Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I ponder curious things. I got to thinking about available solar energy. That’s the amount of solar energy that remains after reflection losses.
Just under a third (~ 30%) of the incoming sunshine is reflected back into space by a combination of the clouds, the aerosols in the atmosphere, and the surface. What’s left is the solar energy that actually makes it in to warm up and power our entire planet. In this post, for shorthand I’ll call that the “available energy”, because … well, because that’s basically all of the energy we have available to run the entire circus.
Now, I don’t agree with the widely-held idea that the planetary temperature is a linear function of the “radiative forcing” or simply “forcing”, which is the amount of downwelling radiation headed to the surface from both the sun and from atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Oh, the radiation itself is real … but it doesn’t set the surface temperature
My theory of how the climate operates is that the globe is kept from overheating by a variety of emergent phenomena. These phenomena emerge when some local temperature threshold is exceeded. Among the most powerful of these emergent phenomena are thunderstorms. In the tropics, thunderstorms emerge when the sea surface temperature (SST) is above about 27°C (80°F) or so. Here’s a movie I made of how the thunderstorms follow the sea surface temperature, month after month.
Figure 1. Tropical thunderstorms are characterized by tall cloud towers. The average altitude of the cloud tops is therefore a measure of the number and strength of the thunderstorms in the area. Colors show average cloud top altitude, with the red areas having the most and largest thunderstorms, and the blue areas almost none. The gray contour lines show sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of 27°, 28°, and 29°C, with the inner ring being the hottest.
Thunderstorms cool the surface in a variety of ways. They waste little energy in the process because they emerge to cool the surface only where it will do the most good—the hottest part of the system.
Among the ways thunderstorms cool the surface is via an increase in the local albedo. Albedo is the percentage of energy reflected back to space. The increase in this reflection (increasing albedo) occurs because the thunderstorm clouds both cover a larger area and are taller than the cumulus clouds that they replace. Their height and area provide more reflective surfaces to reject solar energy back to space.
In addition, the thunderstorm generated winds increase the local sea surface reflectivity by creating reflective white foam, spume, and spray over large areas of the ocean. And finally, a rough ocean with thunderstorm-generated waves reflects about two times what a calm ocean reflects (albedo ~ 8% rough vs ~ 4% smooth). That change in sea surface roughness alone equates to about 15 W/m2 less available energy.
Now generally, we’d expect that additional solar energy would be correlated with warmer temperatures. It’s logical that the relationship should go like this:
More available solar energy –> more energy absorbed by the surface –> higher temperatures.
We’d expect, therefore, that both the available energy and the temperature should be “positively correlated”, meaning that they increase or decrease together. And in general, that’s true. Here’s the available solar energy, which is the sunshine that makes it past all of the reflective surfaces, the sunlight that is the one true source of all of the energy that heats, agitates, and powers the climate.
Figure 2. Available solar energy after all reflection from clouds, atmosphere, and the planet’s surface. The numbers are 24/7 averages.
As you can see, the poles are cold because they only get fifty watts per square metre (W/m2) or so from the sun. And the tropics get up to 360 watts per square metre (W/m2), so they are hot. The tropics are the main area where energy enters the system, and they’re also the hottest.
So far, what we see agrees with what we’d expect—available energy and temperature are correlated, going up and down together.
Now, my theory is that emergent phenomena act to constrain the maximum temperature. So an indication that my theory is valid would be if the amount of available solar energy were to not only stop increasing at high surface temperatures, but would actually go down with increasing temperature when the SST gets over about 27°C.
To see if this is the case, I turned once again to the CERES data, available here. I’m using the EBAF 4.0 dataset, with data from March 2000 to February 2019. The CERES satellite data has month-by-month information on the size of the incoming and reflected solar energy flows. The information is presented on a 1° latitude by 1° longitude gridcell basis.
According to the CERES data, incoming solar energy at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) is ~ 340 W/m2. The total reflected is ~ 100 W/m2. That leaves 240 W/m2 of available energy to warm the world. (Numbers are 24/7 global averages.)
To investigate the relationship between the surface temperature and the available energy, I looked at just the liquid ocean (not including sea ice). I do this for several reasons. The ocean is 70% of the planet. It is all at the same elevation, with no mountains to complicate matters. There’s no vegetation sticking up to impede the winds. It is a ways from human cities. All of this reduces the noise in the data, and makes it possible to compare different locations.
What I’ve done is to make a “scatterplot” of available energy versus sea surface temperature (SST). Each blue dot in the scatterplot below shows the available solar energy versus the sea surface temperature (SST) of a single 1°x1° gridcell.
Then I’ve used a Gaussian average (yellow & red with black outline) to see what the data is doing overall. (In this dataset, it turns out that the Gaussian average is basically indistinguishable from averaging the data in bins of a tenth of a degree (not shown). This lends support to the validity of the line.) The yellow/red line outlined in black shows the 160-point full-width-half-maximum (FWHM) Gaussian average of the data. The red area simply highlights the part above 27°C.
Figure 3. Scatterplot of available solar energy versus liquid sea surface temperature. Blue dots show the results for each 1° latitude by 1° longitude gridcell. Yellow/red line is 160-point full-width-half-maximum (FWHM) Gaussian average. The part of the data where the average SST above 27°C is highlighted in red
In Figure 3 we see that above ~ 27°C, the thunderstorm initiation temperature, the available solar energy stops rising, takes a ninety-degree turn, and starts dropping. You’ve heard of things being “non-linear”? This graph could serve as the poster child of non-linearity …
It’s worth noting that at temperatures from about 3°C to 27°C, the temperature is indeed a linear function of the available solar energy. So the common misunderstanding is … well … understandable. In that temperature range the sea surface is going up about 0.1°C per additional W/m2, which is the same as ~0.4° C per doubling of CO2 … but of course, that ignores the area in red, where the relationship is totally reversed and energy goes down as temperature goes up.
This is strong support for my theory that emergent phenomena actively regulate the global temperature and constrains the maximum temperature. It is also evidence against the current theory of how climate works, which is that the temperature slavishly follows the available energy in a linear fashion … as I noted, this is as non-linear as you can get..
In the areas where the sea surface temperature is over ~ 27°C there is less and less energy available with each additional degree C of surface warming. The size of the decrease is large—6.6 W/m2 less energy is available when the surface temperature has risen by each additional 1°C.
Figure 4 shows the location of these areas (shown in blue/green with white borders) where available solar energy goes down when the temperature goes up (negative correlation).
Figure 4. Gridcell by gridcell correlation of available solar energy and surface temperature. Blue box show the tropical area discussed below (130°E – 90°W longitude, 10°N/S latitude).
Investigating the energy flows further, loss of incoming energy via increased albedo is only one way thunderstorms cool the surface. It is an important method of thermoregulation because it acts just like the gas pedal in your car—the thunderstorms are controlling the amount of energy entering the planetary-scale heat engine we call the climate. And above a sea surface temperature of ~ 27°C, they are cutting the incoming energy down.
The thunderstorms which are cutting down the total available solar energy are also cooling the surface in a host of other ways. First among these is evaporation. Thunderstorms make rain, and it takes solar energy to evaporate the rain. That energy is then not available to heat the surface.
Figure 5 Scatterplot of the sea surface temperature versus the rainfall in the equatorial Pacific area shown by the blue box above (130°E – 90°W, 10°N/S). The blue dots show results from the TAO moored buoys in the blue box. The red dots show gridcell results from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite rainfall data and Reynolds OI sea surface temperatures. Graphic from my post Drying The Sky
Figure 5 above has SST data from two separate datasets, Tao buoys and the Reynolds OISST dataset. It also has rainfall data from two separate datasets, the TRMM data and TAO buoys. They agree very well, giving support to the relationships displayed.
And once again, it is highly non-linear …
Because the tropical oceanic thunderstorms are temperature related, so is the rain. Above 27°C, every single 1°x1° gridcell (red dot) and every TAO buoy (blue dot) in the equatorial Pacific area outlined in blue in Figure 4 above has rain.
In addition, by the time the open ocean temperature reaches its maximum value of 30°C, almost every gridcell has nearly three meters (ten feet, or 120″) of rain. At high sea surface temperatures, rain is not optional. This is clear evidence of the thermal nature of the thresholds involved.
It’s an important point. The thresholds for all of these emergent temperature-regulating climate phenomena (e.g. dust devils, cumulus fields, thunderstorms, squall lines) are temperature-based. They are not based on how much radiation the area is receiving. They are not affected by either CO2 levels or sunshine amounts. When the tropical ocean temperature gets above a certain level, the system kicks into gear, cumulus clouds mutate into thunderstorms, albedo goes straight up, and rain starts falling … no matter what the CO2 levels might be. Temperature-based, not forcing-based. It’s an important point.
And below is the rainfall data from 40° North to 40° South, expressed as the amount of energy needed to evaporate the rain.
