I don’t agree with the ideas and conclusions presented in this lecture, but it is interesting and instructive to watch nonetheless. – Anthony
Earnest C. Watson Lecture by Professor Tapio Schneider, “Clouds and the Climate Tipping Point.” Low clouds over subtropical oceans cool Earth’s climate because they reflect most of the sunlight shining on them back to space.
It is unclear, however, how the clouds themselves change with climate; this gives rise to large uncertainties in climate change projections. Tapio Schneider’s lecture will show how advances in computing and satellite observations are enabling breakthroughs in the accuracy of climate projections. Such advances have already revealed a tipping point of the climate system: if greenhouse gas concentrations rise high enough, subtropical low clouds may melt away, triggering dramatic global warming.
Tapio Schneider is the Theodore Y. Wu Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at Caltech in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences; and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist.
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WG1AR5 chapter 7 conclude that net feedbacks of water vapour, lapse rate and clouds are +1.1 watts/m2. They explain that 1) high clouds are expected to rise higher and therefore exert a stronger greenhouse effect, 2) middle and high level cloud tends to decrease in warmer climates, 3) observations suggest storm tracks shift poleward in warmer climates, drying the tropics which shift cloud cover to latitudes that receive less insolation and 4) most GCMs predict that low cloud decreases in the tropics.
They do pay lip service to some proposed negative feedbacks, that they would be 1) more extensive, 2) optically thicker, 3) vertically more extensive. It then rules these out as being contradicted by GCMs. However, the key point is that clouds are a parameterization in GCMs because of their sub grid dimensions and are in no way modelled using the equations of physics, so the question is, how reliable are they? The NIPCC report “climate change reconsidered” provides plenty of evidence that feedback is negative (eg Lindzen and Choi). So, who knows?
People who have studied Earth history know.
There is no such tipping point where clouds disappear and runaway deadly warming occurs.
A warmer world is a wetter and more humid world, and the life zone expands poleward.
More CO2 means more plants grow in more places, and they grow faster, and they grow in places with less moisture. All of which add even more water to the air and retain more moisture in the soil.
Thus all life benefits: Plants, herbivores, and animals that feed on herbivores, and omnivores, and pretty much every other sort of living thing.
What does not happen is any of the ridiculous nonsense predicted by the climate doomsday cult.
Hot moist air rises and forms clouds. Speculation on how adding ppm’s of CO2 to the water vapor in that hot moist air will result in clouds failing to form, is nonsense.
Oh no, we won’t know what low, marine clouds are anymore! Maybe we need to bring back high-sulfur coal-burning merchant ships…. /sarc
“the clouds may melt away ” — or they may not.
Amazing analysis.
I believe I tried to make this point once before in response to a different post, but my understanding of Chaos Theory is that “tipping points,” more formally known as “phase changes,” have two immutable characteristics: their timing cannot be predicted AND their “direction” (higher vs. lower, hotter vs. colder, etc.) also cannot be predicted. The atmosphere is clearly a highly coupled, nonlinear chaotic system. I immediately discount ANY person or paper that uses the phrase “tipping points.”
Kerry,
Tipping points have nothing to do with chaos or phase changes. Phase changes are
easily predicted — the boiling point of water is 100 degrees for example. A tipping
point is when a system flips from one stable state to another. It is another way of saying
there is hysteresis in the system. And the fact that the atmosphere is chaotic doesn’t
preclude the existence of tipping points. The Lorentz system for example is only chaotic
in a small parameter range and if you alter one of the parameters you suddenly jump from
a chaotic system to one with two stable fixed points. Which is many might describe as a tipping
point
Okay so what’s the point of taping a lecture if you don’t show the slides?
This is pure 24 carat BS. The reason for low clouds over subtropical oceans are cold upwelling waters. This is driven by the thermohaline circulation which means that new cold water is constantly being added.
Just one sentence from the paper this is based upon (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1) is enough to kill the whole fairy tale:
“The lower boundary of the subtropical LES domain is a slab ocean whose surface temperature Ts,0 evolves according to the surface energy balance.” (my bold)
So this result is quite likely true if you can find an ocean that is just a few meters deep, without currents or stratification, but certainly not in the real world, and least of all in upwelling areas (which are the only places you will find a low subtropical cloud deck).
I don’t like accusing people of deliberate fraud, but it seems highly unlikely that the authors could have committed this glaring error unwittingly.
Nick, you were good up the 394K baking part. Earth would get warmer as a result of absorbing the Sun’s radiation, which has much more “heat” in it than the “solar wind”.
If someone makes the rather Polyanna assumption that the Earth has an Albedo of 0.3, you can show that the Earth is about 33C warmer due to Greenhouse gases than it would be without those greenhouse gases. But the Albedo of clouds varies widely around 0.6, and the planet is 1/2 covered by cloud, 70% ocean at albedo about .05, so actually cloud cover controls the Albedo of the planet. And the amount of planet cloud cover is very likely primarily controlled by the temperature of the ocean surface.
