March 12th, 2020 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Once again I am being drawn into defending the common explanation of Earth’s so-called “greenhouse effect” as it is portrayed by the IPCC, textbooks, and virtually everyone who works in atmospheric radiation and thermodynamics.
To be clear, I am not defending the IPCC’s predictions of future climate change… just the general explanation of the Earth’s greenhouse effect, which has a profound influence on global temperatures as well as on weather.
As we will see, much confusion arises about the greenhouse effect due to its complexity, and the difficulty in expressing that complexity accurately with words alone. In fact, the IPCC’s greenhouse effect “definition” quoted by Dr. Ollila is incomplete and misleading, as anyone who understands the greenhouse effect should know.
As we will see, in the case of something as complicated as the greenhouse effect, a simplified worded definition should never be the basis for quantitative calculations; instead, complicated calculations are sometimes only poorly described with words.
What is the “Greenhouse Effect”?
Descriptions of the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect are unavoidably incomplete due to its complexity, and even misleading at times due to ambiguous phrasing when trying to express that complexity.
The complexity arises because the greenhouse effect involves every cubic meter of the atmosphere having the ability to both absorb and emit infrared (IR) energy. (And almost never are the rates of absorption and emission the same, contrary to the claims of many skeptics – IR emission is very temperature-dependent, while absorption is not).
While essentially all the energy for this ultimately comes from absorbed sunlight, the infrared absorption and re-radiation by air (and by clouds in the atmosphere) makes the net impact of the greenhouse effect on temperatures somewhat non-intuitive. The emission of this invisible radiation by everything around us is obviously more difficult to describe than the single-source Sun.
The ability of air and clouds to absorb and emit IR radiation has profound impacts on energy flows and temperatures throughout the atmosphere, leading to the multiple infrared energy flow arrows (red) in the energy budget diagram originally popularized by Kiehl & Trenberth (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Global- and time-averaged (day+night and through the seasons) primary energy flows between the surface, atmosphere, and space (NASA). If there was no atmosphere, there would be a single yellow arrow reaching the surface, and a single red arrow extending from the surface to outer space, representing equal magnitudes of absorbed solar and emitted infrared energy, respectively.
[As an aside, contrary to the claims of the 2010 book Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory, this simplified picture of the average energy flows between the Earth’s surface, atmosphere, and space is NOT what is assumed by climate models. Climate models use the relevant physical processes at every point on three-dimensional grid covering the Earth, with day-night and seasonal cycles of solar illumination. The simplified energy budget diagram is instead the best-estimate of the global average energy flows based upon a wide variety of observations, model diagnostics, and the assumption of no natural long-term climate change.]
If the Earth had no atmosphere (like the Moon), the surface temperature at any given location would be governed by the balance between the rate of absorbed solar energy and the loss of thermally-emitted infrared (IR) radiation. The sun would heat the surface to a temperature where the emitted IR radiation balanced the absorbed solar radiation, and then the temperature would stop increasing. This general concept of energy balance between energy gain and energy loss is involved in determining the temperature of virtually anything you can think of.
But the Earth does have an atmosphere, and the atmosphere both absorbs and emits IR radiation in all directions. “Greenhouse gases” (primarily water vapor, but also carbon dioxide) provide most of this function, and any gain or loss of an IR photon by a GHG molecule is almost immediately felt by the non-radiatively active gases (like nitrogen and oxygen) through molecular collisions.
If we were to represent these infrared energy flows in Fig. 1 more completely, there would be a nearly infinite number of red arrows, both upward and downward, connecting every vanishingly-thin layer of atmosphere with every other vanishingly thin layer. Those are the flows that are happening continuously in the atmosphere.
The most important net impact of the greenhouse effect on terrestrial temperatures is this:
The net effect of a greenhouse atmosphere is that it keeps the lower atmospheric layers (and surface) warmer, and the upper atmosphere colder, than if the greenhouse effect did not exist.
I have often called this a “radiative blanket” effect.
Interestingly, without the greenhouse effect, the upper layers of the troposphere would not be able to cool to outer space, and weather as we know it (which depends upon radiative destabilization of the vertical temperature profile) would not exist. This was demonstrated by Manabe & Strickler (1964) who calculated that, without convective overturning, the pure radiative equilibrium temperature profile of the troposphere is very hot at the surface, and very cold in the upper troposphere. Convective overturning in the atmosphere reduces this huge temperature ‘lapse rate’ by about two-thirds to three-quarters, resulting in what we observe in the real atmosphere.
Dr. Ollila’s Claims
The latest installment of what I consider to be bad skeptical science regarding the greenhouse effect comes from emeritus professor of environmental science, Dr. Antero Ollila, who claims that the energy budget diagram somehow violates the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., conservation of energy, at least in terms of how the greenhouse effect is quantified.
His article is entitled, How The IPCC’s Greenhouse Definition Violates the Physical Law of Conservation of Mass & Energy. He uses a modified version (Fig. 2) of the Kiehl-Trenberth diagram:
Fig. 2. Dr. Ollila’s version of the global energy budget diagram.
It should be noted that these global average energy budget diagrams do indeed conserve energy in their total energy fluxes at the top-of-atmosphere (the climate system as a whole), as well as for the surface and atmosphere, separately. If you add up these energy gain and loss terms you will see they are equal, which must be the case for any system with a stable temperature over time.
But what Dr. Ollila seems to be confused about is what you can physically and quantitatively deduce about the greenhouse effect when you start combining energy fluxes in that diagram. Much of the first part of Dr. Ollila’s article is just fine. His objection to the diagram is introduced with the following statement, which those who hold similar views to his will be triggered by:
“The obvious reason for the GH effect seems to be the downward infrared radiation from the atmosphere to the surface and its magnitude is 345 W/m2. Therefore, the surface absorbs totally 165 (solar) + 345 (downward infrared from the atmosphere) = 510 W/m2.“
At this point some of my readers (you know who you are) will object to that quote, and say something like, “But the only energy input at the surface is from the sun! How can the atmosphere add more energy to the system, when the sun is the only source of energy?” My reading of Dr. Ollila’s article indicates that that is where he is going as well.
But this is where the problem with ambiguous wording comes in. The atmosphere is not, strictly speaking, adding more energy to the surface. It is merely returning a portion of the atmosphere-absorbed solar, infrared, and convective transport energy back to the surface in the form of infrared energy.
As shown in Fig. 2, the surface is still emitting more IR energy than the atmosphere is returning to the surface, resulting in net surface loss of [395 – 345 =] 50 W/m2 of infrared energy. And, as previously mentioned, all energy fluxes at the surface balance.
And this is what our intuition tells us should be happening: the surface is warmed by sunlight, and cooled by the loss of IR energy (plus moist and dry convective cooling of the surface of 91 and 24 W/m2, respectively.) But the atmosphere’s radiative blanket reduces the rate of IR cooling from the warmer lower layers of the atmosphere to the upper cooler layers. This alteration of average energy flows by greenhouse gases and clouds alters the atmospheric temperature profile.
A related but common misunderstanding is the idea that the rate of energy input determines a system’s temperature. That’s wrong.
Given any rate of energy input into a system, the temperature will continue to increase until temperature-dependent energy loss mechanisms equal the rate of energy input. If you don’t believe it, let’s look at an extreme example.
Believe it or not, the human body generates energy through metabolism at a rate that is 8,000 time greater than what the sun generates, per kg of mass. But the human body has an interior temperature of only 98.6 deg. F, while the sun’s interior temperature is estimated to be around 27,000,000 deg. F. This is a dramatic example that the rate of energy *input* does not determine temperature: it’s the balance between the rates of energy gain and energy loss that determines temperature.
If energy has no efficient way to escape, then even a weak rate of energy input can lead to exceedingly high temperatures, such as occurs in the sun. I have read that it takes thousands of years for energy created in the core of the sun from nuclear fusion to make its way to the sun’s surface.
Since this is meant to be a critique of Dr. Ollila’s specific arguments let’s return to them. I just wanted to first address his central concern by explaining the greenhouse effect in the best terms I can, before I confuse you with his arguments. Here I list the main points of his reasoning, in which I reproduce the first quote from above for completeness:
[begin quote]
The obvious reason for the GH effect seems to be the downward infrared radiation from the atmosphere to the surface and its magnitude is 345 Wm-2. Therefore, the surface absorbs totally 165 + 345 = 510 Wm-2….
The difference between the radiation to the surface and the net solar radiation is 510 – 240 = 270 Wm-2...
The real GH warming effect is right here: it is 270 Wm-2 because it is the extra energy warming the Earth’s surface in addition to the net solar energy.
The final step is that we must find out what is the mechanism creating this infrared radiation from the atmosphere. According to the IPCC’s definition, the GH effect is caused by the GH gases and clouds which absorb infrared radiation of 155 Wm-2 emitted by the surface and which they further radiate to the surface.
As we can see there is a problem – and a very big problem – in the IPCC’s GH effect definition: the absorbed energy of 155 Wm-2 cannot radiate to the surface 345 Wm-2 or even 270 Wm-2. According to the energy conversation law, energy cannot be created from the void. According to the same law, energy does not disappear, but it can change its form.