Figure 6. Scatterplot of 1° x 1° gridcell annual average ocean-only thunderstorm evaporative cooling on the vertical axis, in watts per square metre (W/m2) versus 1° x 1° gridcell annual average sea surface temperature on the horizontal axis. Evaporative cooling amount is calculated from the rainfall—it takes ~ 80 W/m2 for one year to evaporate a metre of rainfall. Graphic from my post, How Thunderstorms Beat The Heat
As I write this, I think hmm … I could use the relationship shown in red above, between tropical sea surface temperature and evaporative cooling. Then I could add that TRMM data to the solar availability data to see how much is available after albedo and evaporation. Hmm … I’m off to write a another bunch of code in the computer language simply called “R”.
(Best computer language ever, by the way, and R was something like the tenth computer language I’ve learned. It’s free, cross platform, free, killer free user interface “RStudio”, free packages to do almost anything, good help files, and did I mention free? I owe Steve McIntyre an unpayable debt for convincing me to learn to code in R. But I digress, I’m off to write R code …)
…
OK, here’s the result. The scatterplot as above, scale about the same, but this time showing what’s left after removing both albedo reflections and the energy used for evaporation. This covers the area where rainfall was measured by the TRMM, from 40° N latitude to 40° S latitude.
Figure 7. Scatterplot, available solar energy minus evaporative cooling, versus sea surface temperature from 40°N latitude to 40°S latitude. Because it is only the middle latitudes the ocean doesn’t get much cooler than 15°C.
I note that when we include evaporative cooling, the drop in available energy starts at a slightly lower temperature, 26°C vs 27°. And it is decreasing much faster and further than just the 6.6 W/m2 decrease per degree of degree warming from albedo alone as shown in Fig. 3 above.
Figure 7 shows that there is 44 W/m2 less available energy per additional degree of warming above 26°C. So it is decreasing about seven times as fast as from albedo alone. On average there is less energy left over for warming at 30°C than at 15°C … go figure.
And finally, here’s the distribution of the solar energy once we’ve subtracted the reflected energy and the energy used for evaporation. What remains is the energy available to heat the planet and to fuel plant growth.
Figure 8. Available solar energy after albedo and evaporation losses. TRMM data only covers from 40° N to 40°S latitude.
Note that there are some areas of the oceans where any additional solar forcing goes into increasing clouds, increasing thunderstorms, and increasing evaporation, with little to nothing left over to heat the area …
Now, remember that my hypothesis is that the widely-believed claim that there is a linear relationship between forcing and temperature is not correct.
Instead, I say emergent phenomena come into existence when a temperature threshold is passed, and that they act to oppose further heating.
My main conclusions out of all of this? It supports my hypothesis regarding emergent phenomena regulating the temperature, and this is clear evidence that temperature is NOT a linear function of forcing.
And on a side note, the US passed a sad milestone today—the number of COVID pandemic deaths (a once-off phenomenon) finally equaled two-thirds of the annual number of deaths from obesity. In the face of this hidden gustatory emergency of 300,000 US obesity deaths per year, I recommend mandatory gastric banding of the entire populace and fine-enforced social distancing from donuts …
My best regards to everyone, end all lockdowns, the emergency is over. Let’s get back to work, school, and play,
w.
The Small Print: When you comment please quote the exact words you are discussing, so we can all be in on the secret subject of your ideas.
Willis,
Two comments.
I think that your figure 1 animation is a superb piece of work. Please publish this.
For me Figure 8 is a delight. What it shows is that the solar energy capture process takes place in the Horse Latitudes beneath the descending limbs of the Hadley Cell. Go back to the Cretaceous, replace the African Sahara with the shallow seas bordering the Tethys Ocean and you have a world geared to capturing more solar energy.
Your work confirms my thoughts of The Oceanic Central Heating Effect.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/20/the-oceanic-central-heating-effect/
The water vapor in question is formed at the sea surface and picks up the heat of vaporization from surface water. As the high-humidity air rises (“wet” air is lighter than dry air) it cools until it condenses and forms a cloud giving up the heat of vaporization as IR, half up, half down. I suppose the up part is largely lost to space.
Is this effect included in your calculations?
Dear Willis,
On November 17, 2018, I posted a comment in response to your question: “Why does the global temperature change so little?”
The conclusion of my comment was as follows:
In conclusion, water, due to both its abundance and its unique properties, is responsible for governing the earth’s temperature.
If the heat balance becomes energy deficient, water reduces outgoing radiation by the green-house gas effect and the insulating effect of snow.
If heat balance has excess energy, water increases outgoing radiation by mass transfer cooling, which increases exponentially with temperature.
And finally, both of these variants are buffered by the energy storage capacity of the oceans with a time constant of the order of decades.
How could a simple linear constant called “climate sensitivity” possibly describe the multi-mechanism, time-lagged, highly non-linear climate phenomena driven by water?
In today’s paper, you have covered the phenomenon of ‘mass transfer cooling’, and shown that this is the principle mechanism by which the earth sheds excess heat, and that this mechanism is so strong that it makes the idea of catastrophic’ warming seem preposterous.
It would also be good if somebody could have a look at the buffering effect, of energy storage in the oceans, that makes futile any attempt to correlate atmospheric temperatures with the radiation balance on time scales of less than centuries.
“the phenomenon of ‘mass transfer cooling’,”
dh-mtl
Modelled here by Stephen Wilde and myself:
“Return to Earth: A New Mathematical Model of the Earth’s Climate”
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo?journalid=298&doi=10.11648/j.ijaos.20200402.11
“if somebody could have a look at the buffering effect, of energy storage in the oceans,”
For this you need to look at Alex Pope’s work
https://popesclimatetheory.com/
Along with linear functions, another assumption, often not justified, is a normal distribution.
_ _ _ _ _
From the you brought it up department: Obesity
Monday afternoon I saw a female, about age 14, that weighed about 3 times what she should have. This morning I saw two, about mid-30s, that were 2X weight.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but this is ridiculous.
The hazard of analyzing climate data without understanding physics is grave mistakes of attribution. In the present case, it’s claiming that tropical line-squalls are a temperature-driven “emergent” phenomena. In reality, they are produced by easterly gravity waves in the atmosphere–quite independently of SST.
LMAO
The hazard of analyzing climate data without understanding physics is gross mistakes of attribution. In the present case, it’s claiming that tropical line-squalls are a temperature-driven “emergent”phenomenon. In reality, they are produced by easterly gravity waves in the atmosphere–quite independently of SST.
“What’s left is the solar energy that actually makes it in to warm up and power our entire planet. In this post, for shorthand I’ll call that the “available energy”, because … well, because that’s basically all of the energy we have available to run the entire circus.”
There we go again. Another geothermal denier making ludicrous claims.
http://phzoe.com/2020/09/10/fouriers-accidental-confession/
Fool: But Zoe, geothermal heat flux is small!
Zoe: Yeah, the smaller, the hotter! Inverse relationship.
http://phzoe.com/2020/04/29/the-irrelevance-of-geothermal-heat-flux/
Fool: But muh conservation of heat flow in steady state blah blah blah!
Zoe: Radiation is based on temperature (and emissivity), not conductive heat flux. Boltzmann and Planck never claimed radiation is based on conductive heat flux steady state blah blah blah.
Your heat flux W/m^2 is not even in the same dimension as a radiating surface:
http://phzoe.com/2020/05/22/equating-perpendicular-planes-is-plain-nonsense/
Fool: But Zoe, that’s not what warmists and lukewarmists teach. You must be wrong.
Zoe: I suggest looking at actual experiments. Here’s two at the end here:
http://phzoe.com/2020/02/20/two-theories-one-ideological-other-verified/
Summary: The sun is not the only game in town. The idea that it is creates the pseudoscience of the greenhouse effect. Hot can’t cool because of cold so becomes hotter. Dumb AF.
Peace :), -Zoe
Ooh, I love it, I’m a “geothermal denier”! What’s not to like?
It’s true, though … I apply a good deal of my writing to denying geotherms. Or I would if I weren’t engaged in scientific research.
Ah, well. So many clowns … so few circuses.
w.
Just answer one thing:
If you place a blanket over you while your laying down and sandwich a pyrgeometer between you and the blanket, do you think you’re 98.6F because of 522 W/m^2 of “Downwelling” IR?
I’m serious. It’s very important.
Sorry, but the quote I picked literally shows you to deny geothermal. Maybe you don’t, but that’s what I see.
Zoe Phin September 23, 2020 at 2:59 pm
Dear lady, when I first went to your site and read it, I was curious about what you said. You gave a link to a dataset I’d never investigated, of borehole data. Hang on … OK, here’s the link to the University of Michigan borehole data.
Being a curious fellow, I analyzed the borehole data to see how much energy was coming up from below. Hang on, let me find my computer code … OK, found it and re-ran it. Here’s the outcome:
This agreed with other estimates I’d seen, that on average the geothermal heat flux was around half a tenth of a watt per square metre (0.05W/m2), although I hadn’t expected that individual boreholes might be almost ten times that. Always more to learn.
That’s what I found, and I deny nothing. I just run the numbers and report the results. Those are my estimates of geothermal heat flux in the area of those 1,012 boreholes.
And no, I’m sorry but I won’t answer your serious and very important question. Not interested in the slightest. On a Venn diagram, our individual understandings of physics and thermodynamics don’t appear to overlap at all … so there’s nothing to discuss and no point in discussing it.
My best regards to you,
w.
Thank you for the response, Willis.
