Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, for my sins I’ve been working on a paper with the hope of getting it published in a journal. Now that it’s nearly done, I realized that I have the worlds’ best peer-reviewers available on WUWT. So before seeing if I can get this published, I thought I’d take advantage of you good folks for some “peer preview”, to point out to me any problems you might see with the title, format, style, data, conclusions, or any other part of the following paper. All of the graphics are in grayscale because that’s what the journals want.
Many thanks for any and all contributions.
w.
The Emergent Thermostat
Abstract
The current paradigm of climate science is that the long-term change in global temperature is given by a constant called “climate sensitivity” times the change in downwelling radiation, called “radiative forcing”. However, despite over forty years of investigation, the uncertainty of the value of climate sensitivity has only increased.1 This lack of any progress in determining the most central value in the current paradigm strongly suggests that the paradigm itself is incorrect, that it is not an accurate description of reality. Here I propose a different climate paradigm, which is that a variety of emergent climate phenomena act in concert to keep the surface temperature within tight limits. This explains the unusual thermal stability of the climate system.
Overview
Several authors have analyzed the climate system as a heat engine. Here is Reis and Bejan’s description
The earth with its solar heat input, heat rejection, and wheels of atmo- spheric and oceanic circulation, is a heat engine without shaft: its maximized (but not ideal) mechanical power output cannot be delivered to an extraterrestrial system. Instead, the earth engine is destined to dissipate through air and water friction and other irreversibilities (e.g., heat leaks across finite ∆T) all the mechanical power that it produces. It does so by ‘‘spinning in its brake’’ the fastest that it can (hence the winds and the ocean currents, which proceed along easiest routes).2
When viewed as a heat engine, one of the most unusual and generally unremarked aspects is its astounding stability. Over the 20th Century, the global average surface temperature varied by less than one kelvin. This is a variation of ± 0.2%. Given that the system rejects a variable amount of incoming energy, with the variations mostly controlled by nothing more solid than clouds, this is a most surprising degree of stability.
This in turn strongly argues for some global thermoregulatory mechanism. The stability cannot be from simple thermal inertia, because the hemispheric land temperatures vary by ~ 20K over the year, and hemispheric sea temperatures vary by ~ 5K.
Emergence
There is no generally accepted definition of emergence. In 1874 Lewes proposed the following definition: “Emergence: Theory according to which the combination of entities of a given level gives rise to a higher level entity whose properties are entirely new”.3
For the purposes of this article, I will define emergent climate phenomena functionally and by example.
Emergent climate phenomena arise spontaneously, often upon passing some thermal or other threshold. Consider the daily development of the tropical cumulus cloud field. Upon passing a temperature threshold, out of a clear sky hundreds of individual cumulus clouds can appear in a short time.
They have a time of emergence and a limited lifespan. Dust devils form spontaneously at a certain moment, persist for a while, and then dissipate and disappear.
They form a separate whole, distinct from the surroundings. Tropical thunderstorms are surrounded by clear air.
They are often mobile and move in unpredictable ways. As a result, tropical cyclones have “prediction cones” for where they might possibly go next, rather than being accurately predictable.
They are often associated with phase changes in the relevant fluids. Convective cloud emergence involves a phase change of water.
Once in existence, they can persist below the threshold necessary for their emergence. Rayleigh-Benard circulation requires a certain temperature difference to emerge, but once in existence, the circulation can persist at a smaller temperature difference.
They are flow systems far from equilibrium. As such, in accordance with the Constructal Law4, they must evolve and mutate to survive.
They are not naively predictable, as they have entirely different properties than the substrate from which they emerge. If you lived somewhere that there were never clouds, you likely would not predict that a giant white object might suddenly appear hundreds of meters above your head.
Examples of natural emergent phenomena with which we are familiar include the behavior of flocks of birds, vortices of all kinds, termite mounds, consciousness, and indeed, life itself. Familiar emergent climate phenomena include thunderstorms, tornadoes, Rayleigh-Bénard circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, clouds, cyclones, El Ninos, and dust devils.
A Simple Example
To explain how emergent phenomena thermoregulate the earth’s surface temperature, consider the lowly “dust devil”. As the sun heats a field in the summer, the change in temperature is some fairly linear function of the “forcing”, the downwelling solar radiation. This is in accord with the current paradigm. But when the hottest part of the field reaches a certain temperature with respect to the overlying atmospheric temperature, out of the clear sky a dust devil emerges. This cools the surface in several ways. First, it moves warm surface air upwards into the lower troposphere. Second, it increases sensible heat transfer, which is a roughly linear function of the air velocity over the surface. Third, it increases evaporation, which again is a roughly linear function of the surface air velocity.
At this point, the current paradigm that the change in temperature is a linear function of the change in forcing has broken down entirely. As the sunshine further irradiates the surface, instead of getting more temperature we get more dust devils. This puts a cap on the surface temperature. Note that this cap is not a function of forcing. The threshold is temperature-based, not forcing-based. As a result, it will not be affected by things like changing amounts of sunshine or variations in greenhouse gases.
A Complete Example
The heavy lifting of the thermoregulatory system, however, is not done by dust devils. It is achieved through variations in the timing and strength of the daily emergence of tropical cumulus fields and the ensuing tropical thunderstorms, particularly over the ocean. This involves the interaction of several different emergent phenomena
Here is the evolution of the day and night in the tropical ocean. The tropical ocean is where the majority of the sun’s energy enters the huge heat engine we call the climate. As a result, it is also where the major thermostatic mechanisms are located.
Figure 1. Daily emergent phenomena of the tropical ocean.
As seen in Panel “Early Morning”, at dawn, the atmosphere is stratified, with the coolest air nearest the surface. The nocturnal emergent Rayleigh-Bénard overturning of the ocean is coming to an end. The sun is free to heat the ocean. The air near the surface eddies randomly.
As the sun continues to heat the ocean, around ten or eleven o’clock in the morning a new circulation pattern emerges to replace the random atmospheric eddying. As soon as a critical temperature threshold is passed, local Rayleigh-Bénard-type circulation cells emerge everywhere. This is the first emergent transition, from random circulation to Rayleigh-Bénard circulation. These cells transport both heat and water vapor upwards.
By late morning, the Rayleigh-Bénard circulation is typically strong enough to raise the water vapor to the local lifting condensation level (LCL). At that altitude, the water vapor condenses into clouds as shown in Panel “Late Morning”.
This area-wide shift to an organized circulation pattern is not a change in feedback, nor is it related to forcing. It is a self-organized emergent phenomenon. It is threshold-based, meaning that it emerges spontaneously when a certain threshold is passed. In the wet tropics there’s plenty of water vapor, so the major variable in the threshold is the temperature. In addition, note that there are actually two distinct emergent phenomena in Panel 2—the Rayleigh-Bénard circulation which emerges prior to the cumulus formation, and which is enhanced and strengthened by the totally separate emergence of the clouds. We now have two changes of state involved as well, with evaporation from the surface and condensation and re-evaporation at altitude.
