Bob Wentworth Ph.D. (Applied Physics)
In their 2020 paper, An Analysis of the Earth’s Energy Budget, Stephen Wilde and Philip Mulholland (W&M) examine the energy budget of the Earth. They infer the presence of energy fluxes associated with energy recycling, add the measured and inferred fluxes together to achieve a total energy flux which matches the flux needed to explain the Earth’s mean surface temperature. Based on this analysis, they offer various conclusions.
In this post, I’ll deconstruct W&M’s analysis. I expect this will be of interest primarily to those interested in their particular analytic methods and conclusions.
My prior post Atmospheric Energy Recycling is essential back-ground reading for understanding what I will be offering here. So, please read that if you want the rest of this post to make sense.
Regrettably, W&M’s analysis in this paper contains multiple serious errors which render the conclusions meaningless.
Let me outline key aspects of their analysis process, as I understand it:
- W&M (correctly) embrace the idea that there exists an “energy recycling” process in which energy circulates back and forth between the planetary surface and the atmosphere, increasing net energy flux in this region.
- W&M (incorrectly) assume that the recycling fraction associated with this recycling process is β = ½.
- W&M (correctly, within the limitations of the assumption that β=½) sum the net result of recycling back and forth (with infinite but geometrically declining power) to conclude that any initial energy flux introduced to the recycling process will result in the generation of an equal downwelling radiation flux towards the surface, and an another equal upward energy flux towards space.
- W&M assert (p. 57) “the atmosphere retains and stores an energy flux equal to that of the total intercepted flux” and (p. 60) talk about the “role of the atmosphere as an energy recycling reservoir.” They say the energy recycling process is the means by which the “Back Radiation of the canonical model is created and stored in the atmospheric reservoir.”
- For each energy flux absorbed by the atmosphere, whether that flux originates from the surface, or from direct absorption of solar radiation, W&M tally up an equal inferred “stored” flux due to energy recycling. (These fluxes are listed in tables under the label “Infinite Recycling Limit”).
- W&M compute (p. 58) a “total energy budget for the Earth” which includes: solar radiation absorbed by the surface, solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere, net energy fluxes from the surface absorbed by the atmosphere, fluxes “stored” as a result of recycling of fluxes absorbed by the atmosphere. This yields a “total planetary energy budget of 558 W/m² [which] converts to a thermodynamic temperature for the Earth’s surface of 315 Kelvin (42° Celsius)” using the Stephan-Boltzmann law.
- W&M reason (p. 58) that energy fluxes away from the surface cool the surface and so must be subtracted from the previously calculated “total planetary energy budget.” They subtract net all net heat fluxes away from the surface, including radiative heat flux (net of radiation from surface subtracting back-radiation), and fluxes associated with thermals and evaporation. This produces what is described a “Surface Radiation flux” of 390 W/m². Applying the Stephan-Boltzmann law, they conclude “the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere for a net atmospheric power intensity flux of 390 W/m2 is shown to be 288 Kelvin (15° Celsius).”
Reviewing this, I notice some seeming oddity and vagueness in the way that locations are discussed.
- W&M (c.f., item #4) apparently think of recycled energy fluxes as being “stored” in the atmosphere. Yet, a flux is a flow (energy per unit time per unit area) at a particular location.
Calculations of “back-radiation” to the surface are well-defined and meaningful if one is talking about fluxes at the interface between the surface and the atmosphere. While fluxes exist at other points in the atmosphere, there is unlikely to be a simple relationship between those fluxes within the atmosphere and the fluxes at the interface with the Earth’s surface.
I am skeptical that it can be meaningfully be said that fluxes are “stored” anywhere. I wonder how this surprising way of thinking affects W&M’s reasoning. - Solar irradiance absorbed anywhere in the atmosphere is assumed (cf., item #5) to be recycled to the surface in the same way, and to the same degree, as energy fluxes originating at the Earth’s surface. In any realistic model of the atmosphere, it seems unlikely that this would be the case.
- W&M (cf., item #7) vary between talking about their total energy flux as a “Surface Radiation flux” or an “atmospheric power intensity flux.” Similarly, they vary between talking about a “thermodynamic temperature for the Earth’s surface” and “the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere.” The average temperature of the surface and the average temperature of the atmosphere are not the same. It’s a bit worrisome that W&M shift their terminology in this way.
After the adjustments (cf., item #7), what fluxes are included in W&M’s “total energy budget”?
In subtracting all the net heat fluxes leaving the Earth’s surface, W&M removed an amount equal to the solar irradiance absorbed by the surface. Thus, their total energy budget includes (a) fluxes associated with energy recycling, and (b) energy fluxes absorbed by the atmosphere, whether originating from the surface or from solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere.
This is where vagueness about location becomes problematic.
As I understand it, fluxes associated with energy recycling (back-radiation to the surface) are meaningfully defined only at the interface between the surface and the atmosphere. Yet, the fluxes of solar irradiance absorbed by the atmosphere relate to locations distributed throughout the atmosphere. So, some fluxes relate to energy arriving at the surface and other fluxes relate to energy leaving the surface (and entering the atmosphere), yet these are added together and not subtracted. What does it mean to add together fluxes that are going different directions or are associated with different locations?
And where is the location for which we are calculating the temperature?
- Are W&M calculating the temperature of the surface? To calculate the temperature of the surface one must do an energy balance calculation at the surface. Such a calculation would need to include solar irradiance absorbed by the surface, yet that has been excluded. And one would not include energy fluxes present only in the atmosphere, which have been included. The calculation of temperature clearly cannot relate to the temperature of the surface.
- Are W&M calculating temperature of the atmosphere? At first this seems likely, given that all energy fluxes absorbed by the atmosphere are included. Yet the total also includes fluxes associated with the result of energy recycling. Rigorously speaking, these are fluxes associated with energy leaving the atmosphere and being absorbed by the surface. Why would these be added to energy arriving in the atmosphere, rather than being subtracted? And, even if we had a correct figure for total energy absorbed by the atmosphere, it would not be correct to use an emissivity value of 1 to calculate temperature, as W&M have apparently done in their calculation. So, the calculation of temperature cannot relate to the temperature of the atmosphere.
In summary, energy fluxes with different destinations have been jumbled together. The “total energy budget” does not constitute an appropriate list of fluxes for any one location. The resulting temperature calculation for radiative balance is not meaningful for any location.
* * *
Perhaps if W&M were to correct their reasoning about which fluxes to include or exclude, their calculation could be fixed?
Unfortunately, even if that were done, the faulty assumption that the energy recycling fraction must be β = ½ would likely doom their efforts.
As discussed in my post on Atmospheric Energy Recycling. , the assumption that the energy recycling fraction β is ½ would be appropriate if the atmosphere consisted of a single layer which was opaque to longwave radiation yet thin enough to have a uniform temperature. However, for a thick atmosphere with a temperature that varies with altitude, this assumption is not valid. The energy recycling fraction β could, in principle, be anywhere in the range 0 < β < 1 (subject to additional limitations associated with the radiative properties of the particular gases involved).
Unfortunately, I expect that it is impossible to say, a priori, what the energy recycling fraction β of an atmosphere will be. I believe it is an emergent property of the system as a whole. It can only be computed after the fact, after one has accurately modeled or measured the thermal behavior of the atmosphere.
So, it is not clear to me how W&M could salvage their analytic approach. I hope they succeed in finding a way.
Conclusions
The analysis in An Analysis of the Earth’s Energy Budget has some serious flaws. There is no coherent model of for what location in the system W&M are computing a “planetary energy budget.” The energy fluxes included in the proposed energy budget do not correspond to the fluxes needed to calculate a valid temperature anywhere. In addition, the analysis relies on an invalid assumption that the energy recycling fraction of an atmosphere is ½.
Unfortunately, this means that none of the inferences and conclusions which W&M offer as a result of their analysis are justified.
I appreciate the level of original thought that it appears Wilde and Mulholland have given to this work. It’s a shame that they’ve built their work on flawed foundations.
Appendix: The Role of Convection
I address this topic as an appendix because it involves no quantifiable claims that I can address, just some comments that seem to hint at important implications.
An idea in W&M’s paper which invites attention relates to their perspective on “atmospheric mass movement.”
W&M (p. 60) seem to find it important to point out “the implicit role of atmospheric mass movement in the process of energy recycling that also heats the surface of our planet. In the presence of a gravity field that binds the atmosphere to the surface of a planet, what goes up must come down.”
They note that their “total atmospheric energy budget” includes terms associated with sensible heat flow (surface thermals) and latent heat flow (evaporation), as well as corresponding recycled energy (back-radiation) terms. These terms are both associated with “mass movement.”
W&M (p. 60-61) reason:
“if the proportion of flux carried by mass motion increases due to an increase in moist convection overturning, then the proportion of energy transmitted by radiant processes must decrease (or vice versa). A given energy flux cannot do two things at once, a balance is always maintained between these two distinct processes if the Bond albedo remains constant.”
W&M do not seem to unpack the perceived implications of this logic within this paper. Perhaps this idea is offered as a foundation for reasoning in other papers?
I feel a bit worried by the generalization to the idea of “atmospheric mass movement” when all that W&M have purported to show importance for is convection. Perhaps, elsewhere, W&M argue that additional types of “atmospheric mass movement” are important?
I’m not in a position right now to comment on inferences that aren’t unpacked in this particular paper.
But, I can try to examine these assertions as they’ve been presented.
* * *
First, we need to address the fact that W&M have been calculating their “total atmospheric energy budget” in a way that lacks any physical meaning.
Let’s address that deficiency by writing an energy balance equation for the surface:
S + B = 𝜀σT⁴ + V [Equation 1]
Here, S is the shortwave solar irradiance absorbed by the surface, B is longwave back-radiation absorbed by the surface, 𝜀σT⁴ is emitted longwave thermal radiation, and V is heat transport away from the surface related to latent or sensible heat flux (typically associated with moist convection). This equation balances the energy flux going into the surface with the energy flux leaving.
This equation suggests that convection tends to cool the surface.
Let’s try to incorporate the concept of energy recycling into the energy balance equation.
From my post on Atmospheric Energy Recycling, the flux of back-radiation could be written as B = S⋅β/(1-β) where β is the energy recycling fraction. So, we could write the energy balance equation as:
S/(1-β) = 𝜀σT⁴ + V [Equation 2]
Alternatively, to align with how W&M are analyzing things, we could write S = U + V where U is the net radiative flux away from the surface, U = 𝜀σT⁴ − B. That allows us to split the back-radiation into a component associated with radiant flux and a component associated with convection. However, energy leaving the surface via thermal radiation or by moist convection will in general be deposited in different portions of the atmosphere. Consequently, there is no reason to believe that the energy recycling fraction will be the same for both type of energy flux. So, we could write back-radiation as:
B = U⋅βᵤ/(1-βᵤ) + V⋅ βᵥ/(1-βᵥ)]
(Perhaps one should also include a term related to W, the amount of solar irradiance absorbed by the atmosphere. It might look like W⋅βᵥᵥ/(1-βᵥᵥ). For simplicity, I will forgo this added complication.)
