Earth is on a budget – an energy budget. Our planet is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy in and out of Earth’s system. But human activities are throwing that off balance, causing our planet to warm in response.
Radiative energy enters Earth’s system from the sunlight that shines on our planet. Some of this energy reflects off of Earth’s surface or atmosphere back into space. The rest gets absorbed, heats the planet, and is then emitted as thermal radiative energy the same way that black asphalt gets hot and radiates heat on a sunny day. Eventually this energy also heads toward space, but some of it gets re-absorbed by clouds and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The absorbed energy may also be emitted back toward Earth, where it will warm the surface even more.
Adding more components that absorb radiation – like greenhouse gases – or removing those that reflect it – like aerosols – throws off Earth’s energy balance, and causes more energy to be absorbed by Earth instead of escaping into space. This is called a radiative forcing, and it’s the dominant way human activities are affecting the climate.
A simplified animation of Earth’s planetary energy balance: A planet’s energy budget is balanced between incoming (yellow) and outgoing radiation (red). On Earth, natural and human-caused processes affect the amount of energy received as well as emitted back to space. This study filters out variations in Earth’s energy budget due to feedback processes, revealing the energy changes caused by aerosols and greenhouse gas emissions.Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image LabDownload the panels in this GIF from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio
Climate modelling predicts that human activities are causing the release of greenhouse gases and aerosols that are affecting Earth’s energy budget. Now, a NASA study has confirmed these predictions with direct observations for the first time: radiative forcings are increasing due to human actions, affecting the planet’s energy balance and ultimately causing climate change. The paper was published online March 25, 2021, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“This is the first calculation of the total radiative forcing of Earth using global observations, accounting for the effects of aerosols and greenhouse gases,” said Ryan Kramer, first author on the paper and a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “It’s direct evidence that human activities are causing changes to Earth’s energy budget.”
NASA’s Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) project studies the flow of radiation at the top of Earth’s atmosphere. A series of CERES instruments have continuously flown on satellites since 1997. Each measures how much energy enters Earth’s system and how much leaves, giving the overall net change in radiation. That data, in combination with other data sources such as ocean heat measurements, shows that there’s an energy imbalance on our planet.
“But it doesn’t tell us what factors are causing changes in the energy balance,” said Kramer.
Other satellites and instruments – like CERES – monitor incoming energy from the Sun and energy that is emitted back into space.Credits: NASA’s Scientific Visualization StudioDownload this image from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio
This study used a new technique to parse out how much of the total energy change is caused by humans. The researchers calculated how much of the imbalance was caused by fluctuations in factors that are often naturally occurring, such as water vapor, clouds, temperature and surface albedo (essentially the brightness or reflectivity of Earth’s surface). For example, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite measures water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere. Water vapor absorbs energy in the form of heat, so changes in water vapor will affect how much energy ultimately leaves Earth’s system. The researchers calculated the energy change caused by each of these natural factors, then subtracted the values from the total. The portion leftover is the radiative forcing.
The team found that human activities have caused the radiative forcing on Earth to increase by about 0.5 Watts per square meter from 2003 to 2018. The increase is mostly from greenhouse gases emissions from things like power generation, transport and industrial manufacturing. Reduced reflective aerosols are also contributing to the imbalance.
The new technique is computationally faster than previous model-based methods, allowing researchers to monitor radiative forcing in almost real time. The method could be used to track how human emissions are affecting the climate, monitor how well various mitigation efforts are working, and evaluate models to predict future changes to the climate.
“Creating a direct record of radiative forcing calculated from observations will allow us to evaluate how well climate models can simulate these forcings,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) in New York City. “This will allow us to make more confident projections about how the climate will change in the future.”
Header image caption: A NASA supercomputer model shows how greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) – a key driver of global warming – fluctuate in Earth’s atmosphere throughout the year. Higher concentrations are shown in red. Credits: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio / NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. Download this image from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
By Sofie Bates
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
Last Updated: Mar 25, 2021Editor: Sofie Bates
The claim is of Direct Observational evidence. But the paper says – “This fundamental metric has not been directly observed globally” and then “We apply radiative kernels to satellite observations to disentangle these components and find all‐sky instantaneous radiative forcing has increased 0.53±0.11 W/m2 from 2003 through 2018, accounting for positive trends in the total planetary radiative imbalance.”
But they can somehow get realistic outcomes by modelling and especially clouds to get “all‐sky” forcing.
Of course I could be wrong.
Have they got rid of all the uncertainties in the earth’s energy budget?
They simply ignored all the unknown forcings and uncertainties in those values that swamp their 1/2 Watt/sm value. That’s how. They assume the system doesn’t regulate or compensate for forcing changes. Total crap in the face of 4 billion years of obvious evidence to the contrary.
Like that graph from Trenberth or someone equally DUMB
+/- several W/m² on all fluxes, yet the said the outcome was +0.6 W/m²
Quite bizarre !
I suspect this will be just the same.
Certainly still seems to be based on a flat, non-rotational Earth. 😉
“yet the said the outcome was +0.6 W/m²”
I figured out what that 0.6 is. It’s the difference between all-sky and clear-sky upwelling IR.
Yes, it’s strange isn’t it that CO2 has been up to 7,000ppm in the earth’s atmosphere. Not only was the planet not burned to a crisp but what followed was the emergence of mammalian life and, eventually, humans.
That was before CO2 became evil.
Yes, don’t be transphobic. First, came good CO2, then bad CO2. Today, babies with carbon-based physiology are exorcised during reproductive rites to atone for past, present, and progressive “burdens”. Be socially responsible, reduce, reuse, recycle her profitable parts, sequester excess lives.
Followed by an Ice age.
It was natural CO2
”Have they got rid of all the uncertainties in the earth’s energy budget?”
Have they got rid of ANY of the uncertainties in the earth’s energy budget?
From 1980 through 2019 the atmospheric CO2 level increased 72ppm. The IPCC estimates that human activity causes five percent of the atmospheric CO2 level. Thus human activity caused 4ppm of the 72ppm increase. This amounts to a contribution of only one tenth of one ppm of CO2 per year. It is illogical to propose that this microscopic amount has the slightest effect upon global temperature or climate. It is also important to note that whatever caused 68ppm of the 72ppm increase from 1980 through 2019 seems to be of no interest to these worthy studiers.
“The IPCC estimates that human activity causes five percent of the atmospheric CO2 level. Thus human activity caused 4ppm of the 72ppm increase.”
The IPCC actually assumes that all of the increase is human caused based on a faulty line of reasoning. Their analysis of the fulx being about 5% human would correctly result in the human part of the increase being 5%. See https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/preprint3/ Your analysis is correct as far as I can see.
I seem to recall the figure being 3%-4%, so they’ve overestimated even that – which should surprise no one.
The IPCC estimates, correctly, that human activity is responsible for 100% of the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the 20th century. The fraction of CO2 in the air that is anthroogenic does not equal the anthropogenic contribution to changes in the atmospheric concentration.
The IPCC is totally wrong about human CO2
Another EPIC FAIL from the daily-fail.
Humans have contributed about 15-25% of the HIGHLY BENEFICIAL rise in atmospheric CO2, that FEEDS the world’s plant life and has no effect on the climate whatsoever
We can do better, and will thanks to China, India and many other places.
You’ll need to provide sources for this claim.
You never do. you remain a FAILURE at producing evidence
https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/preprint3/
Let’s try again for that evidence of CO2 warming, shall we.
… or will you FAIL UTTERLY as always.
1… Do you have any empirical scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2?
2… In what ways has the global climate changed in the last 50 years , that can be scientifically proven to be of human released CO2 causation?
Berry’s hypothesis is nonsense and is completely dismantled by commenters on his own blog. I don’t know what you hoped to achieve by sending me there.
Estimates are never correct, by definition. Word games do not change that.
Be that as it may, it’s easy to show logically that the assumption that you claim is correct is in fact false. The IPCC, in order to claim 100% human responsibility, must also assume that there is no increase in CO2 anywhere from the entire biosphere in the 20th century. Since they do not and cannot know this, their entire assumption is shown to be false.
The only natural reservoir large enough and fast enough to have provided the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 is the marine, and pCO2 of the oceans is increasing, so they cannot possibly be the source. We do indeed know beyond any reasonable doubt that human activity is the source of the observed increase.
Termites alone produce 10 times more CO2 than humans.
The term “Radiative Forcing” is nonsense. It has no meaning in physics. It implies that there is “heat trapping” where there is none. No substance traps in heat. “Radiative Forcing” is a reference to another very clever, nonsense term: “Global Warming Potential”. When there is no “Global Warming Potential” then there is no “Radiative Forcing”. These terms are self referencing circular arguments. Such terms are pure pseudoscience.