Under this new late-morning cumulus circulation regime, much less surface warming goes on. Part of the sunlight is reflected back to space, so less energy makes it into the system to begin with. Then the increasing surface wind due to the cumulus-based circulation pattern increases the evaporation, reducing the surface warming even more by moving latent heat up to the lifting condensation level.
The crucial issues here are the timing and strength of the emergence. If the ocean is a bit warmer, the new circulation regime starts earlier in the morning and it cuts down the total daily warming. On the other hand, if the ocean is cooler than usual, clear morning skies last later into the day, allowing increased warming. The system temperature is thus regulated both from overheating and excessive cooling by the time of onset of the regime change.
Consider the idea of “climate sensitivity” in this system, which is the sensitivity of surface temperature to forcing. The solar forcing is constantly increasing as the sun rises higher in the sky. In the morning before the onset of cumulus circulation, the sun comes through the clear atmosphere and rapidly warms the surface. So the thermal response is large, and the climate sensitivity is high.
After the onset of the cumulus regime, however, much of the sunlight is reflected back to space. Less sunlight remains to warm the ocean. In addition to reduced sunlight, there is increased evaporative cooling. Compared to the morning, the climate sensitivity is much lower.
So here we have two situations with very different climate sensitivities. In the early morning, climate sensitivity is high, and the temperature rises quickly with the increasing solar insolation. In the late morning, a regime change occurs to a situation with much lower climate sensitivity. Adding extra solar energy doesn’t raise the temperature anywhere near as fast as it did earlier.
At some point in the afternoon, there is a good chance that the cumulus circulation pattern is not enough to stop the continued surface temperature increase. If the temperature exceeds a certain higher threshold, as shown in Panel “Late Afternoon”, another complete regime shift takes place. The regime shift involves the spontaneous emergence of independently mobile heat engines called thunderstorms.
Thunderstorms are dual-fuel heat engines. They run on low-density air. That air rises and condenses out the moisture. The condensation releases heat that re-warms the air, which rises deep into the troposphere.
There are two ways the thunderstorms get low-density air. One is to heat the air. This is how a thunderstorm gets started, as a solar-driven phenomenon emerging from strong cumulus clouds. The sun plus GHG radiation combine to heat the surface, which then warms the air. The low-density air rises. When that circulation gets strong enough, thunderstorms start to form. Once the thunderstorm is started, the second fuel is added — water vapor. The more water vapor there is in the air, the lighter it becomes. The thunderstorm generates strong winds around its base. Evaporation is proportional to wind speed, so this greatly increases the local evaporation. This makes the air lighter and makes the air rise faster, which makes the thunderstorm stronger, which in turn increases the wind speed around the thunderstorm base. A thunderstorm is a regenerative system, much like a fire where part of the energy is used to power a bellows to make the fire burn even hotter. Once it is started, it is much harder to stop. This gives thunderstorms a unique ability that is not represented in any of the climate models. A thunderstorm is capable of driving the surface temperature well below the initiation temperature that was needed to get the thunderstorm started. It can run on into the evening, and often well into the night, on its combination of thermal and evaporation energy sources.
Thunderstorms function as heat pipes that transport warm air rapidly from the surface to the lifting condensation level where the moisture turns into clouds and rain, and from there to the upper atmosphere without interacting with the intervening greenhouse gases. The air and the energy it contains are moved to the upper troposphere hidden inside the cloud-shrouded thunderstorm tower, without being absorbed or hindered by GHGs on the way. Thunderstorms also cool the surface in a host of other ways, utilizing a combination of a standard refrigeration cycle with water as the working fluid, plus cold water returned from above, clear surrounding air allowing greater upwelling surface radiation, wind-driven evaporation, spray increasing evaporation area, albedo changes, and cold downwelling entrained air.
As with the onset of the cumulus circulation, the onset of thunderstorms occurs earlier on days when it is warmer, and it occurs later (and sometimes not at all) on days that are cooler than usual. Again, there is no way to assign an average climate sensitivity. The warmer it gets, the less each additional watt per meter warms the surface.
Once the sun sets, first the cumulus and then the thunderstorms decay and dissipate. In Panel 4, a final and again different regime emerges. The main feature of this regime is that during this time, the ocean radiates the general amount of energy that was absorbed during all of the other parts of the day.
During the nighttime, the surface is still receiving energy from the greenhouse gases. This has the effect of delaying the onset of oceanic overturning, and of reducing the rate of cooling. Note that the oceanic overturning is once again the emergent Rayleigh-Bénard circulation. Because there are fewer clouds, the ocean can radiate to space more freely. In addition, the overturning of the ocean constantly brings new water to the surface to radiate and cool. This increases the heat transfer across the interface. As with the previous thresholds, the timing of this final transition is temperature-dependent. Once a critical threshold is passed, oceanic overturning emerges. Stratification is replaced by circulation, bringing new water to radiate, cool, and sink. In this way, heat is removed, not just from the surface as during the day, but from the entire body of the upper layer of the ocean.
Predictions
A theory is only as good as its predictions. From the above theoretical considerations we can predict the following:
Prediction 1. In warm areas of the ocean, clouds will act to cool the surface, and in cold areas they will act to warm the surface. This will be most pronounced above a temperature threshold at the warmest temperatures.
Evidence validating the first prediction.
Figure 2. Scatterplot, sea surface temperature (SST) versus surface cloud radiative effect. The more negative the data the greater the cooling.
As predicted, the clouds warm the surface when it is cold and cool it when it is warm, with the effect very pronounced above about 26°C – 27°C.
Prediction 2. In the tropical ocean, again above a certain temperature threshold, thunderstorms will increase very rapidly with increasing temperature.
Evidence validating the second prediction.
Since there is always plenty of water over the tropical ocean, and plenty of sunshine to drive them, thermally driven tropical thunderstorms will be a function of little more than temperature.
Figure 3. Cloud top altitude as a proxy for deep convective thunderstorms versus sea surface temperature.
As with clouds in general, there is a clear temperature threshold at about 26°C – 27°C, with a nearly vertical increase in thunderstorms above that threshold. This puts a very strong cap on increasing temperatures.
Prediction 3. Transient decreases in solar forcing such as those from eruptions will be counteracted by increased sunshine from tropical cumulus forming later in the day and less frequently. This means that after an initial decrease, incoming solar will go above the pre-eruption baseline until the status quo ante is re-established.
Evidence validating the third prediction.