“On a Venn diagram, our individual understandings of physics and thermodynamics don’t appear to overlap at all”
That’s true. I think radiation is based on Temperature (and emissivity), while you think it’s based on internal conductive heat flux.
I believe in conservation of energy, and you believe in conservation of heat flux.
Take a look at page 1 and 2 here:
https://faculty.utrgv.edu/constantine.tarawneh/Heat%2520Transfer/HeatTransferBooklet.pdf
Funny how textbooks miss the opportunity to claim what you claim. This one had the perfect opportunity to claim
q_rad = q_x
or
q_x => q_conv + q_rad
It’s obvious that emission is based on TEMPERATURE, not heat flux.
I see that you’re still stuck on “geothermal heat flux is small”, and can’t get past that.
Well, here’s a reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate a point:
IF the geothermal heat flux was 0 W/m^2 from Earth’s core to the surface (a hypothetical), it would imply the surface and core had the same temperature, i.e. 5400C. And the theoretical emission to space from that would be: 58,732,722 W/m^2.
5400C would CERTAINLY not produce 0 W/m^2 of radiation just because the conductive heat flux was 0 W/m^2.
QED
P.S. I don’t know how you got such a small 0.05 heat flux. I examined 312 sites that have data for 50m and 100m depth and got 49mW/m^2.
This number tells you nothing about what will be emitted at the top. That will depend on Temperature. Please read:
http://phzoe.com/2020/04/29/the-irrelevance-of-geothermal-heat-flux/
Willis:
You are making the mistake of assuming that you are talking to someone who understands the most basic concepts involved, such as conservation of energy, and even the very concept of energy itself.
I have taught comparable subjects at the university level, and I have never had a single student who could not fundamentally understand these introductory concepts. (Thanks to the admissions office, I think.)
She is literally arguing that 0.09 W/m2 of upward geothermal flux ALONE can maintain steady state conditions in the surface layer that is radiating over 300 W/m2 upward.
It’s as absurd as thinking that $0.09 of interest a week into your bank account by itself can maintain a constant week-to-week balance while spending over $300 per week, but there’s no convincing her otherwise.
Ed,
You’re still not getting what I’m doing.
I’m not arguing geothermal would emit 330 W/m^2 to surface boundary GASES in NET terms. 330 W/m^2 is NOT heat transfer. It is an absolute energy level equivalent.
I’m describing what geothermal would emit in ABSOLUTE terms without regard to what’s further down the line, so to speak.
So while your body normally emits 522 W/m^2, in a room at 98.6F, your body’s heat flow to the room would be 0 W/m^2.
Knowing that the heat flux is 0 W/m^2 in this example doesn’t tell you much. You’d get the same with for a 20C object in a 20C room.
Likewise, knowing the geothermal heat flux doesn’t tell you what geothermal ENERGY level is delivered to the surface.
My aim is to explain why global avg. temp. is ~15C, not explain NET heat flow.
If you want to discuss heat flow into the atmosphere, then we should look at surface boundary NET conduction, NET convection, NET radiation between surface and gases. And I’m not talking about flows into the middle of the atmosphere. I’m talking about that tiny sliver hovering just above the surface. Those values will be small, as in milliWatts/m^2.
“It’s as absurd as thinking that $0.09 of interest a week into your bank account by itself can maintain a constant week-to-week balance while spending over $300 per week”
No, silly, your spending is $300 and you get $299.91 back. Your $0.09 was used for conduction + convection + radiation directly to the immediately neighboring layer of gases.
Summary: Don’t confuse heat flow with energy. Don’t confuse a differential with an absolute.
If temperature was based on heat flux and not energy, then the definition of temperature would say so. What’s the definition of temperature?
Strange, I don’t see the definition of temperature as NET flows of 3 types of heat transfer.
One must look into what TEMPERATURE geothermal delivers.
One must look into what ENERGY geothermal delivers, not the HEAT FLOW!
Energy != Heat Flow (with understood exceptions)
Was that understood?
$330 = Energy
$0.09 = Heat Flux
Zoe:
It is painfully obvious that you have never taken a thermodynamics course in your life, or for that matter actually understood a thermodynamics text and done any of its problems.
I have previously laid out the most fundamental equations for conservation out of the 1st chapter of a typical text, in a form that I would expect any student of mine to grasp immediately without any effort. Yet time after time you cannot understand it at the most basic level.
The fundamental equation for the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, found at the beginning of any text, is:
DeltaE = Q + W
where E is the energy of the system in question, Q is the (signed) sum of the heat flows in and out of the system, and W is the (signed) sum of the work done to and by the system. All terms are energy values, typically expressed in Joules.
In differential form, it can be expressed in terms of rates (in Watts) as:
dE/dt = Q’ + W’
In the systems we are considering, no work is done, and splitting the heat flows into input and outputs we have:
dE/dt = Sum(Q’in) – Sum(Q’out)
For simplicity, let’s consider a surface layer with area of 1.0 m^2 with a thickness of 0.01 m (or 1cm). You claim that the only heat flow in (Sum(Q’in)) is the geothermal conductive flux from the bottom of 0.09W.
The top of this thin surface layer will radiate upwards. At common temperatures and emissivities, this section of the surface will radiate upwards a power flow of about 330W. This IS a heat flow out of the system — it is NOT the energy of the system. It is thousands of times greater than the
You can’t even follow the simple financial analogy I use for non-technical people. Heat flows in are deposits ($0.09/week), and heat flows out are withdrawals ($330/week). The energy of the system is the bank balance, whose rate of change is easy to compute (-$329.91). I said nothing about the absolute level of the bank balance, analogous to the energy level (and corresponding temperature) of the system.
You say: “If temperature was based on heat flux and not energy, then the definition of temperature would say so.” Once again you betray the fact that you have never solved even the most basic of thermo problems. You don’t understand at all the interplay between (temperature-dependent) heat fluxes and temperature.
Here’s a typical easy problem of the type. Prove me wrong by solving it correctly. You have a spherical satellite with a 1.0 m^2 surface area (think Sputnik). It has an internal radioactive power source of 240 watts. The satellite is out in interstellar space, far from any other power source. The surface has unit emissivity. What is the steady-state temperature of the surface?
The problem has a definite answer and could be given as an uncontroversial exam question. There is a definite SS temperature that can be calculated based on the heat flux.
Back to your geothermal flux assertions. You have repeatedly claimed that the 0.09 W/m2 upward geothermal flux BY ITSELF is sufficient to maintain the type of surface temperatures we see (so roughly steady state), even though the upward radiative heat fluxes from the surface are thousands of times greater. To anyone who understands the first thing about thermodynamics, this is complete nonsense.
You say: “One must look into what ENERGY geothermal delivers.” OK: For a typical square meter, it delivers 0.09 Joules each second. That’s a completely insignificant amount, as is the ~$0.09 interest my bank gives me each week. I don’t expect it to maintain my spending.
Trivially simple concepts, yet totally beyond you!
Ed,
“this section of the surface will radiate upwards a power flow of about 330W. This IS a heat flow out of the system — it is NOT the energy of the system.”
You obviously refuse to learn or you’re purposefully mixing heat flow and energy.
Let’s take a typical surface temperature of 288K and typical lapse rate of 0.0065 C/m. This means that the air 1 meter above the surface is 287.9935 K.
So what’s the actual heat flow from surface to 1 meter above?
s = 5.670367e-8
s(288^4-287.9935^4) = 0.035 W/m^2
35 mW/m^2 is the HEAT FLOW. I would never argue that 390 W/m^2 of surface emission from 288K surface was the HEAT FLOW. It’s clearly not, it’s just the radiative equivalent of available energy (emis = 1).
Likewise, when I say geothermal provides 330 W/m^2, I mean geothermal delivers ~4C worth of energy to the surface. Why not? geothermal 0.09 W/m^2 seems just fine delivering ~5C 10 meters below the ground where the sun doesn’t go.
Your 0.09 W/m^2 geothermal flux CAN NOT explain energy delivered to the surface. In fact there is an infinite variety of temperature profiles that match same geo flux:
Now think again. We saw that heat flux in the lowest 1 meter of air is 35 mW/m^2 ! And that’s with the sun!
Geothermal is 91 mW/m^2, that is higher.
“You have a spherical satellite with a 1.0 m^2 surface area (think Sputnik). It has an internal radioactive power source of 240 watts. The satellite is out in interstellar space, far from any other power source.”
Funny you should ask that. Same problem, but the power source is Earth, nothing inside the satellite. Don’t you think that over time the Earth’s 240 W/m^2 will eventually heat the super thin sensor to -18C, and thus diminish the actual heat flow from Earth to 0 W/m^2 ??? Don’t you think the geothermal heat flux alone could power such a satellite, that’s leaking 0 W/m^2 of heat flux from Earth?
Or do you believe the satellite sensor is immune from getting heated? And thus must receive an actual HEAT FLOW of 240 W/m^2?
“You claim that the only heat flow in (Sum(Q’in)) is the geothermal conductive flux from the bottom of 0.09W.”
Sure, aside from the fact that geothermal made the surface ~4C in the first place (0C by convention), there is also some heat flow … enough heat flow to cover the heat flow of the first meter of air in the atmosphere.
I swear you’re just barking for excuses to deny geothermal. It’s so obvious that you’re conveniently confusing heat and energy when it suits you.
Ed,
“dE/dt = Q’ + W’”
“Back to your geothermal flux assertions. You have repeatedly claimed that the 0.09 W/m2 upward geothermal flux BY ITSELF is sufficient to maintain the type of surface temperatures we see (so roughly steady state), even though the upward radiative heat fluxes from the surface are thousands of times greater. To anyone who understands the first thing about thermodynamics, this is complete nonsense.”
Genius, Temperature is based on ENERGY. Energy is E. Heat flux is dE/dt.
dE/dt might be 0.09 W, but E is MUCH GREATER. I can’t tell you what E is, because that depends on the properties of matter, but I can tell you geothermal delivers at least 0C worth of energy for that matter at the surface.
Why are you having such a hard time with this?
I’m glad you understand thermoDYNAMICS, as do I, but you failed to look at the available BASE thermo. That’s why you are so confused.
Zoe says:
“P.S. I don’t know how you got such a small 0.05 heat flux. I examined 312 sites that have data for 50m and 100m depth and got 49mW/m^2.”
Because the last time I checked Zoe your 49 mW/m^2 is the same as Willis’ 0.05 W/m^2.
You appear to be disagreeing with Willis when he got the same answer?
Good catch, ThinkingScientist.
For some reason I read that as 0.05 mW/m^2, and I remembered I got forty-something in my old post. I thought he must’ve done something else since I used only a small subset of the data. But he didn’t. Thanks for clearing that up.
Zoe:
As always, you present such a target-rich environment!
You say:
So now you are at least acknowledging the principle of “radiative exchange”, which when I earlier pointed you to that section of the MIT engineering heat transfer text, you vehemently denied was correct.
So progress, but baby steps. You still get a couple of things horribly wrong. (I noticed both as a student and later a teacher that the weaker students would find some equation that seemed to deal with the situation at hand without understanding what the equation meant or when it was appropriate to use.)
First, you are treating the first meter of the atmosphere as completely opaque to all wavelengths of thermal radiation from the surface (that is, as an idealized blackbody). This is not remotely true. Only a minuscule fraction of surface radiation is absorbed in the first meter, and only a tiny bit radiated back. You have actually treated it like Willis’ “steel greenhouse” shell, whether you realize it or not.
Second, the presence of any downward radiation from the atmosphere, serving to reduce the net upwards heat flux, IS THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT. An atmosphere transparent to longwave infrared (including N2, O2, and Ar) would neither absorb nor radiate this radiation, so the surface radiation of 300+ W/m2 would radiate directly to space. (If you wanted to apply the equation you used, you would plug in 3K for the sky temperature.)
So even though you got the quantities grossly wrong, you argued FOR the principle of the greenhouse effect very well. More commonly used numbers – globally averaged — are 390 W/m2 upward, 324 W/m2 downward (because mostly coming from significantly higher in the atmosphere), yielding a net upward radiative heat flux of 66 W/m2.
There is so much more that I could attack, but I have to get back to real technical work.
Ed,
“you vehemently denied was correct”
False. I denied two-way photon flow. There are only waves. Heat transfer is from hot to cold.
“Only a minuscule fraction of surface radiation is absorbed in the first meter, and only a tiny bit radiated back.”
That’s true, but I didn’t want to complicate things with conduction and convection.
Surely you recognize that the meter above is only 0.0065C cooler and hence the heat flux to that level is TINY.
You missed the important point, as usual.
“Second, the presence of any downward radiation from the atmosphere, serving to reduce the net upwards heat flux, IS THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT.”
Wrong! The greenhouse effect is the warming of the surface due to this downward radiation. The fact that the surface warms the atmosphere and then this reduces heat flow to that atmosphere is just basic thermodynamics.
“so the surface radiation of 300+ W/m2 would radiate directly to space.”
No, it wouldn’t. Conduction and convection would still create a thermal gradient. Look at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune’s emission to space. It’s pitiful. They have extremely hot interiors and almost no GHGs.
“More commonly used numbers – globally averaged — are 390 W/m2 upward, 324 W/m2 downward (because mostly coming from significantly higher in the atmosphere), yielding a net upward radiative heat flux of 66 W/m2.”
No! There is 66 W/m^2 of heat transfer from the surface to the atmosphere. The downwelling IR is derived. The surface (and some sun) heated the atmosphere.
The GH effect argues that 324 W/m^2 originates in the atmosphere due to the sun’s 240 W/m^2 trying to escape, and this is what creates 390 at the surface.
This is bunk! The 324 (~330 by my method) ORIGINATES from geothermal.
Add 168 to that ~330 and you get 390 + latent + sensible.
There is no energy creation in my method from attempting to conserve heat flow. The energy is already abundantly present from geothermal. And since Earth emits what it receives, geothermal is not drained AT ALL. Therefore it can sit still and maintain ~4C at the surface.
So why is the surface ~15C?
~4C + 168 W/m^2 Solar – 18 W/m^2 Sensible – 86 W/m^2 Latent = ~15C
There is no mystery here.
The moon only provides ~105K. The sun should would provide ~270K, but because moon is so cold, the solar energy is dissipated into sub-surface conduction. In other words, the cold dampens the hot, so much so, that it leaves only 200K at the surface.
This might be hard for you to understand since you only know boundary level heat fluxes and nothing about bulk mass – whether dirt, rocks, or air.
Zoe:
You continue to outdo yourself! You say: “I denied two-way photon flow. There are only waves.”
We have over 100 years of spectacularly successful predictions based on the quantization of electromagnetic radiation. We have multibillion-dollar industries completely dependent on understanding and using this quantization. (I have personally worked in these industries, and none of the designs would make sense without this quantization.) Yet little Zoe waves it all away on a whim…
You say: “Surely you recognize that the meter above is only 0.0065C cooler and hence the heat flux to that level is TINY.”
The radiant power fluxes THROUGH this level are huge comparatively. The majority of sunlight makes it through the entire atmosphere without being absorbed, so an absolutely tiny fraction is absorbed in this last meter.
You say: “I mean geothermal delivers ~4C worth of energy to the surface.” This is completely meaningless gobbledygook. Energy, or even power, is not measured in C or K. You might as well have said “geothermal ~4 meters worth of energy to the surface.” All you are saying is that you do not understand the fundamental concepts AT ALL.
“successful predictions based on the quantization of electromagnetic radiation.”
Sure. Between matter and using waves. E+M are waves.
“so an absolutely tiny fraction is absorbed in this last meter.”
Blah blah. Small temperature differences between every meter = small heat flux between every meter.
“Energy, or even power, is not measured in C or K”
I said “worth”. Q = m Cp dT
Learn science.
Zoe:
You just keep getting more ridiculous. Treating EMR as waves alone cannot explain literally hundreds of phenomena we see and use every day. We have known this for at least a century now, through thousands of repeatable controlled laboratory experiments.
The well-known distinction between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation cannot be understood by wave theory. Phototransistors work on the principle that one photon absorbed causes the transfer of one electron.
The evidence for the existence of photons is every bit as strong as the evidence for the existence of electrons (quantized electrical charge). And electrons have wave properties too — they can generate diffraction patterns.
It is pathetic that you do not understand this in the 21st Century.
You say: “Small temperature differences between every meter = small heat flux between every meter.”
True if you are talking about conductive transfer. The conductive heat flux through the atmosphere is about one-millionth that of the radiative heat fluxes that overwhelmingly pass through each meter. That is why they are usually ignored in at least first cut calculations.
You say: “I said “worth”. Q = m Cp dT”.
Here’s yet another case where you just grab an equation without understanding what it means. The clue should have been the “dT”. The equation expresses the energy input required to create a CHANGE in temperature. You are using it incorrectly as an absolute temperature value. Rookie mistake!
Ed,
The discussion was about the invalidity of corpuscular theory of light. There is no justification for it. “Wavelength” means nothing to a corpuscle. So they don’t exist. And they don’t travel from something to nothing.
Everything else is irrelevant to this point. Everything has been explained with waves. Listening to scientists who believe in corpuscular theory doesn’t mean its true. If helps them to conceive of it that way, that is their own choice.
“the radiative heat fluxes that overwhelmingly pass through each meter.”
Uhuh, and what’s the NET of up and down through a meter? You won’t answer !
“You are using it incorrectly as an absolute temperature value”
I fed you a clue, dummy.
You said:
‘You say: “I mean geothermal delivers ~4C worth of energy to the surface.” This is completely meaningless gobbledygook.’
It sounded like you don’t understand there’s a relationship between energy and temperature.
If I told you my electric heater brought 100C worth of energy to the top of the water, you would say “This is completely meaningless gobbledygook”.
It’s pretty obvious what I’m saying. Why not to you?
Obviously my equation is iterative. You add delta T to the current T. Duh!
Geothermal makes the surface ~4C. I blurred the specifics since it’s hard for you. Is that better?
Zoe:
You say: “Everything has been explained with waves.”
As a crusty old thermodynamics professor of mine would roar when someone made a ridiculous claim: “HORRRRRRSESH*T!”