Substituting our formula for B into our energy-balance equation yields:
𝜀σT⁴ = S + U⋅βᵤ/(1-βᵤ) + V⋅[(2βᵥ – 1)/(1-βᵥ)] [Equation 3]
Equation 3 is the form of the energy balance equation that would seem most aligned with W&M’s formalism.
We can see from this that if W&M were correct in thinking that the energy recycling fraction is βᵥ = ½, then changes to convective heat transfer (i.e., the “mass transfer” contribution to heat flow) would have zero impact on temperature!
(I don’t know what βᵥ is in practice, and I’m not likely to trust any informal estimate of this.)
Does Equation 3 support W&M’s contention that convection is important in determining planetary temperature?
To the extent that βᵥ might be close to ½, Equation 3 would seem to undermine the hypothesis that convection rates are important in determining surface temperature. However, the answer seems unknowable in the absence of a value for βᵥ.
It seems worth noting that Equation 3 is a very odd equation. It computes back-radiation in terms of the net surface radiant flux, U, which can only be calculated if one already knows the amount of back-radiation! (This was happening in W&M’s analysis all along.)
I might make more sense to use something like Equation 2 as a basis for reasoning. Though, there is no guarantee at all that β would really act like a constant, independent of other variables.
* * *
Overall, I have significant doubts about this whole approach to trying to make sense of planetary temperature.
I do wish W&M good fortune in their efforts.
It should be fun to come back later and read the comments on this thread.
Regards,
Bob
Oh, stick around, Bob. It’s another excuse for them to get some cash for “doing something” and leaving the reader confused. (Not the article, but rather their conclusion.)
I do have a suggestion in regard to Earth’s “energy budget”, and that is that those guys go to Iceland to the new volcano and stand next to any one of the (currently) five vents that are expelling hot, noxious gasses along with molten lava. I’m sure that the heat generated by the magma welling up out of the mid-Atlantic rift (source of the magma) is FAR over the “budget” described by those persons authoring that claim, and (aside from the noxious gases) would completely throw off their theory, never mind anything else.
They could also visit La Soufriere where lies that explosive volcano from last week, and spend some quality time with Etna (Sicily) along with the 35++ other volcanoes currently venting, burping and spitting out magma and ash.
They might even get to experience Marvin the Martian’s oft-requested “Ka-Boom!” He was so fond of the ‘Ka-Boom”.
Sorry, I just can’t help it when I run into people like those guys. The article is good and thoughtful. The climate change fanatics: not so much.
Hi Sara,
You may enjoy the following 4 articles by Professor Wyss Yim:
Volcanoes and disastrous storms
Explanation for the northern Pacific Blob
Geothermal heat and climate variability
Climatic impacts of the SW Indian Ocean Blob
Thanks, Philip!!!
We’re forecast to have snow on Tuesday in my A/O, so I will enjoy all of that!
E-balance charts showing average upwelling LWIR = 396 W/m² have never made sense to me. Especially considering vast location differences between tropics and poles:
https://twitter.com/Kenneth72712993/status/1365928938170707968?s=20
Also see my reply below the tweet.
1) By reflecting away 30% of ISR the albedo, which would not exist w/o the atmosphere/GHGs, makes the earth cooler than it would be without that atmosphere like that reflective panel set behind the windshield. Remove the atmosphere/GHGs and the earth would become much like the Moon and Mercury, a barren rock with a 0.1 albedo, 20% more kJ/h, hot^3 on the lit side, cold^3 on the dark. Nikolov, Kramm (U of AK) and UCLA Diviner mission all tacitly agree.
2) the GHG up/down welling, “trapping”/”back” radiating/delaying/intercepting, 100 % efficient, perpetual warming loop requires “extra” energy which according to RGHE theory comes from
3) the terrestrial surface radiating that “extra” energy as a LWIR ideal black body which
4) cannot happen because of the non-radiative heat transfer processes of the contiguous atmospheric molecules and as demonstrated by experiment, the gold standard of classical science:
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
1+2+3+4 = 0 Greenhouse Effect + 0 Greenhouse gas warming + 0 man caused climate change.
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Nick makes a good point about albedo, maybe without realizing it.
Simple N-layer models will result in a surface temperature of Tsurf= (N+1)^.25 X Tradiative
plus you can add in Betas and emissivities for more thoroughness. Plus you can add in constant temp or constant lap rates to be the equivalent of a convective layer. The result of this is that you can now get pretty much any answer you want.
Nick’s point is really that planetary Albedo, of which clouds are at least half, are more important than the fudge factor differences in the N-layer radiative simplified cases. Work on clouds there Ph.D wannabes.
Clouds are precisely like fog, which is not like shiny surface.
Cloud diffuse light and droplet or ice particles or water or snow can absorb the diffused light.
Or transparent ocean water is not heated at surface, it’s mostly absorbed in first meter of surface water. And with cloud, it’s more like km than a meter- or one meter of cloud not warm much just 1 cm ocean water is not warmed much {directly] by sunlight.
“1) By reflecting away 30% of ISR the albedo, which would not exist w/o the atmosphere/GHGs, makes the earth cooler than it would be without that atmosphere like that reflective panel set behind the windshield.”
The reflective panel makes a car cooler but not like a refrigerator.
Without the reflective panel, the car can more rapidly absorb the energy of sunlight, so in few hours the interior of car can get hot. So per second or hour the reflective panel reduces the amount energy absorbed. And since there there only few hours the sunlight can be warming the most, the car is not as hot as it would be without the reflective panel.
Earth absorbs a lot energy. Our Moon at same distance from the Sun, gets hotter surface, but
it absorbs less energy from the Sun.
Why?
Apparently, it’s because the heat is recycled. Or atmosphere somehow absorbs 150% of the energy of the sunlight.
Well that maybe sort of right. But what other aspect of Earth causes it to absorb more energy.
It seems to me that Earth’s ocean absorbs a lot of energy.
It’s said that recent warming, over 90% of global warming is warming the ocean rather than the atmosphere. Or the ocean absorbing 90% vs atmosphere absorbing less than 10%.
So if our Moon had ocean {particularly in equatorial region} it would absorb more energy from the sun. And/or if our Moon had atmosphere it also absorb more energy. And both would cause the Moon to reflect more sunlight.
And it seem if Moon had atmosphere without any greenhouse gases, it would still absorb more of the energy of sunlight, as compared the Moon without an atmosphere.
So Moon with atmosphere and a tropical ocean it absorbs more than without the ocean and
perhaps lunar’s water vapor is recycling heat also, somehow.
First can I make a plea to all responders to Bob’s post that you make it clear which set of authors you are replying to, if you are referring to our work and not Bob’s then W&M is fine.
I am now going to speak for myself and state my motive for performing the analysis that Bob is criticising. For me this all starts with the Vacuum Planet equation of astronomy and its application to the study of the Earth’s climate. First some comments about the Vacuum Planet equation. It does what it says on the tin. It is meant to apply to a vacuum planet. Next it is a fundamental requirement that the planet being analysed is rapidly rotating. This requirement arises because in the absence of a mobile atmosphere (or global ocean) there is no mechanism other than rotation that can transmit the energy the surface acquires during the daytime from intercepted sunlight to the night side of the planetary body.
I have always viewed the diurnal rotation requirement as a fundamental weakness in the application of this equation to a planet with an atmosphere because it is reasonable to assume that a tidally locked planet with an atmosphere can occur. Consequently, the first part of the analysis that Bob is criticising is simply the external view of the climate black box. I started building the Noonworld climate model with the explicit assumption that this model refers to a tidally locked planet, and that the only mechanism that can be invoked to transmit intercepted solar energy to the night side is atmospheric mass motion. All other considerations at this point are discounted. The atmosphere is assumed to be pure nitrogen (or even pure argon if you prefer) and so be fully transparent. Consequently, only surface considerations of the absorption of radiant energy and subsequent loss of energy to space are considered. As has already been mentioned in comments the material mass of the atmosphere is an energy reservoir that both stores and transmits energy to the dark side before returning energy-depleted back to the day lit side. The fundamental point of this model in its simplest form is that it fully replicates the action of the Vacuum Planet equation but for a tidally locked body. In my view this is a fundamental advance that needs to be acknowledged.
This initial model, which we call the diabatic model, conclusively demonstrates that the divide by 4 flux dilution of insolation as traditionally used is wrong. We have no issue with divide by 4 for the process of planetary surface radiant loss, however our model uses divide by 2 for the process of solar energy flux dilution. For those who are still in favour of divide by 4 for sunlight energy dilution I have to ask what happened to the night? After all, if you take the night time solar flux as zero (which it clearly is) and divide zero by 4 then the answer is still zero. Therefore, we can say that with equal justification the surface of the Earth is always perpetually dark.
???
“…The area of this circular disc is πr^2, in which r is the radius of the Earth. Because the Earth is approximately spherical, it has total area 4πr^2, meaning that the solar radiation arriving at the top of the atmosphere, averaged over the entire surface of the Earth, is simply divided by four to get 340 W/m2…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance
Divide planetary globe intercepted solar flux by 2. A worked example
And dividing the daytime flux by 2 while leaving the nighttime solar flux at zero is the same as dividing the whole day by 4. Simples. I do like the instructiveness of the day/night split of the worked example to show the variation.
This is what our DAET model does. It provides new insights.
Yes, divide by 2 to get the average for half the sphere, but that doesn’t mean “the divide by 4 flux dilution of insolation as traditionally used is wrong.”
Further to your diagram. No sensible and no latent transport during nighttime? No daytime surface radiation? Same bypass radiation from the varm daytime side as from the cooler nighttime side?
Now take the next logical step and ask what the average surface temperature of the lit hemisphere is.
The next logical step is not to spend more time on this mess.
NO. dividing by 2 or by 4 is JUST PLAIN WRONG
You are after the warming effect of the radiative input, which is given by the S-B relationship, which has 4th power components
You cannot just “average” over half the globe as if its a flat disc
Somewhere there should be a cosine. Even if there were no axial tilt the sun’s radiation effect at the poles is less than at the equator.
Not just one cosine, but an integral of a cosine in both the latitude and longitude as the Earth rotates to form a 3D cosine cone, peak at around 1000 – 1100 W/m², with the 4th order warming effect taken into account.
The daytime incident normal component is 1361 watts (times albedo) at noon at the equator, times cos zenith angle. Integrate that twice from -90 to plus 90 for latitude and longitude and you get 1361 (times albedo) divided by 4 for a whole revolution.