Regarding the third prediction, my theory solves the following Pinatubo puzzle from Soden et al.5
“Beginning in 1994, additional anomalies in the satellite-observations of top-of-atmosphere absorbed solar radiation become evident, which are unrelated to the Mount Pinatubo eruption and therefore not reproduced in the model simulations. These anomalies are believed to stem from decadal-scale changes in the tropical circulation over the mid to late 1990’s [see J. Chenet al., Science 295, 838 (2002); and B.A. Wielicki et al., Science 295, 841 (2002], but their veracity remains the subject of debate. If real, their absence in the model simulations implies that discrepancies between the observed and model-simulated temperature anomalies, delayed 1 to 2 years by the climate system’s thermal inertia, may occur by the mid-1990s.”
Figure 4. Soden Figure 1, with original caption
However, this is a predictable result of the emergent thermostat theory. Here is the change in lower atmospheric temperature along with the ERBS data from Soden:
Figure 5. ERBE absorbed solar energy (top panel in Figure 4) and UAH lower tropospheric temperature (TLT). Both datasets include a lowess smoothing.
As predicted by the theory, the absorbed solar energy goes above the baseline until the lower troposphere temperature returns to its pre-eruption value. At that point, the increased intake of solar energy ceases and the system is back in its steady-state condition.
Prediction 4. The “climate sensitivity”, far from being a constant, will be found to be a function of temperature.
Evidence validating the fourth prediction.
Figure 6 below shows the 1° latitude by 1° longitude gridcell by gridcell relationship between net downwelling radiation at the surface and the surface temperature.
Figure 6. Scatterplot, CERES net downwelling surface radiation (net shortwave plus longwave) versus Berkeley Earth global surface temperature. The slope of the lowess smooth at any point is the “climate sensitivity” at that temperature, in °C per watt per square metre (W/M2)
The tight correlation between the surface temperature and the downwelling radiation confirms that this is a valid long-term relationship. This is especially true given that the two variables considered are from entirely different and unrelated datasets.
Note that the “climate sensitivity” is indeed a function of temperature, and that the climate sensitivity goes negative at the highest temperatures. It is also worth noting that almost nowhere on the planet does the long-term average temperature go above 30°C. This is further evidence of the existence of strong thermoregulatory mechanisms putting an effective cap on how hot the surface gets on average.
Prediction 5. In some areas, rather than the temperature being controlled by the downwelling surface radiation, the surface radiation will be found to be controlled by the temperature.
Evidence validating the fifth prediction.
Figure 7 below shows the correlation between net downwelling surface radiation (net shortwave plus longwave) and surface temperature. As expected, over most of the land masses the correlation is positive—as the downwelling radiation increases, so does the surface temperature.
Figure 7. Correlation between monthly surface temperatures and monthly surface downwelling radiation. Seasonal variations have been removed from both datasets.
However, over large areas of the tropical ocean, the temperature and downwelling surface radiation are negatively correlated. Since decreasing downwelling radiation cannot increase the surface temperature, the only possible conclusion is that in these areas, the increasing temperature modifies the number and nature of the overlying clouds in such a way to decrease the downwelling radiation.
CONCLUSIONS
1) The current climate paradigm, which is that in the long run, changes in global surface temperature are a simple linear function of changes in forcing (downwelling radiation), is incorrect. This is indicated by the inability of researchers to narrow the uncertainty of the central value of the paradigm, “climate sensitivity”, despite forty years of investigations, millions of dollars, billions of computer cycles, and millions of work-hours being thrown at the problem. It is also demonstrated by the graphs above which show that far from being a constant, the “climate sensitivity” is a function of temperature.
2) A most curious aspect of the climate system is its astounding stability. Despite being supported at tens of degrees warmer than the moon by nothing more stable than evanescent clouds, despite volcanic eruptions, despite changes in CO2 and other GHG forcings, despite great variations in aerosols and black carbon, over the 20th Century the temperature varied by only ±0.2%.
3) This amazing stability implies and indeed requires the existence of a very strong thermoregulation system.
4) My theory is that the thermoregulation is provided by a host of interacting emergent phenomena. These include Rayleigh-Benard circulation of the ocean and the atmosphere; dust devils; tropical thermally-driven cumulus cloud fields; thunderstorms; squall lines; cyclones; tornadoes; the La Nina pump moving tropical warm water to the poles and exposing cool underlying water; and the great changes in ocean circulation involved with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, and other oceanic cycles.
5) This implies that temperatures are unlikely to vary greatly from their current state because of variations in CO2, volcanoes, or other changing forcings. The thresholds for the various phenomena are temperature-based, not forcing-based. So variations in forcing will not affect them much. However, it also opens up a new question—what causes slow thermal drift in thermoregulated systems?
REFERENCES
1 Knutti, R., Rugenstein, M. & Hegerl, G. Beyond equilibrium climate sensitivity. Nature Geosci 10, 727–736 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo3017
2 Lewes, G. H. (1874) in Emergence, Dictionnaire de la langue philosophique, Foulquié.
3 Reis, A. H., Bejan, A, Constructal theory of global circulation and climate, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Volume 49, Issues 11–12, 2006, Pages 1857-1875, https://doi.org/10.1016
4 Bejan, A, Reis, A. Heitor, Thermodynamic optimization of global circulation and climate, International Journal of Energy Research, Vol. 29, Is. 4, https://doi.org/10.1002/er.1058
5 Brian J. Soden et al., Global Cooling After the Eruption of Mount Pinatubo: A Test of Climate Feedback by Water Vapor,Science 26 Apr 2002, Vol. 296, Issue 5568, pp. 727-730, DOI: 10.1126/science.296.5568.727
Anyhow, that’s what I have to date. There are few references, because AFAIK nobody else is considering the idea that emergent phenomena act as a global thermostat. Anyone who knows of other references that might be relevant, please mention them.
Finally, any suggestions as to which journal might be willing to publish such a heretical view of climate science would be much appreciated.
My best to all, the beat goes on,
w.
As Always: I can defend my own words, but I can’t defend your interpretation of them. So if you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing so we can all understand what you are referring to.
Willis, you heretic! (I mean that as a compliment).
Apart from the nit-pick that Benard either has an accent or doesn’t, what stood out for me
was some strange things I saw in your scatterplots.
Now, you have plotted 1×1 degree grid cells, over 20 years. And it seems (but your
words do not confirm) that you have plotted each individual grid cell for each
individual month as a separate point. That’s over 15 million data points. I
usually only do scatterplots over a few dozen, or at most a few hundred data
points. And my experience is, that even if there’s a trend line or curve, the
deviations from that trend don’t have any particular structure. They are pretty
much random. I wouldn’t expect that to change if you up the number of data
points. Unless there are secondary effects that you aren’t accounting for.
But your scatterplots show an internal structure, even well away from the LOWESS smooth line! Your Figure 2 (which I call the “Swan’s Neck”) has some really strange patterns below the line. Like several of what look like bridges, reaching out towards what look like islands. Reminiscent of the Mandelbrot set. Could we have a new discovery here, the “Eschenbach pattern?” Well, I count ten of those bridges, and some dubious ones either side; so, it may merely be that it wasn’t the right thing to do to plot individual months. It might have been better to average over the years first. If, when you do that, the odd-looking details disappear, that would tell us something.
