Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In considering how the energy flows around the planet, I got to thinking about the amount of solar energy that is absorbed rather than transmitted by the atmosphere and the clouds. As with many other such questions, I turned to the wonderful CERES satellite data. Figure 1 shows what CERES has to say about the average amount of solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere.
Figure 1. Total amount of solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere on average on a 1° latitude x 1° longitude basis. CERES Data, Mar 2000 – Feb 2017.
As you can see, just under eighty watts per square metre of incoming solar energy doesn’t make it to the ground. Instead, it is absorbed in the atmosphere. This is a bit more than a fifth (22%) of incoming solar energy. It is also about the same amount of sunlight that is reflected by the clouds.
And Figure 2 below shows the same data, but this time showing the absorption as a percentage of incoming solar energy. Obviously, where there is more solar energy, more energy will be absorbed in the atmosphere. Showing the atmospheric absorption as a percentage of incoming solar energy removes that bias.
Figure 2. Total amount of solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere, as a percentage of incoming solar energy, on average on a 1° latitude x 1° longitude basis. CERES Data, Mar 2000 – Feb 2017.
As I’ve mentioned before, I love the surprises that come from turning a huge mass of numbers into a picture. Here is what is the surprise of the 64,800 individual 1°x1° gridcell calculations was for me. See the red areas? Those are the areas where the largest percentage of incoming solar energy is being absorbed.
Now, the absorption of solar energy in the atmosphere is due to “aerosols”. In the most general sense, this is a term for a variety of chemicals and elements which are held aloft in the atmosphere. Aerosols include things like sulfur dioxide from volcanic eruptions, salt crystals and molecules from sea spray, a variety of bacteria, and black carbon and hydrocarbons from fossil fuels and forest fires. A number of aerosols are human-generated. I’d kind of expected to see increased absorption near cities and industrialized areas of the northern hemisphere.
But none of that was the case. The surprise to me was, it looks like the red areas are from plant-generated aerosols. The Amazon rainforest, the tropical forest areas of Africa and Asia, the forested tropical islands of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, those were the main sources of aerosols.
And on the other hand, there is little vegetation in the arid areas of northern Mexico, the Sahara and Atacama deserts, Southern Australia, and southern Africa; or in the mountainous areas of the Rockies, the Andes and Himalayas; or in the polar areas of Greenland and Antarctica. These areas in greens and blues have clearer air, with less solar energy absorbed in the atmosphere.
Huh. Plant-based aerosols are the major player in terms of solar absorption. Go figure That would certainly not have been my first guess.
And this brings up another of those curious evolutions over time. Warmer surface temperatures generally mean more plants. More plants mean more plant aerosols. More plant aerosols mean more atmospheric absorption of incoming solar. More atmospheric absorption of solar means less solar energy making it to the ground. And finally … less solar energy hitting the ground means cooler surface temperatures.
And vice-versa, of course.
So the plants are affecting the amount of sunlight making it to the ground, with more sunlight making it through the atmosphere when and where plants are scarce and less sunlight making it through the atmosphere when and where plants are abundant …
Who knew? Likely somebody, but certainly not me …
Next, here’s the evolution over time of the amount of solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere:
Figure 3. Change over time of the absorption of solar energy by the atmosphere. Top panel is the raw data. Middle panel shows the repeating monthly changes. Bottom panel shows the residual signal after the seasonal component is removed. CERES Data.
There is a very slight drop over time in the absorption (a tenth of a watt per decade) which is not statistically significant (p-value 0.08). Overall, the data is surprisingly stable.
I also note that the El Nino/La Nina pump is clearly visible in the 2015-16 data. I showed in a paper called The La Nina Pump that there is an oddity about the La Nina pumping action. The La Nina pumping action is wind-driven, and it moves huge amounts of warm water first westward across the Pacific and from there towards the poles. The oddity is that it begins in November, lasts one year, and ends in the following November.
This same change is visible in the bottom panel above. In November 2015, the atmospheric absorption of solar energy peaked and began to drop. This drop ended in November of 2016, in parallel with the La Nina pumping action of that Nino/Nina episode.
Overall? I’d say what stands out is the stability, plus or minus half of a watt over the period.
w.