Way back in the 19th century, scientists were noticing phenomena that could NOT be explained with WAVE theory. Starting in the early 20th century, quantum theory COULD explain these phenomena, and VERY successfully and accurately. I’ve listed just a few of these.
But Zoe is stuck in the 19th century and believes that every physics textbook written in the last century is wrong, that whole industries that have been operating successfully for decades can’t possibly be working. Amazing arrogance!
You ask: “what’s the net up and down through a meter?” Well to use typical low-altitude values for thermal infrared alone, with 400 W/m2 up and 300 W/m2 down, the net is 100 W/m2 up, with virtually none of this absorbed in a 1-meter layer.
You say: ‘If I told you my electric heater brought 100C worth of energy to the top of the water, you would say “This is completely meaningless gobbledygook”.’
Yes I would because it is true! You might say that you have an electric heater that is capable of raising the temperature of a certain vessel of water (say, 1 liter, well insulated) to 100C in an ambient of say, 25C. But that very same electric heater probably would be able to “bring 100C worth of energy to the top of the water in, say, a 100 liter poorly insulated vessel in an ambient of -10C. So your statement is indeed meaningless gobbledygook!
Zoe Phin
You say heat only flows from hot to cold.
Perhaps you could use your science to explain how an UNCOOLED thermal imaging camera works?
Modern cameras using microbolometers can measure to better than 0.03 °C differences in temperatures from -20°C to a few hundred °C. in one range. other ranges allow much higher temps 2700°C to be measured.
Now obviously temperatures above the temperature of the microbolometers can warm them above ambient changing their resistance. But how do colder temperatures, -20°C remember, cause the micro bolometer to cool and its resistance change.
The lens images the subject onto the microbolometer array. What magic allows the image of cold objects to change the resistance of the bolometer sitting at +40°C? There is no such things as cold rays.
The way it works is that all parts (hot or cold) of the image warm the bolometers. Cold parts of the image (above 0K) warm the bolometers less than the warmer things so resistance of the bolometers follows the temperature.
Remember the bolometer array is at a warm temperature gaining heat from all its surroundings – electronics, mechanical bits, lenses so will be above ambient.
It will continue working when focussed objects are just above 0K but the small changes caused by minimal added energy at these temperatures will be lost in the noise of detection. Hence most uncooled machines only show temperatures down to -20C
Zeo Phin
“49mW/m^2” rounds to “0.05 W/m^2” as Willis Eschenbach stated.
“Zoe: Yeah, the smaller, the hotter! Inverse relationship.”
When your whole argument is based on a falsehood, it’s no wonder it falls apart so easily.
You are nothing but a warmist, MarkW. Come out of that closet!
Only a sith thinks in absolutes.
The idea that everyone who doesn’t agree with you 100% is evil is a religious statement, not a scientific one.
Groupthink, MarkW, groupthink.
Warmists believe the GHE exacerbated by humans will cause untold damage. Lukewarmers like yourself don’t believe it is that serious.
Me? I see no evidence for either stance. I see no evidence for climate change, rapid climate change that is, either.
What climate are we talking about? The one in Mumbai? The one in the English Lake District, the one in New York?
Grow up, plonker.
Ed Bo
“OK For a typical square meter, it delivers 0.09 Joules each second. That’s a completely insignificant amount, as is the ~$0.09 interest my bank gives me each week.”
How about 9 cents a second if you compare apples to apples instead of apples to assholes…
I was comparing $0.09 interest per week to spending of $330 per week. Zoe analysis says that the account balance could remain steady with those as the only input and output.
So, let’s ramp it up to a huge account that earns $0.09 per second of interest, but spends $330 per second. Same problem. Trivial to see, but Zoe can’t understand it no matter how many times it’s explained to her.
Ed,
The sun emits at 5778K, that is equivalent to $63,196,526.55
Let’s say the meter below the emission surface is 5779K. The net radiative heat flux (the photonic version of conductive HEAT FLUX) between this layer and next is $43,761.11.
So the emissive layer is getting $43,761.11, but spending $63,196,526.55.
That’s a ratio of 1 to 1444.
Yet no one doubts the sun shines just fine, and will continue for billions of years.
Of course here on Earth, the sun gives us $240 and we spend $240, geothermal doesn’t need to spend anything. $330 is not spent. It’s just an SB equivalent of ~277K of energy provided by geothermal (273K by convention).
Zoe:
You keep making a fool of yourself with these “drive-by” analyses.
You make completely arbitrary and unsupported assumptions (1 K/m solar temperature gradient, layers interacting as blackbody radiators only), then try to make definitive arguments based on these assumptions.
It doesn’t even pass the laugh test!
Ed,
The sun is not considered a black body generator?
If the emission layer is considered a blackbody generator, surely the denser layer beneath would be more so.
1 K/m is indeed made up. The real gradient is much less than this, and it only bolsters my point.
You’re a sophist, Ed.
Zoe:
Every time I think you can’t outdo yourself, you manage it!
You say: “If the emission layer is considered a blackbody generator, surely the denser layer beneath would be more so.”
WRONG!!!
I’ve designed heatsinks with black-anodized surfaces that radiate outwards almost as perfect blackbodies (emissivity ~0.97.) But underneath the surface, heat transfer acts NOTHING LIKE blackbody radiative transfer. Our experimental results show that Fourier’s conduction equations predict very well what really happens.
Oh, and there is no “more so” than blackbody radiation. BB radiation is the idealized limit for thermal radiation.
In every argument you make, you simply show that you have no idea what you are talking about.
Ed,
You’re not even going to attempt to figure out what the heat flux through a meter near the emission level is, because it would leave you embarassed.
You say more about yourself than me.
Zoe:
Because I understand that the 1st LoT is a fundamental and universal law, and I understand how to apply it, I can confidently state that the power transferrate from the interior to the top layer that radiates to space (which is a lot thicker than a meter, by the way) is fundamentally equal to the radiative power transfer out, because the sun is in close to steady state conditions.
And I can state this without being an expert in the details of the mechanisms of heat transfer in a plasma. I can also state confidently that you know nothing about heat transfer in plasmas, because you know nothing about heat transfer in solids, liquids, and gases.
Has anyone simulated the earth’s energy budget by actually using a sphere that spins and only half is receiving incoming energy at a time? And adds clouds based on a yearly pattern or average for each 1×1 degree quadrant? As most of the processes are not linear over even modest temperature changes, assuming an average for very different modes of operation sounds like a gross simplification. We have the computational power to do this type of simulation and verify if the average is a reasonable approximation.
“Has anyone simulated the earth’s energy budget by actually using a sphere that spins and only half is receiving incoming energy at a time?”
Careful Loren.
That will really upset the apple cart.
Loren,
Have a look at this paper and tell me what the value of the solar flux is used on their model.
Leconte, J., Forget, F., Charnay, B., Wordsworth, R. and Pottier, A., 2013. Increased insolation threshold for runaway greenhouse processes on Earth-like planets. Nature, 504(7479), pp.268-271.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12827
Hint “Figure 1 | Temperature and radiative budget for the Earth under two
insolations. a, b, Maps of the annual mean surface temperature for the models
corresponding to present Earth (F* = 341W m^-2 ; a) and to a mean solar flux of 375W m^-2 (b)”
Let me remind you that the NASA value of the Earth disk interception is :
Solar irradiance 1361.0 (W/m2) – a value 4 times bigger, so yes in climate models the sun does shine onto the ground at night.
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.html
Loren C. Wilson September 23, 2020 at 2:04 pm
Yes. Every single modern climate model.
The accuracy of the results is a different question, but yes, climate models do that.
w.
Great article Willis, thank you. Articles like these are why I come to WUWT.
I like the theory overall, it’s just another piece of the mountain of evidence that water moderates temperature extremes on this planet.
There’s one thing I’d like to say about figure 8 though, direct downwelling solar energy is not the only and may not even be the primary energy source for evaporation because of kinetic energy from wind. Gas has inherent properties that make it an energy reservoir with far more thermal feedbacks to the surface than radiant emission.
Recipe for a Hurricane
Whipping up a hurricane calls for a number of ingredients readily available in tropical areas:
A pre-existing weather disturbance: A hurricane often starts out as a tropical wave.
Warm water: Water at least 26.5 degrees Celsius over a depth of 50 meters powers the storm.
Thunderstorm activity: Thunderstorms turn ocean heat into hurricane fuel.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/how-hurricanes-form.html
And angular momentum. You get more of that in the tropics.
Don’t forget the lack of vertical shear, which tears hurricanes apart before they can form.
Ghalfrunt
Another thing that hurricanes do is cool the local ocean surface quite significantly, partly by causing upwelling. This can be of comparable significance to the atmospheric convective and radiative cooling from storms and thunderclouds. All in all a big burp of energy from ocean to space.
It can only get to space from radiative gasses and clouds (greyish body)
clouds need to be above 10km before they can directly radiate all wavelengths to space otherwise some wavelengths are intercepted by ghgs just as the radiation from the sea is
cooler ocean = less radiation (black body)
convection will move heat upwards perhaps quicker than if no upwelling. Radiation from ghgs plays little part a lower altitudes – collison between molecule is too frequent and transfers hot ghg to non ghg.
so just how much cooling do you really get
Willis, this is a great article! Thank you for taking the time to create all the detailed plots and to put forth, in detail, your reasoning. Overall, I find what you say to be very credible.