There’s a similar internal structure in Figure 3 – there’s a duck in there somewhere – and Figure 6, “the Eel.” So, my best guess is that you’re probably not plotting the data in quite the right way.
Neil ==> Yes, I noticed the same. The question with the fractal/chaotic/non-linear banding “Is it it the real world or in the maths?”
Neil, I see I need to clear up the descriptions. They are scatterplots of the averages of the 20 years of data. They’re 180 latitude by 360 longitude, so each one has 64,800 data points. As to the lines, my sense is that they are an artifact of the collection of the data into 1°x1°gridcells. That will leave gaps between each line of latitude, where the values are changing quickly.
w.
I thought Figure 3 looked like the skeleton of the Loch Ness monster.
One of the consequences of water vapour responding to surface temperature is that there is persistent high level cloud at lower latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere when the water vapour peaks.
I prefer real heat fluxes at the top of the atmosphere rather than non-physical downwelling longwave but the sum of reflected SWR and OLR at the ToA show a high positive correlation with moisture. It also shows the uptick at the high end over the warm pools. The slope for a year is up but there are three months when the slope is negative – the cold surface months. So water vapour itself has an overall regulating role.
The other thing to note is that there is an upward trend in the area of warm pools this century.
I have named the gradient of the regression line for the ToA heat loss v TPW as the Atmospheric Water Cooling Coefficient.
The attached chart shows how the slope changes with sea surface temperature. As noted above there are three of the twelve months when it is negative. It is highly responsive to sea surface temperature. The annual average AWCC for the year considered was 1.4W/sq.m/cm.
Willis:
Another example of a discussion of emergent phenomena:
https://judithcurry.com/2015/05/26/observational-support-for-lindzens-iris-hypothesis/
Slides:
https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/lindzen-iris.pdf
Lindzen’s point is that there is a powerful emergent phenomenon that is temperature caused and correlated.
As I understand it, your major point is that the reason the phenomenon is temperature-related is that the “forcing factor” – which is to say base to final temperature – is correlated with the initial temperature. By that is meant “the Climate Sensitivity” which is another way of saying the GHG-based warming to be expected from an increase concentration. Is that a fair characterization?
The trouble you may get into with reviewers is that the phenomenon you describe would emerge without any GHG’s at all. If you double the CO2 concentration in your graphical representation, exactly the same emergence would be seen, and the result would – I wager – be essentially identical. The reason the CO2 concentration would make no difference is a) water vapour swamps any feeble GHG effect, b) there isn’t much CO2, c) CO2 doesn’t form clouds when it rises.
Strictly speaking, I don’t think you can argue that the effect of temperature is a “climate sensitivity” because CS is defined as a temperature variation with respect to GHG concentration (factored to CO2e) provided in units of “feedback Watts per sq M”.
You have shown (quite well) that there is a correlation between the starting temperature and the (permitted) rise in degrees before powerful shading and reflecting is invoked. The upper limit on temperature is capped.
GHG warming theory says that if you were to plot such “capping” lines as you have in hand, increasing the concentration of GHG’s will lift all points of the whole line, (unequally, it is admitted, but everything will go up, they say). GHG forcing is the same as increasing the radiative power at source.
But that is not what is happening. Whatever the starting temperature, the upper limit is fixed by a combination of water vapour properties, air pressure and the fraction of the Earth that is covered by water. It is inherent in the construct.
If you were to produce the same final chart showing the slope of the curve is related to the starting temperature, but bin the CO2 concentration data by date, you might be able to show there is a correlated <i>changing peak temperature</i>. One chart for 350 ppm, one for 375 and another for 400 might show “something”. Or not. If there is no correlation between the position of that line and the CO2 concentration, you have an publication that extends your Thunderstorm Hypothesis paper showing not only a correlation of clouding-over-time with morning sea surface temperature, but that the phenomenon works over an large range of initial values.
If you were to combine this (which is essentially a heat rejecting mechanism) with Lindzen’s Iris (which is essentially a heat venting mechanism) you can account for heat gain or loss and terminal temperature whether it is cloudy or not.
Best regards
Crispin
An excellent study Willis, ahead of its time – emergent phenomena is where climate research is needed.
Here’s another interesting study from 2016 that you might consider a brief mention:
https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings/alif2016/28/608/99454
They show a model system where temperature regulation again emerges spontaneously.
We demonstrate the emergence of spontaneous temperature regulation by the combined action of two sets of dissipative structures. Our model system comprised an incompressible, non-isothermal fluid in which two sets of Gray-Scott reaction diffusion systems were embedded. We show that with a temperature dependent rate constant, self-reproducing spot patterns are extremely sensitive to temperature variations. Furthermore, if only one reaction is exothermic or endothermic while the second reaction has zero enthalpy, the system shows either runaway positive feedback, or the patterns inhibit themselves. However, a symbiotic system, in which one of the two reactions is exothermic and the other is endothermic, shows striking resilience to imposed temperature variations. Not only does the system maintain its emergent patterns, but it is seen to effectively regulate its internal temperature, no matter whether the boundary temperature is warmer or cooler than optimal growth conditions. This thermal homeostasis is a completely emergent feature.
Looks interesting, Hatter, I’ll give it a look when I get time.
w.
Willis, thunderstorms are evidence of how clouds shutter the light from the surface and are the result of evaporation, for sure. But every day https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/ shows us pics that the major cloud producers are advective weather fronts, not mostly convective thunderstorms. I think that with clear blue sky the sunlight mostly sees an ocean Albedo of .06. Then the sunlight heats the ocean surface until enough water vapor forms .8 Albedo clouds, driving the planetary albedo to 0.3 again. It does this over and over in randomly shaped patches of the Earth’s surface the size of Europe moving over the surface by Coriolis forces. The net result is an average between ocean Albedo of .06 and Cloud Albedo of .8 and cloud cover of 60%, all varying accoding to Clausius Clapeyron…
DMK, did you analyze it quantitatively? Please share your results.
George, you can do your own little spreadsheet….
So start with the usual Te= [ So/4(1- albedo)/5.67e-8]^0.25 add 33 degrees average lapse rate, not quite technically correct but we’re trying to get a feel for reality here. You should get around 255 C plus 33 gets you 288 C average surface temp.
Now do the same calculation as if the Earth was a water world, albedo say 0.1, and again as cloud covered world, say albedo = 0.8. See the temperature difference.
Temperature controls how much water evaporates off the wet parts of the planet to make the clouds that changes the planetary albedo….and so albedo of about .3 and 65% cloud cover ends up being the balance point.