From Figure (2) it is easy to name the two other energy sources which are needed for causing the GH effect namely latent heating 91 Wm-2 and sensible heating 24 Wm-2, which make 270 Wm-2 with the longwave absorption of 155 Wm-2.
When the solar radiation absorption of 75 Wm-2 by the atmosphere will be added to these three GH effect sources, the sum is 345 Wm2. Everything matches without the violation of physics. No energy disappears or appears from the void. Coincidence? Not so.
Here is the point: the IPCC’s definition means that the LW absorption of 155 Wm-2 could create radiation of 270 Wm-2 which is impossible.“
[end quote]
Now, I have spent at least a couple of hours trying to follow his line of reasoning, and I cannot. If Dr. Ollila wanted to claim that the energy budget numbers violate energy conservation, he could have made all of this much simpler by asking the question, How can 240 W/m2 of solar input to the climate system cause 395 W/m2 of IR emission by the surface? Or 345 W/m2 of downward IR emission from the sky to the surface? ALL of these numbers are larger than the available solar flux being absorbed by the climate system, are they not? But, as I have tried to explain from the above, a 1-way flow of IR energy is not very informative, and only makes quantitative sense when it is combined with the IR flow in the opposite direction.
If we don’t do that, we can fool ourselves into thinking there is some mysterious and magical “extra” source of energy, which is not the case at all. All energy flows in these energy budget diagram have solar input as the energy source, and as energy courses through the climate system, they all end up balancing. There is no violation of the laws of thermodynamics.
Is There an Energy Flux Measure of the Greenhouse Effect?
One of the problems with Dr. Ollila’s reasoning is that there really isn’t any of these unidirectional energy fluxes (or combinations of energy fluxes, such as 155, or 270, or 345 W/m2) that can be called a measure of the greenhouse effect. The average unidirectional energy fluxes are what exist after the surface and atmosphere have readjusted their temperature and humidity structures (as well as after the sensible and latent convective heat transports get established).
Even the oft-quoted 33 deg. C of warming isn’t a measure of the greenhouse effect… it’s the resulting surface warming after convective heat transports have cooled the surface. As I recall, the true, pure radiative equilibrium greenhouse effect on surface temperature (without convective heat transports) would double or triple that number.
If the atmospheric radiative energy flows are too abstract for you, let’s use the case of a house heated in the winter. On an average cold winter day, I compute from standard sources that the heating unit in the average house leads to a loss of energy through the walls, ceiling, and floor of about 10 W/m2 (just take the heater input in Watts [around 5,000 Joules/sec] and divide by the surface area of all house exterior surfaces [ around 500 sq. meters]).
But compare that 10 W/m2 of energy flow though the walls, ceiling, and floor to the inward IR emission by the exterior walls, which (it is easy to show) emit an IR flux toward the center of the house that is about 100 W/m2 greater than the outward emission by the outside of the walls. That ~100 W/m2 difference in outward versus inward IR flux is still energetically consistent with the 10 W/m2 of heat flow outward through the walls.
This seeming contradiction is resolved (just as in the case of Earth’s surface energy budget) when we realize that the NET (2-way) infrared flux at the inside surface of the exterior walls is still outward, because that wall surface will be slightly colder than the interior of the house, which is also emitting IR energy toward the outside walls. Talking about the IR flux in only one direction is not very quantitatively useful by itself. There is no magical and law-violating creation of extra energy.
Concluding Comments
If you have managed to wade through the arguments above and understand most of them, congratulations. You now see how complicated the greenhouse effect is compared to, say, just sunlight warming the Earth’s surface. That complexity leads to imprecise, incomplete, and ambiguous descriptions of the greenhouse effect, even in the scientific literature (and the IPCC’s description).
The most accurate representation of the greenhouse effect is made through the relevant equations that describe the radiative (and convective) energy flows between the surface and the atmosphere. To express all of that in words would be nearly impossible, and the more accurate the wording, the more the reader’s eyes would glaze over.
So, we are left with people like me trying to inform the public on issues which I sometimes consider to be a waste of time arguing about. I only waste that time because I would like for my fellow skeptics to be armed with good science, not bad science.
[I still maintain that the simplest backyard demonstration of the greenhouse effect in action is with a handheld IR thermometer pointed at a clear sky at different angles, and seeing the warming of the thermometer’s detector as you scan from the zenith down to an oblique angle. That is the greenhouse effect in action.]
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I promised to write one comment for those commentators who think that there is no LW radiation from the atmosphere to the Earth’s surface and if there is it has no effect on the surface temperature or “Heat cannot flow from a cold object to the hotter object”. Heat cannot but radiation can heat a hotter object. . This is a long explantation including a real test.
Cars under carports have clear windows – why? Introduction for the roles of clouds In Scandinavian countries carports are popular, because
1) They are cheaper than garages.
2) They keep temperatures lower than in garages, which keep corrosion rate lower (they use a lot of salt on our roads).
3) They prevent snow covering the car.
4) They keep the windows of the car clear without ice and frost and the driver does not need to scrape windows.
This last advantage is a great mystery for a layman. Why do the windows not get frozen and covered by frost and ice, when the car nearby without a carport can have totally frozen and icy windows? Seemingly exactly the same conditions, but a very different result. There are wild guesses in the net sites and the real reason may not be believed.
The roof makes a difference: it prevents cooling by radiation
This is a real example. I have not a carport, but my neighbor next door has. The outside temperature was -17 degrees, it had been a cloudless night, my car’s windows were covered by frost and the neighbor’s car had clear windows in the morning. The surface temperatures of the tops of the cars measured by infrared thermometers were: my car -35 degrees, the neighbor’s car -20 degrees.
Radiation flux of any surface can be calculated from the eq. (1). This eq. (1) can be used for calculating the temperature of the radiating body as well, if the radiation flux is known.
I = εσT4 (1)
where I is radiation intensity (W m−2), ε is emissivity coefficient (black body =1), σ is Stefan-Boltzmann constant (σ = 5.670373×10−8 W m−2 T−4), and T is the temperature of the radiating body (Kelvin=K).
We can use the equation (2) developed by Goforth et al. which is more accurate in the atmospheric conditions for calculating downward radiation from the sky:
Idown = (1 +K*C)* 8.78*10^-13 * T^5.852 * RH^0.07195 (2)
where K is cloud height parameter(0.34 for 5 km), C is cloud cover (0 for clear sky and 1 for total overcast), T is temperature in Kelvin, RH is relative humidity. Emissivity of the car is about 0.95, snow and frost 0.8 and the night sky 0.74.
In this example the car’s upward radiation flux value is according eq. (1) 232 Wm-2 assuming 50 % RH. In the same conditions, the clear sky radiates downward according to eq. (2) 145 Wm-2. This means that my car cools down with the flux rate of 232-145 = 87 Wm-2. The temperature of the car surface decreases and in the temperature -26.8 degrees it starts to get frost cover because it is the dew point of the air. When the car’s surface temperature has reached -35 C, its upward radiation rate is 146 Wm-2 (I have used snow’s emissivity 0.8). Now there is about the thermal balance (145 versus 146) in the radiation fluxes upward and downward and my car does not cool down anymore. Note that the measured temperature of my car’s surface in the morning was -35 degrees. Nothing is so practical and handy as the right theory. Do you know that water in a bucket under the clear night sky in Sahara can be frozen in the morning even though the ambient temperature is above 0 degrees? The explanation is above. The cloudless night sky represents space, where the real temperature is close to the absolute zero in Kelvins. It is about -270 C.
Back to basics. the Stefan-Boltzmann law can be written also in the form, which can be found in many textbooks of physics
P = e σ A (T^4 – Tc^4), where (2)
P is net radiated power, A is net radiated area, emissivity (1 for ideal black surface, the Earth is very close to 1), σ Stefan’s constant, T is the temperature of the hot radiator, Tc is the temperature of a cold radiator of the temperature of surroundings.
The question is, why there is the term Tc? It is therefore that the colder object emits radiation all the time according to Planck’s. The photons emitted by this colder object hit the surface of the hotter body and they will be absorbed. Is there a law, which says that a hotter object cannot absorb certain kinds of photons? No, there is not. A black surface absorbs all the SW and LW radiation photons. Will the energy of photon originating from a colder object disappear in the absorbance process? According to the 1st law of thermodynamics, the energy cannot disappear but it will be transformed into heat.
I cannot help those who do not accept these explanations. It is hopeless because they have their own laws of physics. On the Finnish webpage, one man used five pages to show that the atmosphere cannot radiate LW radiation to the surface and in the end he also said that it cannot even be measured.
Antero,
The frosting differences are due to the psychrometric properties of moist air. wet bulb and dew point.
Evaporation to saturation and moisture dew points below freezing.
It’s that frosty costing from pouring a cold beer into a beer stein out of the freezer.
No IR need apply.
The only difference between these two cars in the roof above another car which has no frost on windows and its temperature is higher than the other car. your explanation does not apply but my physics and mathematics work well.
But I do not continue this discussion because you belong to that group with your own physics.
Please explain your claim of 0.95 emissivity. Your case can be explained by air and does not require radiation equations. In addition, your explanation is using the car port cover as a heat source. That is physically impossible.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1985-11-10-8503170655-story.html
https://www.transcat.com/calibration-resources/application-notes/measuring-emissivity
To JP66.