Tim: You say: “Somewhere there should be a cosine.”
As has very often been explained here, in all actual climate models, in every grid cell (e.g. 1 degree latitude by 1 degree longitude) in every time increment (e.g. every 15 minutes), the cosine of the sun’s offset from vertical (or the sine of its elevation from horizontal) is calculated for that cell at that time interval. I have examined the source code before.
Don’t think that simplified conceptual illustrations constrain what is actually done in calculations. There are many problems with the climate models, but this is not one of them.
None of the “radiative” concepts described here seem to take this into consideration at all. If model calcullations do take it into consideration then why do the model outputs seem to be in agreement with the radiative concepts?
If you had ever actually done work in science or engineering, you would be familiar with the concept of “first-cut approximations” in analysis. They are used all the time. The “average power” approximation here is one such case.
Further refinements are usually done to get more accurate results, as in these time- and area-gridded computer models. Sometimes the differences from the first-cut are significant, sometimes they are not.
Again, I emphasize that there are many, many issues with the computer models. But they do NOT use the average power input approximation
Please! I worked in telephone engineering for 30 years. I *am* familiar with the concept of “first-cut approximation”. But that first-cut approximation *has* to be based in physics.
The earth and the sun are in a spatial and time based relationship. You simply cannot get any kind of a first-cut approximation by ignoring those relationships.
When you add up all the mid-point temps to form an average you totally ignore the spatial and time relationships. If you *really* want to know the average temp of the earth then you need to take all measurements at a single point in time. Then both the sun side and the dark side get equal contribution to the average temp (sort of – because of the spatial relationships some points may have longer or shorter sun-lit periods than others).
Another consideration. The temperature profile at any location approaches a sine wave. The average value of a sine wave is 0.637 times the peak value – it is *NOT* the mid-range value. So if you want an average temperature at any location then at least do it right mathematically using an integral of the temperature profile.
Tim:
You seem to be surprised that sometimes first-cut approximations are pretty close. Seriously?
In my professional capacity, I work with “pulsed power” systems (PWM, single-phase AC) every day. Everyone does average power calculations as a first-cut approximation. It is good enough for some purposes.
In my home, my thermal systems — furnace, hot water heater, oven — are intermittent pulsed power systems as well. Average power calculations for those work pretty well for most purpose as well.
Of course, for detailed analysis, I sometimes have to go well beyond average power calculations. Applying PWM voltage to an RL circuit leads to a sawtooth current waveform. With resistive losses varying as the square of current, these losses are larger than with constant average current. I’ve done detailed analyses of these effects.
The “spacial and time relationships” you cite lead to pulsed power application to locations on the earth, basically like half-wave rectified AC. This is “based in physics”. If there is large thermal capacitance in play during the cycle, as with the oceans that cover most of the earth, using the average power calculation is a good start. OF COURSE, a more detailed calculation will show variations from the average, and not necessarily centered exactly around that average.
You asked upthread “if model calculations do take it [sun angle] into consideration, then why do the model outputs seem to be in agreement with the radiative concepts?”
The answer is simple — in this case, the average-based calculations provide a pretty good first-cut approximation.
I am *not* surprised when first-cut approximations are pretty close. The first-cut approximation here is *not* close however!
A true first-cut approximation would recognize that there is a time *AND* a spatial relationship that must be recognized in trying to determine a true average temperature for the globe. It would also recognize that the average power in a sine wave is not the same as the mid-range value.
“With resistive losses varying as the square of current, these losses are larger than with constant average current. I’ve done detailed analyses of these effects.”
What do resistive losses from current through a resistor have to do with anything? Are you trying to say that the temperature profile at a location is a sawtooth wave rather than a sine wave?
A half-wave rectified AC current is *NOT* a sawtooth wave.
The model calculations agree with the radiative concepts because they both have exactly the same flaw. Neither consider the time/spatial relationship of temperature around the globe.
A *real* first-cut approximation would be to take the temperatures around the globe at 0000 GMT for every station and then average those temperatures to determine a “global average”.
Tim:
You say: “The model calculations agree with the radiative concepts because they both have exactly the same flaw. Neither consider the time/spatial relationship of temperature around the globe.”
COMPLETELY FALSE!!!
The models explicitly break the globe into small grid sections (e.g. 1 degree by 1 degree) and update them at small time intervals (e.g. every 15 minutes), and individually compute many variables for each section in each interval, explicitly considering the time/spatial relationship of temperature (and many other variables) around the globe.
I am not claiming they do this perfectly, or even well enough to make good predictions, but they DO it. You are simply demonstrating that you have no idea whatsoever what is going on here.
You wonder what my point is on oscillating current response to PWM voltage and the resulting increased dissipation. So let me elaborate. If you do a first-cut approximation of average voltage input, you get a resulting constant average current and resulting I^2 * R dissipation. If you then refine your analysis to a “second-cut approximation” and resulting oscillating current, you will always get a higher average dissipation. The first-cut therefore sets a minimum dissiption. So I am agreeing with you that the first-cut is not ideal.
Here’s how that’s relevant to the issue at hand. Because radiative output is proportional to the 4th power of temperature. So the more the temperature varies — over time and over area — the higher the total (and therefore average) output is. The first-cut therefore sets a minimum radiative output.
Because the radiative output closely matches the solar input (nobody thinks it’s more than a small fraction of 1% out of balance), the minimum total radiative output case is the maximum temperature case.
So as you refine your analysis to consider spatial and time variations (which, I repeat, all the models do), you always end up with lower temperatures ovarll than the first-cut approximation. So the first-cut here is a limiting maximum case.
Simply –
Again, for emphasis, the models *DO* ignore spatial and time relationships because they are trained to match a global average temperature that ignores spatial and time relationships. You simply cannot get away from that simple, basic fact.
And the models do *NOT* come up with lower temperatures than the global average temperature calculated from ignoring spatial and time relationships. They come up with HIGHER temperatures. That’s why the models always run higher than UAH.
You can obfuscate all you want. The whole shebang is wrong from the start.
I simply cannot believe that you are still trying to defend your indefensible claim that the models ignore spatial and time relationships when the WHOLE POINT of breaking the model up into small area and time sections is to do EXACTLY that.
Do you realize how ridiculous that is? Why would anyone ever take you seriously on anything?
Models are very much not in agreement with observations, never have been, since 1979 when we got reliable whole planet satellite coverage by common instruments that could not be “adjusted” so easily. So your statement is either deceitful, or made in ignorance of the scientific observations. Neither is a good thing.
?dl=0
What statement of mine is deceitful? That temperature around the globe is a temporal and spatial function? That the average of a sine wave is not the mid-range value?
Philip, Mercury has an extremely thin atmosphere and is tidally locked to the Sun. Its orbit is sort of like a daisy petal in shape, because Venus is partially influencing Merc’s orbit, too.
Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other. And Uranus somehow got whacked onto its side, which makes one pole perpetually face the Sun, so you could justifiably say – sort of – that Uranus is tidally locked to the Sun at its northern pole.
The tidally locked planets really aren’t all that unusual.We got lucky with Earth.
Bob, thanks for the excellent articles.
Suppose that we consider the simple case of a vacuum thermos. If it is perfect, there will be zero net energy flux. On the other hand, since there will be photons whizzing back and forth between the hot coffee and the reflective surface, it seems to me that there will be an energy density, yes/no? I haven’t read W&M but I get the impression that they’re confusing flux with density.
We are separating radiative fluxes from the mechanical conversion of KE to PE and back again. No confusion.
The observed radiative fluxes are a consequence of the mechanical process.
Bob, your first toy model post ignores convection. So does this one. I don’t understand why you go through the effort with an approach that makes no sense.
Thanks Nelson.
Bob is studiously ignoring the very process that is at the heart of our model which renders his comments unhelpful at best.
Well said Steven and Nelson
The energy movement in the atmosphere is controlled by bulk energy movements due to the pressure and temperature differences.
That is the over-riding control.
Stephen, I am not “studiously ignoring” anything. I am taking your work precisely as you have presented it in your paper that I am analyzing.
Convection is not much talked about in the paper, as far as I can tell, aside from the few remarks that I commented on.
Hi Stephen, thanks for pointing out your experience of a disconnect. Please see my comment addressing this.
I am not presenting a model in this blog piece. I am simply examining the logic (or absence of coherent logic) in a particular paper by W&M.
This particular paper doesn’t talk much about convection, and that’s why my deconstruction doesn’t talk much about convection.
Utter confusion in Bob’s mind.
The basic premise is extremely simple.
Every atmosphere develops a convective overturning circulation and in the process converts KE at the surface on the lit side to PE within the body of the atmosphere.
At the same time the reverse process occurs on the unlit side.
The combined effect is to balance the mass of the atmosphere against gravity in hydrostatic equilibrium.
Rotation simply jumbles up those complementary processes between the lit and unlit sides.
Since that purely mechanical process is slower than radiation the system backs up energy within the atmosphere which slows emission to space and thereby heats the surface. The backed up energy is in potential form which is not thermal energy and therefore cannot be radiated away.
The observed radiative fluxes are thus a consequence and not a cause.
Bob’s error lies in trying to shoehorn radiative exchanges into that scenario as if they are a cause of the higher surface temperature and the convolutions of his logic in support of that misguided effort really are a sight to behold.
Philip has built our model under my meteorological guidance and is therefore better placed to explain in more technical terms why Bob’s conclusions are incorrect.
This is not a day/night issue it seems. Lifted air from the surface is replaced almost immediately by air from above sinking to the surface. You can see this demonstrated conclusively by winds aloft being brought to the surface almost immediately once the convection begins. Potential energy in the atmosphere is almost entirely the result of lateral temperature (density) contrasts. At smaller scales (smaller than the Rossby length probably) whatever PE is generated by solar irradiance, and IR cooling is converted to KE almost immediately.
Think more in terms of the Ferrel, Hadley and Polar cells which are on the macro planet wide scale. The stuff most regard as convection is just the micro scale.
Once the circulation is established any change in speed at the uplift end is indeed pretty much instantaneous with a corresponding change at the descent end.
Stephen:
A transparent atmosphere has no capability to transfer energy to or from external entities. It can only transfer energy to or from the earth’s surface. In steady-state conditions, its transfers to or from the surface must balance completely. (If it’s a “cyclic steady state”, then it must balance over a cycle.
The convection up/down cycles balance, as you acknowledge, so they transfer as much TO the surface on the down half as the do FROM the surface on the up half. Except for the resulting horizontal distribution of thermal energy reducing temperature differences and therefore reducing Holder’s inequality, these do NOT affect the energy balance of the surface.
You go completely off the rails when you say: “Since that purely mechanical process is slower than radiation the system backs up energy within the atmosphere which slows emission to space and thereby heats the surface.” This is … what is the word I’m looking for? … Oh, yes: NONSENSE!