So you are correct in the sense that without water vapour, there would be no clouds and the planet would be warmer as a result of decreased Albedo. However there is no failure of greenhouse gas theory here. There likely is a failure of cloud cover albedo parameters in the computer models.
DMac
Refer to the Dutton/Brune Penn State METEO 300 chapter 7.2: These two professors quite clearly assume/state that the earth’s current 0.3 albedo would remain even if the atmosphere were gone or if the atmosphere were 100 % nitrogen, i.e. at an average 240 W/m^2 OLR and an average S-B temperature of 255 K.
That is just flat ridiculous.
NOAA says that without an atmosphere the earth would be a -430 F frozen ice-covered ball.
That is just flat ridiculous^2.
Without the atmosphere or with 100% nitrogen there would be no liquid water or water vapor, no vegetation, no clouds, no snow, no ice, no oceans and no longer a 0.3 albedo. The earth would get blasted by the full 394 K, 121 C, 250 F solar wind.
The sans atmosphere albedo might be similar to the moon’s as listed in NASA’s planetary data lists, a lunarific 0.11, 390 K on the lit side, 100 K on the dark.
And the naked, barren, zero water w/o atmosphere earth would receive 27% to 43% more kJ/h of solar energy and as a result would be 19 to 33 C hotter not 33 C colder, a direct refutation of the greenhouse effect theory and most certainly NOT a near absolute zero frozen ball of ice.
Nick,
So let’s cover your diverse thoughts…Dutton/Brune are likely just trying to show the SB equation temperature for 240 W/SqM and albedo 0.3….Of course without clouds, Earth’s albedo would be half of .3, and calculably warmer than today….so they aren’t technically correct when taken that extra step
Your NOAA -430 ball, have never seen that claimed by NOAA, don’t believe they would say that.
Solar wind blast at 121 C, this is trivial to Earth’s temperature, less effect than adding say 400 ppm of radiative gas to the N2/ O2/ H2O atmosphere. This being mostly due to the far less than 400 ppm of water vapour that exist above the convective troposphere and the radiative gas giving the clear sky an infrared temperature in the SB equation.
And your statement “direct refutation of GHE”….actually from your claims one can neither confirm nor refute the GHE, just temperature change due to albedo change.
DMac,
-436 F
https://sos.noaa.gov/Education/script_docs/SCRIPTWhat-makes-Earth-habitable.pdf
Slide 14.
We agree that without an atmosphere the earth would be much hotter.
This simple observation contradicts, refutes and negates the greenhouse effect theory.
Of course the notion that 400 ppm of CO2 had enough substance to do anything of consequence to the atmosphere, i.e. warming, has always been total nonsense.
-436….so some summer students made an error on a slideshow for school kids. What NOAA says is here…https://esrl.noaa.gov/research/themes/forcing/
Again you confuse an Albedo change due to 50% cloud cover with the effects of radiative gases in the atmosphere. Different phenomenon, admittedly confused by many and not properly explained by those in a hurry.
To correct your thoughts on CO2, you have B.Sc, find a chart on the vapor pressure of water over ice. Use it to calculate the ppm of H2O with increasing altitude/decreasing temp. assuming the air is water saturated. Geez, a few km up, the 400 ppm CO2 exceeds the ppm of Water content. And C02 and H2O are the primary gases radiating a little bit of heat back to the surface. That’s why C02 has some importance. Peanuts compared to cloud albedo though.
The cause of climate change and weather is Milankovich cycles, plus cosmic rays, plus natural ocean cycles, plus many other factors some of which feed back on each other and some do not and we will never understand it all, even with a HYPERcomputer.
John,
Short term it’s changes in the albedo, the elliptical orbit and tilted axis.
My back of envelope says a 1% change in albedo changes surface temperature 1 C.
Those geoengineering folks wanting to brighten the albedo better have a number.
Jeepers, I think I’ll call that one “Crocodiles of the North Pole.” It does conjure up funny images in ones head. I guess the warm Eocene thing is slipped in to bolster the notion that a tipping point may actually be credible while calling forth that grand symbol of danger – the crocodile. (I also noticed the adoption of the famous “burning embers” color scheme for the graphs). Why can’t I just calculate things this way? The Eocene was 50 million years ago; therefore the chance of a warm Artic after a climate tumble is about 50 million to one. But the real question that leaps to my mind is what did the crocodiles do when the lights went out for months at a time as they do every winter in the North. Did they migrate southward in great flocks not to escape the cold but to escape the dark or perhaps they hibernated through? Maybe crocodiles can see in the dark, but then the question becomes what did the hippos do? This global warming thing is getting very absurdist and arty. I found the talk to be a long wandering trek toward a nebulous conclusion but with some great visuals thrown in.
