Reposted from Dr. Roy Spencer’s Blog
January 1st, 2020 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Polar Stratospheric Cloud display (smartphone photo posted by Reddit user Breuuan on Dec. 31, 2019.)
Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to cause upper atmospheric cooling in the 2020s, which will lead to some of the most beautiful cloud displays ever witnessed by human eyes.
Along with the warming in the lower atmosphere that more CO2 is theoretically expected to produce, the upper atmosphere is supposed to cool even more strongly. For example, in our satellite observations since 1979, we have observed about 3-4 times as much cooling in the middle stratosphere as warming in the troposphere over the last four decades. This cooling is expected to exist even higher up, into the upper mesosphere and beyond, which is at the edge of outer space and where meteors burn up. The current record solar minimum conditions are probably also contributing to this cooling.
Polar Stratospheric Clouds and Noctilucent Clouds are Increasing
As 2019 came to a close, reports of some of the most vivid opalescent displays of wintertime polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) in memory have been coming in from Northern Europe. These clouds require very cold temperatures in the stratosphere (-80 deg. C or colder). They show up shortly after sunset or before sunrise when the sun is still shining at that high altitude (15-25 km), while the usual weather-related clouds in the troposphere are no longer illuminated by the sun.
Wintertime polar stratospheric clouds in Sweden, Dec 30, 2019 (by Patricia Cowern Israelsson).
In the summertime in the polar regions, electric-blue noctilucent clouds (NLCs) are sometimes seen in the upper mesosphere (80-85 km) where temperatures plunge to the coldest anywhere on Earth, -100 deg. C. Like PSCs, they are seen after sunset or before sunrise, but due to their great altitude occur when the sun is well below the horizon and some brighter stars are beginning to shine. These clouds exist at literally the edge of space, above 99.999% of the mass of the atmosphere, and are believed to be seeded by meteoric dust.
Summertime noctilucent clouds (Nando Harmsen, FStoppers.com).
These clouds have a rippled appearance, and time lapse photography has revealed an amazing variety of undulations, like waves from multiple pebbles thrown in a pond interacting. The following 4K time lapse video shows cloud behavior unlike any you have seen before, and is well worth the 2 minutes it takes to watch (go full-screen):
2017 NOCTILUCENT CLOUD CHASING SEASON TEASER – 4K (UHD) from Night Lights Films on Vimeo.
Last year (2019) NLCs were observed well outside the polar regions for the first time in recorded history, as far south as southern California and Nevada. This is due to some combination of colder temperatures and higher water vapor amounts (methane is converted to water vapor at these altitudes, and increasing atmospheric methane could be causing higher humidity up there).
I can remember seeing clouds similar to the first picture in Sheffield, Uk way back in the early ’90s.
Shame I didn’t have a camera with me.
Wonderful. I can’t go there to see for myself, so thanks for making me feel closer.
0.04 of the atmosphere has some kind of significant effect.
Seems too good to be true.
GHGs “trapping” “extra” energy created by a theoretical “what if” calculation violates the thermodynamic conservation of energy law.
Because of the contiguous participating atmospheric molecules black body LWIR upwelling from the earth’s surface is not possible.
The earth gets warmer without the atmosphere not colder.
The greenhouse effect, carbon dioxide’s warming and man-caused climate change do not exist.
It is that simple.
Debunking CAGW does not require a couple thousand words, dozens of pages, esoteric graphs and charts and a blur of pretentious handwavium.
If one can see these clouds, then they scatter sunlight, don’t they? Thus, they must have an impact on solar irradiance at the surface. How large is it? I suspect it is at least as large as a doubling of CO2.
“Beautiful Upper Atmospheric Clouds”
Ah, I can see it now:
Polar bears sitting back drinking a Coke and seeing clouds that looks like their Grandma!
A UC Boulder study concluded that less than 10% of the cooling of the upper atmosphere was caused by CO2. The rest was caused by lower solar activity. I’ve cited that paper previously on this site several years ago. I can dig it up again if others are interested
“Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to cause upper atmospheric cooling in the 2020s, which will lead to some of the most beautiful cloud displays ever witnessed by human eyes.”
But if carbon dioxide is a dense gas then how is it supposed to reach the upper atmosphere to cause this cooling?