However, there is one thing nagging at me: what is the root case of the marked inflection point at 27 C?
You posted (two paragraphs before Figure 4): “In the areas where the sea surface temperature is over ~ 27°C there is less and less energy available with each additional degree C of surface warming.” That cannot be correct, as stated. The specific heat capacity of seawater near the surface is basically constant over the range of, say, 20 to 30 °C, so the energy content change in the ocean surface per degree temperature change should be the same going from, say 27 to 29 °C, as it is going from 25 to 27 °C.
Something else is in play. If I accept that 27 °C is the ocean surface “trigger temperature” for thunderstorms, then it seems that thunderstorms would cause sea-surface evaporative cooling to be maximized at that temperature (i.e., RH ~100%) and the resulting atmospheric albedo (from CN cloud tops) to be also be maximized at that temperature. I am at a loss at to the mechanism that might explain ADDITIONAL COOLING for sea surface temperatures higher than the asserted 27 °C trigger point . . . shouldn’t both sea-surface and atmospheric temperatures be stabilized by the massive energy exchanges engendered by thunderstorms, as you have so aptly described their influence. By what mechanism does additional heat loss at the surface above 27 °C actually occur . . . could it be that precipitation out of CN thunderheads sends enough cold water/hail coupled with very cold air downwashes to provide net COOLING that increasing with sea surface temperature above 27 °C? But then again shouldn’t this energy exchange be obvious in the CERES data for cloud tops?
Evaporative cooling is a mass transfer phenomenon, i.e. the transfer of water vapor from the water surface to the ambient atmosphere.
The rate of mass transfer = kc x A x Driving Force.
The Driving Force is the difference between the saturation vapor pressure of water and the ambient partial pressure of water. The saturation vapor pressure (and thus the Driving Force) increases exponentially with temperature (approximately 6% / degree C at 25 C).
The mass transfer coefficient kc is, in this case, driven by natural convection, which in turn is a function of density differences between different air masses. The main cause of the density differences is the amount of water vapor in the air, whose density is 40% lower than dry air. Thus a 1 C increase in temperature results in both a 6% increase in mass transfer because of the vapor pressure, plus a positive feed-back of a similar magnitude because of the effect of water vapor on natural convection.
The effective area, A, is the ocean surface, if the ocean is calm. However, if the winds increase (i.e. natural convection driven by the concentration of water vapor) and there are waves and swells with broken surface, then the area becomes the sea surface area plus the surface area of all of the water droplets associated with the broken surface.
In other words once there is sufficient evaporation to cause natural convection to increase until the winds are strong enough to cause waves with broken surface, then the surface area can increase explosively.
Thus one gets a situation where a small increase in temperature, causes an exponential increase in water vapor pressure, which drives multiple positive positive feed-backs that can cause an explosive increase in the mass transfer rate.
From Willis’ paper, it seems that the minimum temperature for this to occur is about 26 C.
The maximum mass transfer rate will be limited by ability to transfer heat, within the water, required to support the rate of evaporation required for the mass transfer to occur. It seems from the data presented by Willis, that heat transfer within the water cannot support the mass transfer rates at temperatures above 30C.
In the above comment, in the first two sentences, ‘heat transfer’ should be ‘mass transfer’.
Fixed. I hate typos and that kind of errors. And since WordPress has no edit function, well, that would be me.
w.
dh-mtl,
OK, but my question still is: what is the root case of the marked inflection point at 27 C?
Gordon Dressler
It appears that above 27 C, the rate of evaporation is high enough to cause winds that are strong enough to cause rough seas, which then causes a massive increase in the rate of evaporation.
It’s the classic run-away feed-back loop.
Except for the fact that Willis has already pointed out “The thunderstorms which are cutting down the total available solar energy are also cooling the surface in a host of other ways. First among these is evaporation. Thunderstorms make rain, and it takes solar energy to evaporate the rain. That energy is then not available to heat the surface. . . . In addition, the thunderstorm generated winds increase the local sea surface reflectivity by creating reflective white foam, spume, and spray over large areas of the ocean. And finally, a rough ocean with thunderstorm-generated waves reflects about two times what a calm ocean reflects (albedo ~ 8% rough vs ~ 4% smooth). That change in sea surface roughness alone equates to about 15 W/m2 less available energy.”
So, it seems that these mechanisms would combine to REGULATE the maximum sea surface temperature at a “balance point” of around 27 °C, but do not explain the mechanism of active cooling of ocean temperatures above 27 °C. In other words, if 27 °C is the point at which tropical thunderstorms are triggered, how is it possible that open ocean surface waters can be heated above 27 °C in the first place so that they can be “cooled down” from those higher temperatures?
Gordon A. Dressler September 24, 2020 at 8:58 am
Thanks, Gordon, always good to hear from you.
It seems you think the development of the thunderstorms is an “all-or-nothing” proposition.
It is not.
As the surface temperatures continue to rise, there are several things that change in response:
• Daily thunderstorm emergence time
• Number of thunderstorms
• Strength of thunderstorms
In addition, at higher temperatures there is a brand new emergence, where the thunderstoms form into long squall lines.
We can see all of this at work by observing the continuing increase in average cloud top height at temperatures above 27°C.
As a result, the thunderstorms can exert increasing additional downward pressure on the surface temperature by forming earlier in the day, by being more numerous and individually stronger, and by forming squall lines.
Regards,
w.
Hi Willis, thank you for the prompt response to my recent comment.
I’m apparently not clearly communicating my major question about the data you present in support of your theory of “emergent phenomena”, which has great intrinsic appeal to me.
Let me try approaching it another way. In your Figure 3 scatter plot graph, the FWHM Gaussian average trend line of available solar energy (after albedo reflections) versus liquid sea surface temperature has a sharp reversal in slope (going from yellow to red color indication) at close to 27 °C . . . not at close to 26 °C, and not at close to 28 °C. And the downward (red) slope is shown to continue up to 30 °C.
So, fundamentally, if not coming from residual incoming solar radiation, what is the source of energy (or W/m^2) to heat, on average, ocean surface waters to temperatures above that relative sharp and dramatic 27 °C reversal point for solar heating?
This appears to me to present the quandary of what is the source of energy for heating the ocean’s surface above 27 °C if the solar energy available for such heating is actually declining above 27 °C as this graph indicates is happening . . . all this based on statistical averages, of course.
[Note that the above is true and even more evident in your Figure 7, although the sharp slope inflection point has shifted downward to 26 °C.]
Is this a case where I am making a mistake in taking that red slope literally, whereas I should instead be considering the vertical min/max range of observations (max variations providing more solar heating than the FWHM Gaussian average trend line peak implies, at least out to 29 °C)?
I do understand that the development of thunderstorms is not an “all-or-nothing” proposition, and this is clearly implied by the data scatter, both vertically and horizontally, in your Figures 3 and 7. But the breakpoints in Figure 3 and Figure 7 are very sharp.
Please understand that I am not trying to be argumentative, but just to obtain understanding, along the lines of the Biblical advice: “Test all things; hold fast what is good.”
Thanks!
dh-mtl
If atmospheric pressure were to increase by 10%, due to more N, O2, CO2 in the air, then the thunderstorm inflection point would move up several degrees C.
Grandma’s kitchen had a pressure cooker. There was a weight sitting on the steam vent, which regulated the internal increase in temperature. That increase made for faster cooking.
100 million years ago, do we know what the mass of the earths atmosphere was? I keep following the discussions on “can Pterodactyls fly?” No one has a fix on the fundamental question as to the atmospheric density. Perhaps that density question is involved with the GAT more than CO2 changes.
My opinion is that this is related to water vapor partial pressure and buoyancy of humid air. Somewhere around 27C is buoyancy of 100% relative humidity air high enough to reach condensing altitude.
Peter, cumulus clouds (perhaps stratus clouds also) form above oceans having sea surface temperatures well below 27 °C (81°F). Look at Figure 1 in the above article to see the widespread distribution of 2-4 km high clouds for sea surface temperatures less than 27 °C.
Thanks Willis, a valuable supplement to your EP (emergent phenomena) sequence.
Where I live, 19°11’34.27″S,146°40’39.74″E, anyone who cares to look can see the reality of EP. The “West Pacific Warm Pool” is not far away, and the dominant (60%) airflow is from the NE. You only need to be on elevated ground here on a late summer afternoon to see the whole thing boiling up. Even happening now (early spring) to a minor extent.
An interesting point:
“… when we include evaporative cooling, the drop in available energy starts at a slightly lower temperature, 26°C vs 27°”
An early technical paper from JCU CTS (Cyclone Testing Station) says cyclones can be triggered by a sea temperature in excess of 24°C and a thunderstorm in the Solomon Sea, which is then likely to track south and west (except when it doesn’t).
You also say ” … by the time the open ocean temperature reaches its maximum value of 30°C … “. Also correct in my opinion, but the BoM (Australian Bureau of Meteorology) “MetEye” device http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/meteye/ is currently showing a range of 24 – 26°C along the shore line here, and 32 – 36°C further out. One reason why I never look to BoM for reliable information.