How does anybody still get away with this climate tipping point nonsense? I will restate the Null Hypothesis with 2 points —
1) Climate has been warmer in the recent past and there was no tipping point.
2) CO2 has been much, much higher in the past and there was no climate tipping point.
Some might foolishly argue “but this time it’s different! Past climate changes were natural, this time it’s man-made.” There is no evidence to suggest greenhouse gases work differently when released by nature or burning fossil fuels.
Apparently WUWT discussed this when his study was published.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/02/26/striking-study-finds-a-climate-tipping-point-in-clouds/
There is a tiny little problem with this. If all clouds disappear, so will rain. Without rain, all land is dry. That means no vegitation and no animals living of it. That however did not happen..
Bottom line is this:
Removing the atmosphere and the albedo it produces heats the earth.
Hard to dispute.
As a consequence the greenhouse effect which theorizes exactly the opposite heads straight for the nearest dumpster with all the handwavium, pseudo-physics, nonsense “mansplaining” following close behind.
Nick, I prefer a major modification to your claim “Removing the atmosphere and the albedo it produces heats the Earth.”
I believe the physics and relevant examples support “Removing the atmosphere and the albedo it produces heats the Earth on the sunlit side and cools the Earth on the hemisphere not facing the Sun, at any point in time.”
Look to the Moon (+100 C/-173 C) and Mercury (+427 C/-180 C) as examples of this. And please note that Mercury is NOT tidally locked to the Sun; it rotates exactly three times for every two times it revolves around the Sun.
It is left as an exercise for the student to calculate what the “global average temperature” of Earth would be if it had no atmosphere, both before the oceans and ice fields evaporated/sublimated away and then after.
Without an atmosphere the earth would be similar to the moon, i.e. 390 K on the lit side, 100 K on the dark.
Average is irrelevant.
A direct contradiction and refutation of GHE.
And the entire climate change house of cards collapses.
Without an atmosphere, there would be no clouds….but cloud albedo is NOT the GHE. Keep the effects separate and you have a good case in your fight against CAGW, combine them like you are doing and you will be scoffed at by those who took a physics class before going on to their law or business degree, though they don’t really understand it. These people run the country. And I have found, they don’t like being told by engineers that their ideas are dumb. You need to explain this in terms that are “simple without being too simple” to paraphrase Einstein . Your non-atmosphere Earth being hotter is too simple.
It’s totally dismaying that Caltech would present as grossly simplistic a lecture about complex geosystem behavior as Schneider’s staggering ruminations about putative “tipping points” in a purely static-gain conception of “climate sensitivity.” In its manifold lack of physical comprehension, there’s not even a basic recognition of the difference between causal and concomitant relationship between CO2 and temperature, nor of the role of coastal upwelling in the development stratocumulus. Even half a century ago, more was commonly known about the physics of oceanic heating and manifold factors affecting cloud development than are evident in this lecture.
Climate models make errors totally about 100+ W/m^2. Willie Soon has published on this.
The models misallocate about 1/3 of the 340 W/m^2 or so of the solar irradiance at the cloud tops. That means the models cannot solve the problem of the climate energy-state.
Climate models are engineering models, not physical models. They don’t deploy a complete theory of the climate. They can’t predict observables of the climate, outside of their calibration bounds. And they can’t describe the physics of the climate within them.
The annual increase in forcing from CO2 emissions is about 35 milliWatts/m^2 (0.035 W/m^2). Compare that with 100+ W/m^2 of error. A mere S/N = 0.00035.
Climate modelers, apparently including Tapio Schneider, think they can resolve that 35 mW perturbation away from the 100+ W of uncertainty.
There isn’t a self-respecting branch of science that would make such a claim.
But then, climate modelers aren’t scientists. Also, here.
Tapio Schneider credits climate models and so clearly does not think like a scientist. Even those modelers who have training in physics have abandoned scientific thinking. Did they not do, they’d not credit climate models to be indicative or predictive. As regards CO2 and climate, none of them, not one, knows what they’re talking about.
Full disclosure: Tapio Schneider was one of the reviewers of my Skeptic article on climate models. He revealed himself as such during my debate with Gavin Schmidt (Gavin lost).
In his review, Tapio gratuitously accused me of scientific dishonesty, in an apparent effort to discredit by slander. But Michael Shermer ignored the calumny, to Michael’s eternal credit. Nevertheless, I have little regard to lose for Tapio Schneider.
so clouds are a tiny fraction of the water in the atmosphere.. .1mm
Ya’ll know the trace gas argument right?
You know about instrumental resolution, right?
I’ve seen H2O vapor as 1% to 5%. Not “tiny.”
The vapor pressure of water at 15 C is .0168 Atmospheres, therefore 1.68 % is the saturation water content at 1 atmospheric pressure, 3.13% at 25C, 5.55% at 35C, etc.