In a transparent atmosphere, it does absolutely NOTHING to slow, reduce, impede emission to space. It is still transparent to radiation regardless of how the convective process is occurring. And WTF does it mean to “back[] up energy within the atmosphere”?
And it gets worse when you consider a real atmosphere with IR-absorbing gases, where most of the radiative emissions to space occur from high up in the atmosphere. In this case, when solar heating of the surface creates atmospheric lapse rates greater than adiabatic, the convection moves warm air up, so it can radiate more freely to space. This has a COOLING, not warming effect.
And it gets even worse when you consider the evaporation at the surface and condensation at altitude involved in a lot of this convection. This significantly amplifies the cooling effect.
You obviously don’t have a handle on the most basic concepts of thermodynamics and heat transfer, resulting in your continued promulgations of absurd theories.
That coming from a person that obviously doesn’t have a handle on the most basic concepts of thermodynamics and heat transfer in the atmosphere..
…., resulting in dumb idiotic responses.
Oooh, a content-free response. I wonder why you didn’t include any actual technical arguments.
Actually, I’m quite sure I know why…
I tend to think that Beta is not a physical parameter, but a fudge factor used to help their energy balance model approximate their calculated global average temperature. In a flow system where energy is being transported from the tropics to the poles, a global average temperature is physically meaningless.
The issue I have always had with atmospheric “energy budget” calculations is how they bundle sunlight/radiation into essentially just two wavelengths—short, and long, with long the peak of one CO2 absorption band, i.e. 15um, while short is visible (0.4-0.7um). But solar radiation as well as the atmosphere are infinitely more complex than this. For example, scattering by air molecules and aerosols occurs in all directions, and the multitude of H2O absorption bands are just ignored. I don’t see how these models can provide meaningful insights.
Solar shortwave also includes near IR (the “hot” irradiance) – so 0.4-1.1 µM bandwidth. Of the 1361 W/m² at TOA… about 1000-1100 reaches surface near noon at equator… depending on atm clarity. You can measure solar shortwave anywhere anytime with this handheld meter – carriable in your shirt pocket.
https://www.solarmeter.com/product/model100/
A large portion, 70 – 80%, of the direct sunlight that hits the earth’s surface penetrates the ocean surface to be absorbed, subsurface, by the water. This solar energy is then stored in the oceans, for time periods ranging from hours to decades, and is eventually recycled to the atmosphere, primarily by evaporation, where it is transported to the upper atmosphere and upon condensation is radiated to space, bypassing most of the green-house gases.
From what I see this mechanism, which is perhaps the most important regarding the earth’s energy budget, is completely missing from the analyses of these papers.
How can such an analysis, that ignores the absorption of solar energy by the ocean’s, its storage in the oceans and its eventual release by evaporation, be taken seriously?
The effect of the oceans and all other confounding factors is baked into our mass based model because convection will change to neutralise all such factors however caused.
That is why it is consistent across multiple solar system bodies with atmospheres.
Convection changes because such confounding factors interfere with the lapse rate slope to produce a negative system response.
One way to look at atmospheric heat flow might be to look at Willis Eschenbach’s “steel greenhouse” model (which I understand to be basically very compatible with standard greenhouse theory).
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
Quote from the above (toward the end of the article, after a step by step buildup of basic ideas):
“Lt, [is] the thermal loss. It is the sensible energy (energy you can feel) and latent energy (evaporation) which is transported from the surface to the shell by convection”
In the accompanying Figure 4 diagram in the article, the ‘latent’ heat flow, actually the evaporative heat flow in particular, shows up as only 76 Watts/square meter, this is assumed to be transmitted up to some level in the colder mid troposphere. Everything else is assumed in this ‘simple’ model to be dominated by infrared processing. That is, of the 342 Watts of average solar power incoming, most of it is presumed to be diverted or processed by cloud reflection, IR absorption and release. Of the 342 total power that must be processed or diverted in some way, only 76 Watts gets sent up from the surface evaporatively? One thing to note here is that Eschenbach’s own advanced ideas of cloud feedback response, also ideas about the importance of storms in moving heat upward etc., would seem to almost totally belie this basic infrared transport model?
Like you, then, I find it hard to get any climate theory answers that seem to me in any way truly definitive or realistic. I’d even be willing to speculate that maybe storms and/or turbulence as such, can move substantial amounts of heat power flow *downward* (though I’ve no clue how much heat might be moved that way). One thing I try to picture sometimes is situations like that on planet Venus, where the temperature at the surface would seem to be so high as to imply a lot of heat flow out, despite it being so dark down there (with only 5% of solar energy making it to the surface of Venus, so I understand). If power has to flow out (due to the high temperature), then how does that heat power get down there in the first place?
‘actually the evaporative heat flow in particular, shows up as only 76 Watts/square meter, this is assumed to be transmitted up to some level in the colder mid troposphere’
Yes, that is right. But of the 342 W/m2 of solar radiation, only 48% (~165 W/m2) is directly absorbed by the earth’s surface. So evaporation is a major source of energy transport from the surface (and when combined with convection represents approximately 60% of the solar radiation that is directly absorbed by the earth’s surface), which is much too large to just be glossed over.
As well, I don’t understand how the tremendous time lags between absorption of solar energy by the oceans, and its reemergence as energy of evaporation or convection, which can amount to decades, can just be ignored,. To me these lags make any static analysis useless.
“If power has to flow out (due to the high temperature), then how does that heat power get down there in the first place?”
David,
If you are talking here about Venus, then maybe our latest analysis here will help explain how energy collected at the top of its atmosphere can be transmitted down to heat the surface of Venus.
A Modelled Atmospheric Pressure Profile of Venus
Thanks for your link about the situation on planet Venus! Having just read your paper’s Abstract, if I may now quote from the conclusions there,
“a process of full troposphere convective overturn occurs and delivers solar heated air to the ground via the action of forced air descent in the twin polar vortices of Venus. This forced descent of the topside heated air means that it undergoes adiabatic heating as it falls in the gravity field of Venus .. By this means the compressed air is heated as it falls, therefore the thermal limit to radiative forcing set by the insolation of Venus is easily surpassed..
[this is] “a process of full troposphere convective overturn .. delivers solar heated air to the ground via the action of forced air descent in the twin polar vortices of Venus. This forced descent of the topside heated air means that it undergoes adiabatic heating as it falls in the gravity field of Venus.. and [surface heating is] not due to a process of thermal radiant energy flux impediment by atmospheric thermal radiant opacity.”
So, what do you know sir, you are way ahead of me there!
The science is not settled, etc.
Thank you David. These insights come from the application of our DAET model. We have also made a similar study of Titan.
The air will not descend unless it is colder that the surroundings, so it’s cooling the surface, not warming it.
What about warm, Chinook winds? They descend down the eastern side of the Rockies. The warmth is due to adiabatic warming as the air descends.
Jim
There are local apparent exceptions. Latent heat is released in the ascending air on the other side of the mountains. The chinook would not be that warm without that added heat.
“There are local apparent exceptions.”
Apparently
“Latent heat is released in the ascending air on the other side of the mountains.”
True.
“The chinook would not be that warm without that added heat.”
What added heat? “Adiabatic” means no heat is transferred or added.
Jim
The added heat I wrote about, release of latent heat. The air on the eastern side is coming from the western side of the mountains. On the western side it’s a moist adiabat. On the eastern side a much dryer adiabat. The lapse rates are different. Passing the range the air is warmer than it would have been with a dry adiabatic ascent.
The lack of accounting for the energy that penetrates the surface skin is a major problem in climate models of the atmosphere. The surface skin, which absorbs IR energy, needs to be separated from the deep subsurface where much of the energy collects.
The IR from the atmosphere never makes it into the subsurface. It is absorbed by the surface skin and much of it is immediately radiated back into the atmosphere. As a result, any computation of back radiation is essentially meaningless. For all intents and purposes it is just reflected back.
This is very similar to the atmosphere itself where energy is often physically transferred to other molecules of the atmosphere which soon transfer it back to another GHG which then emits the radiation. Most atmospheric models simply ignore this step. That’s essentially what is done when you treat the surface skin as reflecting the energy.
That which isn’t reflected generally enhances evaporation which is a cooling effect. Once again, the energy moves into the atmosphere.
There is a constant flow of energy from the subsurface to the surface skin as well. This allows us to look at the skin as a special part of the atmosphere. The subsurface then becomes the physical absorber of solar energy. The advantage of this technique is the entire concept of back radiation disappears.
dh-mtl, you said:
No more than 71% of the sunlight impinges on the ocean surface, because of the impact of clouds. Of that 71%, less than 82%, on average, is absorbed by the oceans, for a final value of much less than 58% absorption. The 82% figure accounts for specular reflection alone; however, there is also diffuse reflectance from suspended sediments and plankton that increases total reflectance, dependent on location and season.
I said ‘80%, of the direct sunlight that hits the earth’s surface penetrates the ocean surface’.
Last I checked, the clouds were above the earth’s surface, not at the earth’s surface. In other words, I was referring to the total radiation that hits the earth’s surface, after passing through the atmosphere.
OK, assuming that there are no clouds, the amount of sunlight that can fall on the oceans still is no more than 71%. Land is part of the Earth’s surface.
However, the Pacific Coast is notorious for thick cloud banks, also called fog, sitting right on the oceans surface. It is the reason that Mark Twain said that “The coldest Winter I ever experienced was a Summer in San Francisco.”
On the basis of the external analysis of the climate as seen from space β = ½. is exactly what happens.
This is not our number it is K&T’s number; it is in Figure 7 of their paper. They did an energy budget, with plusses and minuses. Their numbers are:
67+168 + 324 = 559 = 390 +78 +24+ 67
Here is our version of this budget using divide by 2 as a solar flux input and showing how the mechanical process of convection and thermals heat the air during the daytime, while the process of daily planetary rotation moves the warm surface to the night where it cools preferentially by thermal radiation.
As indeed K&T (1997 p205) does also.
Bob. You seem to be criticising K&T 1997, if you are then more power to you, I say.
Philip, Thanks for responding.
Regrettably, it is impossible to deduce a value for β based on observations from space. Please look at Figure 3 in my post on Atmospheric Energy Recycling. As you can see from that figure, the same radiant flux reaches space totally independent of the value of β. The value of β only affects what what happens within the region of energy recycling. And in particular, it is measurable at the interface between the Earth surface and the atmosphere. Data in K&T 1997 suggest a value of at least β = 0.58.
If you’re talking about some other sort of “analysis of the climate as seen from space,” please let me know what sort of analysis you’re talking about.
I am not taking issue with K&T’s numbers. K&T apply careful logic to determine their various numbers.
What I am taking issue with is the way that you (W&M) chose to combine these numbers in your paper in order to calculate a temperature.