A Quote: “In addition, your explanation is using the car port cover as a heat source.” The roof of the carport prevents cooling into the black night sky because there is much warmer roof above the car. The roof emits much more LW radiation than the black night sky. The car does emit radiation according to its temperature. It has no idea what is the situation above the car but it reacts to LW radiation hitting its roof. I have shown this with detailed calculations. If you disagree, please show your calculations.
“The frosting differences are due to the psychrometric properties of moist air. wet bulb and dew point.”
“The frosting differences are due to the psychrometric properties of moist air. wet bulb and dew point.”
Dear, oh dear!
No they are not.
You speak of deposition of rime.
Deposition of hoar frost is due to the surface falling below the frost point of the air, the RH of the air does not matter other than the surface is cold enough to reach the air’s FP.
This can only happen via radiation to space (otherwise it cannot get colder than the air temperature).
Should a cloud come over then (quite often) in marginal conditions the frost will melt.
It staggers me that you have not observed that or noticed that only surfaces open to a clear sky are/have been effected.
BTW: I have observed this many, many times in a professional capacity and indeed provided forecasts to authorities of such conditions on their roads. ….. the surface temperature of which I was required to monitor (in their 10’s), so I know precisely how they behave in all overnight meteorological conditions.
Try observing!
It can commonly be seen that Ci cloud at temperatures well below -30C will cause a road temperature to pause falling or even rise a little when at sub-zero temps.
And it isn’t some magical heat transference, it is the ground heat flux being maintained whilst the surface emission is slowed.
The GHE.
Just 3 questions.
Why do CO2 molecules NOT accept Radiation photons at any other than their “frequency” Bands of 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)?
ie why do they not absorb (and heat up) by absorbing all Radiation photons for all Frequencies?
What do you call a gas that prevents heat from escaping the Atmosphere?
What do you call a Gas that assists heat to escape the Atosphere?
Dr. Spencer, who I highly respect, clearly cautions that calculating the energy flows and energy “balance” in the Earth-atmosphere system is very complex.
However, he then goes on to state: “Given any rate of energy input into a system, the temperature will continue to increase until temperature-dependent energy loss mechanisms equal the rate of energy input.”
Unfortunately, by this statement, Dr. Spencer reveals that he has overlooked the latent heat (enthalpy) that is involved with the phase changes of water: liquid water going to ice (and vice versa) and liquid water going to water vapor (and vice versa). Both of these processes take place at CONSTANT, albeit different, temperatures (neglecting ambient pressure-induced variations) and both involve a considerable amount of specific enthalpy (334 J/gm at ~ 0 C for water freezing/melting, and 2500 J/gm for liquid water at 0 C to 2460 J/gm for water at 17 C vaporizing/condensing, respectively). These are not “energy loss” mechanisms, but instead can be considered as energy “reservoirs”.
Processes involving the latent heat of fusion of water and the latent heat of vaporization of water take place continuously within the normal range of temperatures and pressure occurring seasonally across Earth’s surface (e.g., poles versus equator). These thermophysical aspects of water, which comprises about 71% of Earth’s surface, effectively decouple energy exchange from temperature variation on global Earth and introduce a significant time phase-shift that invalidates any “equilibrium” energy balance calculation, such a those of Trenberth et. al. Notice that energy inflows and outflows for water phase changes are not considered in these so-called “energy balance” diagrams.
And it would be incorrect to say that the energy flows into and out of these energy “reservoirs” cancel out over a year’s—or even longer—time period because that would be tantamount to saying cloud cover, atmospheric humidity, GLAT and total ice extent on Earth remain constant year-after-year, which clearly they do not.
It is surprising to me that so many scientists overlook these critical aspects of water as it governs Earth’s climate.
“…the atmosphere both absorbs and emits IR radiation in all directions.”
Prove it!
CO2 absorbs IR radiation.
CO2 emits IR.
CO2 doesn’t care which direction the radiation it absorbs is coming from.
CO2 doesn’t care which direction the radiation that leaves it is going.
CO2 and other green house gases are part of the atmosphere.
Consider it proven.
Handwaviium is not proof.
MarkW’s statements (although anthropomorphizing CO2 for simplification, and considering the words “absorb” and “radiate” to refer to CO2’s specific spectral bands) are scientific FACTS. They are not handwaving.
That you do not understand the difference is a pity.
“I have often called this a “radiative blanket” effect.”
A blanket obeys Q = U * A *dT just like the insulated walls of a house and NOT sigma * epsilon * A * T^4
[I still maintain that the simplest backyard demonstration of the greenhouse effect in action is with a handheld IR thermometer pointed at a clear sky at different angles, and seeing the warming of the thermometer’s detector as you scan from the zenith down to an oblique angle. That is the greenhouse effect in action.]
The Instruments & Measurements
But wait, you say, upwelling LWIR power flux is actually measured. (and by extension downwelling.)
Well, no it’s not.
IR instruments, e.g. pyrheliometers, radiometers, etc. don’t directly measure power flux. They measure a relative temperature compared to heated/chilled/calibration/reference thermistors or thermopiles and INFER a power flux using that comparative temperature and ASSUMING an emissivity of 1.0. The Apogee instrument instruction book actually warns the owner/operator about this potential error noting that ground/surface emissivity can be less than 1.0.
That this warning went unheeded explains why SURFRAD upwelling LWIR with an assumed and uncorrected emissivity of 1.0 measures TWICE as much upwelling LWIR as incoming ISR, a rather egregious breach of energy conservation.
This also explains why USCRN data shows that the IR (SUR_TEMP) parallels the 1.5 m air temperature, (T_HR_AVG) and not the actual ground (SOIL_TEMP_5). The actual ground is warmer than the air temperature with few exceptions, contradicting the RGHE notion that the air warms the ground.
Pointing an IR thermometer at the sky and claiming downward energy flow violates thermo and is generally clueless.
If an IR thermometer pointed into a clear night sky reads any higher than -270C then that is due to a GHE.
Energy back-radiated from somewhere/thing between the thermometer and space.
If it were not then space is not, as we are told, at 3K.
Are you at least prepared to believe that bit of empirical science?
Anthony,
All the IR sensor “sees” is the surroundings out to about 30 m. And radiation demands a surface. What’s the sky’s surface?
Space around the earth is, in fact, NOT 3K.
Space – the Hotter Frontier
One of the heated issues underlying greenhouse theory is whether space is hot or cold.
Greenhouse theory says that without an atmosphere the earth would be exposed to a near zero outer space and become a frozen ice ball at -430 F, 17 K. https://sos.noaa.gov/Education/script_docs/SCRIPTWhat-makes-Earth-habitable.pdf
(slide 14)
Geoengineering techniques that increase the albedo, the ISS’s ammonia refrigerant air conditioners, an air conditioner in the manned maneuvering unit, space suits including thermal underwear with chilled water tubing, UCLA Diviner lunar data and Kramm’s models (Univ of AK) all provide substantial evidence that local outer space is relatively hot.
But outer space is neither hot nor cold.
By definition and application temperature is a relative measurement of the molecular kinetic energy in a substance, i.e. solid, liquid, gas. No molecules (vacuum), no temperature. No kinetic energy (absolute zero), no temperature. In the void & vacuum of outer space the terms temperature, hot, cold are meaningless, like dividing by zero, undefined. Same reason there is no sound in space – no molecules.
However, any substance capable of molecular kinetic energy (ISS, space walker, satellite, moon, earth) placed in the path of the spherical expanding solar photon gas at the earth’s average orbital distance will be heated per the S-B equation to an equilibrium temperature of: 1,368 W/m^2 = 394 K, 121 C, 250 F. The ISS HVAC engineer even remarks on dealing with this in keeping folks cool.
Like a blanket held up between a camper and campfire the atmosphere reduces the amount of solar energy heating the terrestrial system and cools the earth compared to no atmosphere.
This intuitively obvious as well as calculated and measured scientific reality refutes the greenhouse theory which postulates the exact opposite even incorrectly claiming the naked earth would be a -430 F ice ball.
Zero greenhouse effect, Zero CO2 global warming and Zero man caused climate change.
re: “But outer space is neither hot nor cold.”
It doesn’t matter what you think, it matters what your “IR thermometer” reads (or measures).
BTW, what __does__ it read (or measure)?
_Jim,
IR instruments, e.g. pyrheliometers, radiometers, etc. don’t directly measure power flux. They measure a relative temperature compared to heated/chilled/calibration/reference thermistors or thermopiles and INFER a power flux using that comparative temperature and ASSUMING an emissivity of 1.0. The Apogee instrument instruction book actually warns the owner/operator about this potential error noting that ground/surface emissivity can be less than 1.0.
That this warning went unheeded explains why SURFRAD upwelling LWIR with an assumed and uncorrected emissivity of 1.0 measures TWICE as much upwelling LWIR as incoming ISR, a rather egregious breach of energy conservation.
This also explains why USCRN data shows that the IR (SUR_TEMP) parallels the 1.5 m air temperature, (T_HR_AVG) and not the actual ground (SOIL_TEMP_5). The actual ground is warmer than the air temperature with few exceptions, contradicting the RGHE notion that the air warms the ground.