The temperature profile of the atmosphere is fully explained by the Ideal Gas Law and the adiabatic lapse rate which make no reference to radiation whatsoever
Are you saying that termites are contributing to the observed increase in atmospheric CO2? Can you provide a source for this?
Radiative forcing is simply a difference between incoming and outgoing radiation. This concept is quite meaningful in physics.
Still the mindless EMPTY rhetoric from weakly-fail
Even the most IGNORANT person knows that termites produce CO2, and itf its warmer, their territory expand
Seems you haven’t got even a single working brain-cell.
Daily FAIL, Hourly FAIL. !
The biosphere is expanding. Termites are part of the biosphere and they produce 10 times more CO2 than humans.
There is no difference between incoming and outgoing radiation, they are in balance. There is no such thing as a substance that traps heat or radiation which is why there is no “radiative forcing” and no “global warming potential”, these terms have no meaning in physics.
Again, are you trying to claim that termites are contributing substantially to the observed rise in atmospheric CO2? Can you cite a source?
Heat is not trapped by greenhouse gases, it is merely lost to space more slowly than it would be if the planet had no atmosphere. The terms “radiative forcing” and “global warming potential” certainly have meaning in climate physics, which is the field they were coined in.
Are you denying that the biosphere is expanding? Are you also denying that termites produce 10 times more CO2 than humans?
”Climate physics” is the ideal gas law and the adiabatic lapse rate, which describe perfectly the atmospheric temperature profile. Neither of which reference radiation in any way.
”Radiative forcing” and “global warming potential” have no meaning in physics. They are pseudoscientific terms.
I do deny that termites produce 10 times more CO2 than humans, because that is not true. Importantly, termites are not digging their carbon up out of the geologic reservoir and putting it into the air, so they are contributing nothing whatsoever to the increase in atmospheric CO2.
The lapse rate describes the lapse rate, I agree with you there. The lapse rate does not explain the surface temperature of the earth. You cannot possibly explain the earth’s temperature without referencing radiation, since that is how the planet gains and loses energy. It is floating in a vacuum.
Pound for pound termites outweigh humans 10-1. Their sole existence is dedicated to the production of CO2 and Methane which also breaks down into CO2. Your link is to a study based on nothing but estimates and speculation. The original study published in https://science.sciencemag.org/content/218/4572/563.abstract is a study based on actual measurements.
As to your other I’ll conceived point, the lapse rate does indeed explain the surface temperature. Just as it does on your favourite planet Venus where no sunlight ever actually reaches the surface. But you can’t have it both ways.
Over most of the Earth’s there is a temperature inversion in the first 4’ above the ground. Which is why Stevenson screens are always placed at 4’ above the ground.
Again, termites are carbon neutral. Humans are not. Termites are not causing the observed rise in atmospheric CO2. Your 1980s study does not refute this.
The lapse rate does not and cannot explain the surface temperature, on this or any other planet in our solar system. You cannot explain a planetary temperature without referencing the radiative balance. Visible light certainly does reach the surface of Venus, I’m not sure where you read anything to the contrary.
If the biosphere is expanding, which it is, then termites are contributing to the increase in CO2 as they are part of the biosphere. Termites are not carbon neutral by any stretch of the imagination, they produce vast amounts of methane which breaks down into CO2 in the atmosphere.
Using the atmospheric lapse rate of 6.5°C per km measuring down from the effective emission height temperature of -18°C it is possible to predict the surface temperature to within 0.5-1°C.
You cannot make such predictions by reference to “radiative balance”.
The amount of visible light reaching the surface of Venus is negligible.
You’ve literally invoked the radiative balance in the first paragraph. You can use the lapse rate to predict the surface temperature if you know the equilibrium temperature at the emitting height.
“You’ve literally invoked the radiative balance in the first paragraph. You can use the lapse rate to predict the surface temperature if you know the equilibrium temperature at the emitting height”
That’s right and we began this conversation talking about radiative forcing, not radiative balance.
Now show me where your so called “greenhouse effect” makes any mention of the effective emission height as being the Earth”s radiative surface. Your pet hypothesis says that only “greenhouse gases” emit IR to space and other than that, the ground is the only radiative surface.
When you refer to radiation you are referring to radiative forcing from “greenhouse gases” only.
If you accept however, that the true radiative surface of Earth is the effective emission height at an average height of 4-5km above the ground and that -18°C is the Earth’s equilibrium temperature, as it looks like you just did, then you must also accept that the so called greenhouse effect is non-science because the extra 33°C average increase to the ground is explained perfectly by the ideal gas law and the atmospheric lapse rate, neither of which make any mention of radiation. Maxwell’s “gravito-thermal effect” in other words.
Now I don’t know about you but I’ll take Maxwell over Tyndall any day. Richard Feynman was of the same mind, he also preferred Maxwell’s explanation to Tyndall’s
Tyndall made many more incorrect assumptions than correct ones.
It seems we may have made some real progress today, well done. Let’s keep this up!
I accept all of this, except for the idea that you haven’t made any mention of radiation. The effective emission height refers to the height at which radiant energy escapes from the atmosphere to space. The effective emission height is at a temperature of -18C because that the is temperature necessary for the planet to be in radiant equilibrium with incoming sunlight.
The absorbing gases in the atmosphere set the emission height, the radiant balance sets the temperature of the emission height, and the lapse rate sets the difference in temperature between the emissions height and the surface. I and every climate scientist on earth calls this process “the greenhouse effect.”
I agree that this is great progress, and it looks like we’re finding some common ground, in everything except the name of the phenomenon we’re describing.
I never said that I haven’t made any mention of radiation. What I said was that the ideal gas law and the atmospheric temperature lapse rate make no mention of radiation and that is a fact, they do not.
So you accept how the atmosphere actually works but then you had to blow it with,
Not quite.
The effective emission height is set by LTE and by the central mass point of the atmosphere. The effective emission height varies greatly from one geographical location to another depending many factors such as time of year/day, specific weather conditions and geographic location. If it was determined by “absorbing gases” as you say, then there would be very little variation in altitude from one location to another. But that is simply not the case as can be seen from the radiosonde data.
The atmospheric lapse rate does not set anything. It simply results from the ideal gas law, PV=nRT. We know and have agreed that it is possible to predict the surface temperature very accurately by counting down from the effective emission height temperature of -18°C using the normal lapse rate of 6.5°C per km. So we must agree that the atmospheric lapse rate is counted from the effective emission height down to the surface and not the surface up, because there is no predictive abilities when counting from the ground up, except that above -18°C as would be expected, the atmospheric lapse rate breaks down.
So regarding your “absorbing gases” and presumably you believe water vapour is a so called “greenhouse gas”, the presence of which causes atmospheric warming? Counting down from -18°C, don’t you find it contradicts your “greenhouse gas” hypothesis that the wet lapse rate is only 5.5°C per km where as the dry lapse rate is actually very nearly double that at 10°C per km? Or do you think you can count up and down for which ever suits your narrative?
The truth is all gases absorb incoming solar radiation. The evidence of that is the temperature inversion in the first 4’ above the ground. You know, the reason why they place Stevenson screens at 4’ above the ground. This inversion indicates that the air is warmed by incoming EMR. The diurnal atmospheric bulge is another proof that the atmosphere is heated by incoming EMR.
The IPCC state in their first report 1990, that CO2 is a dangerous “greenhouse gas” because it has large absorption and emission bands @ 15μm. According to Wien’s displacement law 15μm has a corresponding temperature of -80°C. The troposphere, the part of the atmosphere we live in, is defined by molecules with a minimum temperature of -60°C. Contrary to what the IPCC say, emissions of IR @15μm cannot heat any molecules in the troposphere. What is needed to maintain average temperatures of 15°C at the surface is a gas that can absorb and emit around 10μm. Guess what that gas is? I’ll give you a clue, it makes up over 19% of the atmosphere, that’s right O2, oxygen!
The effective emissions height is certainly set by the concentration of greenhouse gases. We can easily see this using radiative transfer equations, e.g. here. You can also see that emission at different wavelengths is occurring at different altitudes.
I agree completely that we can arrive at the surface temperature by starting at the effective emitting height and working down to the ground. I disagree strongly that we would expect the emission height to remain constant at every point on earth’s surface, since it is, after all, not an actual altitude where all radiation escapes, but a kind of mean of all the various altitudes where radiation escapes, which themselves can vary with things like land cover, topography, humidity, etc.
The difference between the moist and dry adiabatic lapse rates has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, and everything to do with the fact that water vapor condenses out of moist air as it rises and releases heat.
No it is not set by GHG’ s. The effective emission height is set by the temperature of the atmosphere. The higher the temperature the higher up -18°C will be found and so the higher the effective emission height. As I have already pointed out, a dry atmosphere is warmer than a wet one at the same latitude.
It seems that you have missed the point. Let’s try again: measuring down from the effective emission height gives 5.5°C per km for a wet adiabatic lapse rate (with GHG’ s) and 10°C per km for a dry adiabatic lapse rate (without GHG’ s). Once again, a dry atmosphere is warmer than a wet one at the same latitude by almost twice as much.
As for your link to the modtran model, the thing to remember with models is that if you put Tyndall in, you get Tyndall out. Tyndall was a dangerous buffoon. Maxwell, by comparison, was a giant.
This logic is backwards.The earth is trying to reach a state of thermal equilibrium. To do this, incoming sunlight must be balanced by outgoing longwave radiation. Radiant emmittance is directly proportional to temperature (hot things radiate more intensely than cold things), which means the temperature of the emitting layer of the atmosphere will adjust until the radiant emittance of the atmosphere equals incoming sunlight. If the emitting layer is too cold, earth will be radiating less intensely than the incoming flux, so energy will be increasing in the system until the layer warms enough that the fluxes balance.
Thus, the altitude of the emitting layer is set by GHG concentrations, the temperature of the emitting layer is set by radiative balance, and the temperature of the surface is set by the lapse rate down from the emitting layer. The lapse rate is driven by convection.
Increasing the concentration of GHGs forces the emitting height to a higher, colder layer of the atmosphere, which will now warm until it is in radiative equilibrium again.
The lapse rate is not a temperature, but a rate of change. The rate of change of temperature for moist air is less negative than the rate of change of temperature for dry air. The greenhouse effect is also related to the global energy balance, you will not have a localized greenhouse effect within a column of air.
First paragraph is correct. Second paragraph is Tyndall pseudoscience and is based on 150 year old failed hypothesis that you really need to let go of.
A 150 year old hypothesis is a dead hypothesis.
IPCC first report 1990 section 8.4 “When Will The Greenhouse Effect be Detected ?
The rate of change of temperature is less negative if you measure from the ground up but you seem to have forgotten that you accepted and we agreed that we are measuring down from the effective emission height down to the ground. Therefore the rate of change produces higher temperatures per km for dry air and lower temperatures per km for moist air.
Cognitive dissonance is pretty much all you have at this point, time to let go of your zombie GHG hypothesis.
Concrete is responsible for 10% of human CO2 emission.
Forbes, China: The Worlds King of Concrete
China used more concrete in 3 years than the USA used in the entire 20th century. Between 1901-2000 USA poured 4.5 gigatons and between 2011 and 2013 China poured 6.6 gigatons . Gates notes, USGS Cement statistics USGS mineral industry of China 1990-2013
Yet this unprecedented 3 year human CO2 emission pulse is missing in the global CO2 data. Can you explain why?
But that is not what you said. You said that the IPCC assumption that 100% of 20th century CO2 emissions into the atmosphere were human caused was correct. Don’t go changing your claim later.
I stand by the assertion that 100% of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial age is due to human activities, no one in this thread has provided any evidence to contradict this view.
Yes they have, human emissions are only 4ppm per year. Termites alone produce ten times that. There are millions of other sources of CO2 on this planet, it is inconceivable that the tiny human emissions are the only source for the claimed 2ppm annual increase in atmospheric CO2.
China poured 1.5 times more concrete in three years than the USA did for the entire 20th century and this unprecedented human CO2 emission pulse didn’t even show up in the CO2 data and no none has an explanation for that.
The IPCC are lying again, They have lied about every aspect of AGW.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a political entity, not a scientific entity. Lies are the stock-in-trade of politicians, we all know that. The political systems of the world have never been more corrupt than they are today.
The early mapping based on OCO-2 data showed the highest levels of CO2 to be in Northern Brazil, Central Africa, Eastern China, Southeast Asia and Indonesia, the areas of the most intense broad leaf vegetation on the Globe. If vegetation absorbs but does not exude increased levels of CO2 then why should these areas feature the highest levels of CO2. It would seem that there would be less CO2 in the air above these areas than above areas with less absorbing vegetation..
Did they include elusive OCO-2 data?
The CO2 mapping from satellite data shows a strong correlation between the location of heavy broad leaf vegetation and higher levels of CO2. Little or no correlation between CO2 levels and human activity.
Bill Everett:
The increase was demonstrably due to global Clean Air efforts that removed dimming anthropogenic SO2 aerosol pollution from the atmosphere.
Not from developing economies, especially China and India where those countries’ aerosol emissions overwhelmed any reduction from the US Clean Air Act and the Wester European equivalent.
What is the sun incoming radiation? About 1380w/m2?
According to the SORCE spacecraft, the TSI varies from a low of around 1315 W/m^2 to a high of about 1407 W/m^2 with an average of about 1364 W/m^2. The variation in the TSI is due mostly to the distance variation in the Earth’s orbit.
Jim
I don’t see how the claims in this paper are accurate considering the stepped pattern of global temperature rise as shown in the official global temperature record.
If the woefully simplistic model were an accurate representation of the infinitely complex reality, then maybe. Otherwise,
But that’s the job of the evangelist – make the complex simple, leave out those incongruous facts and run with the ‘big’ message (oh, and successfully gain more funding)
Richard:
Reality is far from being infinitely complex In the final analysis, it is actually extremely simple: Add SO2 aerosols to the atmosphere, and it cools down. Decrease them, and it warms up. Ice Ages, through today.
They seem to claim that anything not accounted for by the measured natural factors must be the result of human forcing. Undersea volcanic activity is certainly not measured and the SWARM data on magnetic fields is not mentioned in the supporting information. In addition, the CERES website only mentions using SORCE data for TSI, so it may be missing the fluctuations at different wavelengths, masking the changes in solar effects. And that’s just the known unknowns.
That does not seem to be what the authors are claiming. They are claiming that anything not accounted for by the radiative response must be accounted for by the instantaneous radiative forcing (IRF). They use this “radiative kernal” technique (which I do not yet understand) to parse out the radiative respoonse component of the total radiative change at the TOA (and, therefore, the IRF).
They then show, quite compellingly, as far as I’m concerned, that the IRF is completely explained by GHG concentration, with a little bit accounted for by aerosols.
The variability of many other factors makes it impossible to separate out any human factors. from the highly variable CERES data
Of course their result completely explains GHG content . ITS WHAT THEY AIMED FOR.
Just like their temperature adjustments
Why do you always fall for such obvious CON-JOBS?
You can’t really be that dumb and GULLIBLE !.
Again, what they have separated out is not specifically human factors, but the instantaneous radiative forcing from the overall radiative change. They then show that the trend in IRF can be explained almost entirely by GHG concentration, see Figure 2 from the paper:
They use “estimated”, “calculations”, and “model”. This is not real.
They IMAGINE they have explained a TINY change that they use statistical mayhem to produce.
The massive variability of each of many other factors means they are TALKING NONSENSE.. that is aimed right at gullible anti-science FAILURES like you.
“The “NASA team’s” “0.5 Watts per square meter from 2003 to 2018”, is deep in the noise of a +/- 4 Watts per sm of global cloud variability, and thus makes it unknown albedo forcing changes to the total global radiative in vs. out energy budget.”
They use that word “FORCING”.. so whatever they are doing it is not science.
The 0.5 W/m^2 is outside of the cloud forcing error since it represents the change in instantaneous radiative forcing only, not forcing from feedbacks.
Just WRONG !!!
Cloud forcing range is FAR HIGHER ,
You cannot extract 0.5 Watts per square meter of “human” signal when other known signals vary by FAR LARGER amounts and you ignore many other unknown signals.
ITS A FARCE.
Sorry that you don’t have the intelligence to see that FACT.
Try doing junior high .. yet again !!
Looking at
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/03/25/claim-direct-observations-confirm-that-humans-are-throwing-earths-energy-budget-off-balance/#comment-3214094
You will see just how much statistical BS they have pulled out of where-ever they pulled it from
0.5W/m² change from data like that….. roflmao !!!
Even a mathematical and intellectual nonce like you must see the FARCE behind it.
It is interesting that I seem to be the only person in this thread who has actually read the paper they’re commenting on.
Yet you are SO DUMB that you can’t see the statistical garbage they are dishing up.
Its really quite hilarious watching your brain-dead gullibility. 🙂
Interesting that you find something you say you do not understand to still be compelling. Explains a lot.
You misunderstand. I do not understand well the paper’s approach to parsing out the IRF. Assuming that their technique is valid (and it certainly seems valid as I understand it), the argument they present to show that the trend in IRF is driven by GHGs is very compelling.
You ASS-ume.. yes.
That would be correct. !
“is very compelling.”
.
.
To a mindless gullible scientifically-illiterate AGW cultist.
just BELIEVE… believe… believe !!!
“They are claiming that anything not accounted for by the radiative response must be accounted for by the instantaneous radiative forcing (IRF). ”
“Radiative response” = the effects of GHG changes
Your second sentence is effectively the same as my first. The difference is in your assumption that the data drove their results, when it was really the method that led to the results.
From the Supporting Information:
“The cloud masking constant, Cl, used to estimate all-sky IRF accounts for the effect of the presence of clouds on the magnitude of the IRF”
“we assume the LW cloud masking is equivalent to the masking of IRF from CO2 perturbations in this study, which is the dominant GHG driver over the observed period being evaluated.”
With LW changes to IRF being 87% of the total change to IRF (table SA2), it is no surprise that their calculations for GHG effect and IRF changes are nearly equal – no matter what the observations ended up being, only changes to Short Wave IRF would not be blamed on GHG, and that’s the little bit left for aerosols.
Willis has beat this CERES radiation outgoing budget dead horse many times and then flogged it some more… for good measure.
The “NASA team’s” “0.5 Watts per square meter from 2003 to 2018”, is deep in the noise of a +/- 4 Watts per sm of global cloud variability, and thus makes it unknown albedo forcing changes to the total global radiative in vs. out energy budget.
This AGU paper is Total junk science because the known “unknowns” (uncertainty) is much larger than their assumed forcing changes. Complete junk science claims.
So there is no way that mankind’s fingerprint can be found in this CERES data. It is data of only a few decades compared to the millennia which we have human experiences on both much warmer and colder periods.
Thank you Joel, I thought they were now claiming that had certainty with the effect of clouds.
Putting it more directly, the paper is junk because the TOA imbalance they claim to have found can’t exist. I recall distinctly on this very site that when Roy Spencer and Pat Frank were debating Pat’s recent paper on error propagation in the GCM models, Roy’s main point was that TOA balance by the GCMs somehow indicated that computed anthropogenic forcings that were a small fraction of observed GCM cloud error was not an issue. Clearly, they are now moving the goal posts when their modeled observations don’t agree with their GCMs.
Not proof of anything. Simplistic nonsense.
.
Gavin Schmidt is involved.. what would you expect !
Indeed. We have this recent WUWT story that points out the primacy of water in determining the Earth’s heat budget. ‘They’ dick around with milliwatts in the atmosphere while ignoring zetawatts in the oceans.
The link here is well worth reading. Thanks. It explains much.
What about a change in clouds over that time?
What about changes in oceanic heat dissipation?
Show me your algorithm or you can “F” off.
With Gavin Schmidt involved, you KNOW its a mathematical/statistical scam of some sort.
They constructed a new and improved hashing function to reduce the complexity of the system to manageable clusters. Now they need to compare their model to observation, assess how much information was lost, and calculate the fit in different frames of reference.
Modelling, animations? Yawn!
It says : “The new technique is computationally faster than previous model-based methods”
So they are not “directly observing” anything – it’s just a different computer model.
Junk science.
Can they explain the medieval real warm period or the much warmer 1st century AD?
Vikings in Greenland?
Thought not!
Garbage in = garbage out.
The result +0,5 W/m2 2003-2018 [paper in question] claimed to be caused by add of greenhouse gases: CO2 +33 ppmv [Mauna Loa], H2O +33 ppmw [NOAA PSL] and reduction in aerosol optical depth from 0.003 to zero [Bourassa et al. AOD index] is interesting in comparison with the global surface temperature during this period.
Image: Global Surface Temperature anomaly [t2m, NASA MERRA-2 reanalysis via Climate Explorer, KNMI]
Comment by: Simo Ruoho, chairman of Ilmastofoorumi ry. (Climateforum, registered association, Finland)
So it is GIGO only done faster?
Maybe it needs to be called Giddyup.
This is BS
“Eventually this energy also heads toward space, but some of it gets re-absorbed by clouds and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
Some of it gets “re-absorbed” by the bulk of the atmosphere (N2 and O2) as well, due to the bulk movement (convection), “instead of escaping into space”. The difference is, N2 and O2 can hardly radiate and need to transfer the heat to the “greenhouse gases” first. The bulk of the atmosphere insulates the surface. This is basic heat transfer.
Yes. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere should increase radiation to space. Convective heat transfer to transparent gases is “trapped” for a long time since the emmissivity is tiny at atmospheric temperature. But really water does the bulk of the work and CO2 is minor.
They won’t have included a figure for the extent to which a change in the speed of the convective overturning cycle occurs in order to neutralise any radiative imbalances.
Any radiative imbalance causes a change to the lapse rate slope determined by the amount of atmospheric mass floating in the gravity field which in turn causes a change in the average rate of convection.
Changing the rate of convective overturning means that any ‘excess’ energy in an atmosphere is returned to the surface faster which accelerates radiation to space from the surface thereby offsetting the imbalance.
Thus there is no net change in average surface temperature, just a minuscule change in the established climate zones which is indiscernible compared to natural variability.
I have been curious as to how much energy is used in the hydrological cycle, and how much energy it takes to accelerate it.
Does this mean we can call it “global warming” again? I notice that the article calls it “climate change”, but seems to only report global warming as the anthropogenic effect.
Now when the warming doesn’t occur in any greater magnitude than the recovery from the Little Ice Age, can we finally call this whole scam disproven?
John wrote:
“Now when … can we finally call this whole scam disproven?”
The catastrophic human-made global warming (CAGW) hypothesis was disproved decades ago and has been disproved many times since. I listed over a dozen disproofs in this paper published one year ago. My friend Madhav K wrote me to suggest a few more strong disproofs, and I agreed… but in any case, as Einstein famously stated, “One would be enough”.
THE CATASTROPHIC ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (CAGW) AND THE HUMANMADE CLIMATE CHANGE CRISES ARE PROVED FALSE January 10, 2020
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/the-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming-cagw-and-the-humanmade-climate-change-crises-are-proved-false.pdf
The absolute drivel that passes as mainstream (alarmist) climate science is appalling in its dishonesty, its deliberate and obvious fraud. No rational, honest person could be this wrong, this deliberately obtuse, for this long.
The alleged CAGW crisis is a false narrative, a scary-fairy story concocted by wolves to stampede the sheep – and it’s working, especially on that ~half of humanity that are of below-average intelligence.
To be scientific, a hypothesis must be framed properly so that it can be falsified.
The concept of falsifiability is important, because the very-scary humanmade “Climate Change“ hypothesis can mean anything and everything to climate alarmists – warmer, colder, wetter, drier, windier, calmer and thus cannot be falsified – it is Karl Popper’s “non-falsifiable hypothesis”, or in layman’s terms, it is non-scientific nonsense.
“A theory that is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific.” – Karl Popper
Scammers never admit to the scam.
I remember when I was new to this site. I thought these quoted papers were the work of the site owners; how I laughed at their stupidity that even an amateur like me could recognise as bull. This one would have solicited some real ugly insults…
I think it was Pratchett who said “If you believe the universe is made of scrambled egg, all you need do is build a scrambled egg detector, and point it anywhere, and you’ll confirm your theory, because there’s a hell of a lot of broken eggs out there.”
This is prime scrambled-egg detectoring…
Mr. goy: Very early on, I could see that our host is happy to post articles by AGW advocates, with no comment whatsoever (thus your impression that it was the “site” posting), and sit back while the comments expose the tripe science. No need for Mr. Watts to say a word! And the comments are rock solid logic and science, using the language of the article to destroy it (example- “based on direct observations” but not based on observations). I find this shows our host is confident enough to post something Gavin S. finds persuasive, knowing the end result will show Gavin to be …….. wrong again. Keeps me coming back.
Who you calling ‘mister’? I go by ‘paranoid freak’, thank you very much!
But yeah, as you say , you saw “early on”, but, like me, it was not “immediate”, right? In these times, it is not always easy to discern irony from sarcasm from climastrology or warmunism. Is the guy joking, or is he actually thumping his personal version of the Bible of Unassailable Bolshevik Truth?
Luckily, the folks here generally have a sense of humour. Until someone like Loydo or Griff presses some especially touchy button, of course…but even that is sometimes funny as hell.
Man Made microwaves are passing through the atmosphere 24/7 and should be part of the outgoing radiation budget.
“Microwave heating is largely caused by the changing electric and magnetic fields (i.e. the “microwaves”) which are emitted by your microwave oven affecting polar molecules. As the direction of the electric field changes over time, the polar molecules (often, of water) attempt to follow the field by changing their orientation inside the material to line up along the field lines in an energetically favorable configuration (namely, with the positive side pointing in the same direction as the field lines). As these molecules change direction rapidly (millions of times per second at least), they gain energy – which increases the temperature of the material. This process is called dielectric heating.”
electromagnetic radiation – How do microwaves heat moisture-free items? – Physics Stack Exchange
“Microwave technology is extensively used for point-to-point telecommunications (i.e. non-broadcast uses). Microwaves are especially suitable for this use since they are more easily focused into narrower beams than radio waves, allowing frequency reuse; their comparatively higher frequencies allow broad bandwidth and high data transmission rates, and antenna sizes are smaller than at lower frequencies because antenna size is inversely proportional to transmitted frequency. Microwaves are used in spacecraft communication, and much of the world’s data, TV, and telephone communications are transmitted long distances by microwaves between ground stations and communications satellites. Microwaves are also employed in microwave ovens and in radar technology”
Microwave – Wikipedia
Underneath those big white golf ball looking things we call weather radars, is one of these rotating transmitters used to excite the water molecule.