A valid temperature calculation may be done by doing an energy balance at a well-defined interface, such as at the surface of the Earth. One adds up all the power fluxes entering the surface and set that equal to all the power fluxes leaving the surface. One of those fluxes will be for total power radiated, 𝜀σT⁴. One then solves this equation for T.
Such an energy balance equation will contain certain fluxes and not others. It is critical that one correctly chooses which fluxes to add and which fluxes to subtract.
It appears that you (W&M) did none of these things. Based on the procedure specified in your paper, you computed a total “energy budget” number which was based on adding and subtracting a variety of fluxes.
In other words, I could detect no hint of any logically or mathematically correct rationale for how you combined various numbers to arrive at a total “energy budget” number.
One difference is that K&T calculated a temperature for the surface, while you label your result as a temperature for the atmosphere. These are not the same thing, unless you specify near-surface atmosphere–and that wouldn’t seem to be consistent with other ways you’ve used the term.
What is more to the point is that you got the right answer for the wrong reasons.
You ended up with the expected number. But, ending up with a “right answer” by invalid means does not make for a valid analysis.
I don’t know how you ended up with the procedure you did for computing the energy budget in this paper. In the absence of more information, it appears as if perhaps you simply tried combining the available numbers in various ways that appealed to you intuitively until you found a combination that yielded the expected answer?
To all appearances, you used an invalid means to get a “right” answer. This led you to then rely on the logic of that faulty analysis to arrive at additional conclusions which were unjustified. For example:
This conclusion is completely false. Yet, it made sense to you because you had previously used an incorrect means to get to a correct answer; I imagine that boosted your confidence in the quality of your logic.
But, the logic was broken, so the follow-up conclusions were not valid.
* * *
I don’t mean to be hard on you.
But, I am trained as a mathematician and as a physicist. I am acutely aware that once you let one piece of flawed logic into an analysis, you can prove absolutely anything, without it needing to have any connection to the truth.
Sadly, I see logical errors happening all over the place in this paper.
I trust that you’re sincere in your work and are working hard to understand reality. I deeply appreciate that intention.
I want to support you in not fooling yourself through applying faulty logic.
“If you’re talking about some other sort of “analysis of the climate as seen from space,” please let me know what sort of analysis you’re talking about”
Bob,
I am talking about the Vacuum Planet equation, the tap root idea at the basis of all of this, the idea that asserts though the flawed process of serial averaging that in effect the Sun shines onto the Earth at night.
I accept that your intentions are honourable but will you please address the fundamental issue of why my flawed analysis based on a misapplication of the tools used, and using the completely false idea that the sun only ever shines instantaneous on half of the globe, produces a result that matches the Vacuum Planet equation?
My criticism of the budgetary analysis used by K&T is this, they have thermal transport and evepotransipiration as surface cooling losses (negative flux) and they balance these with back radiation (positive flux). In doing this they completely hide the required return to the surface energy delivery of mass flux in a gravity field. In doing this they completely ignore all of the energy return to the surface (positive flux) that powers the hydrological and sedmentary mass motion processes and also indeed ignore the atmospheric cell air circulation processes that powers the trade winds and the katabaltic winds.
Typo correction katabaltic katabatic
I hope to get back to what you’re saying above. First, I’m getting the sense that there is a disconnect in play, which might benefit from being sorted out. See my comment on this.
Bob,
Let me take you back almost 50 years to the time when I was an undergraduate student studying for an Environmental Science degree at the University of Lancaster (as it was then called). The environmental science course I took was designed by Professor Gordon Manley the renowned climatologist, and although he was no longer there in 1972 our course tutors were respected academics delivering his vision.
I well remember sitting in the lecture theatre on Bailrigg campus and being told of the use and limitations of the Vacuum Planet equation derived from astronomy, and how it could be applied to climatology. It was made explicitly clear that the only valid use for this equation was to determine the outgoing thermal radiant flux from a rapidly rotating vacuum world. This equation was described as a “mathematical trick” and while it could be used to determine outgoing flux intensity from the Earth, that was its sole function.
Since graduating in 1974 I have pursued a geoscience career and also obtained a second degree in conservation with my particular interest being the ecology of natural woodlands. It is therefore with extreme concern that I have observed over the years the development of this destructive industry that justifies the wholescale burning for fuel from valuable woodlands because for some unfathomable reason fossil wood consumption is dangerous.
When this “new science“ first appeared it was absolutely clear to-me that the promulgators were not geoscientists, they assumed totally incorrectly that the burning of fossil fuel was the sole source of industrial carbon dioxide production, and that plant biomass was the sole sink mechanism for this trace atmospheric gas. Both of these ideas are wrong, as the industrial consumption of limestone in multiple industries readily testifies, and the marine precipitation of calcium carbonate by inorganic means also clearly shows.
But for me the final straw is the totally incorrect use of the vacuum planet equation where the solar input flux is divided by 4 before it has even entered the climate system. The sophistry used to justify this egregious error is truly appalling. Yes, I know the geometric relationship but I also know that it is not valid science to build a model that does not represent reality. At no time ever in the history of this planet has the sun ever shone instantaneously over the full surface area of the globe.
By the time of my retirement in 2015 I had had enough and so I determined to do something. I set myself the task of building a climate model of a tidally locked planet with a non-greenhouse gas atmosphere. In collaboration with Stephen Wilde and following his expert meteorological advice, I built my first model of a tidally locked planet using the recognised ideas of climate science. To my surprise I succeeded in creating a model the output of which fully matched the radiant flux results of the Vacuum Planet equation. The two key differences of course are that the solar flux intensity in our DAET model is divided by 2, and that the captured solar energy is transported to the unlit night side by meteorological processes of atmospheric mass motion and not by diurnal surface rotation.
For a while I was stuck at this point until Stephen explained to me that in using a 50 : 50 flux ratio I was modelling a diabatic process. This insight is truly profound. It fully proves that the Vacuum Planet equation is externally measuring a diabatic planetary climate process, and furthermore I now had a way forward. Using my inverse modelling skills learnt in industry I redesigned the DAET model to generate the flux partition ratio that matches the observed features of the climate. This is where things literally took off. With the adiabatic DAET model we had generated a result that predicts both the temperature and also the height of the tropopause using the appropriate observed environmental lapse rate.
Now to your statement “K&T apply careful logic to determine their various numbers”. From my perspective as a geoscientist this statement needs to be challenged. First and most importantly all fluxes in the K&T diagram are assumed to be radiative fluxes. For the transport of Latent Heat this is physically impossible. Also, all vertical mass motion in a gravity field both requires energy for the ascent process and then delivers energy in the descent process.
Other aspects of the analysis presented by K&T also require to be challenged. It appears to me that in their analysis of the climate the presence of the separate environment of the unlit night hemisphere, with is distinct meteorological processes of surface thermal radiant cooling and meteorological air inversion, is missing.
The issue of β that you highlight is important because it is β that encapsulates the role of the adiabatic process in climate and is implicitly present in our adiabatic DAET model. This is where I believe that research should now be focused..
Philip, Thank you for offering this rich personal history of your journey through this territory.
It sounds like you’ve seen what seemed like significant errors of fact and procedure that have greatly concerned you, and it’s important to you that those errors be addressed? You really want people and society to have accurate models to work with to help guide their choices? So, you’re doing your part to help people understand how reality works, with regard to climate?
If so, it sounds like a reasonable thing to be passionate about.
* * *
(As an aside from the main flow, I noticed I couldn’t quite parse what you meant when you wrote about “this destructive industry that justifies the wholescale burning for fuel from valuable woodlands because for some unfathomable reason fossil wood consumption is dangerous.” I notice that I’m curious and I’d like to understand what you meant by this.)
* * *
Could I share a concern that I have?
I have a sense that sometimes what happens in debates about climate science is that (a) scientists use very sophisticated models in their actual work, but (b) use much simpler (over-simplified) descriptions to try to teach the public about issues, and then (c) some people get all focused on worrying about flaws in oversimplified models that were never meant to be more than communication devices for conveying ideas to the general public.
I think about that as I read some of what you’ve shared.
I wonder how sure you are that those omissions weren’t just a part of simplifying things for public communications purposes? The multiplicity of sources and sinks for carbon dioxide is something I’ve long heard about in communications about climate science, and I haven’t been following these issues particularly closely. So, I have a hard time imaging that these haven’t been included in climate models for a long time.
With regard to “dividing solar flux by 4,” my impression is that that is done in one of two contexts: (a) It’s done in the context of simplified models to explain things to the general public. (b) It’s also done in some “one-dimensional” modeling, but I think that everyone knows that one-dimensional models need to be checked against models that represent the full 4-dimensional world (3-spatial dimensions plus time).
I’m pretty sure that one-dimensional models get taken seriously only to the extent that some of them aren’t too far off what the full 4-D models predict. None of the big General Circulation Model (GCM) calculations that climate scientists use to make projections about climate involve using “divide solar flux by 4.”
* * *
Thanks for sharing how your model evolved. Knowing that is likely to be helpful, as I work to digest it more deeply.
* * *
I’m quite certain that’s not true. What leads you to believe that this is the case? For example, what makes you think they are assuming the latent heat flux to be a radiative flux?
How would you have expected this to show up in K&T’s diagram? My understanding is that the gravitational processes you’re talking about establish the lapse rate, but that, averaged over the Earth’s surface, the gravitational ups and downs net out to zero. Advective heat flow transports heat between different parts of the surface, ubt again, the global average is zero. Convection cools the surface, and that does not average out to zero globally. K&T are offering global averages. So, at the level of global averages, I’m not sure what you think is missing?
Again, I believe K&T are presenting global averages, and at that level, by definition, they are averaging over day and night.
The only problem arises if one thinks that K&T’s results are what serious climate scientists use to do their detailed climate modeling.
I’m quite certain they don’t. They certainly don’t use that sort of averaged data for the big GCM climate models.
As with the “divide solar flux by 4” thing, the sort of information K&T offer is used for (a) oversimplified explanations for the public, and (b) 1-D modeling that is double-checked against 4-D modeling, and only taken seriously to the extent that the 1-D and 4-D models track pretty well together.
I want to examine the way that β shows up in your models. I agree that this is an important issue.
“The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere, warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents. The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground, even under the most favourable conditions.”
R. W. Wood
This is how the atmosphere insulates the surface, in a nutshell.
It really is that simple. Atmospheres act as a thermal capacitor of planets – inherently storing latent heat of vaporization due to low emissivity and continual warming through conduction/convection from the surface and subsequent conduction/convection of the gas and cooling while returning that energy to the surface via the same processes.
The net flux of energy from radiative emission of the surface to the atmosphere is zero according to Einstein’s Quantum Theory of Radiation.
http://web.ihep.su/dbserv/compas/src/einstein17/eng.pdf
Amen
It isn’t the low radiating power of the gas that matters. It is the fact that the higher one goes the more energy is PE which cannot be radiated.