I would argue that while most of the earth is indeed a fairly random chaotic mess of advection and storm systems, these all “wash out” on average. Storm systems do follow a semi-regular pattern (see Lezac’s Recurring Cycle), and while some areas are cloudy, others are clear. The total Albedo averages out to be fairly constant. However, the ITCZ’s, on the other hand, where the most direct insolation occurs, are regular. So, you have subtropics to polar where there is no thermoregulatory effect, but in the tropics you do.
Thanks, D. A couple points about that. First, it’s not just how many clouds there are. It’s also where they are. First, clouds over ice make little difference. Second, the further polewards you go, the weaker the sunlight on average, so the same cloud will make less difference.
Third, we have to look at the net effect. Clouds reduce sunlight as you point out. But they also increase the downwelling radiation. The net of these is called the “Net Cloud Radiative Effect”, and is shown in Figure 2. Short answer is that clouds warm the cold parts and cool the warm parts.
w.
There is also the issue of “how long clouds last”, kind of the back end of the emergent issue, that is probably important for your paper.
Just want to point out that CRE is a measure of how “in balance” or “out of balance” the radiation effect is. Since the calcs are typically done when everything is in balance the calcs only show a couple of watts feedback. But in reality, the difference in Albedo between an ocean surface planet and a full cloud cover planet is a range of 60% of incoming sunlight being reflected back into space or not. That’s huge, not a couple of watts positive as some (not yourself) indicate. You make a good point “clouds over ice make little difference”…yes look at https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/ today…clouds over ice, its the ice that makes little difference, quite a normal occurrence, plus being far out on the cosine of the zenith angle of incident sunlight, makes little difference compared to the albedo range anyway.
Figure 3 looks like you found a Loch Ness Monster.
At 94 i usually have difficulty in understanding these submissions.
But yours made sense. Thank you.
VK 5ellmje
The skeleton of a Loch Ness Monster.
Willis,
Don’t let this sidetrack you, you will be busy enough.
Wondering about latitudinal effects. If the processes emerge because the surroundings have become too hot, would there not be a different distribution of those big clouds? Would they not be going flat out all the time in the warmer regions of the globe, but be rare or absent where is it not much cooler?
The basic question is one we have briefly covered before about 5 years back: Regulators typically work by using a comparison. If the measurement departs from the comparison, the mechanism emerges and drives the system back towards the comparator or reference, whatever you like to call it. So, if this is what happens in Nature, what is the reference temperature and how is it created? I have a worry that in your description the reference value perhaps has to change with latitude and with seasons.
Basically, it would be neat if there was an explanation of what is meant by expressions like “when it becomes too warm, clouds appear” becoming “when temperature exceeds the reference value for this location, as determined in the following manner, clouds appear”.
OTOH, maybe you do not need to consider this sort of philosophical point because you are reporting what Nature does, not so much why it does it. The earth has had a long time to settle down to systems that keep it stable. If it had not settled down we mght have had a very different earth and no us. It is fundamentally the inexorable operation of physics, chemistry, biology etc, the hard sciences, that have combined to create what we are able to habitate.
Geoff S
Here you go, Geoff. Cloud top altitude shows the location of deep tropical thunderstorms. We’re a full-service website.
w.
Thank you, provider of full service. Geoff S
“at dawn, the atmosphere is stratified, with the coolest air nearest the surface” … hmmm maybe not because as you rise in altitude it gets colder hence the warmest air is at the surface.
Willis:
For your theory to have any relevance, it needs to be able explain the large temperature swings during, for example, the RWP, the MWP, and the LIA, each of which which lasted for hundreds of years.
And nothing in it makes any predictions as to what we might expect in the future.
An excellent paper but you will find it difficult to impossible to publish however well argued and well documented it may be. The trouble is, it’s physics. In my experience climate science is owned by the modellers who are mathematicians. Any proposal which threatens the dominance of the GCMs is out of bounds. We came up with a statistical technique for forecasting future temperatures based solely on past observations (http://paradigm2.net.au/). Like you we question the notion of a “Climate Emergency”. Because our arguments are not GCM based, journal editors are way out of their depth and our paper never makes it to peer review.
The high priests of emergent phenomena have a church in common at the Santa Fé Institute, despite often radically different background disciplines. You may find this piece useful as a support for your motivation:
https://medium.com/sfi-30-foundations-frontiers/emergence-a-unifying-theme-for-21st-century-science-4324ac0f951e
The opening couple of paragraphs:
These persons may be of interest:
https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/marten-scheffer
https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/joshua-garland
Of course back in the day they pushed the idea of the weather and climate as a complex chaotic system, highlighting the butterfly effect. These days it seems that openness of thought has disappeared otherwise you might find willing collaborators there. I did unearth this, from the days when Murray Gell Mann was still an influence:
https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780195159769.001.0001/isbn-9780195159769-book-part-17
It might be fun to cite some of the early work
Willis, I think that your data supports the thesis that in the tropics, thunderstorms are a significant contributor to constraining temperatures to below 30°C, over water. But what if anything does that say about the rest of the world? According to some reports, the world’s average temperature is about 15-16°C, and thunderstorms are a very rare phenomenon globally. Please explain the mechanisms at say a latitude of 40°. What drives the formation of clouds and how do they act as an effective thermostat to stop further warming?
Willis, write it in a way that aims to enhance knowledge around climate change and not challenge it. Focus on the CERES data and less on how remarkably stable the climate is. That might be a red flag to some, even if true!
E.g. given the importance of accurately predicting anthropogenic climate change, reducing uncertainty is key to better forecast outcomes. To do this we have examined CERES data to better quantify the observed relationships between temperature and feedback. Our results indicate that the feedback parameter is not linear as conventionally assumed, but a function of temperature governed by emergent weather phenomena such as thunderstorm activity at the equator. Application of these relationships could narrow uncertainty and more accurately quantify the effects of climate change at a regional and global level.
I’m late to this party but – – –
Dust Devils occur in abundance on the dry farms in Eastern Washington State. Interstate 90 west of Ritzville is native territory.
The parts that can be seen are small (relative to a thunderstorm) while many of them will turn the sky brown. Massive rolling clouds of dust are rare, relatively. Insofar as this region is Damn Near Idaho (DNI) I suspect the forests of Northern Idaho are the recipient of this soil.
This phenomenon is interesting but I agree inclusion likely distracts from your main arguments.
If one searches up – dust devils Ritzville WA – using “images” there are many photos and a few videos.
“Peer review” is fake! A ‘siren song’ of Marxists at the A.G.U. et al. and their beloved Fake Science. “Peer review” of the A.G.U. did not exist when Einstein sent his four papers (the second an addendum to the first) on General Relativity for publishing, November 1915. And about a year after their publishing, a ‘committee’ of more than 100 “pissed off” German physicists sent a “Consensus” letter to the journal, demanding withdrawal. Einstein replied to the journal editor saying, [paraphrased] “They don’t need 100 arguments of why I am wrong, just 1 … that is correct! And on that, they can’t even come to a … ‘Consensus’!”
Best.
Ref.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirens_and_Ulysses
I agree Reginald. It’s Pal Review, not Peer Review, and it’s crap (a formal engineering term).
I prefer the rough-and-tumble of internet review, even though one is sometimes subjected to trolls and imbeciles.
Regards, Allan
Published circa 2010, possibly by me (not sure, but I agree with every world):
It is a year since the so-called Climategate e-mails were leaked. Since then, we have had freezing winters in Europe and the US, and revelations of gross misrepresentations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The lasting impression is of massive corruption of science.
Leaked from the Climate Research Unit in England, the e-mails showed the scientists behind the climate scare plotting to: hide, delete and manipulate data; to denigrate scientists presenting different views; to force journals to publish only papers promoting climate alarm; to subvert “peer review” into “pal review”; and make the reports of the IPCC nothing but alarmist propaganda. The corruption spread through governments, universities, scientific societies and journals. You have to look back to the Lysenko episode in the Soviet Union in the 1940s (when a crank persuaded the Soviet establishment that agriculture did not follow Darwinian evolution) to find such perversion of science.
The worst nonsense after the scandal was this: “Well, some climate scientists committed a few minor transgressions but the basic science is sound.” In fact, the basic science is nonexistent.
There is no evidence that mankind is changing the climate in a dangerous way. The slight warming of the past 150 years is no different from previous natural warming periods, such as the worldwide medieval warm period from about 900 to 1200AD. Global warming and cooling are closely correlated to variations in the sun, especially in its emission of charged particles. Carbon dioxide (CO² ), a harmless, natural gas upon which green plants depend, is a feeble greenhouse gas. Its only significant absorption band (15 micron) is saturated, so adding more to the atmosphere has a small and diminishing effect.
Continued at
http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/1959-andrew-kenny-a-year-after-climategate-the-corruption-of-science-persists.html This link no longer works.
Willis,
As a researcher in and reviewer of journals I highly recommend you lose/re-word all statements that directly attack the people, efforts, costs, etc in the past. Albeit true, it has no bearing on the main points (scientifically speaking) you are trying to make (and good ones at that). Scrub the paper and reword/remove those like the one below. Let your scientific based method and analysis speak for itself. Also, most journals prefer third person … stay away from I, we, etc. Once you have your target journal … check its style).
“This is indicated by the inability of researchers to narrow the uncertainty of the central value of the paradigm, “climate sensitivity”, despite forty years of investigations, millions of dollars, billions of computer cycles, and millions of work-hours being thrown at the problem.”
Thanks, Doc, will do. Always good to hear from someone who actually has been there and done that.
w.
Doc Walt
What do you think about the term “climate sensitivity”? A reviewer might well ask: transient or equilibrium? While the observation that the ECS is uncertain the phenomenon is not discussed in terms of ECS or TCS and as I noted above, the paper is about regulation, not climate sensitivity. Willis notes that the number of degrees of rise before thermoregulation caps the temperature varies with the initial value – not a big surprise really. I was going to suggest picking ECS or TCS and drop CS, but a reviewer will balk at the dissonance between thermoregulation and ECS before getting to the term itself.
Willis gives a clear demonstration that if the energy input to the earth increases (for any reason like distance to the sun in winter and summer) the area moderated under the temperature cap increases, the temperature does not rise above the cap.
Now, the average temperature does, because the poles warm more than the temperate zones. GHG proponents noticed that and claimed it is a proof of GHG’s in action. To me, it is an indication that Willis is correct, and that it is not related to any standard definition of ECS or TCS.
In short, when the poles warm and the tropics don’t, it is proof of global warming, but not proof that it is caused by GHG’s.
It is rather, proof of thermoregulation which has two components: Shading and Lindzen’s Iris Effect. There are two subclasses – one for each: Svensmark for his well-known shading and Prof Lu (Waterloo Univ) for the lesser known ozone iris over Antarctica, also mediated by GCR’s and oceanic bromine (etc).
Interestingly both Svensmark and Lu have demonstrated their respective effects at lab scale. Both have supporting satellite data. Willis and Lindzen have demonstrated their mechanisms using measurement sets and analysis. It looks as if the GHG signal is lost in the noise of larger effects.
Hi Crispin and Willis,
Prediction 4. The “climate sensitivity”, far from being a constant, will be found to be a function of temperature.
I don’t think that Climate Sensitivity (CS, ECS or TCS) even exists in practical reality. Atmospheric CO2 changes lag temperature changes at all measured time scales. (MacRae, 2008). Humlum et al (2013) confirmed this conclusion.
Kuo et al (1990) and Keeling (1995) made similar observations in the journal Nature, but have been studiously ignored by global warming propagandists.
CS is a fiction. “The future cannot cause the past.” Here is the proof:
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah6/from:1979/scale:0.18/offset:0.17
Regards, Allan
Thoughts from 2013:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/10/the-sun-does-it-now-go-figure-out-how/#comment-1121415
[excerpt]
The popular debate in climate science suggests that this science is in its infancy. I further suggest that the majority of climate science has taken a giant step backwards in recent decades due to egregious political interference and scientific misbehaviour.
Notwithstanding all the wonderful data available especially since ~1979, we have an “ECS mainstream debate” that ASSUMES THAT CO2 SIGNIFICANTLY DRIVES TEMPERATURE and centres on the question of “climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2” (“ECS”) that questions whether ECS is greater or less than 1 (that is, are there positive or negative feedbacks to increasing atmospheric CO2).
Since CO2 clearly LAGS temperature at all measured time scales, this ECS mainstream debate requires that, in total, “the future is causing the past”, which I suggest is demonstrably false.
To be clear, I suggest that atmospheric CO2 does NOT significantly drive Earth temperatures, and Earth temperatures clearly drive atmospheric CO2.
This does not preclude the possibility that the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 is primarily caused by some factors (natural and/or humanmade) other than temperatures, but such increase in CO2 is insignificant to Earths’ temperatures.
In summary, in climate science we do not even agree on what drives what, and it is probable that the majority, who reside on BOTH sides of the ECS mainstream debate, are BOTH WRONG.
It is also possible that I am wrong on this point ( possible, but not probable :-} ).
Regards to all, Allan
Thoughts from 2012:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/16/onset-of-the-next-glaciation/#comment-899050
johnpetroff says: September 16, 2012 at 9:37 pm
“There will be no “next glaciation” as long as modern man dominates the Earth. While we can debate the onset of the next cooling cycle, the planet is current warming and warming rapidly.”
I disagree John. The satellite record, which is the only reliable scientific record of current global temperature, shows no net warming for 10-15 years.
To be clear, I think Earth is at the end of a natural cyclical warming period and is about to enter a cooling period, which could be moderate or severe. This cooling will be apparent by 2020-2030 (or sooner) and could be as severe as the Dalton Minimum circa 1800 or the Maunder Minimum circa 1700. I’d rather be wrong about this prediction.
Since there is no evidence that atmospheric CO2 has any significant impact on global warming, I do not see that mankind’s current fossil fuel burning activities have any significant impact on climate, either for better or worse. The only apparent impact of increasing atmospheric CO2 is to make little flowers happy.
I’m not convinced that whatever we do regarding methane will make any difference either. If running around shoving corks up the backsides of bovines is someone’s cup of tea, then let them proceed, but at their sole risk. Just do not expect it to have any impact on climate, and don’t send me the bill. 🙂
Allan,
On CO2 lags temperature,it is widely acknowledged that the ice records show the lag of up to 800 years plus but the attempted rebuttal is Shakun et al 2012.
It claims in a study of the emergence from the Ice Age 20,000 years ago that while orbital changes triggered the initial warming, overall more than 90% of the glacial/interglacial warming occurred after that atmospheric CO2 increase.
As ocean temperature rose,the oceans released more CO2 into the atmosphere.
In turn this release amplified the warming trend leading to more CO2 being released.
Thus it is claimed increasing CO2 became both the cause and effect of further warming.
This positive feedback was said to be necessary to trigger the change between glacials and interglacials because the effect of orbital changes was insufficient to cause the variation.
I have always struggled with this paper and its explanation.
Thank you Herbert,
It sounds interesting, but I won’t promise to read Shakun. I’ve wasted too much of my life reading warmist nonsense that turned out to be false and fraudulent.
Excerpt from my paper
CLIMATE CHANGE, COVID-19, AND THE GREAT RESET Update 1d
“Rode and Fischbeck, professor of Social & Decision Sciences and Engineering & Public Policy, collected 79 predictions of climate-caused apocalypse going back to the first Earth Day in 1970. With the passage of time, many of these forecasts have since expired; the dates have come and gone uneventfully. In fact, 48 (61%) of the predictions have already expired as of the end of 2020.”
Climate doomsters have a perfect NEGATIVE predictive track record – every very-scary climate prediction, of the ~80 they have made since 1970, has FAILED TO HAPPEN.
Fully 48 of these predictions expired at the end of 2020. Never happened! Never will!
What are the odds at 50:50 per prediction?
3.6*10^-15 = 0.0000000000000036
So the climate doomsters were wrong in their very-scary climate predictions 48 times in a row – at 50:50 odds that’s like flipping a coin 48 times and losing every time! The odds against that being mere random stupidity are a gazillion to 1. It’s not just scientists being stupid.
No, these climate doomsters were not telling the truth – they displayed a dishonest bias in their analyses that caused these extremely improbable errors – they knew they were lying.
There is a powerful logic that says no rational person or group could be this wrong for this long; they followed a corrupt agenda, and they lied again and again.
The ability to predict is the best objective means of assessing scientific competence, and the global warming alarmists have NO predictive track record – they have been 100% wrong about everything and nobody should believe these fraudsters – about anything!
I published this new Law in early 2020. Edit: Please delete the word “Virtually”.
“MACRAE’S MAXIM”:
“VIRTUALLY EVERY SCARY PREDICTION BY GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS IS FALSE.”
Best regards, Allan
Hi again Herbert,
This just arrived from my friend Cap Allon in Europe:
UNPRECEDENTED COLD INVADES EUROPE: “EYELID FREEZING NIGHT BREAKS RECORDS”
April 29, 2021 Cap Allon
https://electroverse.net/unprecedented-cold-invades-europe/
This year’s punishing winter has shown few signs of abating, even as May fast-approaches.
Across the European continent, the majority of nations are suffering their coldest April’s in decades–in around 100 years in Germany and the UK. This climatic reality (aka cooling) is in response to the historically low solar activity we’re been experiencing, as a decrease in output from the Sun weakens Earth’s jet streams and increases their tenancy to flow in more of a weak and wavy manor — this “meridional” flow, as it’s known, increases the prevalence of Arctic outbreaks and “blocking” phenomenons.
And it’s not over yet – brace for the cold May2021 forecast:
EUROPE BRACES FOR EXTREME MAY FREEZE April 27, 2021 Cap Allon
https://electroverse.net/europe-braces-for-extreme-may-freeze/
The models are in, and the models are grim: the majority of Europe is set on for an extreme May freeze with heavy snow forecast for Scandinavia, the Alps, Germany, and even the UK.
I accurately predicted this cooling two decades ago, in 2002 and again accurately to the month in mid-to-late-2020 – see my 2021 paper for details.
The ability to predict is the best objective measure of scientific and technical competence – that’s the acid test.
If the global warming alarmists were auto mechanics, you would have taken your car to their garage 48 times, and it still would not start.
Where to begin? I suggest you get a good editor with experience in journal submission as I can see, unless the journal is atypical or for hire, a whole lot of issues. I’ll give you an example using the abstract.
Remove all words before, “Here I propose”. They go in the introduction and are not abstracting the new work you are detailing. You then need to rewrite the final bit (obviously since it is written to follow the first bit.) Including a reference in the abstract is unusual. The abstract should not need references.
Some other things – the headings and the liberal use of bolding. Including a description of a graph within the graph is not something I’ve seen tolerated, nor are headings above and below figures.
and so on…
Example 543
“4) My theory is that the thermoregulation is provided by a host of interacting emergent phenomena.”
“my theory” yuck – instant rejection.
“A host” and “phenomena” unnecessary tautology
Rewrite-
It is proposed that thermoregulation is provided by interacting phenomena.
Nice. Done.
w.
Thanks, Gee. Excellent suggestions.
Do you, or anyone with experience, want to work with me to edit the document and submit it? Author credit for that of course, since most of the writing would likely be yours …
w.
HI Willis,
I’ll stay out of the minutiae, but thanks.
Seriously there is a lot of stuff to fix – tense, phraseology, use of undefined terms, too many words. I am not trying to cut you down but I am urging you to hold back from submitting until you’ve had independent and experienced assistance.
You have a lot of fans here which is good in one sense but, and there is evidence in these comments, this also means you get overly positive comments. People are urging you to publish because they agree with what you write (possibly regardless) and not because they know it is up to scratch for peer review. So you need someone hard-nosed.
I just saw Doc Walt’s comment – spot on (maybe twist his arm for help)
Gee, thanks for your help and your straight talk. I’ve not felt once in what you wrote that you were trying to “cut me down”. You were just talking straight, which is why I posted this.
I’ll ask again if there’s someone knowledgeable and willing to take this on with me. Doc Walt? Anyone?
Let me further extend the offer to anyone interested in writing up any of my other 900+ posts, or a combination of them, in exchange for author credit.
Anyone?
And thanks again, Gee, honesty is always welcome.
w.
willis,
To get it out there you might like to try this Institute of Physics
conference on Planetary Atmospheres?
https://www.iopconferences.org/iop/frontend/reg/thome.csp?pageID=1037531&eventID=1673&traceRedir=2
Re the IOP conference, Short notice is to be expected when papers contradicting cherished hypotheses could be presented. You have till 12 May to submit abstracts and until 7 June to register for an IOP Conference with the above title. The meeting itself is scheduled for 9 June and will be virtual with no charges but registration beforehand is required. See:
https://www.iopconferences.org/iop/frontend/reg/thome.csp?pageID=1037531&eventID=1673
Well, for a while I had 110 or 120 comments in the email queue, and then I’d answer twenty of them. And when I looked up again I had 110 or 120 comments in the email queue … having finally gotten them down to zero and it being past midnight, a few thoughts are in order.
First, my thanks to everyone who contributed. It has confirmed my view of the denizens of this site as being one of the most knowledgeable and responsive audiences imaginable. My thanks to you all. In particular, I want to thank those who didn’t mince words, those who said they were “brutally honest”, those who spoke out clearly and strongly about the flaws of the paper.
Look, at 74, at this point I’m in my middle youth. And if you want to aggravate my blood, telling me the truth about problems with what I’ve written won’t even begin to do that. Seen too much, done too much, for honesty to bother me.
[I will confess, however, I don’t take kindly to being called a liar or accused of misrepresenting or shading facts … that does indeed angrify my molecules. I tell the truth as best I know it and I admit my mistakes loud and clear when they are pointed out. I was brought up under what in my family was called “The Captain’s Code”.
“The Captain” was my great-grandfather, an 1800’s riverboat captain on the Mississippi and in the Gulf. One part of The Captain’s Code was:
Now, I’m not an 1800’s guy, so I don’t kill people for false accusations of me lying, although family legend has it that The Captain once might have … but I must confess, being called a liar definitely makes me say bad words and invite my accuser to engage in an anatomically improbable act of sexual self-congress.
But on the other hand, honesty, even of the most brutal kind? Honesty I welcome—my thanks to those of you who told the unvarnished truth, and particularly those of you who don’t seem to even know what varnish is. But I digress mightily …]
Second, it’s clear that I could greatly benefit from having someone partner with me to turn this into a real journal paper. I partnered on a paper once before, with Craig Loehle, who has my eternal gratitude for all that he did. That paper, “Historical bird and terrestrial mammal extinction rates and causes“, was our (mostly his) transformation of my post entitled “Where Are The Corpses” … and it has garnered over 100 citations in the journals.
So if there is anyone out there with experience and knowledge who is willing to take on the most charming task of re-writing my first draft and submitting it to a journal, all I can offer is credit as the co-author … plus lots of work.
I would also extend the same offer regarding any of my 900+ posts on a host of subjects. Some of these are preliminary investigations, some are not far from complete journal articles, but all of them are written in my most idiosyncratic style which is nothing like the big-paragraph, thick turgid third-person prose favored by the journals.
Onwards, the hour is late, more tomorrow. My best regards to all,
w.
Willis –
Nitpick yes : A challengeable statement in your intro-
“The stability cannot be from simple thermal inertia, because the hemispheric land temperatures vary by ~ 20K over the year, and hemispheric sea temperatures vary by ~ 5K.”
That’s sea surface temperatures. Thermal inertia of the great oceans cannot be dismissed quite so lightly, even if on timescale that is tangential to the argument you present.
—
I agree with the various commenters who have proposed that you deal with prior work on thermoregulation in the body of your argument, rather than merely as references. That is what many reviewers will expect, and will be offended if you don’t.
I also think getting a couple of people to go through the paper and mark up suggested changes in the language, which you might then consider, would be a good idea. A sort of ‘proof read’ by knowledgeable folk who know what journals will look for, even if they themselves don’t know much about the subject of your work.
Good luck with this – I’m in awe of your grasp of issues, and your work rate!
Very nice theory which also really makes sense.
May I comment on “prediction 3”:
Prediction 3. Transient decreases in solar forcing such as those from eruptions will be counteracted by increased sunshine from tropical cumulus forming later in the day and less frequently…
I would replace the underlined phrase with something along these lines:
counteracted by increased sunshine due to the tropical cumulus forming later in the day…
(otherwise one could interpret it as though tropical cumulus leads directly to increased sunshine using the verb “from”)
Willis just stick to the numbers and graphs of your study. Then at end draw conclusions from the study. You want to report the data, and leave it for others to draw conclusions. At end you can add your own possible conclusions that the data might suggest.
There are mainly 2 steps
– report the data in a very and graphs in very mathematical way
– draw possible conclusions from data
Willis, I can just about follow the science, and you write very well. Thank you, as always.
A suggestion – I have done a good deal of manuscript editing of various kinds, and I have become used to having page numbers (at least) to allow me to find my way round. There aren’t any here. Would it make sense to number the paragraphs in the document, so that for the purpose of making comments, people could point to what they are talking about? I don’t know if this is possible with the software.
One point. After figure 1, in the paragraph beginning ‘this area-wide shift to an organised circulation pattern’, there is a sentence:
In addition, note that there are actually two distinct emergent phenomena in Panel 2—the Rayleigh-Bénard circulation which emerges prior to the cumulus formation, and which is enhanced and strengthened by the totally separate emergence of the clouds.
On first reading, it is not clear that the part of the sentence, after Panel 2 -, is about the two distinct emergent phenomena; the last half of the sentence, beginning ‘and which is…’ sounds like an elaboration of the first phenomenon, rather than the second phenomenon. I had to go back and reread to make sense of what I had read. Suggest a rewrite, something like:
the first of these is the Rayleigh-Benard circulation, which emerges prior to the cumulus formation; the second is the totally separate emergence of the clouds, which enhances and strengthens the first.
Best wishes for the submission, and the vagaries of peer-review in these times.
w – A brilliant paper, so I fear that you will have great difficulty publishing. Here’s a mixture of comments,in no particular sequence, for you to use or ignore as you wish. Apologies if I’m duplicating comments already made,
PS. Where I say that Ellis and Palmer “hint at the existence of your Emergent Thermostat”, it may be worth noting that this is both global and longer timescale. I suspect that rejection attempts will be based on the local (tropics) nature of most of your material and its very short timescales.
“nothing more solid than clouds” Don’t know if you have changed this; suggest “fluid phenomena” You will probably be tasked for the claim that includes “Nothing”, which is an absolute. There may be other absolute claims (all, no, none, everything, etc.) that should be changed.
After reading the comments, I hope you will repost with numbered paragraphs and pages, as suggested. I think the results of the comments will be a much improved read.