“ All the IR sensor “sees” is the surroundings out to about 30 m. And radiation demands a surface. What’s the sky’s surface?
Space around the earth is, in fact, NOT 3K.”
Nick:
You still do not get the concept.
The IR sensor seems what it is pointed at.
It is directional.
If pointed at the sky it sees the sky.
You say “the space around the Earth is not 3K”
CORRECT
BUT the IR thermometer can only see that it is “not 3K”
WHEN GHGS ARE PRESENT TO RE-RADIATE LWIR BACK TO SAID THERMO.
That is the entire point right there!!
The GHE.
The GHE comes from the presence of GHGs.
If they were not there then the thermo would “see” space at 3K.
Ergo you have the GHE as the thermo sees “space around Earth, NOT 3K”
YOU ARE ARGUING AGAINST YOURSELF AND FAIL TO SEE IT.
Your conceptual fail is blinkering you, and you alone here – the world’s scientists are not and have not been these last 150 years since Arrhenius ‘discovered’ the GHE.
Why are you special in that?
You’re not.
There’s a name for the syndrome you know.
My biggest problem with the greenhouse theory is that the conductive transfer and adiabatic transfer of energy to the upper atmosphere and re radiation by all atmospheric particles isn’t counted whereas the relatively tiny interception / re-radiation energy budget of the CO2 molecule will have a vast effect on the difference between Stefan Boltzmann calculations and our actual temperature. Even Trenberth shows 5 percent of solar energy being conducted into the atmosphere and basic physics says all of this energy may be re-radiated by any particle. The basic ability of the CO2 particles to absorb energy is more than 2 magnitudes smaller in budget when conductive intercepted energy is considered. Turning water to vapour and then having it deposit large amounts of energy through conductive processes to neighbouring molecules in the atmosphere when condensing is also something CO2 doesn’t do.
That’s perhaps the biggest laugh in their hypothesis. As if the atmosphere magically stays in place between updrafts and downdrafts, no thermal conduction taking place between gas molecules like they themselves are magically fixed in place and radiating/absorbing like a solid.
I’m ROTFL reading all this nonsense about the U.N. IPCC’s fake physics hoax called CO2-driven global warming. There is one magic bullet that kills all attempts to save it, namely, that CO2 is the wrong gas for global warming because its radiation absorption/emission wavelength has a Planck radiation temperature of -80C, about the same temperature as dry ice, which can’t melt an ice cube. If it were more like +40C, a blizzard of words might make it plausible, but not -80C. Cold photons can’t increase the temperature of a hotter object, period, end of story.
Read my lips: Dry ice in the sky can’t cause global warming. Just Say No to the IPCC and -80C.
http://www.historyscoper.com/thebiglieaboutco2.html
– T.L. Winslow (TLW)
“World’s Greatest Genius” (WGG)
My big problem with the graphic is that the atmosphere appears to radiate more heat to the ground than space:
345 vs. 212 if I’m reading that right. Sorry, for a sphere the surface area is greater on top than inside. Also, at altitude there is a less than 50% probability that radiation will strike the Earth than go to space.
This seems like a massive error, so I must be interpreting the graphic wrong.
TL; DR: if the atmosphere is emitting 212 W/m2 to space, what it emits to the Earth must be less due to geometry.
They seem to ignore the optical depth of a photon emitted greatly increases as you increase in height due to the decrease in density. Very few photons emitted from GHGs above 100 m reach back to the surface.
Good Lord, what a bunch of amateurs, including our author. “Returning a portion” is not a concept we learn in engineering school.
Rod has it partially correct, although his spelling is not very good. John Tillman is spot-on.
The Sun emits radiation at a temperature of 5,778 K. It hits the rotating Earth, which has an atmosphere. The atmosphere absorbs some, the clouds and the surface reflect some, and the surface absorbs the rest.
The surface and the atmosphere radiate too, both, all the time.
CO2 absorbs radiation emitted from matter at around -80 C, or 153.15K. Of course there is a Plank spectrum, so CO2 absorbs a bit from matter at other temperatures too.
Radiative heating is proportional to the 4th power of the difference in temperature between the two bodies involved. This is a concept difficult to understand, and if you never had to pass an exam on this concept, good luck.
The energy flow diagram is ludicrous, simply because the Earth Rotates!
Bottom line is, CO2 absorbs essentially all the radiation from the surface that it can, at an altitude of less than 10 meters from the surface, and immediately thermalizes this radiation. This is most of the greenhouse effect. Thermalizes means converts the 15-micron longwave IR to atmospheric heat. How it does this involves an induced dipole moment, another concept about which you must have needed to pass an exam to understand.
‘Way up high where the atmosphere is thin and there is not much water vapor at all, CO2 absorbs and re-radiates, not thermalizes, radiation emitted at -80C. This re-radiated IR goes in all directions, half of which goes down. More CO2 in the atmosphere raises the height at which this happens, lowering the temperature at which this happens, increasing the amount of energy retained in the atmosphere.
All matter radiates all the time in all directions. CO2 only absorbs radiation emitted at a temperature lower than the surface of the Earth, and only emits radiation at this same temperature.
Photons emitted at a lower temperature than the receiving body are not received, but reflected, as the 2nd Law tells us that a cooler body can never raise the temperature of a warmer body by transferring heat, whether conductively, convectively, or by radiation.
The atmosphere cannot heat itself, not the surface of the Earth. The Sun does that. The atmosphere affects the way the Earth radiates back to space.
Professors Smith and Wang at the glorious U of Michigan told me so, and they know whereof they speak.
Michael,
Even if CO2 could actually do what you say (I have my doubts.) 0.04% has insufficient mass to warm anything of substance.
Yeah, but 0.06% by mass rather than volume!
Schroeder Fitting, not Hansen,
The atmosphere radiates to space. CO2 up high changes the altitude at which the atmosphere freely radiates to space, affecting the rate at which the atmosphere radiates to space, affecting the amount of energy NOT radiated to space hence retained in the atmosphere.
I did not say that CO2 warms anything. By absorbing and thermalizing outgoing long-wave IR close to the surface, energy is retained in the atmosphere. By absorbing and reradiating outgoing long-wave IR up high, energy is retained in the atmosphere.
Is retaining energy the same thing as Warming? No. Does a blanket warm you? No, it slows cooling.
The “atmosphere” freely radiates to space?
The whole atmosphere radiates to space?
AC/DC,
Yes. All matter above Absolute Zero radiates all the time in all directions. The ice cubes in your freezer are radiating. Since the atmosphere is gaseous it does not radiate much compared to, say, a utility boiler, but yes it radiates, at the Plank frequencies corresponding to its temperature.
The top of the atmosphere radiates freely to space.
As you go deeper into the atmosphere, the radiation is more indirect.
If the atmosphere didn’t radiate to space, then the planet would heat up until it vaporizes.
Michael,
For a given Q increasing the thermal resistance with a blanket, R = 1/U, increases dT, (Tme – T cool bedroom).
The heat flow rate doesn’t change but Tme increases and I feel warmer.
For the same dT my heat loss, Q, decreases.
Or a combination of the two.
The greater the resistance the greater the dT potential needed to move energy through.
Suppose an R6 house is 70 F inside with 30 F outside, dT = 40.
Increase R to 12 and for a given furnace setting the dT goes to 80 and inside goes to 110 F.
Instead the thermostat cuts Q in half.
The atmosphere behaves in much the same way.
1) the earth is cooler with the atmosphere.
2) “extra” BB LWIR energy upwelling from the surface is not possible.
3) No “extra” BB upwelling means no “warming” GHG “extra” energy loop.
4) No RGHE no CAGW
All other topics and discussions are moot.
You have a good point. If the absorbed sunlight is not quickly thermalized then O2 and N2 have little effect in the atmosphere. Little effect means convection is primarily handled by H2O and CO2. Their temps would have to be very high to cause strong updrafts. This just doesn’t make any sense.
In my opinion to many have fallen into a radiation hole and can see nothing else. Thermalization of the whole atmosphere and associated effects on convection, heat transport, and water vapor are much larger than appreciated.
But it’s not 0.04% of radiative forcing via the GHE.
The atmosphere contains >99% gases that are transparent to terrestrial LWIR, so it is actually >40%, up from 28% pre-industrial and together with the other GHGs radiative forcing has risen 41% since 1990 (in 2018).
I don’t suppose you have any problem with CO2 not being sufficient to green the planet?
And that is a 2D effect – the GHE takes place in 3D within the depth of the atmosphere.
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/greenhouse-gas-levels-atmosphere-reach-new-record
https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/atmospheric-greenhouse-gas-concentrations-6/assessment-1
The mass ratio doesn’t matter. Each molecule of CO2 is capable of converting millions of photons of IR into heat, per second.
MarkW,
how would that work?
CO2 is busy radiating away the energy that it received and can convert all the phone energy in heat? This is truly amazing and we should stop building solar panels, power plants and all and convert the free atmospheric energy into work.
Anyone aver pointed out that you have a very wrong grasp of simple physics?
“Each molecule of CO2 is capable of converting millions of photons of IR into heat, per second.”