Mmmm … you have offshore reef there as I recall, inshore of that the temperature could go over 30°C. The limit only applies to open ocean.
Nice place to live, though.
w.
Very interesting article. Actually based on data, rather than models.
I’ve been thinking about the albedo effect on the earth’s temperature.
Solar panels are designed to absorb solar energy. In general, their albedo is less than that of the ground they cover. This means that a solar farm must increase the amount solar energy absorbed by the earth. Eventually, this must end up as heat (Second Law of Thermodynamics). This heat will warm the atmosphere. So the effect of the transition to solar energy will be global warming. Not what is being advertised.
Have I missed something?
Haven’t missed anything, it’s a known and discussed effect.
w.
The cells are as black as can be made to absorb solar visible radiation where energy is at a peak.
This unfortunately in simple cells (no wavelength selective coatings) also means that they absorb thermal radiation.
The sum of the solar input and losses due to electrical resistance heats the panels more than the ground that they are covering would heat.
However they are black and emit at black body spectrums (less the bits removed for elect energy) so compared to ground which emits grey body radiation they will emit more energy. They are also thin and will be cooled by conduction to air, both sides. There would be little heating of the grond so ;ittle storage of energy (like open ground would give).
A corollary question would be: for those eras where the global temperature has been higher or lower, what changed the setpoint?
Paul, that to me is a fundamental question. We cooled down into the Little Ice Age, hung out there for a while, then started warming. During this whole time CO2 was relatively stable … so what was changing the set point?
I wrote about this in a post you might enjoy called Slow Drift in Thermoregulated Emergent Systems.
w.
Probably random. There are a lot of interacting mechanisms, so it would be surprising if there were not variation. Its like an imperfectly tuned car idling. You get periodic changes in tone and frequency, but it carries on idling and reverts back.
The ‘slow drift’ piece was very interesting in ruling out the intuitively promising contenders, but there could be interactions between their effects which are not captured by examining them individually.
Have you considered putting the key pieces together in book format, and publishing on Amazon? Most of the work is done, they are pretty much organized in chapters already. Need some editing, it would be work, but it would be a valuable contribution.
michel
September 24, 2020 at 12:28 am
That’s a great idea…it would be a wonderful reference for all us minions and those to come.
One downside is that it might divert Willis from generating new and useful ideas.
Is it cosmic effects [ phenomena ] Willis, do you think, or do they explain some of it..
The current temperature is controlled by the connectedness of the oceans. The tropical ocean cannot be more than 303K providing the air in the ocean circulation gets cooled to 271K. The temperature where sea ice forms. Under those conditions all the water evaporated into the air circulating into the tropics has to be dropped out by the time the air returns to to the pole/s.
Before Drakes passage opened, there was no Southern Ocean circulation. That meant that there was no sea ice on the southern side of the Pacific Ocean. That enabled higher sea surface temperature than 303K, the present limit. If the sea surface never gets to freezing then the circulating air does not lose all its water and the water column increases; still varying from tropics to poles but above zero baseline at the poles. That means the elevation of the condensing air and cloud formation is higher resulting in higher sea surface temperature.
Drakes passage formed to enable the southern ocean circulation from 60M to 40M years ago. That enabled heat transfer from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. Cooling the Pacific and warming the Atlantic. The trees in Antarctica died.
The distribution of water over the planet and properties of water control the sea surface temperature to a narrow range. Up to 303K in the tropics and down to 271K at the sea ice interface. Providing there is sea ice at the poles this temperature range will be maintained.
Opening and closing of Bering Strait controls heat transfer from the Northern Pacific to the Northern Atlantic in the northern hemisphere. Bering Strait is only 50m deep so it works as a regular switch in the current ice age that gets flicked by the small changes in earth’s rotational eccentricity to cause glaciation in the Northern hemisphere.
Willis,
Evaporative cooling at the warm ocean surface makes sense.
Where does the latent heating of condensation go?
Jerry
Jerry, good question. The heat is released at the LCL, the lifting condensation level. This is down at the base of the thunderstorm tower. The released heat acts like a fire in a fireplace and drives the now much drier air vertically up the “chimney” of the thunderstorm tower.
It emerges at the top of the tower in the dry rarified air of the upper troposphere, where it is much freer to radiate to space.
It is worth noting that during the whole process of the energy moving vertically from the surface to the top of the troposphere the heat is shielded from interacting with the GHGs in the atmosphere. Thus little of it returns to the surface. Instead, it rises as latent heat through the lower clear air to the LCL, and is shielded from radiative interaction with the atmosphere above that because it’s moving up the core of the thunderstorm tower.
w.
Willis,
In our manuscripts on equatorial and mesoscale motions, the vertical velocity is directly proportional to the total of the heating plus cooling. And the main contributions to that total are evaporative cooling and latent heating. Thus your description of what happens in tropical storms is in complete agreement with the mathematical Bounded Derivative Theory. That theory also proves that the climate models are based on the wrong atmospheric dynamical of equations. 🙂
Jerry
Indeed, the failure to recognize that surface-to-air heat transfer is predominantly via surface evaporation and that latent heat bypasses “greenhouse” effects is the egregious dynamical error of most climate models.
David,
See my manuscript in the September issue of Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans or on this site Under the thread “Structural Errors in ….”
For mesoscale case see the Browning and Kreiss 2002 manuscript on google scholar and for the equatorial case the manuscript with Wayne Schubert.
Jerry
Any handy list of references?
Is that phenomena linear or a rapid onset? etc.
Somewhat off topic, but the first graph got me curious about what’s going on around 0 to 10 deg C. You used a gaussian, but the distribution in that area looks like a poisson? I’m wondering if that’s just a state change from ice to water?
Why don’t we count heat from the earth ? ie, the millions of undersea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents ? We now know there are several moons with subsurface oceans that are heated from their cores (and one or two like Enceladus that are heated by gravitation forces), but if there is enough residual heat in small moons to keep liquid oceans going, then it makes sense that there is SIGNIFICANTLY more residual heat coming from earth. We know that the boundary of the mantle-crust is 200 degrees C and the bottom of the mantle is over 900 degrees C. We know from deep mines that just a few kms down the temperatures is so high that people cant survive without cooling – so there is obviously a flow of heat to the surface. 30 years ago they thought there was just a few undersea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents. A decade later it was hundreds. A decade later thousands. And today it’s in the millions. And then you have the sea floor ridges where the plates are spreading and constantly spewing out lava across thousands of kms. I struggle to believe that all of this is not significantly heating the planet.
ggm, there are indeed volcanoes, hot spots, and hydrothermal vents under the sea. There are also hot spots, hot springs, and volcanoes on land. I fear the “million” number is an exaggeration:
“The total number of submarine volcanoes is estimated to be over 1 million (most are now extinct).”
The number of active underseas volcanoes is not known. However, the Smithsonian says:
“Estimates of global magma budgets suggest that roughly 75% of the lava reaching Earth’s surface does so unnoticed at submarine midocean ridges.”
So … 3/4 of the activity in the ocean, which has about 70% of the surface area … sounds like volcanoes below sea level are somewhat more dense than those on land. Let’s say they’re twice as numerous. Heck, let’s say three times as numerous.
Now … think about how far you’d have to walk to come to a volcano that is erupting … even if they were popping off from three times as many places, that’s still few and far between.
Now, on land we have good estimates of geothermal heating rates. It’s about half a tenth of a watt per square metre (0.05 W/m2). And the heat from the point sources, the active volcanoes and the hot springs, is trivially small when averaged over the hundreds of trillions of square metres of land area.
So let’s assume for the sake of argument that sea floor heat is ten times that. It’s not, but let’s assume it were that large.
That would make the ocean contribution 0.5 W/m2, and the land contribution 0.05 W/m2 … weighted mean is a third of a watt per square metre.
And in a world where the 24/7 average total downwelling radiation at the surface is about half a kilowatt per square metre … that third of a W/m2 is generally ignored. It is tiny, it is stable, it changes nothing.
w.
Willis wrote: “ it is stable, ”
This seems to be a point many miss.
We are not concerned with the concept of “deep time” with our discussions of global warming. The argument seems to be since the industrial revolution and the use of carbon based fuels by humans. I live on top of the Columbia River Basalts that came in the middle Miocene, 17 to 15 Million years ago. I read those flood basalts vented a lot of heat. Not of interest now, though. Landforms are interesting.
“So let’s assume for the sake of argument that sea floor heat is ten times that. It’s not, but let’s assume it were that large.”
Say, government was crazy {obviously, it is} and wanted to match that amount heat with nuclear bombs {under deep blue sea- no one would notice it].
Other the waste money {and nuclear bombs] would you regard it as problem?
{I wouldn’t- but it would be doing more global warming than CO2 emission}.
Thing is global climate is long term thing- and no crazy government could do it, for such a long term- if nothing else get Peak Uranium. Maybe whales wouldn’t like it, or maybe they be liking the noise.
What I think is damaging to the world is the stupid global warming religion. Some might think it’s good idea to terrify the kiddies.
Did duck and cover cause that much problems? ?
I think so.