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Fig.2 looks is very impressive, but the important picture is Fig. 1. The globe receives 340.2 W/m² (Average 200101…201712, all sky ) from the sun and absorbs 241.1 W/m². The surface absorbs 163.9 W/m², the atmosphere 77.2 W/m². There are several contributions to the absorption by the atmosphere:
Clouds; 4.4 W/m²; (Difference AS minus CS)
UV; 20.4 W/m²; (6% of SolarIn)
Water vapor; 46.3 W/m²; (13,6% of SolarIn)
CO2; 2.2 W/m²; (0,67% of SolarIn)
Aerosols: 3.9 W/m²
The absorption by aerosols is the difference between the total and the sum of the individual contributions. Please correct me if am wrong.
Interested in where u got ur numbers. These numbers are very consistent with what I noted in the post above urs …… no real mention in the original article about the role that non cloud water vapor is playing in this scenario. Your numbers tend to confirm what I thought and observed from Willis’ graphs …. the most absorption is over humid jungle, least absorption over arid desert. That just smacks of water vapor to me.
UV-contribution:
http://www.kippzonen.com/Knowledge-Center/Theoretical-info/Solar-Radiation,
Water vapor and CO2:
Harde 2014 Advanced Two-Layer Climate Model for the Assessment of Global Warming by CO2
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268981652_Advanced_Two-Layer_Climate_Model_for_the_Assessment_of_Global_Warming_by_CO2
@Joachim Seifert
My results show that it did start cooling around the beginning of the new millennium.
Looks like ca. -0.2K since then. It is not much.
Click on my name to read my final report on this. I would be glad to hear your opinion on this.
Interestingly, the drop in global T coincides with a general increase in ozone (& peroxides, N-oixdes) TOA.
Henry, I stayed with the peak at 2000 AD and the emerging plateau since 2000 for
quite some years. Just out from the numbers of this particular one peak it is hard to
set it clearly onto either 2000 or 2004…. Norman Page set it onto 2004 and the plateau starts from there on….. I did the following: The peak is a 62 year cycle peak – taking 2004 and numerically set the 62 yr-peak years for 5,000 years into the past, by retrieving GISP2, Alley 2004 (it is in BC/AD), drawn on millimetric paper the GISP2 numbers and the 62 year cycle peaks are clearly visible. The 62 year cycle distances fit better with the peaks placed onto 2004 then placed onto 2000…..
see it yourself….. The plateau starting 2004 is slightly at a warmer level than the plateau starting 2000.
I will go onto your page and have a look. For now, just explaining the start of either the 2000 or the 2004 plateau.
Joachim
Thanks!
I did not mention it in my final report, but I am not excluding a ca. 62 year cycle due to a combination of
solar
&
lunar
&
earth&planets
influences
which becomes apparent in the global ocean temperature,
even though,
it was not picked up a lot by previous investigators,
e.g.
http://virtualacademia.com/pdf/cli267_293.pdf
tables II and III
who favor the 87 year GB cycle which I also identified, especially in global Tmax
[T max is a good proxy for incoming energy}
The oceans have much more mass than the atmosphere, therefore, in the end, that temperature (SST) is the determining factor in global T
On its turn, the SST of the oceans is dependent on the amount of UV it gets, mostly, and also IR,
coming through the atmosphere.
A very interesting article, as always! Thank you Mr. Eschenbach.
I wonder what percentage of the total absorbed energy goes into a certain area. It’s still hard to guess from the – excellent – graphics. Maybe contour lines could help? Something like: half of the absorbed energy is absorbed inside the grey contour lines. And the area covered is just X percent of the globe.
Best regards,
a loyal lurker…
Yes, Willis –
Forrests know how to build needed aerosols:
https://www.google.at/search?q=W%C3%A4lder+Aerosole&oq=W%C3%A4lder+Aerosole&aqs=chrome.
.
.
.
.
aka ‘condensation nuclei’
As Harald Lesch says:
One should not be surprised that the cat has holes in the fur where the eyes are.
But that there are cats.
Willis
I imagine that solar insulation and radiation dominates warming of the planet from external sources. How much role does the electrical current created by the earth’s magnetic field moving through the solar magnetic field and the warming caused as this current flows from pole to pole through the main conductive medium, the oceans?
JimC
This post is a great demonstration of human psychology. Someone as bright as Willis having a total blind spot to the main cause of the absorption being studied, and then creating a narrative around aerosols. This is a common kind of behaviour among the greatest climate experts. And the most interesting part is how they handle it when corrected. Conceding is very rare.
Ulric Lyons said:
I’m happy to concede and change my mind when the facts change … what do you do?
However, due to your ugly habit of making accusations without quoting what you are objecting to, I have no idea what you think is the “main cause of the absorption being studied”. Different people have proposed a variety of causes, all of which likely cause some percentage of the absorption. Yes, some must be due to the Asian “brown cloud”. Yes, some must be due to smoke. Yes, some must be due to other factors.
