geothermal heat flux ranging from fifty to one hundred milliWatts/m2 in the literature [0.050 – 0.100 W/m2].
And for Ben’s theory about how the ocean is heated to be valid, the heat flow would have to be no less than 310 watts per square metre … so taking the highest geothermal estimate in the literature, 100 mW/m2, we’d need about 310 / 0.1 = more than three thousand times the known amount of geothermal energy to get the ocean up to 275°C.
Conclusions? Ben is wrong on all counts. The ocean is NOT heated to 275K [2°C] by geothermal energy. The moon’s surface is NOT warmed an additional 40°C by geothermal energy. His claimed blackbody day/night moon temperatures are way off.
Finally, as to Ben’s claims about the blackbody temperature of the Earth, I encourage everyone to read Dr. Robert Brown’s outstanding post, Earth’s baseline black-body model – “a damn hard problem”. It points out that you can’t calculate the blackbody temperature it with a couple of simplistic assumptions as Ben has done.
In closing, let me say that I encourage people to do their own calculations as Ben has done. Me, I don’t believe something until I run the numbers myself, so I congratulate Ben on his industry and dedication.
But as I’ve found out the hard way more than once, running the numbers myself is no guarantee of success—I have to run the right numbers in the right way … as my Grandmother used to observe:
Best to all,
w.
Willis, Your chart reminded me of my now likely infamous 🙂 chart, I was going to repost it in case anyone forgot, but out of kindness and fear of being lynched(mostly the latter) I’ll just include the link upthread.
Earth’s temp profile, and the associated net radiation flow are quite interesting, and insightful.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/05/symmetry-and-balance/#comment-2809726
His geothermal heat and moon calculations were wrong, but the conclusion was correct for the wrong reasons. Water vapor and CO2 doesn’t explain any of the planets large surface temperature differences but, the oceans and solar insolence explain all. Nailed on the head as it’s the oceans, not so much water vapor and CO2.
If all the heat could be released from the oceans suddenly went into the atmosphere at once there would be nothing alive left on planet Earth.
WV couples the ocean SSTS changes to the land masses.
+1000, almost perfect reply. I may have added a few things extra but this is more than enough. So many bad assumptions by Ben!
Nylo
If you can just fill us in on how you measured the amount of energy being added to the oceans due to volcanic avtivity? What we now see happening in Iceland and Hawaii is only a small area….
The atlantic- and pacific rims are enormous areas where there is continous volcanic activity at the bottom.
Ben is right and I agree with him. But I dont think we can prove much because there simply is no credible data.
Willis Eschenbach May 7, 2018 at 2:15 pm
An ideal blackbody has NO heat storage / conductivity. So rotation indeed has no effect in this case.
Acording dr. Brown: