Guest essay by David Archibald
The world hasn’t warmed as much as some predicted it would. The little bit of warming that has occurred in our lifetimes is easily explained by the increased solar magnetic field strength that we have lived through, relative to the experience of prior generations. So how do warming catastrophists maintain the faith when the world we live in has failed them? The answer is that they contort their weltanschauung so that decreasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels can cause warming. In effect warming happens, and the punishment of mankind, no matter what.
From the blog Peak Oil Barrel, this post carries this figure in comments:
Figure 1: Loony notion that has temperature going up no matter what
With this explanatory text:
I’ve been thinking about that recent Schellnhuber et.al. paper about whether it’s possible to reach and maintain a stable, if hotter, intermediate temperature. My understanding is in the chart below. We are presently somewhere to the right of point B. If we go past point C, and may have already, then it’s not easy to quickly get back to point B by removing GHG (the Earth has to be cooled somehow as well). If GHG keep getting added then we move up the big arrow and end up in a hothouse condition somewhere between E and F, and that’s probably the end for humans. If we remove GHG then we could get back to some intermediate condition D, which might be stable. To get back to the ice age (lower) branch we’d have to remove so much GHG we’d actually trip back to a glacial condition. D might be stable as, if the GHG is removed further, then the temperature increases and more GHG would be released from the earth sinks; so it’s a negative feedback (things get a bit fuzzy here). The main point is that the longer it’s left before anything is done the warmer D will be, this means more GHG would need to be removed to get to D but also the more GHG would have been released from the earth sinks, and the less chance of success there is. Therefore delaying action and allowing an overshoot makes things exponentially harder, and deniers, whose main aim is to procrastinate so they don’t have to take any personal responsibility or inconvenient actions, should be held accountable accordingly. D is not a good place to be (weather chaos) but better than E or F, and maybe the best, if slim, hope we have.
The author of that text has increased CO2 causing the climate to come out of glaciations. His next step would be to explain why glaciations came along every 100,000 years or so over the last million years, and every 40,000 years or so in the two million years before that.
How long will we have to endure the wailing and inanities of the global warmers? What would help is a break in the slight uptrend in the temperature record. Now that Hadrcut has been discredited we are left the UAH satellite record from Dr Roy Spencer. The satellites have been up for almost 40 years. What can be divined from their record is shown in the following figure:
Figure 2: Climate bounds from the UAH temperature record
The green line is the lower bound of the satellite temperature record. Five points establish that line. The chance of this being a random happenstance is infinitesimally small. Perhaps the lower bound is caused by a negative feedback established by Richard Lindzen’s iris effect. The upper bound, shown by the orange line, is penetrated by large El Nino events. Our current climatic uptrend channel is 0.8°C wide and rising at 0.1°C per decade. The result for September 2018 was 0.3°C above the lower bound.
As Nir Shaviv pointed out, the oceans are a precise calorimeter. Each day the Sun sends a pulse of heat deep into the oceans, with the amount varying with cloud cover. As the following figure from Professor Humlum of Argo temperature for a transect across the North Atlantic at 59°N shows, heating occurs to at least 400 metres:
Figure 3: Time-depth temperature diagram along 59 N, 0-800 m depth, across the North Atlantic Current.
The cumulative effect of the daily heat pulse means that temperature can still be going up even as solar activity is going down as long as thermal equilibrium hasn’t been reached for a particular level of solar activity. It looks like we are headed for a record neutron flux for the instrument record in about two years. So, according to Svensmark theory, the clouds will have their albedo effect.
For people who haven’t one out of their way to understand climate science, global warming theory remains plausible while the Earth’s temperature is still in uptrend. A break of the lower green bounding line in Figure 2 would mean that the warming period is over. Not long to go now.
David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare
How We Will Know When It Is Over?
Given its a claim that mean ‘anything ‘ and where anything is regarded as ‘proof ‘ the answer is of course never or at least not until the political will and money has gone and even then there will remain the ‘true believers ‘ whose life is total investing in the idea .
In reality the whole AGW game was always going to end in a slow death rather than a quick end , far to many peoples careers and political outlooks are invested in it for it to go any other way , and the IPCC like other UN bodies never really dies even the reason they were set up disappears.
The last IPCC ‘report ‘ may well have been the last big push which seems to have already failed given interest was limited and even now seems to have dropped off outside of the ‘fanatics’ While for the last few years and across the world AGW has been a none-issue with the voters and hence the politicians. And the focus now drifting into areas like ‘plastics ‘ which can get wider scale support .
We may have already seen the beginning of the end with ironically the ‘high water mark ‘ come and gone for those that thought AGW was going to give them the type of control they knew they could never get through the voters . But the last period may well see them fight like rats in a sack, so it will not be easy.
James Hansen has been getting grumpy. He’s backed off on the urgency of reducing GHGs immediately. link He points out that efforts to address the problem are nonsensical anyway. link
Mostly everyone else is still on message. As CAGW starts to lose currency we can expect to hear a lot more bitter venting.
There is a reason the narrative changed from Global Warming to Climate Change.
Climate Change always existed and will always exist so the political racket is infinite in time.
Last paragraph (g)one out of their way. The Argo temp data from the Atlantic current shows decreasing depth of warmer temperatures with time, but I wonder if this is about the current or about solar input? The current loads up with warmer water in equatorial areas then passes east coast North America, then continues NE to save Britain (et al) from the hellish winters they normally would expect. IF this current is getting cooler, transporting less heat value, might be time to move somewhere else, like BREXIT writ large.
We might have an idea about a decade ahead where the global temperature is heading regardless of what the CO2 is doing.
IMHO, the best forward indicator is the strength of the Earth’s magnetic dipole
Vukcevic, Where do you get your dipole data please?
Hi Dr. A
Data is from the NOAA geomagnetic data website, but there is no single file, or at least I could not find one, which will quote annual values. It requires a bit of an effort to calculate strength of GMF dipole due to the movements of magnetic dip-poles.
The BGS quotes the estimated coordinates in steps of 5 years, while the NGDC.NOAA gives IGRF annual values for the required coordinates and a specified period. To cut down number of files download (e.g. 2 files for say 2000-2005 period, one for each dip-pole) I used 10 year period, but you are welcome to be more accurate and use the 5 year period.
IMO, for all practical purposes the differences between using 5 or 10 year periods are far to small to bother with, but it does cut number of downloads by half.
If you do manage to find a ready made data file I would appreciate the info.
You are welcome.
My guess is that by 2030 we should see clear evidence that 1980-2020 was just the upswing of a natural cycle, as the downturn will have started.
But as far as the CAGW crowd is concerned, it will never be over, it was never about the climate, it’s justification for a coup d’état, a socialist globalist revolution.
https://youtu.be/ep-xgd_eETE
Global warming will be over when the sun goes out. Until then I hope the sun keeps Earth warm.
So the Sun as gone out many times in the past each time the Earth went from an inter-glacial warming period back to the regular glacial climate?
The 40,000 year glacial cycle is reasonably well-explained by orbital mechanics. The switch to 100,000 year cycles is not. The cause of the change from a warm period to a glacial period is also not known, although hypotheses abound. This is a problem where we need more data, and it will take a long time to accumulate reliable data. Some variables that need to be measured are still unknown at this time. Look at the complexity in the system that we have discovered over the past 100 years.
Loren,
The 41,000-year axial tilt cycle is still in operation, as seen by the stadials and interstadials during glacial phases. What seems to have happened is that by the mid-Pleistocene climate had gotten generally colder, such that some interglacials were stillborn, leading to apparent glacial phases of 82,000 and 123,000 years, which average out to around 100,000 years. In effect, what would previously have been interglacials became interstadials in lengthened glacial phases.
The various parameters of the eccentricity cycle average out to about 100,000 years, too, but axial tilt (obliquity) appears to be the most important of the Milankovitch orbital and rotational mechanical cycles.
I don’t really know about interstadials, but I will point out that 82,000 and 123,000 are pretty close to multiples of ~40,000 year periods. My first thought would be to see if there was a reason that one, and then two warm periods did not appear rather than average them to 100,000 years.
Maybe this has been studied and the answer well-known, but on the surface, I don’t see any reason you would have to assume a switch to 100,000 year cycles.
I’d be interested to know about it if it is explainable in a simple enough form for me to understand.
Norm,
They are exact multiples of the 41,000 year tilt cycle, the same Milankovitch cycle which is most important in initiating and ending glaciations.
The idea is that the mid-Pleistocene switch from regular 41K year glacial cycles to apparent 100 K occurred simply because the epoch got colder as it progressed, so that after some 1.2 million years, Earth’s baseline condition was such that the weakest interglacials in effect became interstadials within a continuing glaciation. That is, the great continental ice sheets didn’t completely melt before the next glacial interval began.
While this hypothesis is controversial, a version of it has been well advanced here and elsewhere by frequent poster Javier, a biologist rather than Earth scientist. There might well be other Milankovitch cycle components in the mid-Pleistocene shift and other causes as well.
The devil is always in the detail, but I have never seen a detailed account of how the radiant GHG contention is claimed to work.
As all of us should know, the CO2 molecule absorbs photons at three distinct wavelengths, namely2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM) (which considerably overlap with the absorption characteristics of water vapour). This raises three obvious questions:
First how many photons are there in Earth’s atmosphere at the 2.7 µM, 4.3 µM and 15 µM wavelength which would be absorbed by the CO2 molecule?
Second, what is the source of these photons?
Third, when backradiated towards the surface, what is the warming effect of the photons of the three wavelengths that the CO2 molecule absorbs and re-emits?
It is claimed that the atmosphere is generally transparent to the wavelength of incoming solar irradiance but rather opaque to the wavelength of outgoing LWIR emitted from the surface. But this is where the detail kicks in, given that incoming solar irradiance contains photons of the wavelength that is absorbed by the CO2 molecule (ie., 2.7 µM, 4.3 µM and 15 µM photons) and Earth’s atmosphere is not transparent to photons of those wavelengths.
If one looks at the Plank’s curve for solar irradiance (circa 5,500 to 6,000 degC) it contains, in its wings, far more photons of a wavelength that is absorbed by the CO2 molecule than does the Plank curve for outgoing radiation at a temperature of the surface temperature of the Earth (eg circa 0 deg C to 40 deg C, say average 15 degC).
This is well known. Energy from a higher frequency source will always contain more photons of all wavelengths than photons being emitted from a lower frequency source. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body#/media/File:Black_body.svg
Now imagine the plot containing a curve for 288K which will fall well below and will be flatter than the 3,000K curve. Note how the wings of the 5,500K curve are at all times higher than the 3,000K curve and would be even higher compared to a 288K.
Of course, incoming solar irradiance is not received uniformly 24/7 whereas surface emissions are a 24/7 event. But this means that if there is considerable more photons incoming from solar irradiance of the 3 wavelengths absorbed and then reradiated by the CO2 molecule than there are photons of the wavelengths emitted from the surface, then adding more CO2 will do little if anything at all since the additional CO2 will backradiate towards space more of the incoming solar source photons than it will back radiate to the surface photons sourced from surface emissions.
It is simply a numbers game, and I have never seen the numbers involved. I would welcome comments from anyone who has some information on the relative quantity of 2.7 µM, 4.3 µM and 15 µM photons incoming from the sun and 2.7 µM, 4.3 µM and 15 µM photons emitted by the surface.
I would welcome comments from anyone who has some information on the relative quantity of 2.7 µM, 4.3 µM and 15 µM photons incoming from the sun and 2.7 µM, 4.3 µM and 15 µM photons emitted by the surface.
The quantity of 15 micron photons emitted by the earth far exceeds the quantity received from the sun. Notice that the vertical axis on the BB graph is ‘per steradian’, the emission from the earth is over 4*pi steradians whereas that received from the sun is over 6.8×10^-5 steradians. You should multiply the sun’s contribution by that factor.
How have you assessed the illuminated area of the TOA Earth atmosphere as 6.8×10^-5 steradians per m2?
That’s the angle subtended by the earth at 1AU from the sun.
The total solar irradiance absorbed by the earth has to be balanced by the total emission leaving the earth. There is no way that the extremely minor tail of the solar irradiance in the FIR equals the peak of the FIR emission from the earth.
How do you square that comment with the claim, in the K&T energy budget cartoon, that the Earth receives, on a 24/7 basis, one quarter of the TSI?
See also, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Breakdown_of_the_incoming_solar_energy.svg
This diagram suggests that some 38PW of incoming solar is absorbed by the atmosphere and air (presumably this is water vapour and CO2) whereas only 26PW of surface emitted radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere (and nothing by the air).
You state:
There is for practical purposes no surface on this planet where the peak FIR corresponds to the 3 absorption bands of CO2. For example one needs a surface temperature of around -80degC for emissions to peak at 15 µM, and a surface at around 400 degC for emissions to peak at 4.3 µM, and a surface at around 800 degC for emissions to peak at 2.7 µM.
The 3 absorption bands of CO2 are also in the wings of surface emission (ie., average ~15degC). So we are always dealing with the wings, whether this be the wings of the high energy source of solar irradiance, or the wings of the low energy source of surface emissions.
How do you square that comment with the claim, in the K&T energy budget cartoon, that the Earth receives, on a 24/7 basis, one quarter of the TSI?
The Earth receives the TSI distributed over the whole cross section of the earth, i.e. TSI*pi*r^2, 24/7. The IR emitted from the Earth, I, is emitted from the whole surface, i.e. I*4*pi*r^2. Over time TSI*pi*r^2 = I*4*pi*r^2 so 4I = TSI
You state:
“There is no way that the extremely minor tail of the solar irradiance in the FIR equals the peak of the FIR emission from the earth”.
There is for practical purposes no surface on this planet where the peak FIR corresponds to the 3 absorption bands of CO2. For example one needs a surface temperature of around -80degC for emissions to peak at 15 µM, and a surface at around 400 degC for emissions to peak at 4.3 µM, and a surface at around 800 degC for emissions to peak at 2.7 µM.
You need to learn some physical chemistry.
The IR spectrum of a blackbody at -80ºC have a peak wavelength at 15microns however as far as emissions are concerned this is meaningless. The energy of a photon is inversely proportional to the wavelength so the peak in the energy spectrum corresponds to the peak wavenumber not the peak wavelength. The peak spectral radiance of a blackbody at 288K is at 565cm-1 and is 0.136 W/m^2/sr/cm-1,
the spectral radiance at the center of the CO2 band (667cm-1)
is 0.131 W/m^2/sr/cm-1, very near the peak value.
The 3 absorption bands of CO2 are also in the wings of surface emission (ie., average ~15degC). So we are always dealing with the wings, whether this be the wings of the high energy source of solar irradiance, or the wings of the low energy source of surface emissions
As shown above, you’re wrong, the absorption peak of CO2 is very close to to the maximum in the energy spectrum.
What puzzles me is that a typical photon energized CO2 molecule within a few meters of the surface loses its energy to thermalization, not re radiation. So how does more CO2 effect this? The mean path length drops a bit, that’s all. There is no “extra” heat. Water vapor controls the movement of heat upwards through the Troposphere, not CO2.
This paper provides proof, does it not?
http://notrickszone.com/2018/03/23/uncertainty-mounts-global-temperature-data-presentation-flat-wrong-new-danish-findings-show/
http://www.biocab.org/Mean_Free_Path_Length_Photons.html
It has to do with the fraction of surface emissions absorbed by the atmosphere and increasing Co2 increases this fraction by a tiny amount, at least for cloudless skies. Clouds can absorb nearly all surface emissions, thus incremental CO2 absorption between the surface and clouds (2/3 of the surface) has little incremental warming effect on the surface as the clouds would be absorbing and returning some of that energy back to the surface anyway. This fact is universally ignored by the consensus.
How surface emissions absorbed by the atmosphere increase the surface temperature is easily quantified. If absorption is 0, the Stefan-Boltzmann LAW, and I emphasize LAW, can be used to convert the incident solar energy into an equivalent average temperature with an emissivity of 1, given that the steady state emissions are equal to the incident power flux. As atmospheric absorption increases, the equivalent emissivity decreases and the Stefan-Boltzmann LAW can be applied with a non unit emissivity. To be absolutely clear, the EFFECTIVE emissivity is the ratio between the average emissions at TOA and the average BB emissions of the surface. The current ratio is about 0.62.
The atmosphere is not an infinite store of energy, thus in the steady state, the energy it absorbed must be emitted in an equal amount. The atmosphere absorbs energy from the surface and emits it both back to the surface and out into space, thus the steradian factor means that half of what is absorbed is returned to the surface, added to the 239 W/m^2 arriving from the Sun to offset the 390 W/m^2 of BB emissions by the surface. The other half is added to surface emissions not absorbed by the atmosphere to offset the 239 W/m^2 of post albedo solar input power.
One of many flaws in the consensus ‘theory’, is the assumption is that the EFFECTIVE emissivity of the planet, relative to the surface, can go to zero, where surface emissions are infinitely higher than the emissions at TOA. This is based on a flawed understanding of Venus in the context of the GHG effect on Earth. Given the semi-transparent nature of our atmosphere (the Venus atmosphere is completely opaque), surface emissions can never be more than twice the emissions at TOA. The Earth’s surface emissions are 1.6 times larger than the emissions at TOA and well within this limit. This flawed understanding of Venus is then reinforced by a broken feedback analysis that assumes an implicit power supply that doesn’t actually exist as the Sun can not be both the forcing and the implicit power supply assumed by the feedback analysis that was applied to the climate system.
The 2x limit is easily established considering that if the atmosphere absorbed 100% of what the surface emitted, half of this is emitted into space and the remaining half is returned to the surface. The distinction of Venus is that the surface that this applies to is not the solid surface of the planet, but a virtual surface comprised by the cloud tops in DIRECT equilibrium with the Sun. Much like Earth, where 2/3 of its solid surface is under the oceans and whose temperature is constant. The virtual surface of Earth in direct equilibrium with the Sun is comprised of the ocean surface and bits of land that poke through.
EdB,
The effect of more CO₂ is in the upper troposphere, more CO₂ results in a higher effective emission height.
When radiation is in equilibrium with the temperature of the atmosphere, all absorbed radiation will be emitted, there is no further thermalisation.
Molecules and photons are extremely small.
First we start by finding the mass of the atmosphere
Pressure = Force / Area
Pressure = 101,325 Pascals
Area = Area of Earth
The earth is a near sphere. A sphere has an area of 4*PI*radius^2. Earth has a radius of 6,371 km = 6,371,000 meters. Area of Earth = 4*PI*6,371,000^2 meters^2 = 5.1 * 10^14 m^2
Force = Pressure * Area
Force = (101,325 Pascals * 5.1 * 10^14 m^2) = 5.17 * 10^19 Newtons
Force = mass * gravity
mass = Force / gravity
mass = 5.17 * 10^19 Newtons / 9.8 ms^-2 = 5.27 * 10^18 kilograms
Now that we have a mass in kilograms, we need to convert this number into grams
(5.27 * 10^18 kilograms) * (1000 g / 1 kg) = 5.27 * 10^21 grams
The molar mass of air is around 29 grams / mole
(5.27 * 10^21 grams) * (1 mole / 29 grams) = 1.81 * 10^20 moles
Finally, multiply by Avogadro ’s number to convert moles to molecules
(1.81 * 10^20 moles) * (6.02214179*10^23 molecules/mole) = 1.09 * 10^44 molecules
Since CO2 is 408ppm by volume or 4.08 x 10-4 there are approx 4.4472 x 10 ^40 no. of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere.
For number of photons
Multiply the the Planck constant, 6.63 x 10^-34, by the wave’s speed. Assuming the wave’s speed to be the speed of light in a vacuum, which is 3 x 10^8 meters per second: 6.63 x 10^-34 x 3 x 10^8 = 1.99 x 10^-25.
Divide the result by the wave’s wavelength. If you’re calculating, for instance, for a wave with wavelength of 650 x 10^-9 meters: (1.99 x 10^-25) / (650 x 10^-9) = 3.06 x 10^-19
Divide the power of the wave by this answer. If, for instance, you are calculating all the photons emitted by a 100-watt bulb: 100 / (3.06 x 10^-19) = 3.27 x 10^20. This is the number of photons that the 100 watt light bulb transmits each second or 3.27 x 10^18 photons per watt.
Now disregarding the NASA energy budget diagram and any back radiation by CO2( argue that on another thread please) we have 163.W/m^2 hitting the surface but 40 W/m^2 leaving the surface directly and 86.4 W/m^2 by evapotranspiration and another 18.4 by convection that leaves 18.5 W/m^ leaving the earth surface in long wave IR.
So because the earth surface transmits on average 18.5 watts /m^2 or (see above for photons per watt) 6 x10 ^19 photons per second/m^2
and because the earth surface area = 5.1 x 10^14 m^2 that leaves 3.06 x 10^ 34 number of photons per second leaving earth surface.
Or every second there are ((4.4472 x 10 ^40)/ (3.06 x 10^34)) = 1,453,333 CO2 molecules to catch each photon leaving the earth surface. Since sea level air molecule collisions occur at the rate of 1.24 x 10^35 per cubic meter per second and there is 8.14 x 10^ 18 m^3
of troposphere, there are 1 x 10^54 collisions per second.
There are 2.2 x 10^ 13 collisions per CO2 molecule each second but most of those are between N2 and O2.
Since 1 photon at 15 micron wavelength has the energy of 1.325 x 10^ -20 joules and only 8 % of (3.06 x 10^34 photons per second) are being absorbed you have 2.448 x 10^33 absorptions, and you have ~ 3.24 x 10 ^13 joules added to the total number of CO2 molecules(that are absorbing) each second. or 3.1536 x 10^7 seconds in a year therefore 1.02 x 10 ^21 joules added each year. However it has to be transferred to the O2 and N2 in order to heat up the atmosphere. This is spread out to 1.09 * 10^44 molecules or 9.357798 x 10^-24 joules per molecule each year.
Even if all 3.06 x 10^34 photons were being absorbed per second, that would mean you would have
1.325 x 10^-20 joules per photon multiplied by 3.06 x 10^34 photons = 4.05 x 10^14 joules per second or 1.2772 x 10^22 joules per year . Therefore per year (1.2772 x 10^22) / (1.2772 x 10^22)= 1.17 x10^-22 joules per molecule is added to the atmospheric heat per year as a maximum. Since the heat capacity of N2 and O2 per molecule joules/K is 4.85 x 10^-23 The whole question comes down to how much of the photons are being absorbed. If it is 8% we are getting less than a 1 K per year heat absorption and if it is 100% then it is a little more than 1K per year. This is all assuming that none gets carried away by convection.
However, even that assumes that each CO2 molecule has the heat capacity to store a photon of energy at the 15 micron wavelength at average sea surface temperatures. It does not. The heat capacity of a single CO2 molecule absorbing at the 15 micron wavelength at atmospheric surface temperature and pressure is 6.135 x 10^-23 joules /K, which is smaller than the amount of energy of that 1 photon (1.325 x 10^ -20 joules) at 15 micron wavelength.Only at a temperature of around -80C does the CO2 molecule have enough heat capacity to store a photon of energy coming from the earth surface at that wavelength.
As per the above Avogadro’s number = 6.0221415 x 10^23 of CO2 molecules in 1 mole
One ton of CO2 = 22730 moles of CO2
One ton of CO2 = 1.36883 x 10^28 molecules
1000 tons of CO2 = 1.36883 x 10^31 molecules
Since mankind is releasing more than ~ 1000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every second, we are putting 1.36883 x 10^31 molecules of CO2 into the air every second. However 3.06 x 10^ 34 of photons are leaving the earth surface every second, but there are 2.6 x 10 ^ 35 of CO2 net in the air. This means that there are 2235 photons leaving the earth surface for every manmade CO2 molecule leaving the surface and there are 9 CO2 molecules to catch each photon. Mankind is only adding 1/ 18994 of the total number of CO2 molecules to the atmosphere every second. However since there are 3.1536 x 10^7 seconds in a year that means mankind is adding 4.31674 x 10^38 molecules of CO2 every year to the atmosphere. However other parts of the earth system are adding and taking away 25 times that number every year.