The mean decay time for an excited CO2 molecule to emit an IR photon is on the order of 1 second. The mean time between molecular collisions, through which an excited CO2 molecule can transfer its energy to another gas molecule (N2, O2), is on the order of 1 nanosecond. So, after a CO2 molecule absorbs an IR photon, 99.9999999% of the time, this energy will be transferred to other gas molecules as kinetic energy, not emitted as another photon.
Photons that are re-emitted are in a random direction. Probability and geometry dictate that less than 50% of the time, can this re-emitted photon intersect the Earth. If it does, it adds molecular energy, which by definition, increases the temperature of the surface.
There are two essential things to consider.
1) Most of the energy transfer is from the surface to the atmosphere. Convection moves heat from the surface to the atmosphere. Radiation primarily moves heat to the atmosphere – with a tiny fraction of that radiation returning to the surface.
2) A photon can only be in one place at a time! If it is energy at the surface, then the surface experiences increased molecular motion and therefore increased temperature. When the photon is emitted away from the surface, it is no longer a part of the surface energy, and consequently, the temperature decreases. If the photon goes to space, then that energy has left the Earth system forever. If a GHG captures it, then the temperature of the atmosphere increases while that energy exists in the GHG or is transferred to the gas as molecular motion. If it returns to the surface, then it adds to the energy of the incoming solar radiation for the time it exists at the surface.
To the energy of the incoming solar radiation, we must add the small number of photons that return to the Earth. But, what percentage of photons return? How long do they persist? How many times do they go back and forth before escaping to space, or residing in the atmosphere before escaping as radiation?
Remember, Watts is Joules/s. These effects are on the order of seconds. An integration over time will show the net energy at the surface. These photons that return will increase temperature.
For those who promote GHE base AGW, the challenge is to:
1) Explain how more than a minuscule fraction of photons return to the surface.
2) Explain how the atmospheric temperature doesn’t indicate the magnitude of energy imbalance claimed.
3) Explain how the ice sheets escape all but a minuscule quantity of this back-radiated energy.
4) What property of physics explains how 95-99% of this imbalance makes its way to the deep oceans – especially considering that IR only penetrates water to a few microns.
You would be correct with most of your statement.
One addition to the photons. Its not the amount of photons but the energy level of the same. This energy level is determined by the temperature at which the photon was emitted.
On that this means that regardless how many photons you might count, if they coming from a source with a lower temperature, they will not matter for the receiver.
This is why a colder body will not be able to warm up a warmer body through radiation.
Adding a fourth molecule of plant food per 10,000 dry air molecules over the past century of course hasn’t raised effective emission height by much, considering that on average Earth’s atmosphere has about 250 water vapor molecules, the far and away most important GHG.
Enriching the air with a fifth and sixth CO2 molecule wouldn’t move it much higher either. It’s still going to be in the middle of the troposphere, around five klicks up.
Quote: “Bottom line is, CO2 absorbs essentially all the radiation from the surface that it can, at an altitude of less than 10 meters from the surface, and immediately thermalizes this radiation. This is most of the greenhouse effect.”
Most of the greenhouse effect. Really? Have you ever heard that water vapor is the most important GH gas even according to the IPCC? I think this enough for commenting this comment.
Of course I have heard that water vapor is a far more effective “greenhouse” gas than CO2, I was a little sloppy there. Up higher, where more CO2 actually does something, there is little if any water vapor.
@Michael Moon
“ Up higher, where more CO2 actually does something, there is little if any water vapor.”
Why do you think CO2 only does something up high?
By absorbing and thermalizing outgoing long-wave IR at 500 meters altitude, energy is retained in the atmosphere. By absorbing and reradiating outgoing long-wave IR at 500 meters altitude, energy is emitted to lower layers (just like “up high”).
“more CO2”
I am not the only one who has carried out the spectral analyses and found out the in the altitude of 1 km the absorption of CO2 is 90 % complete, in the altitude of 2 km, it is 95 % complete. Even though the CO2 concentration is almost the same up to the altitude of 80 kilometers, it does not help, when the energy provided by the surface emittance has been absorbed in the wavelength zone of the CO2. Above the troposphere, there is almost no absorption except the absorption by ozone.
@Antero
90% complete? You must be talking about the infrared emitted by the surface?
Every layer of the troposphere, top to bottom, also produces an upwelling flux.
And this flux is absorbed, shared, and reemitted…. just as if it had come from the surface.
To Snape.
Yes; I am talking about the absorption of LW radiation absorbed by the GH gases in the atmosphere. Yes, I am aware that only 28 W/m2 of LW radiation passes the atmosphere without a single absorption event.
@Antero
I was replying to what you wrote here,
“I am not the only one who has carried out the spectral analyses and found out the in the altitude of 1 km the absorption of CO2 is 90 % complete, in the altitude of 2 km, it is 95 % complete.”
The spectral analyses gave you the percentage of SURFACE IR that had been absorbed at those altitudes, right?
Well, there is also a continuous upwelling flux emitted from lower layers of the atmosphere, and then adsorbed by higher layers. These fluxes are just as important as the one that originates at the surface.
Consider the upwelling infrared emitted by a 100 meter thick layer of atmosphere located at an altitude of about 1 Km. Much less than 90% would be absorbed by the layer directly above it.
This flux is bound for space too, and when absorbed by CO2 or water vapor, the energy is instead shared or reemitted….. just as though it had been emitted by the surface.
“Even though the CO2 concentration is almost the same up to the altitude of 80 kilometers, it does not help, when the energy provided by the surface emittance has been absorbed in the wavelength zone of the CO2”
The concentration Co2 may or may not be the same to 80Km but the amount of CO2 molecules is very substantially less at that height. Most of the idealized CO2 radiation directly to space comes from layers far below which is diluted in weighting by the increase in the TOA surface area at the idealized TOA say 100 km
Sorry for mixing the CO2 absorption and the total absorption by all GH gases. The absorption by CO2 is finished below 1 km because the CO2 is so strong GH gas in its own wavelength zone. The total absorption by all GH gases goes like this_ 90 % in 1 km , 95 % in 2 km, 98 % in 11 km (troposphere). After the troposphere, ozone only increases the total absorption.
Antero,
This is nonsense,
“The absorption by CO2 is finished below 1 km because the CO2 is so strong GH gas in its own wavelength zone. The total absorption by all GH gases goes like this_ 90 % in 1 km , 95 % in 2 km, 98 % in 11 km (troposphere). After the troposphere, ozone only increases the total absorption.”
There is continuous absorption and remission of GHG’s throughout the lower troposphere. A continuous upwelling flux.
You seem to be fixated on the singular flux that originates at the surface.
To Snape. I am not the only researcher who has carried out these spectral calculations. We all have the same results. I have validated my results with the real observations.
Antero
I am not doubting the numbers! I am saying that those figures refer only to the flux originating directly from the surface.
What is the total upwelling LWIR flux at 1 Km altitude? Could you show me using MODTRAN?
A large portion is NOT directly from the surface, but rather was emitted by lower layers of atmosphere.
To Snape. What happens to the emitted LW radiation by the surface is a complicated process. It looks like you are not familiar with spectral calculation applications. They calculate the whole process and you can calculate the absorbed, transmitted and upward LW flux at any given altitude.
You write like this: “A large portion is NOT directly from the surface, but rather was emitted by lower layers of the atmosphere.” That is not correct. As I wrote, these calculations calculate the whole situation, because otherwise, the results would be totally wrong. But they are because they can be validated against the real observations on the surface and at TOA.
Antero
“As I wrote, these calculations calculate the whole situation, because otherwise, the results would be totally wrong. But they are because they can be validated against the real observations on the surface and at TOA.”
I think I see your confusion.
You need to explain to yourself how the total upwelling flux at 1 Km could be observed/measured when viewed from the surface or TOA – if it is subsequently absorbed and reemitted by neighboring layers?
********
An analogy:
From the balcony of a tall building, you could look down and point an IR thermometer at the canopy of a tree. You could perhaps conduct a spectral analysis, and determine that only 5% of the flux originated from the surface, meaning the lion’s share was emitted by the tree’s leaves and branches.
The 5%, however, does not represent the total surface emissions, it only represents the flux that could be viewed from above the tree.
The instr
More simply:
Viewed from the TOA, you cannot see the total upwelling IR flux emitted by the surface, all you can see is the portion emitted from the atmospheric window.
Agreed?
The same holds true for the total flux emitted by a layer at 1Km. Only the atmospheric window is visible from a vantage point at TOA.
I believe that it’s a far more complex issue than how all sides frame it and far too complex to model and get any result of any use to anybody apart from politicians. What I do know that makes me doubt the accepted wisdom is that I can calculate the temperature of a body on the earth’s surface with no reference to downwelling radiation only incoming UV and material properties, I can calculate the temperature profile for the atmosphere with no reference to radiation and, if this downwelling radiation can heat the surface by 33C then surely we can use this immense heat source for something useful? Surely we can measure the magnitude of the downwelling IR if it is real? If we can measure it, it is real and if not then it is imagined. I also know that as you descend from the tropopause, temperature rises and it does so with no reference to radiation. It continues underground where there is none. Jericho is hotter than Jerusalem, the floor of death Valley is hotter than the rim and the snow line is quite high. This seems to indicate that gravity and bulk properties are key issues rather than the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? I believe that to dismiss it out of hand is as wrong as saying that GHGs slow heat release from the atmosphere. I believe that, in the troposphere, conduction and convection completely dominate radiation but I’m not clever enough to understand what happens at the Quantum level
“Climate models use the relevant physical processes at every point on three-dimensional grid covering the Earth, with day-night and seasonal cycles of solar illumination.”