So, how can consensus science turn this beautiful display into a threat? Maybe some animals cant sleep at night and die from stress? Or insects get lost when navigating by the lights, Or birds lose sexual interest in their mates when their feathers look dull and gray compared to the night sky and the birds die out?
I am sute they will think up something resembling science and swedish state media will teport it as a fact.
I love stuff like this. Under the right conditions, some clouds can produce dragons and other mythical critters. Even better if it happens at sunrise or sunset. I’ve got photos of cirrus clouds so high up that they’re shedding ice particles and look like jellyfish. Must be colder than cold up there.
Thanks for the video!!!
Currently on spaceweather.com:
I’m just pleased to read somebody discussing direct affects of CO2 upon cloud formation high up in the troposphere.
Perhaps in a few more decades we’ll see climatists discussing how to model it in a way that simulates reality in a useful manner.
Sara
When viewing clouds I always look for a mid-1950 Ferrari.
🙂
Putting an IR photon into a CO2 molecule and having the molecule re-emit a photon will cause abso lutely NO warming of the atmosphere. You can ONLY use energy one time. If the energy in a photon is re-emitted it cannot have been used for heating.
What happens is that almost all of the absorbed photons are converted to kinetic energy or thermalized in the atmospheric molecules when they collide with the energized CO2 molecules.
Then the energy is gone, It cannot be re-emitted because it has been expended as thermal energy accelerating the particles in the atmosphere as a whole.
TOA spectra prove this. If there was re-emission the notch in the 15 micron band of CO2 absorption would not exist. The energy would find its way to TOA eventually.
What you are being asked to believe is that the Law of Conservation of Energy does not exist and that CO2 can magically both warm the air and re-emit photons in the lower troposphere.
The lower troposphere is a quenching atmosphere that grabs the energy of the CO2 molecule and immediately converts it to atmospheric movement. Once this is done the CO2 molecule cannot re-emit.
Whaaaaaat???? Higher CO2 is going to cause warming down lower and cooling up higher? I am racking my brain but cannot come up with the physics behind this. And this sentence:
“methane is converted to water vapor at these altitudes”
is just wrong. You CANNOT convert methane (CH4) into water vapor – no way, now how. You can oxidize it producing CO2 AND H2O (water) – which has to be (very sloppily) what they mean. But you can do that in the lower atmosphere as well. It just takes a little bump of energy.
So back to a cooler high atmosphere. I found this which makes sense:
“New measurements from a NASA satellite show a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere that correlates with the declining activity of the current solar cycle.” https://www.universetoday.com/47851/earths-upper-atmosphere-is-cooling/
Less ultra-violet light from the Sun, less energy to absorb, lower temperatures. OK, got it. But how does an increase in CO2 warming the lower atmosphere COOL the upper atmosphere? The Earth has to remain in energy equilibrium, so are they suggesting that less high energy radiation is reflected by the Earth? Is it due to pressure gradient of an expanding atmosphere? Thinner air would mean less kinetic (direct) heat transfer and a higher radiant emission. It has to be due to atmospheric expansion, I can’t think of anything else that would cause this.
Help?
No-one so far has mentioned aviation. There are a lot of aircraft flying round the world above the tropopause, pumping out water vapour. Does this not increase noctilucent clouds?
Is this the reason for the increase of “Polar Stratospheric Clouds and Noctilucent Clouds are Increasing”
“A number of experiments and observations have figured out that, under the right conditions, radio communications signals in the VLF frequency range can in fact affect the properties of the high-energy radiation environment around the Earth,” said Phil Erickson, assistant director at the MIT Haystack Observatory, Westford, Massachusetts.
VLF signals are transmitted from ground stations at huge powers to communicate with submarines deep in the ocean. While these waves are intended for communications below the surface, they also extend out beyond our atmosphere, shrouding Earth in a VLF bubble. This bubble is even seen by spacecraft high above Earth’s surface, such as NASA’s Van Allen Probes, which study electrons and ions in the near-Earth environment.”
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasas-van-allen-probes-spot-man-made-barrier-shrouding-earth
As a chemist/chem. eng. this noctilucent cloud business instantly put me in mind of Liesegang phenomena = periodic patterns of reaction products or precipitation in a diffusion dominated viscous medium. (took me a while to remember the name to go with the visual recognition, though)
Check it our here https://becomingborealis.com/in-silico-a-short-history-of-liesegang-rings/
Picture Chem
and Clouds