By Richard Willoughby
May 2021
(The author appreciates the availability NASA’s Earth Observations satellite data sets used in this analysis.)
This is a three part series that analyses the role of atmospheric water in regulating Earth’s thermal balance.
Part 3 Examines the global ocean energy balance over an annual cycle month-by-month to identify the role of atmospheric water in regulating the energy balance.
Part 3: On the role of Atmospheric Water – Albedo trumps Long Wave Absorption and Re-emission
A study of the top of atmosphere electro-magnetic radiated power flux over the global oceans covering a twelve month period from August 2019 to July 2020 reveals that water in the atmosphere provided net radiated energy loss over the annual cycle.
The cooling or heating effect of atmospheric water is found to respond to the ocean surface temperature with slightly less than one month time lag. The gradient of the radiated power loss with respect to the atmospheric water quantity varies from month-to-month and is introduced here as the Atmospheric Water Cooling Coefficient (AWCC).
(All data sourced for this study is available from NASA’s Earth Observations web site.)
Water in Earth’s Atmosphere
Water is a small but key constituent of Earth’s atmosphere. In the tropics, the total water mass distributed throughout the entire atmospheric column can be as high as 70kg/sq.m. That corresponds to 70mm or 7cm above any given surface area. At the poles, the atmosphere contains negligible water.
The water in the atmosphere can exist in three phases – gas, liquid and solid. When water evaporates from a surface, it enters the atmosphere as a gas commonly referred to as water vapour. When water vapour cools it will form a liquid condensate or solid ice depending on the atmospheric temperature where the phase change occurs. If the temperature is higher than 0C then the water vapour condenses to liquid water. If the temperature is lower than 0C then the water vapour solidifies to solid ice. Liquid water and solid ice in the atmosphere are the fundamental constituents of clouds.
Water in its three phases in the atmosphere has a profound effect on the global energy balance. All phases absorb and emit long wave electro-magnetic radiation (OLR) emitted from the surface of the earth and the atmosphere. The solid phase dominates the reflection of short wave electro-magnetic radiation (SWR) thereby reducing the insolation reaching the surface and absorbed by the oceans.
Atmospheric Water & Radiating Power
There are three electro-magnetic radiated power fluxes observed at the top of Earth’s atmosphere:
- Incoming short wave solar radiation
- Reflected short wave radiation
- Outgoing long wave radiation
The incoming insolation varies from 1320W/sq.m to 1420W/sq.m over an annual cycle due to the eccentricity in Earth’s orbit. The peak insolation occurs in early January in the present era. The area average over the spherical surface ranges accordingly from 330W/sq.m up to 355W/sq.m.
For the Earth to have a stable temperature, the incoming SWR from the sun must be balanced at the top of the atmosphere by reflected SWR and the OLR. However the insolation arriving is varying over a year resulting in energy being stored in the oceans when the insolation is high and then released when the insolation is lower. The high thermal inertia of the oceans dampens the surface temperature variation. An additional heat storage factor results from the distribution of water over the surface of the globe with the peak insolation occurring when the southern hemisphere, with its high proportion of surface water, has the highest exposure to the sun. Due to the variation in heat stored, variation in atmospheric water and global distribution of atmospheric water, it is possible to examine how atmospheric water alters Earth’s total radiated power flux (the sum of reflected SWR and OLR) throughout the year.
For convenience of analysis the year was considered in monthly intervals. The specific twelve months examined were August 2019 to July 2020. Over the twelve months, it was observed that the radiated power flux peaked in July 2020 at 360W/sq.m. in locations where atmospheric water ranged from 2cm to 3cm as displayed in Figure 13. For July 2020, there was a strong upward trend in radiating power with atmospheric water averaging 4.2W/sq.m/cm. This gives rise to the herein named coefficient, Atmospheric Water Cooling Coefficient (AWCC).
Figure 13: Radiated power flux above ocean surface as a function of atmospheric water content – July 2020. (Data courtesy NASA Earth Observatory 1X1 degree)
December 2019 also had peak radiated power flux of 360W/sq.m but the peak occurred in locations where the atmospheric water was less than 1cm per Figure 14.
Figure 14: Radiated power flux above ocean surface as a function of atmospheric water content – December 2019.
As shown in Figure 14, for December2019 the AWCC was minus 3.3W/sq.m/cm. Of the twelve months, nine had a positive cooling coefficient and three had a negative cooling coefficient. The average AWCC over the twelve months examined was 1.39W/sq.m/cm as displayed in Figure 15.
Figure 15: Radiated power flux above ocean surface as a function of atmospheric water content – combined twelve months August 2019 to July 2020. Excludes any location having sea ice coverage during any month of the period studied.
AWCC Response to Ocean Surface Temperature
Examining the way the AWCC varied over the twelve months, it became apparent that the AWCC is responsive to the ocean surface temperature so this was tested as observed in Figure 16.
Figure 16: Atmospheric Water Cooling Coefficient charted with average Ocean Surface Temperature over twelve months – August 2019 to July 2020 for AWCC and July 2019 to June 2020 for SST advanced 1 month
In Figure 16 the temperature has been advanced one month to time adjust the lagged response. There is a delay between the ocean surface temperature increasing and the increase in the AWCC of around 20 days so advancing the temperature by one month gives better alignment of the curves. Likewise a fall in ocean surface temperature leads to a reduction in the AWCC.
AWCC and “Greenhouse Effect”
NASA provides the following description for the “Greenhouse Effect”:
The greenhouse effect is a process that occurs when gases in Earth’s atmosphere trap the Sun’s heat. This process makes Earth much warmer than it would be without an atmosphere. The greenhouse effect is one of the things that makes Earth a comfortable place to live.