At 12 Km altitude p, pressure is 0.2 atmospheres or 20,000 pascals. At -50 C, vapor pressure of water in equilibrium with ice is 3.94 Pascals, so air at that temp and pressure can only hold 197 ppm of water. Which is about half the amount of C02 concentration. So CO2 concentration makes no difference at low altitude, where water vapor by far dominates, but CO2 becomes dominant at high altitude.
Just for you, Nick.
These guys seem to be out of touch with what little we know of climate theory. The introductory speaker attributed the increase over the last century of peak night time temperatures in Pasadena solely to climate change, with not even the hint of the suggestion that the urban heat island effect may have something to do with it. Then Tapio Schneider attributed the climate changes over the last 50 million years entirely to changes in atmospheric CO2. I find it hard to understand how they can shut from their minds what should be basic knowledge and understanding of the subject. Surely they are not really that ignorant?
I don’t understand how any intelligent person could either write or believe something as self-evidently silly as the following paragraph:
“Tapio Schneider’s lecture will show how advances in computing and satellite observations are enabling breakthroughs in the accuracy of climate projections. Such advances have already revealed a tipping point of the climate system: if greenhouse gas concentrations rise high enough, subtropical low clouds may melt away, triggering dramatic global warming.”
Since “climate” can only be measured using many decades of observations to separate out the weather from the climate, there is no possible way to demonstrate any “breakthrough” in the “accuracy of climate projections” except by testing these supposed “advances in computing and satellite observations” over a very long time.
The quote above is just a deceitful way of conflating a mere hypothesis with evidence for that hypothesis.
Ocean phases are controlling low cloud cover. There has been a global decline in low cloud cover with the warming of the AMO from around 1993-95. The warm AMO phase is the result of weaker solar wind states via increased negative NAO/AO, and is normal during a centennial solar minimum. So as the AMO is a negative feedback, and so are the low cloud cover changes.
Tapio Schneider in a April 24,2019 talk at Caltech said that there is 250x the amount of water vapour in the air than there is in clouds. 25mm thick layer of H2O vapour and only 0.1mm of water in the cloud. Stratocumulus clouds( cover 20% of tropical oceans and are the most frequent type of cloud) which cool the planet by reflecting sunlight,while cumulus clouds warm local areas. He admits that the climate models underestimate the cloud formation. Climate models are at least 10km minimum resolution and clouds are much smaller. He admits that the models cant tell which types of clouds will form with more warming. At 27:30 he explains why the altocumulus and stratocumulus clouds breakup. He gives 3 reasons 1) with more warming we get more evaporation creates which creates more latent heat and thus more turbulence when latent heat is released. He skips a step of why is there more precipitation? He goes on to say that there is more turbulence caused by release of the latent heat. He ultimately says that more evaporation thins the clouds because dry air from above the clouds is entrained into the cloud layer and therefore breaking them up. 2) As more CO2 gets put into the air, the cooling of the cloud tops gets less efficient(the photons at the cloud tops that the clouds absorb .come from closer to the cloud top where it is warmer.) the difference of the energy streams become smaller therefore there is less cooling. 3) more water vapour in the atmosphere reduces the cooling at the cloud tops by decoupling the clouds from their moisture supply and they will break up. As clouds thin it leads to more warming and the cycle runs away in a tipping point. HE DOESNT MENTION THAT CLOUDS FORM BECAUSE OF AEROSOLS. IF HIS THESIS WAS TRUE THAT HOT AREAS CAUSE CLOUDS TO BEAKUP, THEN IT WOULD NEVER RAIN IN THE SAHARA WHICH DOES RECEIVE ON AVERAGE 0.6 INCHES OF RAINFALL PER YEAR. IF HOT WEATHER DISPERSED CLOUDS, THUNDERSTORMS WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE. IF THE LOW LEVEL CLOUDS BROKE UP THE CLOUDS WOULD SIMPLY FORM HIGHER UP IN THE ATMOSPHERE BECAUSE THERE WOULD ALWAYS BE AEROSOLS TO FORM CLOUDS AND THE HIGHR ATMOSPHERE IS COLDER.
“…………. IF HIS THESIS WAS TRUE THAT HOT AREAS CAUSE CLOUDS TO BEAKUP, THEN IT WOULD NEVER RAIN IN THE SAHARA ……..”
“Earnest C. Watson Lecture by Professor Tapio Schneider, “Clouds and the Climate Tipping Point.” Low clouds over subtropical oceans ”
The thesis holds only over oceans.
“……… IF HOT WEATHER DISPERSED CLOUDS, THUNDERSTORMS WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE…..”
Thunderstorms are convected phenomena within an unstable airmass.
The video talks of turbulent mixing below a capping inversion.
There is therefore a stable atmosphere, unable to support Cb cloud.