But which one are you calling the “main cause”?
Quotation, please.
Regards
w.
The facts won’t change, but you neglected the main fact, which I have already mentioned, and so did PaulS at #comment-2449644. So that’s mighty strange that you have no idea what I think.
Ulric Lyons
Yep, it’s mighty strange that it’s not all about you, and that there actually are people who don’t track your every thought …
However, strange as it might seem, I still have no idea what you claim is the “main cause of the absorption”. A link would be of value.
w.
Why bother with the semantics of impossible mind reading when you can simply read my comment. Here is a picture to go with it.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Solar_spectrum_en.svg
Ulric
it seems to me that you and most people here do not understand what absorption is?
in the wavelengths areas where absorption takes place, the molecule starts acting like a little mirror, the strength of which depends on the amount of absorption taking place inside the molecule. Because the molecule is like a perfect sphere, 62,5% of a certain amount of light (radiation) is send back in the direction where it came from. This is the warming or cooling effect of a gas hit by radiation.
Unfortunately, in their time, Tyndall and Arrhenius could not see the whole picture of the spectrum of a gas which is why they got stuck on seeing only the warming properties of a gas. (closed box experiment)
If people would understand this principle, they would not singularly identify green house gases (GHG’s) by pointing at the areas in the 5-20 um region (where earth emits pre-dominantly) but they would also look in the area 0-5 um (where the sun emits pre-dominantly) for possible cooling effects.
For comprehensive proof that CO2 is (also) cooling the atmosphere by re-radiating sunshine,
http://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/disksite/library/turnbull06a.pdf
note fig.6 bottom.
HenryP
Great link, thanks. I notice that the second author is Wesley Traub from NASA.
it seems to me that you and most people here do not understand what absorption is?
Actually based on your description Henry it is you who does not understand absorption.
in the wavelengths areas where absorption takes place, the molecule starts acting like a little mirror, the strength of which depends on the amount of absorption taking place inside the molecule.
The molecule does not act like a mirror. For example CO2 absorbs a photon of 15 microns which excites an internal vibration of the molecule.
Because the molecule is like a perfect sphere, 62,5% of a certain amount of light (radiation) is send back in the direction where it came from. This is the warming or cooling effect of a gas hit by radiation.
None of the light absorbed is reflected in any direction. In fact if it were acting as a perfect sphere (and not absorbing) you still wouldn’t get the 62.5% back reflection (check out RayleighMie scattering).
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/imgatm/mie.png
@Phil.
same old rubbish from the same books:
wake up and do some real research
Hopefully most people here have now fully grasped that it is water vapour rather than aerosols doing most of the solar absorption, in the near infrared region of the solar spectrum. As the chart shows. Why drag your heels over it? it’s like a child that resents being told off.
@Ulric
obviously, the red areas are the areas where %wise the highest amount of clouds [always] are.
Also remember that there is a paper out from Trenberth where he calculated that ozone is absorbing almost 25% of all [energy] that is being absorbed by the atmosphere. That is a substantial amount; I am not sure if it includes the peroxides and n-oxides, also being formed TOA by the most energetic particles coming from the sun. I think he forgot about those..
[looking at the peroxides’ spectrum you can figure out that it does the same as ozone and you will find more peroxide in the so-called ozone hole. It is most probably formed there preferentially from the OH radicals]
@PhilipM
Yes, that is an important paper and you should keep the link somewhere to prove that the various GH gases (ozone, water, methane, CO2) also cool the atmosphere by deflecting certain radiation off from earth.
Essentially they used the dark side of the moon as a mirror to see what is bouncing off from earth into space, at least for a small portion of the sun’s spectrum.
So the rays went:
sun-earth-moon-earth
Willis has deleted one of his comments.
Ulric Lyons said:
A gentleman man would ask, “Willis, did you delete one of your comments?”. To which I’d reply “Heck, no, which one is gone?”
At that point, I’d likely add something like “I can’t remember ever deleting one of my comments. I suppose it might have happened, but I sure don’t remember ever doing that. It would be unsportsmanlike and dishonest.”
So how about I’ll pretend you actually were polite enough to ask? Can’t let ugly reality be a total straitjacket, after all … and you’ll note my strong denial, and we can proceed in at least relative amity?
In friendship,
w.
Willis, whenever you that ‘ugly’ word it’s invariably you getting ugly. I made a minor mistake and soon corrected it. You have not corrected the fundamental and major error in your post.