Liftport Energy 2.0 : Wireless Power Transmission test 1974 – YouTube
I think that if you consider the amount of energy involved in your microwave stuff and compare it with the amount of energy involved from solar radiation over any equal time period, you will find that the microwave energy, in fact the total of all human energy usage, is too small to even be a rounding error.
Microwave radios pose a serious health and wellness risk, but, as you point out, they are very directed, on the horisontal plane, usually. Besides, high frequencies are easily blocked by things like water. Rather consider normal radio frequencies, undirected, easily passes through clouds etc. But, as Andy says, probably not even enough to count as a rounding error.
If we start talking about HAARP, though, I shut my ignorant mouth, and fret in silence while scouring the ‘Net for info by actual knowledgeable persons. So far, 20 years and almost nothing…
Frankly, I think it terrible presumptuous that puny humans think they affect the energy budget of a whole planet, when they can’t even generate enough electrix for themselves. Greenhouse gasses takes the attention away from real problems of pollution, microwaves being but one.
This isn’t a ‘claim’ – it is confirmation its happening by direct observation…
The new technique is computationally faster than previous model-based methods”
Do you have a reading comprehension problem, griff?
I think that reality has been observed here many many times, Newminster.
WRONG, it is a scam AGW statistical load of BS.
Just like all the BS you constantly spew.
There is no way with all the unknowns and known with highly variable factors, that they ever extract such a tiny amount of change from CERES data.
But you, being a pig-ignorant, intellectually-challenged moron, wouldn’t realise that.
Science is something you have shown you know absolutely NOTHING about…
…, so stop making ludicrous idiotic nil-informed anti-science comments.
And stop showing your complete and UTTER GULLIBILITY to any crap that the AGW scam dishes up.
You know empirically, they observed all what is necessary, or was it just only a tenth of possibilities or a half ?
And you know too, they observed all at the same time and same location ?
In that case, kindly show us the empirical evidence that CO2 controls temperature, not vice versa. You have been asked this question a dozen times or more, and you simply cannot give an answer. So, where is the evidence if it exists?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/11/29/slight-beneficial-warming-from-more-carbon-dioxide/
“Precision research by physicists William Happer and Willem van Wijngaarden has determined that the current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor are “saturated.” In radiation physics that means adding more CO2 or water molecules will bring modest warming that will benefit plant growth, and thus all life on Earth. More CO2 and H2O will not cause dangerous warming.
From this point forward, emissions from burning fossil fuels will bring little additional global warming, and what does occur will improve forests, grasslands and agriculture. There is no climate emergency.”
*******
The diminishing (logarithmic) effects of increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been known as far back as 1971 by none other that Steven Schneider himself Griff….
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate | Science (sciencemag.org)
“Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Because of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content.”
********
You make a bigger fool of yourself every time you troll this website Griffy-poo.
Lab measurements have shown that CO2 absorption is not actually “log” but levels out around 280ppm
Can you reference this to my question immediately above?
There seems to be one aspect of greenhouse not much discussed. Please point out an explanation if I’m missing it or misunderstanding something. Any mention of molecules in the following means a IR absorbing-emitting molecule.
While discussions generally revolve around the bulk effect of these gases in the atmosphere, the basic parts of the process involve individual IR photons and individual molecules. I’ve seen a variety of calculations of how long the average IR photon is delayed by each greenhouse gas molecule it interacts with. 2 milliseconds in and out of the CO2 molecule is the value I’ve seen most often. Whatever the delay is isn’t relevant to the fact that it occurs.
Then there is the mean path of the photon between interactions, and the fact that the emission can be in any direction. Most IR photons are absorbed and emitted a number of times, by different molecules, as they travels through the atmosphere. People attempt to calculate the probable time the average photon is likely to remain in the atmosphere. Even if small, there is some time.
As more molecules of CO2, etc. are added, the distance between such molecules must decrease (the density increases) unless the atmospheric volume increases in proportion. This, it seems to me, has to result in more interactions per photon before the photon escapes to space. This means an increase in the average time in the atmosphere for any given photon.
Unless these photons temporarily trapped in the molecular bonds of H2O, CO2, and other multi-atom gases, do not result in atmospheric temperature increase, additional molecules mean additional delays in exiting the atmosphere, additional total energy in the atmosphere in any given time frame, additional increases in atmospheric temperature, i.e. there is no saturation in fact.
A given increase in atmospheric temperature may indeed require a doubling of CO2, thus the temperature increase becomes slower and slower over the time if the absorbing molecules are added at a constant rate, but if more molecules are added over time, the temperature increase, if it happens at all, would have to continue.
It might be that any molecularly thin layer of atmosphere may be incapable of absorbing any more photons (is saturated?), because it already absorbs all the photons that reach it, and it may also be true that each similar layer of the atmosphere, going upward, would be a little less effective because the distance between molecules increases with altitude, but the energy retaining effect must necessarily continue to increase as the number of such molecules increases because there will be more photon-molecule interactions, even though the result of each individual interaction does not increase.
If there is an error in this logic, I would appreciate having it pointed out so I might gain a better understanding. Replies based on an idea the such gases do not absorb and emit photons, or that such absorption has no effect, are unlikely to be enlightening unless there is an explanation at the molecule/photon level of why that claim is made.
No, it’s not. Their energy budget is like your head, full of holes
Might slick propaganda, I almost bought a carbon credit before I realized it was all lies and quit reading.
Have these clowns actually read Jozef Stefan?
Have they any idea what Entropy is about?
Have they ever heard of Carnot?
They repeatedly use the word ’emit’. Do they have any clue about or actually use ‘emissivity‘ in their calculations
Ceres:
Quote:””The CERES instruments provide direct measurements of reflected solar radiation and emission of thermal infrared radiation to space across all wavelengths between the ultraviolet and far-infrared.“”
Define ‘far-infrared’
a search or wiki tells us that far-infrared starts at 1mm wavelength and waves become shorter in length as you head towards infrared and visible
So:
Let’s go via Roy Spencer and his Microwave Sounders that look at the temperature of the atmosphere.
They look for temperature dependant signals coming off Oxygen molecules at frequencies between 55 and 60GHz
I get a wavelength of 5mm for that
Spencer tells us, and we all believe him, that the atmosphere is radiating at well longer than 1mm wavelength and that it is temperature dependant.
Presumably the radiated energy rises as temperature does, can it do otherwise?
Yet their wondrous high flying ultra authoritative do-as-I-say-or else garbage-can Sputnik is quite completely blind to that and thus, so are they.
Blind but not, in the proper sense, dumb. They (say) claim and repeat endlessly, appealing to their own authority, to be scientists
It and they are farcical
Did Ehrlich see this coming?
Why not, Eisenhower did 7 years earlier
Sometimes wonder why Prince of Chuckles gets his knickers so twisted – The Job is patently in-hand and well under way
.
CERES vs UAH.
NO DIVERGENCE. !
NO RETAINED HEAT.
Its all about CLOUDS !!
Good, we need to avoid a new ice age.
Yes. No matter how, warmer is always better.
When reading a “scientific” article, if the authors lead the reader to a “definition” of a physical magnitude or phenomenon calling it a “forcing”, I know it is BS, stop reading, and discard it. In the physical sciences there are no “forcings”: there are causes and effects.
“Radiative energy enters Earth’s system from the sunlight that shines on our planet. Some of this energy reflects off of Earth’s surface or atmosphere back into space. The rest gets absorbed, heats the planet, and is then emitted as thermal radiative energy the same way that black asphalt gets hot and radiates heat on a sunny day. Eventually this energy also heads toward space, but some of it gets re-absorbed by clouds and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The absorbed energy may also be emitted back toward Earth, where it will warm the surface even more.”
A picture is being painted of “black asphalt” in the sky heating the surface below. If they are talking about CO2 and its back radiation of 15µ, it’s more like “dry ice” in the sky. What actually goes on is the escaping 15µ radiation from the surface is blocked by the 15µ back radiation and the earth doesn’t cool off as fast. It’s the sun at over 5,000K that does the warming. And the sun continues to warm the surface until the imbalance caused by that 15µ back radiation is overcome.