Otherwise you are broadly correct.
Too bad that you forgot about the oceans, which receive about 75% of the direct solar radiation.
The direct solar radiation that penetrates the oceans is stored in the oceans, often for years and decades. It is then returned to the atmosphere by evporative cooling, which for the most part bypasses the lower atmosphere, condensing in the upper atmosphere.
So, it is in the oceans, not the atmosphere, where the heat is stored.
Why don’t you guys just save a lot of your valuable time and write the one sentence essay – “CO2 is a radiative gas”? You will even have the most ardent dragonslayers agreeing with you, I think (although not totally sure).
Then you could move on to taxing your brains with the actual question, which is some version of:
At the molecular level, and up to the global level, and using scientific principles, how has carbon dioxide had any effect on any global climate parameter, at current levels or at any level above 280ppm?
Your mental masturbation allows the climate liars to think we don’t know that the answer to the above question is, in round numbers, a round number.
Stephen Wilde ==> If you are reading here, what physical law states that all incoming energy translates to physical heat measurable by a thermometer?
Any incoming energy from the sun that excites mass in its path will translate to such heat will it not?
I’m unsure what you are trying to get at with your question.
Any energy then transferred upwards by convection will then become PE which is not measurable by a thermometer until it returns again in descent.
Not if it is tied up in Biomass growth.
It takes the same amount of energy to raise the temperature of liquid water 1C, regardless of the temperature of water. For 1g of water, the energy required is 1 calorie.
However the GHG theory would have us believe that the energy required to warm water varies as the 4th power of the energy flux.
Clearly something is wrong, because a linear relationship is not equal to a 4th power relationship, over the range of absolute temperatures we see before averaging and anomalies.
Averaging and anomalies simply gives the illusion that we can equate a 4th power relationship to a linear relationship, by artificiality restricting the temperature range.
Add CO2 to the atmosphere. It will reflect energy from the sun back to space. It will also reflect energy from the earth back to the surface.
CO2 will cool the earth if the energy reflected to space exceeds the energy reflected back to the surtace.
CO2 will warm the earth if the energy reflected to the surface exceeds the energy reflected to space.
No other values are required to tell us the effects (sign) of adding CO2. Water feedback only matters if you want to calculate the amount of warming or cooling.
So what are these values for adding CO2? How much extra energy is reflected to space? How much extra is reflected to the surface?
CO2 does not “reflect” anything.
I don’t think CO2 reflects much into space, because there is not a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere.
This whole cargo cult started with carbonic acid (H2CO3). I don’t think CO2 joins H20 gas
but combines with cold water droplets. And don’t seem like much discussion regarding this
ancient wisdom. Maybe because more water vapor give more water droplets, and more droplets grab more CO2 molecules and they fall from the sky.
Another thing is a CO2 molecule somewhere in a part of sky doesn’t have much sunlight passing thru that area of sky {in terms a average spot in the sky}.
Or Earth is unevenly heated by the sunlight. Or tropical surface and TOA “surface” gets
more sunlight than the rest of world’s “surfaces”. And all surfaces don’t much sunlight most of
the time.
So a spot where CO2 molecule get the most amount sunlight is when the sun is near zenith.
And 60% of world never get sunlight at zenith at anytime. And at tropics exactly at zenith is once a year. So in terms extremes the CO2 molecule reflects the most amount sunlight when at zenith and slightly less when nearer zenith. And to get “more” reflection the CO2 would need to be higher in elevation {where all air is less air}.
But in terms averages, seems safe to say less than 50 watts. But I tend to say less than 10 watts for CO2 molecules in the atmosphere and more 1/2 or 10 watts or less is in tropics.
Or clear day sea level sun at zenith, 1120 watts of direct sunlight reaches ocean surface.
And got 1360 – 1120 = 240 watts not getting to surface. Can large portion of it be due to .04 percent of atmosphere? It seems dust would reflect or absorb more.
Whenever global temperature is presented as topic, there is an attempt to simplify it
due the lack ability of the public to grasp the esoteric aspects.
And one could say such efforts fail.
But the simple story about global temperature has to due with how warm the ocean is.
Our global climate is called an icehouse climate. Earth has been in global icehouse climate
for about 34 million years, and during these tens of million of years, the last few million have
been to coldest part of this global icehouse climate.
A global icehouse climate has a cold ocean. And warmer Earth climates have had a warmer ocean.
In addition to a cold ocean, an icehouse climate has polar ice caps- at either pole and as we have, at both poles. And within the ice climate, there are periods warming, called interglacial periods and glacial periods. During glacial periods, ice sheets develop outside the polar regions and last for many thousands of years. We are currently in an interglacial period.
And the warmest times in interglacial period have the warmest oceans.
Our present ocean’s temperature is about 3.5 C, and other times in our icehouse climate interglacial periods can have ocean warming up to about 5 C. And in our last interglacial period, it’s thought that ocean warmed to about 4 C {or warmer}.
A warmer ocean can cause all the polar sea ice to melt in the polar regions during the summer, and an even warmer ocean can cause there to no polar sea ice, even during the
winter. And global warming is largely about warming the polar regions, and causing a more uniform global air temperatures- which currently about 15 C.
Yes.
And again to link to Phillip Mulholland on salinity.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/06/we-must-get-rid-of-the-carboniferous-warm-period/
Thank you.
Any “model” that doesn’t take into account the storage capacity of the oceans, which comprises some 70% of the surface gives them basically zero diurnal temperature range….
… and also the land masses, which often has very large diurnal ranges…
…. is basically meaningless because it does not come close to representing reality.
Any “model” that doesn’t take into account BULK AIR MOVEMENT based on temperature/pressure gradients (be they vertical or horizontal or whichever way) is also meaningless.
Models that pretend the only method of energy transfer within the atmosphere is radiation..
…are worse than meaningless.
I was going to give a long response. You short one did so nicely.
People people people..
You Are Discussing Dancing Angels and Phlogiston..
You Have Been Had
Somebody is playing a very sad and sick joke upon you and you have fallen for it
You have been ‘rubbed up’ into thinking you are ‘Really Clever’ and ‘The Smartest Savviest Person on The Block’
…. by being told all about Stefan Bolztmann, T to the power 4 and then blinded in a blizzard of graphics and pretty, scary, clever computer generated pictures and a tsunami of folks telling you you are stupid if you don’t understand.
It’s The Oldest Trick in the Book Of The Snake Oil Salesman
Take a trick from almost any autistic person, be flat out honest, admit it and then, see how relaxed and happy you become.
Instead of being grumpy, angrified & belligerent and riddled with brain-ache
Howzabout Star Trek Mr Spock, modelled on an autistic as he was
What would he say about this?
How did telling the truth, admitting your wrongness, affect his prospects?
Bollox it did.
It earned him epic respect.
Like that Koonin guy we’re now reading about.
Recall, Human Animal cannot lie.
We all here respect Koonin because we want to be like him, yet haven’t got the guts. So we disappear into clouds of Stefan Boltzmann and magical thinking
sigh
Go back to very very first principles..
Quote:”Thus, the anomaly of the lower troposphere temperature caused by the increase of CO2, on June 15, 2007 at 18:05 hrs. (UT) was 0.02 K, which is equal to 0.02 °C. The maximum efficiency of the whole atmosphere was 1-[[Tatm/Tbb)^2] = 1 – [311.75 K/300.15 K)^2] = 0.08. A really low efficiency for a heat engine.
Thus, carbon dioxide is not able to cause the global warming experienced again in the last two centuries. In addition, the warmest year of the last century up to present was 1934, not 1998. The real data are “being fitted” and being corrected by NOAA because the team of experts there had flawed the records of the temperature anomalies”
Another quote:“”The change of temperature by doubling the concentration of the atmospheric CO2 is not as high even when we introduced an excessive value for the total emitancy of CO2.
The real emittancy for CO2 if the carbon dioxide was increased to 560 ppmv is at a partial pressure of 0.0005 atm*m, that is 0.443 W/m^2. Introducing the total emittancy in the formula, we obtain a change of temperature of:
ΔT = (0.443 W/m^2) ln[(560 ppmv/280 ppmv)] / 4 (5.6697x 10^-8 W/m^2*K^4) (300.15 K)^3 = 0.307 W/m^2 / 6.13 W/m^2*K = 0.05 K.””
Emissivity and absorbance table
(The 2nd line, in blue, represents contemporary CO2 levels)
Carbon Dioxide is THE most piss poor absorber and radiator there just about could be.
Carbon Dioxide is a Non Event
From here
Re-reported by Jennifer
LOL … I was just about to write a brief comment about the number of angels doing their dance on pins and read your piece. EXACTLY!
There are far too many serious scientists shifting numbers and concepts around, pretending they’re making some headway. It’s ALL just fantasy … both sides. None of it can be taken seriously. CO2 simply is NOT the planet’s control knob. There is no crisis (except a looming ice age). None of their complex equations and energy budgets are meaningful. The only facts I know are; we’re in an aging interglacial that has been relentlessly cooling for over eight millennia, geologically speaking. We were stuck with a shrinking CO2 supply and that is now improving. Natural variation has warmed us a tiny bit.
I have posted Hoyt Hottel’s results of emissivity of CO2 experiment a number of times. Glad to see others know of him.
Here it is again.
In 1954, Hoyt C. Hottel conducted an experiment to determine the total emissivity/absorptivity of carbon dioxide and water vapor11. From his experiments, he found that the carbon dioxide has a total emissivity of almost zero below a temperature of 33 °C (306 K) in combination with a partial pressure of the carbon dioxide of 0.6096 atm cm. 17 year later, B. Leckner repeated Hottel’s experiment and corrected the graphs12 plotted by Hottel. However, the results of Hottel were verified and Leckner found the same extremely insignificant emissivity of the carbon dioxide below 33 °C (306 K) of temperature and 0.6096 atm cm of partial pressure. Hottel’s and Leckner’s graphs show a total emissivity of the carbon dioxide of zero under those conditions.
Here is the chart.
Someday someone is going to have to explain to me how “back radiation” from CO2 in the atmosphere warms the land portion of the earth. I can’t find anything that is common on the land other than water that absorbs radiation at the frequency of CO2. Silicates and clay, two of the most common materials, don’t absorb LWIR from CO2 very well if at all. Thus it would seem that the “back radiation” from CO2 in the atmosphere just gets reflected back from the land’s surface and causes little if any rise in temperature at the land’s surface.
Based on this it then becomes the water on the earth that is impacted most by “back radiation”. And a simple radiative model just can’t capture all the intricacies of heat transport associated with the ocean.
ROFL!!!
I get two downchecks with NO ANSWER TO MY QUESTION!
Why is that *so* typical of the answer I get to this question! What on the land surface does CO2 “back radiation” actually warm? Does *no* one know?