Are you telling me that we have such data available for EVERY POINT on a three-dimensional grid covering the Earth and that we have computers that can handle that much data.
One issue being ignored is that the earth does have geothermal energy.
Yes, 0.03 % of the total energy keeping our planet warm.
Proof of that comment.
For those people who have no idea (or do not approve the fact) on that the energy balance fluxes are based on the observations, I quote a few sentences from the paper of Kato et al. (2018) “Surface Irradiances of Edition 4.0 Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) Data Product”.
Direct quotations from this paper: “TOA and surface irradiances are derived nearly independently. We use surface observations to evaluate EBAF-surface irradiances. The geographical location of surface buoy and land-surface sites used in this study’s validation is shown in Fig. 9. The caption of Fig. 9 is like this: Location of 46 buoys (blue diamond) and 36 land-surface sites (white diamond) where downward irradiances used in validation were taken (after Rutan et al. 2015).”
This is a simple piece of evidence that there is an encompassing network of ground and sea surface measurement stations totaling 81 together, which do measure the downward LW radiation from the atmosphere.
But I know from the experience that those people with their own physics this is no proof at all. Why do I bother?
Dear Dr Spencer,
Perhaps we could get somewhere in this discussion if there were actually an article written that addressed the main arguments instead of red herrings and tangents. Our primary objection to back-radiation hypothesis is that it is standing on its head according to basic laws of physics. We’re saying B-R hypothesis claims that the tail wags the dog, and the only rebuttal we keep getting is that the tail is moving, the tail has momentum, and the tail is connected to the dog, ergo we must be right because we can prove that the tail is exerting a force on the dog.
Start with the kinetic theory of gases, which I would guess most readers here are familiar with. We know that when we measure the temperature of a gas, the energy involved in that thermodynamic relationship between the gas and thermometer is almost entirely due to the translational kinetic energy in the gas. A very tiny fraction of that energy which causes the mercury to rise in the bulb is from the other partitioned energies of the total kinetic energy – the vibrational and rotational degrees of freedom of the individual gas molecules colliding with the thermometer. So where does this leave the contributions from the IR emissions of the surroundings? There seems to be a major disconnect between back radiation hypothesis and established physics here.
Also, many know that the heat budget diagrams are averages and that the GCMs use local physical variables over time, but what I keep saying is that the heat budget diagrams are using erroneous concepts and thus the GCMs must be as well.
1st – Is the atmosphere frictionless? Obviously not. Where is the frictional heating of the atmosphere covered in the heat budget estimates? All sediment transport except from gravity is due to energy that was originally derived from solar heating. In rivers alone this is in the order of petagrams annually. At all times everywhere on Earth the wind is exerting a force upon the surface and everything on it, and it is far from negligible. Like the force needed to sway a 30 meter oak tree back and forth is not negligible, and the wind is doing this on entire forests all day long – until 94 mph where nearly all trees start snapping due to thermal expansion at the flexure point.
2nd – It’s our understanding that the back radiation is estimated by the difference of the estimated temperature using the S-B equation and the measured temperature – assuming that the +33 is entirely due to back radiation. This is flawed because the surface area used to figure the number is abstract. In an academic exercise the area of a 10X10 lawn is 100, but in reality the absorbing and emitting surface area of that 10X10 lawn is much higher than 100 because of the rough texture of that surface – whether it is blades of grass, a forest canopy, or cobbled rocks.
3rd – Thermal density. This is another problem between abstract theory and reality. The Earth is not a hollow shell with zero heat capacity. Water itself acts as a much closer analogue to a real greenhouse gas than the atmosphere because solar energy enters a three dimensional area but can only emit from a 2D surface. All of the terrestrial surface too has thermal mass. The heat budget diagrams act as if the solar energy irradiates a surface and the only place for that heat to go is to radiate back out.
4th – The atmosphere at the surface can be at a higher temperature than the ground below it and heat it via conduction. This happens quite often from late winter to early summer as the ground warms from the low point of winter. Advection fog is a clear example of when there is a large inversion of temperature. Where is thermal return to the surface covered in the heat budget?
5th – Geothermal and photosynthesis – where are they covered in the heat budget estimates?
6th – Thermal updrafts and latent heat transport gas to the upper atmosphere and downdrafts replace that gas at the surface, but what happens to the gas between these vertical moving bundles of air? Do they fall due to gravity – no. Do they float off in to space because they aren’t massive enough to be bothered by gravity – no. This brings me back to the Kinetic Theory of Gases. Air that is seemingly at rest is not at rest at all, there are a huge number of molecular collisions occurring and all contributing to thermodynamic equilibrium. The BR hypothesis conceptualizes the atmosphere as a mass with no motion outside of the updrafts and downdrafts with the primary thermodynamic factor being radiative emission, completely ignoring the Kinetic Theory. The lower atmosphere is heated via conduction with collisions at the surface and that heat it transferred upwards via collisions between molecules regardless of whether that gas is in an updraft or not.
According to BR hypothesis, an atmosphere with no GHGs at all would not recycle any solar heat back to the surface regardless of how massive it was – which of course is utter nonsense. The atmosphere is a heat reservoir that retains thermal energy on the planet almost entirely via mechanical physics. And last, the BR hypothesis paradoxically claims that the atmosphere is there in the first place because of IR absorption from the surface, which of course you can’t receive energy from something if you aren’t there in the first place. The atmosphere is the fractional gas partition of this planet that received the energy to overcome intramolecular forces in order to become a gas in the first place from direct solar heating and retains this energy from the physical processes described above.
Robert,
“…assuming that the +33 is entirely due to back radiation.”
288 K (assumed average) – 255 K (assumed 0.3 albedo) = 33 C (complete garbage)
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.
https://sos.noaa.gov/Education/script_docs/SCRIPTWhat-makes-Earth-habitable.pdf
(slide 14)
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.
With 30 % albedo: 957.6 W/m^2, 360.5 K, 87.5 C, 189.5 F (by 4, 239.4 W/m^2, 255K)
With 11% albedo: 1,217.5 W/m^2 (27.1%), 383.2 K, 109.8 C (22.3), 223.8 F (by 4, 304.4 W/m^2, 270.7 K)
With 0% albedo: 1,367.5 W/m^2 (42.8%), 394.0 K, 121.0 C (33.5), 250.0 F (by 4, 341.9 W/m^2, 278.7 K)
Okay ignore the hypotheticals with scenarios with no atmosphere or 100% N2, what do you think of the +33 C as it is calculated with our atmosphere and the estimated albedo? Is the absorbing/emitting surface of Earth in reality not much higher than the 5.101×10^8 km^2?
Vintners have understood for centuries that just a slope alone increases the surface area for irradiance. And what is the surface area for irradiance on the Amazon Jungle canopy alone? Then consider the additional surface area that isn’t ever receiving direct sunlight but is still emitting surface.
+33 becomes much smaller when you consider the real surface instead of an abstract concept of surface. How much smaller I do not know, but the difference left can easily be explained with the Kinetic Theory of Gases and other gas Laws, no special gas radiation physics needed.
”So where does this leave the contributions from the IR emissions of the surroundings? There seems to be a major disconnect between back radiation hypothesis and established physics here.“
–
You may have forgotten the mercury for a moment?
The mercury is extremely dense and is already saturated with energy to be at the temperature that it is and is radiating to the surroundings as well.
It has a lot of thermal mass.
When the temperature goes down it actually radiates a lot of IR to the surroundings for quite a while as it shrinks.
When the air gets hotter that IR goes into the mercury.
–
Translational energy works both ways as well. While small amounts of air molecules are generating energy from extra movement large amounts of mercury are generating equal and opposite energy back at equilibrium.
Putting hotter air in introduces more IR ( if containing GHG) and more kinetic energy in the gas. It is not a back radiation problem here, both modes of energy transfer coexist and do not deny each other
Robert W Turner March 13, 2020 at 1:35 pm re: “Perhaps we could get somewhere in this discussion if there were actually an article written that addressed the main arguments instead of red herrings and tangents. Our primary objection to back-radiation hypothesis is … ”
Spent ANY time playing around with an IR thermometer Mr. Turner? WITH a variety of ‘sky’ and meteorological conditions (clouds, low clouds, fog, clear sky, cirrus, etc)? CARE to explain any of the ‘readings’ you see?
BEAR in mind these devices (IR thermometers) like the MLX90614* sensor “receive” 8 to 14 um LWIR energy and employ a “thermopile” within the device to convert the LWIR to an electrical signal for measurement purposes.
.
.
* MLX90614 – https://www.melexis.com/en/product/MLX90614/Digital-Plug-Play-Infrared-Thermometer-TO-Can#
Dr. Roy Spencer,
“If the Earth had no atmosphere (like the Moon), the surface temperature at any given location would be governed by the balance between the rate of absorbed solar energy and the loss of thermally-emitted infrared (IR) radiation”.