“but there are 2.6 x 10 ^ 35 of CO2 net in the air.” mistake That should read 4.4472 x 10 ^40 no. of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere.
Since there are 4.4472 x 10^40 CO2 molecules already in the atmosphere to catch each photon, that means there are 4.4472 x 10^40/ 3.06 x 10^ 34 = 1.45 x 10^6 CO2 molecules to catch every one of the pohotons leaving the surface per second.
However, even that assumes that each CO2 molecule has the heat capacity to store a photon of energy at the 15 micron wavelength at average sea surface temperatures. It does not. The heat capacity of a single CO2 molecule absorbing at the 15 micron wavelength at atmospheric surface temperature and pressure is 6.135 x 10^-23 joules /K, which is smaller than the amount of energy of that 1 photon (1.325 x 10^ -20 joules) at 15 micron wavelength.Only at a temperature of around -80C does the CO2 molecule have enough heat capacity to store a photon of energy coming from the earth surface at that wavelength.
This is nonsense, any CO2 molecule in the ground rotational state is able to absorb a ~15 micron photon.
Alan is correct about the -80degC temperature. A BB surface at – 80 degC produces peak emissions at 15 microns.
– 80degC temperatures are not seen on the surface of this planet, although perhaps in the high plains of Antarctica, the surface may near that temperature. Likewise cold temperatures (but not – 80degC) are seen in the peaks of the Himalayas.
The planet’s average surface temperature is thought to be around 15 degC, which corresponds to peak emissions of 10 micron photons which photons do not fall within the 3 absorption bands of CO2. The oceans may have an average SST around 20 degC, which corresponds to peak emissions of 9.88 micron photons.
What we are dealing with are photons emitted in the wings of the blackbody surface spectra, not the peak of that spectra. I have made that point above.
Alan is correct about the -80degC temperature. A BB surface at – 80 degC produces peak emissions at 15 microns.
As pointed out above this is totally wrong. That the wavelength of a blackbody at -80ºC peaks at 15 microns is meaningless. What counts is where the peak in the energy spectrum is as explained above.
What we are dealing with are photons emitted in the wings of the blackbody surface spectra, not the peak of that spectra. I have made that point above.
No, you’re wrong, not even close.
“But this means that if there is considerable more photons incoming from solar irradiance of the 3 wavelengths absorbed and then reradiated by the CO2 molecule than there are photons of the wavelengths emitted from the surface …”
No, this doesn’t mean it. Sun is far far away from that CO2 molecule, surface of the Earth is near and this balances the more photons radiated by the Sun.
More precisely: CO2 absorbs more photons at 2.7 µm from the Sun because Earth practically doesn’t radiate at 2.7 µm, on the other hand CO2 absorbs far more terrestrial photon at 15 µm, while CO2 molecule absorbs about the same number of solar and terrestrial photons at 4.3 µm.
As for the numbers, they are coming soon.
Peter
Suppose the Sun in zenith, no absorption in the atmosphere, temperature 5772K and solid angle 68.00 µ sr.
Suppose the surface of the earth has temperature 288 K and solid angle 2 pi sr.
Then the ratio of the number of 15 µm photons from the Sun with respect to those from the Earth is 0.0016, for 4.3 µm photons is the ratio 1.53 and for 2.7 µm photons is the ratio 778.
The Sun dominates the radiation with wavelengths shorter than ~ 4.5 µm.
Please will you explain how you get that ratio, given that 15 µm photons correspond to peak emissions from a surface at – 80degC, whereas the surface temperature of the planet is around 15 degC which corresponds to a peak emissions of 10 µm photons.
Obviously the surface does emit 15 µm photons, but these are in the wings of its emission curve. Is that taken into account in your calculation?
Richard verney,
I used Planck’s law (The B lambda equation) and filled in the mentioned wavelengths, temperatures and solid angles and calculated the ratios.
The CO₂ absorption bands are on ‘long’ wavelength wing of the Sun’s spectrum and on the ‘short’ wing of the Earth’ spectrum, although the 15 µm band is more or less in the centre of the Earth spectrum. That depends on which distribution you choose as there is for wavelength, frequency or energy.
I did not account for other effects as emissivity<1, back radiation by the atmosphere
or absorption in the atmosphere.
The mentioned ratio of 0.0016 is a maximum value, the Sun is positioned in the zenith.
The ratios are related to fluxes through a window parallel to the surface of the Earth. The solid angle of the Sun, averaged over the globe, is 1/4 of 68 µsr. The averaged ratios are reduced accordingly.
For the 288 K spectrum the maxima for the distributions according to wavelength, frequency and ‘wavelength of peak emission’ are resp., expressed as wavelength, 10.06, 17.71. and 12.74 µm.
Whether you invest in the Svensmark hypothesis or in some as-yet identified root cause for the observed cyclical temperature trend, it seems to me that we will have observed a reversal of the trend within the next five years. If we do not see a cooling trend by 2023, I will see that as evidence that human activity is driving an unnatural warming trend. Of course it would still be an open question whether human-driven warming was dangerous or detrimental, but 45 years of mostly up trend would be unusual and hard to explain from natural causes.
I hope we can continue to trust UAH to indicate the trend. If things start going south, the political pressure to cook the books will be extreme. A clear break in the trend will falsify the CO2 hypothesis (presuming that we don’t suddenly stop burning fossil fuels). It may have to be discovered that Dr Spencer really liked beer in high school or that he stole some crayons in kindergarten.
‘Global Warming’ will be over when the flow of money financing it runs out.
If you decrease the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere, why will there not be an increase in the amount of radiation lost to space? Surely the amount lost to space is proportional to the amount there is?
Or is the amount lost fixed?
Phoenix44, did you mean “increase” the amount of GHGs in atmosphere? Increasing CO2 supposedly raises the emissions height of CO2 and so CO2 emits at a lower temp, meaning less radiation.
To the best of my knowledge we’re not seeing any decrease in the amount of longwave energy leaving earth.