Does Sofie Bates, of NASA’s Earth Science News Team who wrote this misleading dreck, know she’s spewing propaganda? Probably not, but I’m sure there people at NASA who do know better and they don’t step up to the plate because they like getting a paycheck every month.
Radiation from Black Bodies
at different temperatures
Dry Ice 194K
Not only does black asphalt “radiate heat on a sunny day” but it also “conducts” heat to the air in contact with it which then “convects” that energy upward until it is dissipated. Looking only at radiative energy within the atmosphere is overly simplistic.
That is exactly the conclusion I have arrived at and NASA has done nothing with this “study” to change it. In order to actually heat a body, the net radiative transfer must be positive. That means that CO2 would need to be hotter than the surface. Otherwise, using Planck’s equation for radiation from a body which says the amount of radiation from a body is proportional to temperature to the fourth power, one can only determine that CO2 would reduce the gradient of heat loss from the earth’s surface.
That means for a given length of time, the earth would be at a higher temperature than it would be without CO2. Please note, that doesn’t mean it makes the earth hotter than it would be with only the sun. If CO2 radiates less than what the earth is radiating, you can not drive the earth back up the gradient to a higher temperature, you can only slow down the cooling.
The pertinent equation is:
q = (σεAT^4)earth – (σεAT^4)CO2
What this means is that for CO2 to raise the temperature of the earth, it would need to radiate more than the earth. That just isn’t possible. Therefore, if integrated over time, the rate of heat loss is less and doesn’t explain the earth being hotter.
That is precisely what’s happening, is it not? Increasing CO2 concentration slows the rate of radiative heat loss from earth to space. Since the earth is receiving a constant flux of energy from the sun, this means the planet is now losing energy more slowly than it is gaining energy, and must warm.
If we “switched the sun off” a planet with a GHG atmosphere would simply cool a bit more slowly than a similar planet with a non-GHG atmosphere.
.
BS !!! a complete an utter FAIL this time.
Radiative loss depends only on atmospheric temperature.
NO DIVERGENCE.. no CO2 signal.
.
CO2 is one of the MANY channels of energy transference
Even a complete anti-science quack like you must realise that the over-riding energy transfer mechanism in the atmosphere is bulk atmospheric transport, ie wind and convection.
This is what CONTROLS the atmosphere, and CO2 has absolutely ZERO EFFECT on it.
This is absolutely correct, and adding CO2 to the atmosphere moves the effective emitting height to a higher, colder altitude, thereby slowing the rate of heat loss.
Glad we have found some common ground.
NO, you have absolutely NO EVIDENCE that CO2 causes warming or does what you IMAGINE.
Increased CO2 emits more thus increasing the radiant energy outwards.
MASSIVE FAIL, yet again.
The article clearly states that the re- emitted photon goes down to the surface warming the surface. NASA says nothing about emitting height.
This is the same thing. The GHGs set the emission height, and the lapse rate sets the temperature profile, and it all must end up in a state where the fluxes balance. In energy balance, the surface at 288K must be receiving more energy than incoming sunlight alone. That extra energy is coming from downward IR.
The sun is said to deliver ~235 W/m^2, and you think it’s possible for Earth to emit ~395 W/m^2 to balance some equations. You think it’s OK to add radiation from the atmosphere to bump 235 to 395 (160 GHG effect) but your atmospheric GHGs needs the 395 in the first place to make that happen. Where does it get it?
You have a heat dependency loop without a cause. And this dependency loop has ZERO experimental evidence. ZERO.
Zoe, the earth is emitting 240 W/m^2 to space. It is not only valid to “bump” the surface flux up, it is physically necessary to balance fluxes. The surface is some 33 degrees warmer than a blackbody emitting a flux of 240 W/m^2, so it is clearly emitting, and receiving, a higher flux.
The new number is more like 35 to 36 degrees. Pretty much what 91 mW/m^2 of geothermal is capable of.
So you have a single experiment to back that up? Just one will do. I have yet to find it.
We are standing on the great experiment, Zoe. The surface of our beloved planet is not 255 K.
I figured you would say that. So you have no experiment, just an affirming-the-consequent logical fallacy.
What more evidence do you need that the atmosphere keeps the planet’s surface warmer than it would otherwise be than the fact that the planet’s surface is much warmer than its calculated blackbody temperature?
A lab experiment. Do you have one? Just one!
Mimas and Enceladus are both hotter than their expected blackbody temperatures. Neither have an atmosphere.
https://phzoe.com/2021/02/24/us-and-enceladus/
https://phzoe.com/2020/04/21/the-strange-case-of-mimas/
Do you have evidence of a geothermal hot spot on the earth capable of explaining the observed surface temperature? Unfortunately, I am unaware of any simple lab experiment that captures the relevant processes to exactly model the earth’s atmosphere. I am quite sure that such an experiment would be completely impossible without building an earth-sized planet with earth-sized gravity and an earth-sized atmosphere. All the relevant bits and pieces of the greenhouse effect can either be observed experimentally (e.g. absorptive properties of the greenhouse gases), or observed in nature (e.g. we can observe earth’s outgoing LW spectra with satellites).
“That extra energy is coming from downward IR.”
There is no *extra* energy. The atmosphere is not on fire. The only energy there is comes from the sun.
If CO2 absorbs outgoing radiation then why doesn’t it absorb its own reflected radiation? The logic that the atmosphere can stop outgoing radiation that impinges on it but it can’t stop its own downward radiation that also impinges on itself is what is typically called “cognitive dissonance”.
Every layer of the atmosphere is absorbing energy emitted by the other layers. CO2 does absorb its “own” radiation. I’m not sure what could have given you a different idea.
Then where does the “back radiation” come from? The atmosphere itself will absorb any downward emitted, it won’t reach the surface of the earth. Or at least only a small proportion will.
Again, the atmosphere is not a heat source, it isn’t burning. It can only contribute what it receives from other sources. And those other sources cool when they emit that IR. The atmosphere simply can’t re-heat the surface.
Besides, exactly what on the earth absorbs any 15um radiation from the atmosphere? Quartz doesn’t. Feldspar doesn’t. Concrete doesn’t. Granite doesn’t. I don’t know of any vegetation that does. So does the earth absorb any “back radiation” or does it merely reflect it? If it merely reflects it then how does it affect the outgoing radiation/incoming radiation balance?
The absorbed radiation will then be re-emitted, some of it up, some of it down, and it will be absorbed and re-emitted again ad-infinitum until it manages to ping-pong its way out of the atmosphere and into space.
The atmosphere can indeed “reheat” the surface, in that it can put energy that the surface had just shed back into the surface again. If you hand me two dollars per second, and I hand you back one dollar per second, I am not making you richer, I’m making you lose your money slightly more slowly.
Sorry, but you FAIL yet again. is it hourly-fail, now ???
The energy comes from the RETAINED heat due to atmospheric pressure, just like on every other planet with a viable atmosphere.
The extra energy ASS-umed to be from greenhouse gases by the AGW cultists, is actually an ATMOSPHERIC MASS effect.
Photons are not bullets, that is NASA’s first mistake. When a molecule radiates it does so as spherical EM wave. That means it expands in all directions. IOW, half goes up, and half goes down. The # of quanta (# of photons) that are available are proportional to the power of the EM wave.
Using photons would be like saying an 800 watt microwave emits photons at the food. It doesn’t. It transmits an EM wave of 800 watts and the wavelength determines how many photons (quanta) are available to be absorbed. BTW, a microwave uses waveguides to direct the power in a specific pattern that is not spherical.
Ask yourself what happens to raise that emitting height. Does any cooling go on? Where does that energy from cooling go?
The emitting height is raised because the optical depth of the atmosphere increases. This does not cool the atmosphere, it merely forces light, on average, to be emitted from a greater altitude than previously.
“it merely forces light”
Infrared is not typically classified as “light”. Did you actually mean to say that it forces infrared to be emitted at a greater altitude?
If so what makes you think that only the very top of the atmosphere emits infrared?
Correct, I meant infrared radiation. I do not think only the top of the atmosphere emits IR, I’m not sure what gave you that idea.
Not only that, emissions to space have actually INCREASED as CO2 has increased.
Far from reducing: the heat energy emitted to space increased since 1985 by a whole 1.5 W/m².
If, as weakly IMAGINES, it is emitted at great height,
…. it is also emitted over a MUCH great area. (area proportional to square of length)
So more energy is emitted
But weakly is EVIDENCE-FREE.
This is a new FALLACY you are working on is it weaking-fail. 😉
It is noted that you still produce the same amount of evidence, ZERO !!
.
No scientific evidence of that at all
Just the opposite in fact
The data says
:
The optical thickness of the atmosphere to CO2 greenhouse gas is unchanged since 1950 for over 70 years since CO2 increased in the atmosphere from 315ppm to 415ppm.
Are you DELIBERATELY LYING,
… or just chronically MAL-informed !