Atmosphere is a key word in this sentence. The whole atmosphere (not “greenhouse gases”) absorbs heat reflected from the Earth’s surface. And let’s remember that heat radiation and infrared radiation are not identical (see, for example, Van Nostrand Scientific Encyclopedia, 2007: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/0471743984.vse4181.pub2 )
Nitrogen and oxygen do not absorb infrared radiation, but they absorb heat according to their values of heat capacity.
“…any gain or loss of an IR photon by a GHG is almost immediately felt by the non-radiatively active gases (like nitrogen and oxygen) through molecular collisions”. In physics, there is no experimental or theoretical evidence for this statement. A molecule of a “greenhouse gas” absorbs and emits photons with energy that corresponds to energy difference between allowed vibrational and rotational quantum states of the molecule. So, each molecule can absorb only restricted amount of energy, and this absorbed energy does not change the kinetic energy of the molecule, hence, the temperature. No one observed a change in the temperature of carbon dioxide in the cuvette of the infrared spectrometer, because it could not be. Moreover, greenhouse gas molecules cannot transfer excess kinetic energy (which they do not have) to nitrogen and oxygen molecules. An air purified from water vapor and carbon dioxide, with an equal amount of absorbed heat, will heat up to about the same temperature as ordinary air: a slight difference is determined by the mass and specific heat.
It is not about what the air will heat up to, it is about what the air will do to energy coming and going from different heated sources like the ground and sun. Air lacking GHG will not heat up as much. much more radiation [mostly IR will go straight back to space] and much more quickly. The air will warm but as the surface will be colder in average the air can only warm to that schematized earth temperature at the surface. It will not have an equal amount of absorbed heat.
One benefit of Covid-19 is that it has concentrated people’s minds on a real problem for a change and forced them to act urgently in their own interest. It has also closed or postponed many useless talkfests on Climate Change/Global Warming and many of the Warmistas are now down at the supermarket panic buying toilet paper and emergency food supplies. Apart from the severe health hazards, we all benefit.
Good point. They Green blight enthusiasts and progressive taxation socializers will have to wait to chew their cud another day. Meanwhile, Covid19 and Gaia’s Choice (e.g. Planned Parent). Also, an ad for Planned Parenthood soliciting donations to fund operation of their reproductive chambers and Mengele clinics. Progress.
You guys will love this new post:
https://phzoe.com/2020/03/13/geothermal-animated/
Maybe that most of the readers are even more confused about the GH effect after these comments. Maybe they do not even know if there is a GH effect and what is the driving force of this effect as W/m2. For me, it is very clear, as I have written that it is 270 W/m2 and not 155 W/m2 as defined by the IPCC. No complicated calculations- just basic mathematics and the basic laws of physics.
The purpose of the IPCC in this wrong definition is to make enough room for the warming impacts of increasing CO2 concentrations. The contribution of CO2 in the GH effect is 6.3 C according to the IPCC’s definition and according to my definition, it is only 2.5 C in the present climate. The warming impact of 560 ppm is 1.8 C per the IPCC, and it cannot be fitted into the correct GH effect definition but fitting into 6.3 C goes just fine.
One sentence of pure bullshit.
(And almost never are the rates of absorption and emission the same, contrary to the claims of many skeptics – IR emission is very temperature-dependent, while absorption is not).
Dr roy the Greenhouse effect gatekeeper in one sentence slips in cold really really can warm hot….
What an asshole.
TRANSLATION: “A body of higher temperature can absorb IR from a body of lower temperature, just as a body of lower temperature can absorb IR from a body of higher temperature.” … or … as G Ashe translates it, “Cold really really CAN warm hot.”
VERDICT: Wrong.
CORRECTION: A body can absorb radiation from another body which is at a higher temperature but it can only emit radiation at the same energy or at an energy below its own temperature. Thus the energy of outgoing radiation can only be less than or equal to the energy of incoming radiation. This means that energy cannot flow from a cooler to a warmer body, simply because any radiation from the cooler body incident upon the warmer body will experience an energy already higher than that radiation’s energy, thus, for gases, that radiation will be scattered.
Descriptions of the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect are unavoidably incomplete due to its complexity, and even misleading at times due to ambiguous phrasing when trying to express that complexity.
Yes it’s very complex.
Which means 99% of people affirming belief in trace gas back radiation warming, and affirming it aggressively and condescendingly, actually don’t know what they’re talking about. In fact no-one knows what they are talking about unless they are able to write line by line computer simulations of atmospheric heat exchange.
To most believers it’s “CO2 is a blanket stopping heat escaping from the atmosphere”. This is what Arrhenius proposed. All oversimplified and wrong.
The vast complexity of the CO2 global warming conjecture makes it vastly vulnerable to being wrong due to the myriad possible unknown processes and feedbacks. Or complexity emergent behaviours and phenomena.
Due to this complexity and uncertainty it’s a million miles from being settled science.
Roy’s acknowledgement of this complexity is welcome and extremely important. Accusations of stupidity from either side are inappropriate. It is a very real and very hard – and very interesting – scientific problem.
FWIW, I think the most fruitful path to an answer is something along the lines of Heisenberg’s S-Matrix.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty and his “S-Matrix” interpretive paradigm undermine the massive reductionism and inductive hubris of the CO2 warming conjecture:
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/03/11/climate-change-heisenbergs-uncertainty-of-the-settled-science/
Includes a cool PBS space-time video!
The imparsimoniously complex CO2 warming conjecture violates:
– the principle of least action
– Noether’s theorem
– Fermat’s theorem
– Le Chatalier’s principle
It’s wrong.
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/02/09/the-principle-of-least-action-calls-into-question-atmosphere-warming-by-co2/
And Einstein exposes the fallacy of imagining that heat exchange between radiation and gas is about absorption and emission. It’s not.
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/02/16/albert-einstein-said-no-to-co2-radiative-warming-of-the-atmosphere/
Your website says Albert-einstein-said-no-to-co2-radiative-warming-of-the-atmosphere/
I did not see you provide proof or quotes as to where this actually occurred other than you saying so?
It’s a figure of speech. No, Einstein did not say the words “No to greenhouse CO2 warming”. But he did explain that transfer of heat from radiation to gas is NOT dominated by absorption-emission phenomena, but by momentum transfer interactions similar to the way gas molecules exchange heat with each other.
CAGW is built on the assumption that practically all heat exchange in the atmosphere is radiative. Einstein explains that this is false. He did this in advance of CO2 global warming being a political issue. He refuted it in advance.
Read the article, it’s short, clear and obvious.
Here are Einstein’s words from 1917:
“During absorption and emission of radiation there is also present a transfer of momentum to the molecules. This means that just the interaction of radiation and molecules leads to a velocity distribution of the latter. This must surely be the same as the velocity distribution which molecules acquire as the result of their mutual interaction by collisions, that is, it must coincide with the Maxwell distribution. We must require that the mean kinetic energy which a molecule per degree of freedom acquires in a Plank radiation field of temperature T be
kT / 2
this must be valid regardless of the nature of the molecules and independent of frequencies which the molecules absorb and emit.”
“Regardless of the nature of the molecules”. How can it be any clearer than that?
There is nothing whatsoever different about CO2 relative to any other gas in how it gets heated by radiation.
Thanks for clarifying re figure of speech.
Ok with that.
CO2 nothing different?
I would like to think that as well but when it has dominated discussions for years I think you could reassess.
CO2 can absorb energy at what are quaintly called GHG temperatures.
There are spectrum effects due to different absorption wavelengths.
When there are a lot of different parameters involved theories can relate to macroscopic, ie pressure, microscopic ie quantum theory, radiation, energy and temperature all of which might be correct in their own setting.
Try to broaden the horizons, think like a back radiation or a warmist and then reevaluate.
What would you do if you had to use satellites in some way to measure temps. Could you do it better?
IR is real however it works.
Thanks
Someone upthread commented that the main absorption frequency of CO2 corresponds to a temperature of minus 80 C – is that the “GHG temperature”?
Phil Salmon,
The minus 80 C is the Wien’s peak wavelength at 10.6 um for any material at that temperature.
Nothing to do with the absorption or emission of IR at the same wavelength by CO2. whatever its temperature.
The first is what any molecule of any material does emit above zero K.
I am not familiar what that is caused by (maybe from the whole-molecule vibrations or collisions between molecules), that is what Einstein is talking about.
The second is a change in energy within a molecule, completely independent of the Gaussian curve of energy emitted by any object. That is nicely explained by Barret & the late Bellamy at:
http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page12.htm
Some part of the energy absorbed by CO2 or other GHG molecules is immediately transferred to other non-GHG gases like N2 and O2 by collisions and then again obey Wiens law, others loss their energy by sending an IR photon in all directions.
Which one of these two possibilities happens is a matter of density of the gas, with higher density, more collisions and less emissions and reverse for less density.