But everything is confused. There are two general competing paradigms: alarmist and skeptics, and each can bring a lot of “evidence” to the table to prove their theory. Each accuses the other side of lying. It’s a food fight. The only way to settle it is through physical experiments that test the alleged mechanisms, but physical experiments aren’t sexy enough and can’t compete with computer glamour. We should be able to devise a relatively simple experiment that asks: does CO2 raise the temperature of a volume in a (laboratory) atmosphere? Yes or no? And by how much? (Note: uncontrolled and undocumented YouTube experiments do not qualify as legitimate science.) We can surely devise any number of experiments that test any number of alleged mechanisms, but instead we rely on ancient experiments that only show that CO2 absorbs and emits infrared, and from that flimsy basis we seem to be constructing monumental theories that we don’t bother to test except in endless computer programs that we pretend substitute for actual experiments.
A sad state of science when theories are validated by who can shout the loudest: get a group consensus and start shouting; you have the most people you win!
Don132
The entire atmosphere radiates to space, not just CO2 molecules.
The temperature at the TOA (top of Atmosphere) is very close to the temperature of 15 micron radiation, so the amount of CO2 at the TOA determines the altitude at which the atmosphere is free to radiate to space.
The higher this altitude goes, the lower the temp at which the atmosphere radiates to space becomes, hence retaining more energy in the atmosphere.
Michael Moon,
When the altitude of radiation reaches the tropopause, the effect reverses.
This accounts for the Q branch of the 15 µm CO₂ band. The emission of the Q branch reaches into the stratosphere, more CO₂ enhances radiation to space.
Umm, what? The tropopause is miles above the altitude where the atmosphere becomes transparent to 15-micron LWIR. If you knew anything about this, it would have been worth the few seconds it took me to read your reply.
Back to school for you teerhuis…
Micheal Moon,
I referred to the Q branch. When you inspect an upward emission spectrum (pe MODTRAN), you will see the Q branch as a small spike in the center of the 15 µ band.
The band emits at ~220 K, the spike at ~240 K. The corresponding heights are ~15 km and ~30 km.
“To the best of my knowledge we’re not seeing any decrease in the amount of longwave energy leaving earth.”
There wouldn’t be.
You misunderstand radiative physics of the atmosphere.
If LWIR to space decreased that would mean that the solar SW input was decreasing.
Energy in must equal energy out.
BUT energy is not temperature.
LWIR out should be stable and show a terrestrial temperature as seen from space of 255K.
It does.
Yet the GMT is ~288K
The 255K (yes I know that is grey body temp of a no-atmosphere Earth with 0.3 albedo) cannot change as that is what the Earth must radiate at to balance it’s SW energy absorbed.
What the GHE does is to increase the impedance of LWIR photons such that the atmospheric temp below the effective emission height (which will be at 255K at currently 5km using the ICAO standard atmosphere) has to increase in order to keep LWIR leaving Earth at a constant. LWIR mission at a constantly rising atmos height (as an increasing GHE will mean) will be at a lower and less efficient temp.
To meet the requirement of E = sigma T^4
As a former liberal who snapped out of it with Climategate, I believe the global warming fraud will end with critical mass awareness that it’s the totalitarian foundation of the ‘new world order’. I appreciate WUWT, but it’s doing nothing to expose this sinister threat. Nobody fears or cares that global warming is a money-making scheme – only the hard truth ‘shall set us free’. Big lie propaganda will continue until the hard truth is widely known or the NWO succeeds – whichever comes first. I’m NO bible thumper, but prophecy is staring us in the face as SCIENCE: Carbon: 6 protons; 6 neutrons; 6 electrons..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/29/AR2008052903266.html
Carbon Chastity
“Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe. There’s no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.”
“UN Sustainable Development is the action plan implemented worldwide to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all energy, all education, all information, and all human beings in the world. INVENTORY AND CONTROL.” – Rosa Koire
http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com
Who would have prophesized C14, the isotope that broke the Bible’s 6000 year creation date? Thank God we have neutrons, and relativistic cosmic protons for C14 and cloud cover.
The Bible doesn’t say anthing about a 6,000 year creation date. That number was dreamed up by a fallible human being who read the Bible and decided it should be interpreted in a certain way. That doesn’t mean his interpretation was correct.
Others are free to interpret the Bible differently.
Meanwhile, just this morning, CBC is still airing this dire warning to Canadians from the U.N.:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/un-issues-dire-warning-on-climate-change-1.4855061
we got this warning earlier this week. http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-10-08/ipcc-climate-change-report/10348720
luckily our recently new prime minister dismissed them .
That article was written ten years ago, not today!
They didn’t proposed such a rationing scheme, the committee took evidence concerning “personal carbon trading’ as a possible means to meet the 2050 target.
Part of the analysis included reference to the last time this was done in the UK.
Is the British Carbon Card idea current or was it only in 2008?
Linda Goodman, me too. It all started with climate-gate. Inside of 3 years I went from mooning over Obama’s eloquence to despising the man for his divisive rhetoric. Somehow waking up to the climate fraud gave me eyes to see all the rest. At this point, I’d likely be waking up anyway, given all the hysterical insanity out there on the Left. This thing with Kavanaugh has been a genuine disgrace.
As the idea that ‘CO2 is the dominant driver of global temperature’ is unproven it is reasonable to expect that the warming will end eventually.
But it’s not necessarily so, even if the effect of CO2 were negligible. It can still keep warming as it has been. And that could be the case even if we completely destroyed the economy to reduce emissions.
Stick to the science – cause and effect – and don’t wait for the weather to change.
Thank you David.
To All:
Please not Humlum posts a series of graphs monthly at
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_August_2018.pdf
Examine page 41 and 42 and consider the meaning of these observations:
41. Atmospheric CO2 trends lag atmospheric temperature trends by ~9 months in the modern data record.
42. According to UAH LT temperatures, there has been no net global warming since 2005.
Thank you David.
Please not Humlum posts a series of graphs monthly at
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_August_2018.pdf
Everyone, please examine page 41 and 42 and consider the meaning of these observations:
41. Atmospheric CO2 trends lag atmospheric temperature trends by ~9 months in the modern data record.
42. According to UAH LT temperatures, there has been no net global warming since 2005.
“According to UAH LT temperatures, there has been no net global warming since 2005.”