I’m pretty sure that’s because there’s no measurable answer, because there’s no measurable “back-radiation”. Radiation always flows from warmer objects (molecules) to colder ones, which generally means upwards. (there are exceptions when warmer molecules are higher in the atmosphere than colder ones, or the air is temporarily warmer than the surface, but this is relatively rare)
This belief indicates a severe lack of understanding of radiative physics.
That’s NOT how the Second Law of Thermodynamics gets enforced.
Radiation ALWAYS flows in both directions. It’s just that there is always MORE radiation flowing from hot to cold than from cold to hot, and that’s what makes the Second Law work.
If one insists that radiation doesn’t flow from cold to hot, and leaves that out of the equations, everything goes wrong, and models of thermal physics stop working.
* * *
Google “downwelling radiation measurement” or the like. It’s constantly being measured at spots all over the world.
I saw a picture of some guy that looked like my neighbor, pointing an instrument at the sky. It’s ridiculously easy to measure and takes some odd logic to deny.
I neglected to directly answer your question of what can absorb those wave-numbers.
Just as emission is distributed across the wide range of atomic and molecular energy levels, with the peak emission determined more by temperature than composition, so too is absorption of the myriad wavelengths made possible, including the unremarkable 15 micron photon of a vibrating CO2 molecule.
This comment should make more sense when read after my comment below!
I find the down-votes irksome, too; they provide nothing of interest.
I’m also not happy with the ‘back radiation’ story; everything back radiates to some extent.
It’s my understanding that yes, the bonds between silicon and oxygen or between aluminum and oxygen or potassium etc. have characteristic resonances that correspond to fairly specific wave numbers of em radiation.
However, when these molecules are densely interacting with one another, new and transient energy levels arise as the charges jostle among themselves.
This is the basis for broadening of spectral lines and, with sufficient density, emission of waves of so many different energies that we can call the radiator a sort of black body.
I would be very pleased to have somebody more knowledgeable set me straight on this!
This may be true. But I can’t find *any* common substance in either the soil or man-made substances that have an absorption frequency anywhere near that of CO2. Spreading of the spectral lines isn’t *that* wide. Admittedly, most soil has *some* amount of CO2 in it but it is only that amount that is at the top of the soil what would be exposed and that small amount at the top of the soil soon migrates into the atmosphere so even it isn’t going to be able to warm the soil very much. It would just appear that most “back radiation” is actually reflected away from the land surface causing little to no warming of the actual earth.
It just appears to me that conflating a warming atmosphere with the earth warming as well from back radiation, which is what much of the models seem to do, just isn’t physically possible.
Couple that with the fact that the assumption is that the atmosphere is partially opaque to LWIR going *up* but not so going *down*, it just defies logic. Why isn’t the “back radiation” also partially absorbed by the water vapor and CO2 in the atmosphere? If the atmosphere absorbs 50% of the LWIR from the earth headed up toward space then 50% of the “back radiation” should be absorbed on the way back down, leaving only 25% of the original energy being radiated to be returned back to the earth.
If the earth radiates away x amount of energy it then cools by y degrees. If it only gets back 25% of that energy back, even if it absorbs it all, it simply can’t warm back up to where it originally started.
The only heat source in the sun/earth/space system is the sun. There is nothing else to warm the earth to a higher temperature than what the sun causes with its short wave and long wave radiation.
Yes, the broadening of lines is that great.
I don’t think you would deny the notion of a black body, which is defined as a surface that absorbs ALL wavelengths incident upon it.
This is not entirely dependent on its composition of silicon and so on, it depends on the influence that electrons have on one another, regardless of whether they’re in the same molecule. In dense matter there is a lot of pushing and shoving between particles. I believe it’s actually quite a challenge in IR spectroscopy to isolate spectral lines of minerals.
In a ‘cool’ gas, individual molecules are mostly far apart and photons are absorbed only when the electric part of the em wave resonates with the vibration of the bonding electrons in one molecule. Pressure broadening results from increased collisions of gas molecules and other interactions, which very briefly see a vibration interfered with and a photon of another wavelength emitted (or absorbed, or transmitted), but the change is not enormous because the number of interactions is not enormous.
Water gas and water liquid are the same animal but their radiative properties are not identical.
The earth is *NOT* a black body. No where near it. Again, pressure does not smear the absorption lines of quartz, silica, or what-have-you from short-wave clear down to long-wave frequencies such as that from CO2.
It’s not just the electric part of the em wave that is operative. Any molecule with a magnetic pole structure will respond to the H part of the em wave.
There is no such thing as a “cool gas” based on being a partial vacuum.
The bottom line is that you are simply not answering any of my questions. 1. What is it in the ground that absorbs “back radiation” from atmospheric CO2 (be specific)? 2. If the atmosphere intercepts a portion of up-welling radiation from the ground then why doesn’t it intercept the same portion of down-welling?
No more excuses about the absorption lines of the ground being smeared all over the spectrum. Be specific about what material is doing the absorption.
Of course, the earth is not a black body. Nothing is.
Granite has an emissivity coefficient of 0.96 of a black body.
Granite is mostly silicate, alumina, potassium…
Emission is from oxygen, silicon, aluminum, potassium, hydrogen and every other element present. A fraction of that emission will be photons of 15 microns. Some will be at 16, 20, and 0.2 microns.
The sun is mostly hydrogen and helium. It emits at gazillions of wavelengths that are not characteristic of those elements. How?
Question 2; It does. CO2 absorbs photons of 15 microns, whether they come from a proximate atmospheric molecule, the sand of the Sahara or the sun. It doesn’t dine indiscriminately, however; if a CO2 molecule is already excited it won’t absorb a subsequent photon of that energy.
Incidentally, the term ‘back radiation’ is not meaningful to me. Things radiate, they don’t back-radiate.
Which of those molecules, silicate, alumina, potassium, etc absorb and emit radiation at 15 microns? Be specific.
Is the atmosphere transparent to 15 micron radiation or is it opaque at 15 microns?
When the earth radiates 15 micron EM waves toward the atmosphere, the CO2 in the atmosphere is supposed to absorb that energy and radiate some of it back toward the earth – i.e. back radiation.
Now, what on earth emits 15 micron radiation toward the atmosphere? It isn’t silicates. It isn’t feldspar. It isn’t granite. What is it? Be specific.
Well, I see that you’re not happy with any of the responses to your questions.
Maybe you’d like to answer a couple of questions;
First one, already posed, how does the sun emit UV and blue and IR of many, many wavelengths when it’s just made of a couple of elements, which have associated spectral lines?
You seem to accept that CO2 gas absorbs and emits photons of around 15 microns wavelength.
How does it do that?
How about dry ice? Does it only emit and absorb at the same wavelengths as CO2 gas?
What is the closest thing to a black body that you can think of?
How close is it to that?
How does it do it?
I think if you thought about my multi-layer toy model of the atmosphere, the answer to this question might become clear.
It’s not about some portion of the radiation in either direction getting absorbed.
It’s that the ground primarily sees radiation from a lower, warmer part of the atmosphere, while space sees radiation from a higher, colder part of the atmosphere.
Thats why the ground receives more atmospheric radiation than does space.
The average emittance of the Earth has apparently been measured to be 0.94. Wavelengths where matter emits and absorbs are the same, so emittance of 0.94 means that the Earth’s surface will absorb 94% of the radiation in a Planck spectrum associated with some typical temperature.
That doesn’t leave much possibility for huge “holes” in what the Earth’s surface is capable of absorbing.
Most of the Earth’s surface is ocean. So, the key question would seem to be to what extent sea water can absorb radiation around 15 microns in wavelength.
I looked around for emissivity charts. Can’t find anything as nice as I’d like, but it looks like seawater has emissivity pretty close to 1 across a broad range of wavelengths.
And this crummy chart shows broad absorption for soil, etc.
You failed to answer my question. What is it on the earth’s surface what absorbs and radiates at 15 microns? BE SPECIFIC.
We aren’t talking about water. We started off talking about land. Water *will* absorb and emit at 15 microns. What on the surface of the land does the same? BE SPECIFIC.
Whatever Bob says the fact is that the surface has to reach a temperature that provides sufficient energy to both match radiation out to space with radiation in from space AND provide sufficient energy to maintain continuing planet wide bulk motion within the atmosphere.
Our model explains the relevant mechanical process in a way that is consistent with observations on multiple bodies with atmospheres without needing to involve radiative gases at all.
The model works even for a fully transparent atmosphere with no radiative gases at all and would also work for one with 100% radiative gases.
Radiative gases do have a thermal effect but that is neutralised by trivial adjustments in global convective overturning via the link between thermal energy and the lapse rate slope.
I’d like to acknowledge that I was likely missing some relevant context when I wrote this blog post.
Stephen Wilde had written to me, in a comment last week, “Now, do me a favour and have a go at deconstructing the alternative proposal set out in previous contributions to this site by myself and Philip Mulholland.”
I eventually responded “I see your Lungs of Gaia blog post, and the referenced articles An Analysis of the Earth’s Energy Budget and Return to Earth: A New Mathematical Model of the Earth’s Climate. Are these the proposals you’d like me to take a look at?”
I didn’t hear back. So, I focused my attention on these particular papers, starting with the simpler “An Analysis of the Earth’s Energy Budget.” I imagined that this paper was sufficiently self-contained that it could be taken on the basis of what was in the text of the paper. In retrospect, that was a mistaken assumption.
Reading the paper as if it were a stand-alone work led to my possibly missing some important subtext, since I wasn’t aware of conceptual context provided in prior papers. The text for which I lacked context was the following (p. 57):
Reading this passage, it seemed clear that the “feed-back loop” being talked about related to the idea that “half of all captured flux is returned to the surface as back radiation and recycled.” After all, that’s what the text said!
(I was deeply puzzled by the assertion that “the atmosphere retains and stores an energy flux”, but decided to proceed on the basis of the portion that seemed to make sense.)
This is the perspective from which I interpreted the remainder of the paper, and from which I offered my critique.
So, I was puzzled when Stephen responded to my Atmospheric Energy Recycling post by writing:
And in response to the current blog post, Nelson complained that I was ignoring convection and Stephen wrote:
All of this makes it quite clear that I’ve been missing something.
I think there has indeed been a piece I’ve been missing. Yet, it seems to have been only implicit, and not actually explained in “An Analysis of the Earth’s Energy Budget” (at least not in any way that could be understood on its own).
I’m getting that that “missing piece” has to do with beliefs about how convection functions, and how the convective interaction between the atmosphere and the surface can be modeled using a recursive “energy partitioning” process. This became a bit clearer when I looked at M&W’s paper Modelling the Climate of Noonworld: A New Look at Venus. (Aside: I enjoy the name “Noonworld”!)