Where do you think the “33 degrees” added by greenhouse gases like CO2 comes from? If you subtracted the 33 deg first as the earth radiated it, you might come close to even, but not hotter. Even that is bogus since CO2 doesn’t radiate everything down, at most it does 1/2 down, and probably less when you look up the emissivity of CO2.
What a slowdown in cooling causes is a rise in MINIMUM temps. A rise in minimum temps might be considered as “warming” but the implication you always read about is that “warming” will turn the earth into a cinder!
Rising minimums provide far more benefits than problems. Longer growing seasons, better nighttime growth, fewer hyperthermia deaths, and on and on and on. Higher minimum temps do *not* cause more ice melting as long as the minimum temps are still below freezing in the Arctic and Antarctic and therefore can’t be causing catastrophic sea rise.
You simply cannot discern this from global averages of mid-range temperature values. And that’s the way the global warming alarmists like it. They can claim anything they want and who’s to say different?
You didn’t understand a word I said did you? Cooling slower IS NOT HOTTER. If you think so, it is up to you to explain where the 33 degrees of warming over no GHG’s comes from. Remember, CAGW requires the earth to RADIATE 33 degrees more. IOW, 288 K versus 255 K.
A man hands me $2 per second. If he starts with $100, how many seconds will it take him to go broke?
If I hand the man back $1 per second, now how many seconds will it take him to go broke?
A third scenario: The man hands me $2 per second, and you hand the man $2 per second. I hand him nothing. How long will it take the man to go broke?
Now, you hand the man $2, the man hands me $2, and I hand the man back $1 per second. What is happening to the man’s wealth? As you can see, me making the man go broke slower is now making him wealthier. But I am not handing the man back more money than he is handing me.
“The amount left over is radiative forcing.” Or it is the accumulated errors in their “calculations”, or some other either unknown or misunderstood natural factor, or computer program bias, or something else. These satellites appear to be gathering useful data, the issue is how it is used.
Or a DELIBERATE STATISTICAL CONTRIVANCE !
NOAA claims to be able to measure the earths global temperatures to 0.01C. When NOAA says a year is the hottest they mean by 0.01C often. Talk about STATISTICAL CONTRIVANCE!
The uncertainty in their annual values is far beyond the hundredths digit, most likely in the tens digit, e.g. +/- 15C. They have no idea of what the annual differences actually are!
They have mathematicians and computer programmers who believe a repeating decimal is infinitely precise doing all this. No idea of what physical uncertainty is.
“Mommy mommy why Spring?”
“Because of all the fuel people burn in winter: It warms the earth because CO2”
The fact that human activity AFFECTS the energy balance is obvious. But what is never proven is to what extent. And, if that effect is good or bad. Most of the “arguments” (as such) are unsubstantiated predictions for the future, based on—really—nothing.
George Box, “All models are inaccurate, some are useful”. This one is clearly not useful, either. Drawing colored arrows usually ends in grade school.
More solar panels are needed, right?
Yes. Create some purdy pictures purporting to “show climate change”. Boom, “direct observations”. Where, you ask? Right there in front of you – those purdy pictures.
Riiiiight.
What a joke…
Models aren’t empirical evidence.
All the empirical evidence overwhelming show CO2 has a minimal ECS of around 1C, and slightly warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels are better for all life: higher crop yields, milder winters, plants become more drought resistant, increased global greening, longer growing seasons, less frost loss, earlier planting seasons, fewer exposure deaths, more rainfall, etc.
Once the PDO & AMO reenter their respective 30-year cool cycles, CAGW is dead.
This is the first calculation of the total radiative forcing of Earth using global observations, accounting for the effects of aerosols and greenhouse gases.
This is redolent of the claims Berkeley Lab concerning Feldman et al (2015), First Direct Observation of Carbon Dioxide’s Increasing Greenhouse Effect at the Earth’s Surface..
I keep asking but never get an answer: Exactly what on earth absorbs 15u “back” radiation from the CO2? I can’t find anything, including quartz and feldspar which are the two most common materials on earth. Is it only water that can absorb this radiation? If so then how does it affect the land temperature?
Good question. Modtran (screenshot attached here) assumes absorption and emission are continuous across the spectrum as modelled. Obviously results would vary for a specific surface. In this wikipedia page there is a graph for different surfaces, e.g. flat black paint, white paint, mirror. All of these absorb and emit strongly at 15u. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation
“The absorbed energy may also be emitted back toward Earth, where it will warm the surface even more.”
This is one of the big fallacies of the climate scam. The IR radiated to the surface is so weak it can only penetrate a few microns. It is then reradiated towards space almost instantaneously.
The way to handle this science properly is to treat the surface skin as part of the atmospheric energy system. Then, average out all absorption-emission events within that system. What you see with this transformation is the average emission travels towards space and hence all the energy within this system is continually lost.
The only way to add energy to the system (aka warming) is to find energy that isn’t already captured within it. There is some energy available in what is called the radiation window around 15 microns. However, adding CO2 only allows a small portion of that energy to be captured with a trivial impact on the overall system.
The only way you can actually measure CO2 “back-radiation”..
… is to FORCE a net downward radiation by using a super-cooled sensor..
(eg Feldman et al)
You actually have to CREATE the conditions for it to be measured.
Indeed. I note that here:
http://phzoe.com/2019/11/11/why-up-is-not-down/
It seems to me that any source of “warming” or “cooling” would result in observed energy “imbalance”. You can measure the same thing with a thermometer. I do not see how these observations can be used to attribute this to any specific cause. Still on square one.
Our planet is constantly trying to balance the flow of energy. Our planet isn’t ‘trying’ anything,
it’s flow of energy is in balance. No need to read another emotionally based opinion.
And the OVER-RIDING / CONTROLLING flow of energy is by pressure/density controlled bulk atmospheric transfer.
“This study filters out variations in Earth’s energy budget due to feedback processes”. Great, by ignoring nature, they can easily assume that all warming is caused by humans. Science is dead!
I am reminded of a very, very poor magic act.
“The researchers calculated the energy change caused by each of these natural factors, then subtracted the values from the total. The portion leftover is the radiative forcing.”
And that approach is wrong! It could work in a scheme where A causes X, B causes Y and C causes Z. In other words, where causation is not overlapped and there is no redundancy. It will not work however if A causes X AND B causes X.
We have multiple such redundancies, for instance in the way clouds and GHGs reduce emissions. How to allocate causation within redundant systems is an unsolved question. We know however that the subtraction method is illicit. That is saying since A causes X, B will not make any difference and thus is irrelevant. Arbitrarily we could say the same of A, which obviously makes no sense.
NASA makes a childish mistake in the way it interprets satellite data. Accordingly the “results” are garbage.
Precisely. What’s the forcing from the +AMO vs the -AMO? They have no idea as we’ve been in a +AMO since the satellite was launched. What about total undersea volcanic activity. Are they claiming they know precisely what this is? The claim is total nonsense.
From everything I know, if a molecule is a good absorber, then it is also a good emitter. H2O absorbs a tremendous amount of energy from near IR. Much more than is accounted for in the typical radiation spectra of the earth. But, does H2O also radiate at the near IR wavelengths also? If so, have we measured it? Can IR at 16 um (H2O) be part of the near IR radiation?
First of all the graph is wrong! Visible light is in the 400-800nm range. 500nm+ is green, not red. The term “near IR” is used for IR close to visible light. “Far IR” is usually referred to as 15µm+.
H2O does radiate beyond the CO2 range in the far IR range. Actually that is where most of the “GHE” of H2O is located. There are a couple of problems however.
From the first sentence, “Our planet is constantly trying…” Trying? So NASA now believes in the supernatural, maybe even —- God?
Sofia has to justify her salary and NASA has to justify its budget. Hence, this.
I find this claim absurd. How so? Last year I downloaded the CERES 1 degree x 1 degree hourly shortwave out (i.e. reflected solar energy) and longwave energy out for a gridpoint near where I live. Here are plots of hourly shortwave, longwave, and combined for 2018. There is no way to have established a precise out-of-balance condition as NASA’s Gavin Schmidt claims. Every place on Earth sits under a variable emitter/reflector at some altitude above. It is powered in part from the longwave coupling with the surface. Its outputs look like these time series plots. NASA knows better than to promote the continuing misconception of the climate question as a matter of forcing and feedback. Better to grasp that the variable emitter/reflector is largely supplied from below, as the heat engine operation of the atmosphere performs its duty without fail.
I should add this challenge: Find the 530 milliwatt shortage in these graphs. If it cannot be found in a single gridpoint’s data, how in the world does NASA believe a globally precise value could ever be “observed?”
By STATISTICAL MALFEASANCE
Looking at their sequence of earth maps depicting the process their final cell is supposed to be the result of the human change. It shows tropical warming and polar stasis. That seems opposite of what we have been told is happening.