______________________________
Since January 2005 UAH TLT v6 shows warming of 0.202 ±0.270 °C/decade (2σ).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:2005/plot/uah6/from:2005/trend
Such an easy thing for a ‘skeptic’ to check.
I am wondering why the trend line from 2005, on the graph you link to, starts at 0 rather than the 0.3 of the first temp values given. I think you are accepting a trend line which includes data from before the period in question. It is an easy enough thing for an alarmist to check. 🙂
grant
“I am wondering why the trend line from 2005, on the graph you link to, starts at 0 rather than the 0.3 of the first temp values given.”
__________________________________
Why on earth would you expect a trend line to start at the same point as the initial value in a time series?
“I think you are accepting a trend line which includes data from before the period in question.”
___________________________________
A simple glance over to the right of the graph, to where the data input series are, will show you that I started the data in 2005 and also the trend line in 2005. The calculations were done by the site’s own software, not me. Why don’t you try entering the same input data and see if you can come up with a different chart and trend?
“It is an easy enough thing for an alarmist to check.”
__________________________________
Indeed; or a ‘skeptic’ for that matter. Everyone would be better off if we all actually checked claims for ourselves. That’s what skeptics are supposed to do, right?
The claim that UAH TLT temperatures show no net global warming since 2005 is easily checked and turns out to be patently false. If you follow Allan Macrae’s link to Ole Humlum’s site you will see that Humlum does indeed show a chart of current UAH TLT data with a flat trend line since 2005. Yet if you check the UAH trend since 2005 on any of a number of websites (or, better still, actually download it from UAH and calculate the linear trend yourself), you will find that there is a clear warming trend of 0.202 C per decade since 2005.
Humlum has added a fake flat trend line to his UAH TLT chart starting ~2005. I don’t know why he’s done that or what motivated him; but that’s what he’s done. The point is that Allan Macrae, and presumably many others, have just looked at that chart with its fake flat trend starting 2005 and accepted it at face value without checking. That is not ‘skepticism’.
DWR54 aka WD40:
You have expressed your concern re Humlum page 42 – note that Earth is still cooling after the recent big El Nino. Be patient.
However, you skipped over Humlum page 41, which is much more interesting. Do you have any concerns re Humlum page 41?
“41. Atmospheric CO2 trends lag atmospheric temperature trends by ~9 months in the modern data record.”
Please explain how this can happen and, according to global warmist dogma, how the future can drive the past – that is, in the absence of a time machine.
I generally like Humlum’s work. My only issue with Humlum page 41 is that “Humlum et al 2013” did not reference my 2008 icecap paper, which said the same thing 5 years earlier. 🙂
Allan,
The reason I mentioned Humlum page 42 is because it was *you* who drew attention to it in the first place (see your posts above). Now it seems, having been shown that the flat trend since 2005 shown on the chart on Humlum page 42 is a risible sham, you have decided to ignore page 42 altogether. You want to shift direction to something other than what *you* started talking about.
So let’s just stick with the topic *you* raised and avoid any misdirection, shall we?
You claimed, based on the chart on Humlum’s site, that UAH TLT showed no warming since 2005. It’s clear that you didn’t bother to check whether Humlum’s chart was accurate or not; you simply accepted it at face value and passed it on to others for reference. Anyone can check the actual data and see that the UAH trend shown on page 42 Humlum’s chart is completely false and misleading.
Now you don’t want to talk about it. Now you try to suggest that it’s me that’s the ‘slippery’ one (WD40…). Do you really find it ‘so’ hard, as a self-appointed ‘skeptic’, to admit that you just made yet another mistake?
DWR54 aka WD40:
You have expressed your concern re Humlum page 42 – note that Earth is still cooling after the recent big El Nino. Be patient.
“The cumulative effect of the daily heat pulse means that temperature can still be going up even as solar activity is going down as long as thermal equilibrium hasn’t been reached for a particular level of solar activity.”
Yet the Gulf of Mexico in my area goes from around 90F in summer to around 55F in winter six months later and back again to around 90F in summer. That has to do with insolation from obliquity not solar activity.
“…How long will we have to endure the wailing and inanities of the global warmers? What would help is a break in the slight uptrend in the temperature record….”
What would really help is to begin defunding the government funded scientists that are maintaining their job security by finding what the deep state bureaucrats want them to find.
U.S. Global Change Research Program
When there’s $2.8 billion in funding every year, you can bet there’s a whole lot of people trying to find a way to secure a chunk of that money for themselves. That would include climate scientists
Well, you’ve no chance there, Steve, have you? It would take a fundamental shift in human nature — or at least political human nature — to persuade a bureaucrat to stop funding a man who keeps telling him what he wants to hear!
Lots of regulars at Peak Oil Barrel are climate loons that believe IPCC is seriously underestimating the dangers of global warming. I was banned at the place for defending scientific articles that present an alternative explanation to global warming with an important natural component and little alarm. Anybody that shows up questioning their craziness is immediately gang insulted. The owner of the site is a deep doomer willing to censor me because I questioned his climate beliefs with scientific arguments.
It does have good oil information from people within the industry, if you are willing to put up with the climate craziness from others, though. I read the oil section from time to time.
Whoever posted this graph made a mistake in their interpretation of the graph:
Basically once point C is reached you’ll get a transition to the upper branch (Hopf bifurcation), there will be no intermediate value (no guarantee that the upper branch will not be oscillatory). Once on the upper branch in order to return to the lower branch CO2 would have to decrease until the ‘tipping point’ is reached and there is a transition back down. Such a curve leads to a hysteresis in the transitions back and forth.
All the solutions on the backward sloping part of the curve are inaccessible, e.g. D.
You know that the author of the peak oil Barrel is in loony territory when you read
Those are the words, not even of an exaggerating alarmist, but a nut job. Like humans don’t live in hot places today. Most of them without air conditioning.
As to the reality…you can look at the UAH graph and see that the temperature today is about the same as it was at the high point of 1983. Sure, in the in between time it has been trending warmer, not cooler, but the basic fact remains the same. Whatever happens in the future, up or down, it is still the same right now as it was in 1983. Back in 1983 the future was now. Thermageddon was predicted to happen in the future but it hasn’t happened. They could reply “not yet”, but it still just hasn’t happened.