Ulric Lyons said
Yep. It’s called “karma”. When folks try to bite me, I bite back. However, re-read what I wrote. In your case, I bit back using humor …
Say what? You made a very ugly accusation, that I had secretly deleted one of my posts. Not that my comment had somehow been deleted, but that I had done it. That is not a “minor mistake”, that is nasty innuendo.
There is only one way to correct that, and it is not (as you seem to think) to announce that you were wrong about the facts.
The only way to correct your nasty innuendo is to apologize, which you have not yet done.
If you took the trouble to QUOTE WHATEVER YOU ARE BABBLING ABOUT, I could respond to that. As it stands I have no clue what you think is the “fundamental and major error”.
And given your most unpleasant accusation, I have absolutely no interest in finding out what you think it is. Go bother someone else … you’ve burned your bridges with me on this topic.
w.
Sorry he hasn’t, I mistook one of Hp’s comments for Willis’.
All things ozone are discussed here. Especially southern hemisphere and observational no models.. https://reality348.wordpress.com. Many chapters but easy reading.
I find the arosa series interesting. It confirms to me that something special happened in 1994/1995.
It was the same time, when according to my measurements, Tmax (global) started declining and ozone started its incline.
I wonder if maybe you have the results for the past 5 years for me?
@joachim seifert
I did make a small correction in my final report to include the 62 year cycle observed in SST.
it is most probably due to a combination of solar, lunar and planetary influences.
I think there will be a paper of Ian Wilson about it soon, as well.
Willis says
So the plants are affecting the amount of sunlight making it to the ground, with more sunlight making it through the atmosphere when and where plants are scarce and less sunlight making it through the atmosphere when and where plants are abundant …
Who knew? Likely somebody, but certainly not me …
Henry says
Looking at minimum temperatures (last 40 years) I was stunned about the results in Tandil, ARG. I found that minimum T was substantially dropping there, i.e. a decline, whilst Tmax was rising, almost at the same pace but with a positive incline. I subsequently found out that in this area in Argentine, they chopped all the trees. On a massive scale.
In Las Vegas, where they turned the desert in an oasis during the past 40 years, I found exactly the opposite happening.
I can give you the results, if anyone is interested.
Willis,
“Now, the absorption of solar energy in the atmosphere is due to “aerosols”. In the most general sense, this is a term for a variety of chemicals and elements which are held aloft in the atmosphere. Aerosols include things like sulfur dioxide from volcanic eruptions, salt crystals and molecules from sea spray, a variety of bacteria, and black carbon and hydrocarbons from fossil fuels and forest fires. A number of aerosols are human-generated. I’d kind of expected to see increased absorption near cities and industrialized areas of the northern hemisphere.” ( Willis Eschenbach).
I was perusing an article: Myhre, G., Myhre, C. E.L., Samset, B. H. & Storelvmo, T. (2013) Aerosols and their Relation to Global Climate and Climate Sensitivity. Nature Education Knowledge 4(5):7
The graphic presented, shows MODIS aerosol optical depth which broadly coincides with the data presented in Figs 1&2 of your article. However, the Myhre graphic includes a breakdown of aerosol components that purports to include anthropogenic sources concomitant with the observations (source: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/aerosols-and-their-relation-to-global-climate-102215345 ). I think your article broadly anticipates this, but I have to wonder why the clear periodicity you observed appears to have gone unnoticed in Myhre etal. Is it a signal to noise problem which buries plant aerosols among the various atmospheric detritus? or were they simply not looking for it to begin with? I would be keen to hear your thoughts as the article makes what appears to be a straightforward case for complex mixed modalities that seem far from stable.
Disclaimer: I am an Archaeologist, this is not my field of expertise, but I am genuinely curious as the ramifications of climate changes over time and how they occur do have implications for my discipline.
Cheers
Thanks, MalH. Regarding your question, I suspect that Myhre&Myhre have simply removed the annual variation from the data.
w.
Willis, you should probably adjust for atmospheric density and thickness as well as insolation. The atmosphere extends further due to centripetal force at the equator moreover the equator is gravitationally higher above the centre of mass than the poles, this creates a force gradient poleward. This probably doesn’t affect aerosols directly but might explain drift patterns. What about water? According to my direct measurement water vapor has a huge effect on how much energy reaches the ground. The solar energy data for my place indicates that clear day received energy varies 2-5% depending on humidity. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the Simpson desert has one of the lowest absorbtion on your chart and it has very low humidity. To look at aerosols you will have to adjust for water vapor.