Thus there is no “greenhouse specific” peak temperature, there are only greenhouse specific wavelengths that have nothing to do with temperature or Wiens law…
As an example I have posted a link to CO2 lasers: they operate at maximum 100 C, give a beam of 10.6 um that can melt steel at over 1000 C…
There are so many comments which claim that there is no GH effect and the radiation emitted by the surface cannot warm up anything. Could you answer what happens to the LW radiation of 395 W/m2 emitted by the surface, because into space is emitted only 240 W/m2? Or do you say that nobody knows but you have a good answer? If this lost radiation of 155 W/m2 has been lost, could it warm up the atmosphere? Or can latent heat of water warm up the atmosphere? Or can the sensible heat warm up the atmosphere?
If you say that YES or yeees, it is possible that they do warm up the atmosphere, then you confess that it happens all the time. Then you have to find the answer, why the atmosphere has a constant temperature profile? Any comments?
“Could you answer what happens to the LW radiation of 395 W/m2 emitted by the surface,..”
This is a theoretical “what if” calculation that assumes the surface radiates as a 1.0 emissivity BB at 16C or 289K.
It
Does
Not
Exist!!
Surface emissivity is: 63/396=0.016 or 63/160=0.39.
Nick, inexpensive hardwares tore IR thermometers usually use a fixed emissivity setting of 0.95.
If what you write were correct, they would display a different brightness temperature than a thermometer stuck in the natural earth surface. Yet that is not the case, IR thermometers pointed at earth surface display the same brightness temperature as the surface thermometer temperature. If they didn’t, then IR thermometers would not be as useful as they are in practice.
I think that is one of the big errors in the model. 395 W/m2 is not emitted. The number is a theoretical number based on an erroneous use of Stefan-Boltzmanns law. It is not a measured value.
in addition, the number is based on a cloud free atmosphere. Earth does not radiate 395 W/m2 from cloudy areas.
I think this is the main point in all radiation discussions. What is really emitted from earth ? My view is that it is far less than 395 W/m2 -> the equilibrium temperatur is higher than -18C
To Jonas Rosen. The emitted LW radiation value´ of 395 W/m2 is based on two facts. It is the value according to Planck’s law – the Earth’s surface obeys this law as any material in the universe. Do you know an exception? It has been measured all the time by the global international network.
“Could you answer what happens to the LW radiation of 395 W/m2 emitted by the surface, because into space is emitted only 240 W/m2?”
Since I am a member of the group that has my own physics, I can say anything I want. So here goes.
Number one, you have to accept my theory that radiation is not heat.
Then number two, you have to accept my wild guess that the 395 number is a measure of IR, not heat. Somewhere along the line it must have gotten converted into watts.
My hypothesis is that the 395 is multiple readings of the same photons bouncing like pingpong balls between H2O molecules in the sea or earth. You are detecting the same pingpong balls over and over again as they whiz back and forth.
I go back to accordionsrule theory of physics #1. Radiation is not heat, so it doesn’t matter that the same pingpong ball gets counted over and over again. Photons have nil warming effect until they crash into a molecule and makes that molecule move.
This has nothing to do with CO2. Only H2O molecules are close enough to radiate between.
Heat and radiation are different forms of energy. When radiation has been absorbed it will be transformed into heat. On the other hand, any material emits radiation according to its temperature.
What happens at the bottom of the atmosphere is an interesting phenomenon. Firstly, I remind you that the surface temperature over the land is the temperature of the air measured at the altitude of 1,5 meters. The absorption calculations in the clear sky conditions show it with the accuracy of +/- 2 % that the upward radiation and the downward radiation have exactly the same magnitude. This is according to radiation laws. The GH molecules radiate evenly in all directions. Due to absorption, the level of radiation decreases from 395 to 240 at the TOA. It is very nonlinear as I have commented above using the exact numbers.
Dr. Ollila, thank you for your reply. So you aren’t seeking to lower the 395 or 345, you are saying the 155 needs to be raised. By adding in sensible and latent heat, I think is what I’m reading.
As you can guess, I’m not someone who would understand why those belong on the GHE side of the ledger, I’ll take your word for it.
This is so simple that you can rely on your own judgment just by looking at Fig.2. Just calculate how much radiation energy has been absorbed on the surface and compare this figure to 240 W/m2.
“Heat and radiation are different forms of energy. ”
Nope, heat is the energy that is added to the body and will cause a temperature change.
Energy is just that, energy. Not all energy is heat, but all heat is energy.
“Due to absorption, the level of radiation decreases from 395 to 240 at the TOA. ”
How would that be possible? The Lapse rate exists regardless of absorption or radiation.
This sentence and the meaning of this sentence is not correct.
To Another Joe. Quote: ““Due to absorption, the level of radiation decreases from 395 to 240 at the TOA. ” How would that be possible? The Lapse rate exists regardless of absorption or radiation. This sentence and the meaning of this sentence is not correct.”
If you deny the observed flux values of 395 and 240, it means that there is no sense to continue any discussion. In addition to this, you mix up the lapse rate and the absorption in the atmosphere. Hopeless.
Antero,
its not worth spending my time with you, but I will continue to call out your various mistakes. So I might actually spend a lot of time.
For your notion that 395 W/m2 is an observed flux you are so far from the truth you would not even know. As far as I know this, it is a average temperature and its associated flux. You would be surprised that temperature here is 20 deg C. What is the emissivity to radiate that said flux I might ask you!
Like I mentioned below, you have started a name calling game, above you used the word “Deny” which I did none of this sort.
I now have given you one example that proves you wrong anyway and corrected your understanding.
Happy to help!
Please look at the satellite data for water vapour and OLR. They are strongly positively correlated:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNg1uzA-KKFEvD5BzX
This is the opposite of the “greenhouse gas” non-science.
If water vapour did not provide a negative feedback then all the tropical water would evaporate and end up as ice at the poles.
Global surface temperature is controlled in a narrow range by the surface water, the connectedness of surface water, the heat transfer through the surface water (mostly driven by wind) and the formation of sea ice at a precise temperature.
The ocean is much warmer than the land on average. Water has higher heat capacity and lower elevatiom than land. Same insolation plus [non-existant] GH effect should make the land warmer.
But the ocean reaches deeper into the bowels of the Earth, where it is warmer. Warmer water then convects up. The only solution is geothermal.
Sooner or later all roads will lead to me.
I don’t think so. A circuit of pipes 2 meters down under the surface of the ground, water can be warmed enough to heat flooring/rooms/pools etc in homes.
But it’s the opposite. The ocean gets colder, not warmer, with depth. Near the equator sea water may approach 30 degrees C at the surface but will be close to freezing at the ocean floor 4km down.
https://imgur.com/gallery/keD0gEM
I already said:
“Warmer water then convects up.”
There is no explanation why sun plus GHGs would make the ocean warmer AT THE SURFACE, compared to land.
Bringing depth into discussion supports my view, and only my view.
Zoe Phin, I think that you have things upside down…
Colder, denser water at the poles sink down to the bottom and only the trade winds near the equator bring these cold (not heated!) waters back to the surface near Peru and Chile.
During an El Niño period the trade winds stop and reverse and no fresh bottom water comes up, to the anger of the Peruvian fishermen, as it is the cold rich bottom water which is the source of their income…
“only the trade winds near the equator bring these cold (not heated!) waters back to the surface near Peru and Chile.”
There is a lot wrong with this sentence.
Trade winds do not bring up water from deep down in the oceans. What brings up the water from deep down is geometrie and displacement of water due to cold water sinking, which pushes the water up elsewhere.
The second wrong part is the notion that 4 Deg C cold water is cold! It is, as a matter of fact, much warmer than the -18 Deg C theoretical Earth temperature. If you bring water of that temperature up to the surface you make up a good part of the GHE.
Another Joe.
The main way denser water can get to the surface is by off-land winds. That is the reason that you will see upwelling practically only near the coasts of big landmasses.
The main upwelling place of the THC (thermohaline circulation) is near the coast of Peru and when there is an El Niño, the trade winds stop or reverse and the upwelling stops.
That means no fresh nutrients, less plankton and less fish (and less CO2 emissions, but that is more than compensated by more CO2 emissions from the dried out Amazon forest).
https://www.eartheclipse.com/climate-change/causes-and-effects-of-el-nino.html
Of course, if dense waters sinks near the pole4s, it should be compensated by upwelling somewhere, but as the THC needs many hundreds of years before it gets to its upwelling near Peru, that difference over about a year is leveled off in the total mass of the oceans.
Further, the ocean surface temperature in average is 15 C, at the equator up to 36 C. Although water of 4 C can give less cooling that anything at -18 C, I am pretty sure that is not the cause of the extra average temperature of the ocean surface…
In the eartheclipse article they talk about “water is pulled up”.
This is wrong. wind cannot pull up water. Water is pushed up by cold water sinking to the seabed in the cold regions.
Wind maybe can push water towards the west which creates a lower pressure where it is missing. The true driver yet is not the wind.
Another Joe,
Of course wind can pull up waters from the deep and/or push water into the deep: half of the strength of Gulf Stream is from wind, the other half is from temperature and density differences.
Wind pulls up water when it hits land and if the extra height is high enough, pushes water into the deep, despite density differences. The same for off-land winds pulling water from the deep. All what you need is a small change in water height to overcome the density differences.
This time, Wiki has a good page on upwelling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upwelling
Interesting. Learned something.
So there is multiple effects (temperature and density) and the Ekman Transport acting at the same time together with the Coriolis effect.