The text of the paper I’ve been critiquing said “half of all captured flux is returned to the surface as back radiation and recycled,” and it appeared that this idea was the justification for calculating an “Infinite Recycled Limit” flux for each flux absorbed by the atmosphere.
Yet, I’m getting the impression now that, despite this apparent justification in the text, W&M perhaps believe that these “energy recycling” fluxes mean something else, something related to convection?
And, that belief seems central to how W&M are thinking about things.
The leap from what the text said to the idea that these fluxes relate to energy stored in convection, and a non-radiative recursive “energy partitioning” process is not a leap that I currently see how to make sense of.
But, I’d like to understand.
I’ll think it over, and do some further reading. (Any suggestions regarding which of W&M’s works might most clearly unpack this idea?)
If Stephen or Philip would like to help me make sense of this, that would be welcome.
Thanks, Bob.
I was taking the view that you were making an honest effort but simply missing the point.
You got hung up on the divide by 4 or divide by 2 issue so let me explain why that is important.
Dividing the energy arriving on half the globe by 2 is the same as dividing the energy arriving on the whole globe by 4 in terms of radiation but dividing by 4 over the whole globe completely omits the real world consequence of the thermal imbalance between the lit and unlit sides.
Our divide by 2 for the lit side allows us to properly account for that huge imbalance which then manifests in the atmospheric temperature and density differences within the atmosphere between the two sides.
It is that huge imbalance which then drives the convective overturning that we see in the Ferrel, Hadley and Polar cells.
Once one properly takes that overturning into account we can see that the PE created by uplift on the lit side can add KE to the surface on the unlit side which reduces radiative cooling of the unlit side and thus raises the temperature of the entire globe.
Since the globe is spinning, the basic pattern of uplift on the lit side and descent on the unlit side is broken up into those three main convective cells but most people have difficulty envisaging that.
Once we adopted the divide by 2 rule for the lit side alone we found that our model acquired extraordinary descriptive and predictive power which we continue to explore in our various papers.
It is all about the meteorology and not a matter of radiative physics at all.
The conclusion is that the usual K& T version using divide by 4 across the entire planet is a flat Earth scenario whereas our divide by 2, for the lit side only, properly deals with the spherical reality.
Since climate zones are a product of spherical geometry plus rotation it follows that modern climate science has no adequate tools for dealing with non radiative energy transfer processes in the real word.
We have rectified that incompetence.
I’m not tracking what would lead you to believe that I “got hung up” on that?
I have no problem with your choice about how to handle that.
I do have an impression that you might overestimate the degree to which “divide by 4” is present in or affects the more serious climate modeling.
My impression is that it’s prevalent in simplified communications for the public, high-level overview discussions, and in a few 1-dimensional atmospheric models that everyone understands are quite limited.
All the serious climate models use geometrically accurate flux values, all over the globe (which is far more rigorous than “divide by 2”).
I believe K&T’s work existed at the “high-level overview” level, and isn’t indicative of how serious climate modeling is done.
Bob,
Thank you for a very thoughtful and honest comment and I hope what I now write will also capture the tone and integrity needed for this complex subject.
I will not be able to deliver here the detail of my thoughts as I have engaged with the subject of climate over the full course of my geoscience career, but critical to both my and Stephen’s thinking is the clear failure in our view of the radiative flux model of climate to engage fully with the process of fluid mass motion over the surface of a globe. In essence our question is Where is the meteorology? Never mind the additional issues of Where is the hydrology, the oceanography and the glaciology?
We are grateful to our host in allowing us to present our ideas here on WUWT and we were generously allowed five posts on this topic before the editorial decision was made to close the discussion, a decision that is his right to make. The five posts follow a developmental sequence of ideas and are best read in the order of presentation
1. Calibrating the CERES Image of the Earth’s Radiant Emission to Space (19 May 2019)
2. An Analysis of the Earth’s Energy Budget (23 May 2019)
3. Modelling the Climate of Noonworld: A New Look at Venus (2 June 2019)
4. Return to Earth: A New Predictive Model of the Earth’s Climate (27 June 2019)
5. Using an Iterative Adiabatic Model to study the Climate of Titan (18 July 2019)
In developing the Dynamic-Atmosphere Energy Transport (DAET) climate model, the framework concept is that of a domestic gas fired water circulation central heating system. The key elements of which are
1. A concentrated source of high frequency energy (the gas flame in the boiler).
2. An energy exchange plate (the boiler itself).
3. A mobile heated fluid (the water).
4. A mass motion delivery system (the pipes and pump).
5. A low frequency thermal exhaust system (the radiators in the rooms of the house).
During my time at Lancaster there was a society called the Demeter society, named after the Ancient Greek goddess of agriculture and harvest, so the key issue we are trying to address with our DAET model is how to model the domestic central heating system of Demeter 🙂
Quite clearly this is work in progress and since 2019 we have continued to develop our ideas, which you can find on my Research Gate site. One mistake I made with the Return to Earth model in 2019 was to apply a different flux partition ratio to each of the three main component cells of the Earth’s atmosphere. I did not then have the confidence in the model that I have now. I have now caught up with Stephen and have a better appreciation of the role and distinction between the fundamental base lapse rate set by planetary gravity and specific heat, and the modifying effect of latent heat in producing the situational variable of the environmental lapse rate of meteorology.
We are currently studying the application of our DAET model to the climate of Mars. The challenges here are interesting and we hope that our new study will demonstrate that, even for this low atmospheric pressure world, the fact that it possesses a troposphere with an environmental lapse rate that is significantly lower than the gravitational lapse rate, demonstrates that atmospheric mass motion and energy delivery processes are the dominant feature of the climate on this alien world.
Apropos of the name Noonworld, its origin is serendipity. My original working name was moonworld, to match the familiar tidal-locked reality of our own moon. However, our moon faces the earth and not the sun. One day I mistyped the adjacent keyboard letter N instead of M. I looked up this new word Noonworld on line and it appeared to be not only an unused word, but Noonworld also captured the essence of the idea we were working on.
I enjoyed reading this history and recent context. Thanks for sharing it.
Dear Bob
On rereading your last post I see that you are quoting from a part of our work that is discussing the flawed radiative theory as if it were an exposition of our proposition.
As a result, your head post is all about radiative matters.
You have not deconstructed our novel hypothesis at all or even considered it so the title to your piece is wholly misleading and many readers will now be very confused about the nature and significance of our work.
Until this moment, I had no clue that the text I quoted was not part of your exposition. The text was in a section titled “Methodology”, so I expected that is was describing your methodology.
How might you have expected a reader to know that? If that wasn’t the exposition, where was the exposition?
I’m honestly feeling deeply puzzled.
I’m also feeling sad, if there was as big a misunderstanding as you suggest.
I’m guessing that by my “head post” you mean Atmospheric Energy Recycling?
If so, yes, it focused primarily on radiative matters because your paper referenced “Infinite Recycled Limit” and the text I quoted seemed to indicate you were referring to back-radiation… and the radiative realm is the only realm in which I’m aware of such recycling being a valid concept.
Having read more of your work, I do now see that you believe energy “Recycling” to be a concept that applies to convection, and not just radiation.
There were, regrettably, no clues to that belief that I could find in the text of the paper that I reviewed.
It was likely not the best choice of papers of yours for me to have focused on.
As I said, I imagined the paper I was reviewing to be more self-contained than perhaps it actually was.
You’re right that I didn’t consider your novel hypothesis.
It wasn’t a matter of unwillingness to consider it.
I simply didn’t perceive it, in the text of the paper that I chose to focus on. I imagine you might have expected readers of that paper to already be familiar with your hypothesis, based on prior work? And so not was done much to introduce the ideas that were implicitly present for you?
It makes sense to me why you might feel frustrated, irritated and/or disappointed about this having happened. And worried about what impression it might leave with others.
It may not help, but now that I know more about your novel hypothesis, I plan to address aspects of it soon.
I regret not reading more widely in your body of work before reviewing this paper. Likely that was a misjudgment of mine that didn’t serve either of us well.
I’m sorry.
Duly accepted.
At least you have given us the oxygen of some publicity.
In the section that you quoted from it did state that the assumptions we were listing were implicit in the standard radiative model and it was necessary to go into that model in some detail in order to reveal the flaws and demonstrate how our alternative model dealt with those flaws.
I would be happy for you to address the convective aspects of our alternative model in due course.
Do bear in mind though that a grounding in meteorology would be helpful.
The thing is that meteorology describes how basic physics actually plays out in the real world and the outcomes are often counterintuitive requiring an understanding of multiple scientific principles as they interact.
Thus meteorology is a very specialised discipline with very few proponents. Basic weather presenters do not really count.
The radiative physicists who took over climate science in the 1980s really have no clue about the non radiative processes described in meteorology.
This type of analysis is like the blind leading the blind.
First and foremost, they never mention entropy. Without this the energy budget is a fairy story. Every time heat and work are interconverted, some energy is irretrievably dispersed (dissipated), adding to the Heat Death of the Universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(energy_dispersal)
Second, so-called back radiation from the atmosphere to Earth’s surface has no heating power. It’s not about the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, but the basic Planck Radiation Law. Once 5500C solar radiation heats Earth’s surface to some temperature T, it begins cooling via the Planck radiation curve. Returning a small segment of this radiation to the surface can’t make it into a new curve with a higher T – only more 5500C solar energy can do that. Downward recycled surface radiation can’t even slow down the cooling below the Planck radiation temperature of the radiation. CO2’s 15 micron radiation has a Planck radiation temperature of -80C, colder than the surface ever gets, so it just bounces around until entropy disperses it without heating anything.
Articles like this use what I like to call dodo climate science, based on the beehive of lies of the U.N. IPCC octopus whose sole raison d’etre is to find a pony in the manure and declare CO2 emissions evil. I don’t have much of a marketing machine, but my new Climate Science 101 course, based on decades of study is refounding climate science on true physical principles, and there’s no room in it for CO2 heating. Quit listening to dodo climate scientists and join my new “woke” real climate scientists now before you get hoaxed some more.
http://www.historyscoper.com/climatescience101.html
You apparently do not understand what “dispersed” or “dissipated” means in this context.
It does not mean that the energy disappears from any heat flow budget.
“Calculations of “back-radiation” to the surface are well-defined and meaningful if one is talking about fluxes at the interface between the surface and the atmosphere.
Violates LoT 2.
“Applying the Stephan-Boltzmann law, they conclude “the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere for a net atmospheric power intensity flux of 390 W/m2 is shown to be 288 Kelvin (15° Celsius).”
This assume BB and the ONLY place a BB functions is in a vacuum where there is no non-radiative contiguous participating media to complicate matters.
This “what if” BB assumption spontaneously doubles the amount of energy in the terrestrial system violating LoT 1.
The surface emissivity based on the ubiquitous K-T power flux balance is real 63/160=.39 or theoretical 63/396=.19.