Every time CO2 reaches a maximum we ice over, that’s a lot of warming.
David, you have gone on a brief ramble through some of the Naysayer’s handbook.
“The author of that text has increased CO2 causing the climate to come out of glaciations. His next step would be to explain why glaciations came along every 100,000 years or so over the last million years, and every 40,000 years or so in the two million years before that.”
I would just say that orbital eccentricity was the forcing for climate changes (along with ocean current and albedo responses) – and CO2 was the feedback that amplified it (both ways).
IOW: CO2 lagged the forcing. Modern warming has the CO2 coming first. It still warms as it’s a GHG.
“Now that Hadrcut has been discredited”
No it hasn’t unless you read that thread determined that your bias is confirmed.
IE read NS’s post.
The errors were contained in the National Met files sent to the UKMO and were eliminated by QC.
“we are left the UAH satellite record from Dr Roy Spencer”
No you’re not if (again) you don’t look to confirm your bias.
UAH does not capture (nor any trop temp product) the greatest cause of warming over land. It’s a measure of a depth of troposphere centred at ~4km. ….That caused at the surface due to the magnified GHE response that will take place under a surface inversion.
Plus: It is the extreme outlier in the atmospheric temp series – and shows an extreme disconnect both with radiosonde and with the change in sensor following the move to the AMSU onboard NOAA15. (doesn’t match with the MSU on NOAA14). One is incorrect and both UAH and RSS are showing a cold bias as a result. It’s just that the RSS team are pragmatic and have split the difference, making the cold bias a little less on their V4 product. UAH think that NOAA15 is correct…. which, of course makes NOAA14 wrong. That’s what happens when you have only one sensor and change it.
“It looks like we are headed for a record neutron flux for the instrument record in about two years. So, according to Svensmark theory, the clouds will have their albedo effect.”
Svensmark theory has been discredited, not least by Leif Svalsgaard.
IE: Temps have gone up with increasing neutron flux, not down.
And this is confirmed by Javier (a skeptic) and Svalsgaard in this thread…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/06/solar-update-june-2017-the-sun-is-slumping-and-headed-even-lower/
with this graph that has the correlation backwards….
http://i.imgur.com/OBP3Nan.png
“The upper panel shows the measured change in 14C production rates. This is the one that reflects changes in cosmic rays. The bottom panel has the earth’s dipole effect subtracted. As we can see in the upper panel cosmic rays were much higher a few thousand years ago, with a warmer climate, than during the LIA. Just the opposite of what Svensmark’s hypothesis predicts.”
There is no evidence that the “Svensmark effect” works in the real atmosphere as the above clearly shows.
We will know when it is over by monitoring.
Oceanic sea surface temperatures come to mind which were on the decline until around a month ago when they all of a sudden rose rapidly. Now +.4c above 1981-2010 means up from less then +.2c above 1981-2010 means not very long ago. This is surprising and if it should continue forget global cooling. I think it is a blip but we will see.
In addition to overall oceanic surface temperatures other items need to be monitored such as 500mb heights, global snow cover and cloud cover , geological activity and see what direction these items move in which will impact the climate.
It is wait and see but I think if it does not grow colder now – next few years given the very low solar activity and the decline in the geo magnetic field it will not happen. Now-next few years is going to be telling in my opinion.
Most sceptics will agree that there was no science, evidence or compelling logic that create the global warming scam, therefore it follows that neither science, nor evidence nor compelling logic will cause its demise nor be a reliable metric of this event.
Instead, the true measure of this scam are:
firstly: whether it is fashionable
secondly: whether it is profitable.
Is that why the Dutch Appeals Court upheld this ruling?
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/weather/topstories/dutch-appeals-court-upholds-landmark-climate-case-ruling/ar-BBO8K6E?OCID=ansmsnnews11
Yes, yes the experts know nothing and are scammers, and the Googlers and denizens know better.
If you say so.
The idea that we have enough probes to measure the average temperature of the ocean to less than 0.01C is ludicrous, as in any conclusion drawn from such inadequate data.
Some quite credible solar scientists (like Jan Alvestad of Solen.info) are predicting SC25 magnetic and sunspot activity will pick up in January 2019. If so, then the neutron flux will bottom-out about where it has at every minima since recording began. No “in about 2 years” record low neutron count if that happens.
SC24 low-latitude spots will continue to show up probably all the way in end 2019, but if SC25 ramps up early next year, then the solar community will call it, SC24 over and SC25 started dividing line, and that will also show up in the neutron flux as well.
As far as I can tell from looking at his site, the projected increase is SC25 activity from early next year is based on his feelings. Not hard evidence.
The heliospheric current sheet tilt angle points to the minimum being in September 2019. The peak in neutrons will be a year after that. So still two years to the neutron peak.
ARGO 0-2000m ocean temperature is rising by 0.3°C per century. How can the atmospheric temp rise diverge from that appreciably (rising at 1.2-1.3°C per century) over the long term given obvious strong mixing to depth shown in the above North Atlantic transect?
How much heat does an ARGO buoy produce?
The HadCrut temperature data may have been discredited, but how many left leaning news sources (e.g. BBC and Guardian in the U.K. or NYT) have reported this? Alarmists will ignore the report and keep adjusting the surface temperature record so that global warming will look like it is still happening regardless of what actually happens, so from this perspective it will never end or if there is another 15+ year pause alarmists will just say that temperatures will start rising again soon.
Conclusion, a lot of people will never realise that it’s over even when it is.
“Global warming” began when the PDO flipped in 1977. Eleven years later, Hansen sounded the alarm over warming, as against the global cooling which had so alarmed scientists in the 1970s, having begun in the ’40s.
Thus, no more than eleven years of cooling should be required to pronounce global warming dead. By that time, however, warming might yet again be in the offing.
Earth has been dramatically cooling since the February 2016 peak of the last super El Nino. Hence, should this trend continue, we need wait only until 2027 for the end of the “global warming” scare. Given the Hansen paradigm.