Anyhow, our global climate is set by the entire ocean average temperature. It’s cold and that is why we been in Ice Age for millions of years.
Why we have low CO2 levels.
If ocean were to warm from 3.5 C to 10 C, that is huge change.
Sea levels go thru roof just from thermal expansion, and no more polar ice caps, but even that not much problem. I think we should live on ocean- and such a thing could make that easier.
But in terms of global temperature- it’s “worse than was thought” but not if you thought it going to get hot- as 10 C is not vaguely, hot.
But warming ocean to 10 C, way beyond what humans or space alien could do. Space alien could drop huge space rock on Earth- but it’s the impact being the problem rather any warming of ocean. Same goes for massive increase in volcanic activity- it’s the volcanic activity, which the immediate or only actual problem.
But if ocean warms up to 4 C, that is a lot climate change. It possible within few centuries. Only about 1 foot sea level rise, but maybe have orange tree growing in Oregon- which I would count that as definitely, climate change.
Not against it, but no doubt about it being “climate change”.
Or orange trees growing in Oregon I count as a good sign. And probably or maybe never happened in 100,000 years.
Anyhow, warming or cooling ocean by .5 C matters, warming global air by 1 C doesn’t matter. Though cooling global air 1 C, that obviously is bad news.
Anyhow, modeling- what causes ice box or greenhouse {hothouse} global climate, and in regard to that issue, geothermal heating of ocean is a part of it.
Why are living in time when sun putting out the most energy, and we living in Ice Age. Why was so much warmer, tens, hundreds of million years ago {with sun putting out less energy].
Geothermal.
And plus such things where continents are {though again also related to geothermal factors]. Or where continents are- the entire global topography is big
factor.
Also ocean floor {70% of Earth surface] is roughly less 200 million years old- just that fact, with all the unknowns about this, has got force one consider the geothermal as part of Earth’s climate history.
Under 23s won’t know what global warmening feels like-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/australia-s-south-east-set-for-coldest-spring-day-in-23-years/ar-BB19lUF7
Excellent.
If you supply enough energy to the heat engine, it cranks up in efficiency. This is just like some chemical reactions that can only move forward given some minimum amount of energy.
Now if your theory is correct, think about the consequences – more water in the air, more rainfall, more weathering, more snowfall in some areas which could lead to glacier development.
And with any luck…lower summer temperatures in Texas!
Willis,
your 27C hypothesis would be dependent on surface salinity as well. Higher salinity increasingly needs more energy, and thus higher temps, for evaporation.
so salinity would also be a controlling variable.
Long ago ancient tropical seas have been speculated to be much warmer than today. That would imply ocean salinity was substantially higher than today, thus pushing your emergent behavior threshold temp upward as well.
Much like Carbon being sequestered through the eons to bring pCO2 levels down to modern values, salt sequestration also has been undoubtedly going on. The evidence is the many thick salt deposits around the world where ancient seas evaporated, and then the salt layers were buried.
Interesting, Joel, never thought of that. Hang on … let me do some calcs …
OK. Turns out that it’s a difference that makes basically no difference. I use the “Gibbs Sea Water” package in R for this. It gives latent heat of vaporization (evaporation) as a function of salinity and temperature.
Typical ocean salinity runs from about 33 to 37. At 30°C, when the salinity goes from 0 (fresh water) the latent heat of vaporization varies from 2426.9 to 2427.0 joules per gram …
So it’s what I call “a difference that makes no difference”.
Curiously, at 30°C, peak latent heat of vaporization occurs at a salinity of 17.5, and drops both above and below that. Always more to learn. But again, the changes are minuscule.
Regards,
w.
I don’t know where you got your numbers on Latent heat of vaporization versus salinity.
(rounding to zero decimal places)
At 30ºC, the latent heat of vaporization of 20 g/kg seawater is:
h ≈ 2,400 kJ/kg. But at 40 g/kg,
h ≈ 2,350 kJ/kg.
35 g/kg seawater is going to have a latent heat of vaporization of around h ≈ 2,387 kJ/kg.
36 g/kg seawater, h ≈ 2,390 kJ/kg,
37 g/kg seawater, h ≈ 2,393 kJ/kg,
38 g/kg seawater, h ≈ 2,395 kJ/kg,
39 g/kg seawater, h ≈ 2,398 kJ/kg,
40 g/kg seawater, h ≈ 2,400 kJ/kg.
Salinity of seawater physical properties, Reference: see Figure 12 in this publication:
http://web.mit.edu/lienhard/www/Thermophysical_properties_of_seawater-DWT-16-354-2010.pdf
Those are probably not inconsequential as you suggest from your flawed latent heat numbers. Those differences are probably substantial enough to to support the hypothesis that ancient tropical seas with higher SS temps than today were supported by elevated salinity relative to modern day values.
Oopps wrote that backwards on the latent heats.
But the point is the increasing salinity would mean more seawater has to be evaporated to convert the same kJ from sensible heat to latent heat. And thus yoiur threshold temperature will rise as well. It is not an insignificant rise.
“The highest surface salinities in the open Pacific occur in the southeastern area, where they reach 37 parts per thousand; in the corresponding trade-wind belt in the North Pacific, the maximum salinity seldom reaches 36 parts per thousand. Pacific waters near Antarctica have salinities of less than about 34 parts; the lowest salinities—less than about 32 parts—occur in the extreme northern zone of the Pacific.
The heavy rainfall of the western Pacific, associated with the monsoons of the region, gives rise to relatively low salinities. Seasonal variations are significant in the western Pacific as well as in the eastern Pacific, caused by seasonal changes in surface currents.
Those small variations in salinity matter in regards to how much seawater must be evaporated to “move” a kJ of heat energy (sensible to latent) from the sea to atmosphere.
I’m pretty certain your analysis needs to consider the salinity changes across the equatorial Pacific to account for the energy budget you are studying.
And salinity has been rising:
“Examining the salinity change in the upper Pacific Ocean during the Argo period”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-019-04912-z
the number of COVID pandemic deaths (a once-off phenomenon) finally equaled two-thirds of the annual number of deaths from obesity.”
…
Classic case of Willis comparing apples to oranges. The number of COVID-19 deaths has four more months to go before you compare it to an annual number of anything.
So, 2/3rds of obesity, in 2/3rds of the year. Sounds like a pretty fair comparison to me!
TL,
Note that the number of virus deaths is dropping while continuing the little surges as new subpopulations are encountered.
Meanwhile the deaths that obesity contributes to increase yearly and will remain high while this virus will fade to background in two years.
https://usafacts.org/articles/obesity-rate-nearly-triples-united-states-over-last-50-years/
“while this virus will fade to background in two years”
…
Making an assertion without evidence is stupid. This virus may remain in circulation for decades.
Epidemiological curves are well known.
Please do more reading and less ranting.
Example: The 2009 swine flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic that lasted for about 19 months, from January 2009 to August 2010, … {Wiki}
TL Winslow September 23, 2020 at 4:47 pm
Nice technique, where you accuse me of doing something many times in the past, without providing a quote as requested or a scrap of evidence I’ve done anything. Delightfully underhanded of you, I’d say.
Study up on your reading comprehension. I said:
I said it was a sad milestone, which is a totally valid comparison. It doesn’t mean we’ve seen the whole year as you seem to think. A milestone doesn’t mean you’ve completed the journey or the year. It marks progress along the way.
It just means that we’ve hit two/thirds of the annual obesity deaths, nothing more. You’re overthinking it.
w.
Jerry, yes a good question. For a buoyant process, such as a thunderstorm, an air parcel will rise to the CCL (convective condensation level) where is condenses to cloud droplets and begins to release the latent heat. This is the base of the thunderstorm. The parcel will continue to rise, cool, condense, and release latent heat which keeps it warmer than the environment and keeps it rising at a steadily faster rate. This produces the strong updraft of thunderstorms. So the latent heat of condensation is released steadily through the updraft.
Not all of it can be released. During the uplift process heat is converted to potential energy as the air density falls and the molecules occupy a larger volume. That potential energy cannot be radiated away. It is only recovered when the air sinks back towards the surface.
So, within the global scale Hadley, Ferrel and Polar cells heat is constantly being added back to the surface recovered from potential energy as the density increases and the molecules occupy a smaller volume under the descending legs.
That is where the so called greenhouse effect really comes from.
The radiative theory misses all that.
” back to the surface ”
Poor wording. Atmosphere is meant, I think, not surface.
Well something must stop runaway global warming. Higher temperature means more water vapor which means higher temperature and so on. Willis’ theory looks good to me and backed up by data. The agw models have failed in that they run hot, and have made other predictions that have not occurred, so something obviously is wrong with them. In any other scientific field they would be considered total failures.
Off topic, Willis, but I’ve been watching
https://www.discovery.com/shows/expedition-to-the-edge/articles/follow-an-expedition-to-the-edge
The conditions aboard that ship are horrible. Staph infections and shipmates, some are children, are driving each other batty.
Were your experiences sailing pleasant? Just wondering.
My sailing experiences? Well, you could start with my rollicking sea tale of a long voyage of pirates and perils entitled “A Pacific Penance” … come back and let me know what you think. If you like that one, I have more.
w.