I am just an interested observer and info gatherer on this web site & not educated in the niceties of the scientific technicalities- so my uninformed question is what is considered the norm and how did they arrive at it- actual data for many years, computer extrapolations, or supposed guessed data from the climate change alarmists
Well direct observed evidence of historical temperatures show that the climate models are total failures.
>>
. . . greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) – a key driver of global warming . . . .
<<
It’s more like a very minor factor. CO2 is only a “key driver” in their minds (and models).
Jim
+0.5 W/m² TOA forcing increase in 15 years, eh?
Okay, let’s do the math, and see what that means for temperatures…
The Stefan-Boltzman relation is:
E = ε σ T⁴, where:
E = radiative emission
epsilon ε is emissivity (note that ε [0..1] is actually a function of wavelength, except for perfect grey-bodies)
sigma σ is the Stefan-Boltzman constant = 5.670374419E−8 W/m²K⁴
temperature T is in Kelvin
Referencing:
https://science-edu.larc.nasa.gov/energy_budget/
emissivity ε = approx. 0.7065 (calculated as 1-albedo, for incoming visible & near-IR solar radiation, but maybe not quite right for our LW IR math)
T = 288K (Earth’s current approximate average temperature)
E = ε σ T⁴ = 0.7065 × 5.670374419E−8 × 288^4 = 275.61 W/m² (which is about 15% higher than the 239.9 expected — is that because LWIR emissivity is different from the visible & near IR “1-albedo” value that I calculated as 0.7065?)
Increasing temperature by 1°C…
T = 289K
E = ε σ T⁴ = 0.7065 × 5.670374419E−8 × 289^4 = 279.46 W/m²
279.46 – 275.61 = 3.85 W/m² = the increase in outgoing radiation for a 1°C increase in temperature.
So, 0.5 W/m² = 0.5 / 3.85 = 0.13°C in 15 years, a trend of only +0.087 °C/decade.
Ho, hum. That’s substantially slower warming than most temperature indexes claim.
If we tweak ε down to 0.0615, to make emissions at 288K equal the expected 239.9 W/m², the RF difference for +1°C is 3.35 W/m², making the warming trend from 0.5 W/m²/(15yrs) still only +0.10 °C/decade.
Unless I’ve made a mistake in those calculations, it seems to me that the Kramer paper‘s title should have been, “Observational evidence of less global radiative forcing increase than expected,” instead of “Observational evidence of increasing global radiative forcing.”
Have I missed something?
They have effectively PROVEN that most of the highly beneficial warming …
… HAS NOT COME FROM GHG warming,
… of which CO2 could only be a tiny part if it actually existed. 🙂
Oops! Typo correction:
“If we tweak ε down to 0.0615, to make…”
…should have been:
“If we tweak ε down to 0.615, to make…”
(The “3.35” calculation link used the right number.)
I still haven’t found a copy of Kramer’s actual paper, but the abstract reports a TOA radiative forcing change of 0.53±0.11 W/m² from 2003 to 2018.
Per Mauna Loa measurements, average atmospheric CO2 concentration rose from 375.80 ppmv in 2003 to 408.52 ppmv in 2018. log2(408.52/375.80) = 0.12044, so that increase was about 12% of a doubling.
CH4 concentration rose from 1.777 ppmv in 2003 to 1.857 in 2018. Per MODTRAN, the CH4 increase should have accounted for about 298.488 – 298.426 = 0.062 W/m².
If CO2 and consequent feedbacks accounted for the rest, that leaves 0.53±0.11 – 0.06 = 0.47±0.11 W/m², from a 12% CO2 increase, so RF at TOA from a doubling of CO2 should be 0.47±0.11 / 0.12044 = 3.90±0.92 W/m².
That’s about the same as the Myhre 1998 and the IPCC (TAR & later) estimates for radiative forcing from CO2 alone, without feedbacks: 3.7±0.4 W/m² per doubling of CO2.
https://sealevel.info/Radiative_Forcing_synopsis.html
What????
to 1 decimal place, with NO ERROR or DEVIATION bars?
LAUGHABLE NON-SCIENCE.
In order to accurately measure the net radiation imbalance, the researchers would have to integrate the outgoing radiation (in the UV, visible, and infrared ranges) over the entire surface of the earth.
Satellites in geo-stationary orbits (which follow the earth’s rotation) are always over the equator, and must be farther away to orbit every 24 hours. In order to get accurate measurements at all latitudes, satellites would be needed in circumpolar orbits (moving south to north on one side of the earth, then north to south on the other side), but the earth rotating under these satellites would mean that they are not over the same meridian during successive orbits.
Do the researchers have enough satellites in circumpolar orbits that can accurately measure outgoing radiation over temperate and polar areas?
The incoming solar radiation (at 1,368 W/m2) is projected onto a circular area of pi*R^2, where R is the radius of the earth, but the total surface area of a sphere is 4*pi*R^2, so that the average incident radiation from the sun over the entire earth’s surface (including the night side) would be 1,368 / 4 = 342 W/m2.
An imbalance of 0.5 W/m2 is equivalent to less than 0.15% of the average incoming energy from the sun. If there are not enough satellites in circumpolar orbits to accurately integrate the average outgoing radiation over the entire earth’s surface, this “measured” energy imbalance could be merely measurement error, and the errors bars could reasonably include an energy imbalance of zero.
Math is hard. Numbers is easy.
Any discussion of earth’s energy budget that does not mention evaporation is bogus.
We have been ‘throwing off’ the energy budget of Earth for the last 8000 years or more by farming and probably megafauna hunting. If we had not done so, we would be in an ice age right now. I don’t see a problem. We are part of the world. Get used to it.
Hooray for the scourge and the plague?
+0.5W/m^2 is enough to throw an alarmist off balance?
I’m familiar with CERES. I read this doc recently:
“Despite recent improvements in satellite instrument calibration and the algorithms used to
determine SW and LW outgoing top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiative fluxes, a sizeable imbalance
persists in the average global net radiation at the TOA from CERES satellite observations. With
the most recent CERES Edition4 Instrument calibration improvements, the SYN1deg_Edition4
net imbalance is ~4.3 W m-2
, much larger than the expected observed ocean heating rate ~0.71 W
m-2 (Johnson et al. 2016). This imbalance is problematic in applications that use Earth
Radiation Budget (ERB) data for climate model evaluation, estimations of the Earth’s annual
global mean energy budget, and studies that infer meridional heat transports.”
https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/DQ_summaries/CERES_EBAF_Ed4.0_DQS.pdf
But Zoe, you haven’t applied “climate statistics™” to that data yet… 😉
Just decide what you want to find, and invent a new method..
For laughs, please read:
http://phzoe.com/2020/04/12/lunar-warming/
30 year trailing average of TSI.
.
I use 30 years because it is “climate” 😉
Data… Greg Kopp
.
A small meteor rock would kick up more moon dust than the moon landing astronauts did. !
Have they managed to prove that we also caused the Medieval Warm Period, the following Little Ice Age, and, of course, the current warming, and demonstrated that we are the reason why the current warming has not yet reached the warmth of 6,000 years ago?
Actual measurements/observations yielded less than model predictions.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.10605.pdf
RADIATIVE FORCING BY CO2 OBSERVED AT TOP OF ATMOSPHERE FROM 2002-2019A PREPRINT Chris Rentsch∗Midland, MI 48642rentcp@gmail.comNovember 5, 2020ABSTRACTSpectroscopic measurements at top of atmosphere are uniquely capable of attributing changes in Earth’s outgoing infrared radiation field to specific greenhouse gasses. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) placed in orbit in 2002 has spectroscopically resolved a portion of Earth’s outgoing longwave radiation for over 17 years. Concurrently, atmospheric CO2rose from 373 to 410 ppm, or28% of the total increase over pre-industrial levels. The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) multi-model ensemble average predicts 0.477 Wm−2clear-sky longwave effective radiative forcing from this increase. Global measurements under nighttime, clear-sky conditions reveal 0.360±0.026 Wm−2of CO2-induced longwave radiative forcing, or 75±5% of model predictions
RADIATIVE FORCING BY CO2 OBSERVED AT TOP OF ATMOSPHERE FROM 2002-2019
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.10605.pdf
“The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report predicted 0.508±0.102 Wm−2RF resulting from this CO2 increase, 42% more forcing than actually observed. The lack of quantitative long-term global OLR studies may be permitting inaccu-racies to persist in general circulation model forecasts of the effects of rising CO2 or other greenhouse gasses.”
They got it wrong. CERES all sky data clearly shows earth LW radiation to space increasing by about a watt. This is the stuff CO2 is supposed to be decreasing. It also shows Increased solar SW absorption (not leaving by reflection) is driving the net reduction in energy to space called warming by about 1.5 watts. There’s their half a watt.