The main greenhouse gases are:
- Water vapor
- Carbon dioxide
- Methane
- Ozone
- Nitrous oxide
- Chlorofluorocarbons
During the day, the Sun shines through the atmosphere. Earth’s surface warms up in the sunlight. At night, Earth’s surface cools, releasing heat back into the air. But some of the heat is trapped by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That’s what keeps our Earth a warm and cozy 58 degrees Fahrenheit (14 degrees Celsius), on average.
Actual observed data shows that total ocean radiated power flux, the sum of OLR and reflected SWR, is positively correlated with water in the atmosphere over the twelve months examined. In fact the atmospheric water exhibits a regulating response to ocean surface temperature when area average is 18.5C with the AWCC positive above this value and negative below.
It is further noted that, like the twelve month total chart in Figure 15 and July chart in Figure 13, ten of the twelve individual months examined exhibited an increase in radiated power between locations having atmospheric water in the range 5 to 5.5cm and those locations above 5.5cm. That is the result of convective instability over tropical oceans.
Actual observations of the attributes of water in the atmosphere contradict the heat trapping assumption of atmospheric water described by the “Greenhouse Effect”. Water in the atmosphere is not heat trapping but rather a temperature regulating component that increases radiating power when the surface warms and reduces radiated power when the surface cools. Overall, atmospheric water is a cooling agent. Without atmospheric water, the surface of Earth’s oceans would be warmer than the current temperature, not cooler; atmospheric water is a surface temperature limiting agent with some precision at 30C (303K).
The concept of the “Greenhouse Effect” demonstrates a misunderstanding of how Earth’s average surface temperature is achieved. The energy balance of the oceans, and consequently the entire earth, are related primarily to the upper and lower thermostatic limits on ocean surface temperature. The area of 30C warm pools expand and contract in response to variation in the top of atmosphere insolation due to the orbital eccentricity combined with the extent of water surface exposed more directly to the sun. Sea ice expands and contracts in reverse to the warm pools but to reduce heat loss from water below the ice due to the low thermal conductivity of the sea ice. The temperature of the ocean water surface ranges from minus 2C (271K) to 30C (303K). It should be no surprise that the average surface temperature of the globe is 14C (574/2=287K) given the distribution of water having equatorial dominance over polar extent causing average ocean surface temperature higher than 14C and average elevation of land at 800m with more land at higher latitudes than equatorial resulting in average land temperature being slightly less than 14C.
Climate models are based on a flawed assumption. Until they can replicate the actual physics of deep convection tightly linked to surface temperature rather than the naive parameterisation of clouds they will remain nothing more than extended weather models with useful predictive ability of a few days.
Data Sources
https://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/view.php?datasetId=CERES_LWFLUX_Mhttps://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/view.php?datasetId=CERES_SWFLUX_Mhttps://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/view.php?datasetId=MYD28Mhttps://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/view.php?datasetId=MYD28M
I have used many months from these sets. All the charts and images are independently produced meaning not copied images from these links.
There is also data from the moored buoys that I refer to:https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/drupal/disdel/
My understanding is that the GCM programs cannot handle the phase changes in water vapor, which is a major reason for their not following reality.
Adding in the thermal inertia and feedbacks of oceans makes the problem of modeling even more difficult.
Tom, correct, Climate models cannot for a very basic reason. The phase changes (think a water vapor convection cell Tstorm forming first rain and then hail) happen on grid cell sizes far smaller than computationally tractable given the ironclad CFL constraint on numerical solutions to partial differential equations. By computational intractable, my previous posts on this specific estimated by six to seven Orders of Magnitude!
So, as discussed in my previous models posts here, models have to be parameterized. And parameterization automatically brings in the attribution problem—how much of what we observe is just natural variation?
The parameterization sets are also poorly contrained by observation and are also degenerate. Degenerate meaning different combinations of parameters seems to give similar outputs in the model runs. All this allows the modelers to tune away at will to achieve whatever in their opinion should be the output climate sensitivity to GHG forcing they wish. GCMs for projecting future global temps are total junk, even without considering Pat Frank’s demonstration of GCMs as statistical error propagation engines.
GCM cells have gotten smaller, but are still on the order of 100 km x 100 km x 20 km (vertical). Actually to model clouds would require grids of 10 x 10 x 10 meters. You might get by with 100 meters. So a minimum increase in computing power of 200 million times, but 200 billion would be better.
Actually, my past model posts illustrating the newest and best UK weather model suggested something between 2 and 4 km resolution suffices. And, as Feynman’s Lectures on Physics V2 Lectures on wet water Ch 41 (classic Feyman joke as V2 chapter 40 was ‘Dry Water’ without viscosity) especially last paragraph of last lecture, the result is unknowable at those scales. Feynman tried, experimentally, for several years after finishing his quantum chromodynamics.
I quote his final two first sentences plus the last from V2 Ch41.12 last paragraph on ‘Wet Water’ (my well thumbed Stanford version): “The next great wakening of human intellect may well produce a method of understanding the QUALITIVE content of equations. Today, we cannot… And so we can all hold strong opinions either way.”
Hmm. Mean summer cumulus clouds might average a rough cubic km, but median IMO would be smaller.
However, let’s be generous and call it km resolution. In that case 100x100x20 yields a mere 200,000-fold increase in computing power.
For convective clouds, I shall remain currently unopined regarding resolution needs. For clouds forming near and on geography, I cannot imagine anything at a scale cruder than just a few meters as useful. My personal bias lies in the millimeter range…
But that would still be only good for forecasting weather. For climate, we are part of a greater atmosphere, and we need to include everything in that atmosphere; planets, comets etc. Our weather is insignificant in the light of Sol’s weather.
But this series certainly cleared some things up, didn’t it?
about time they got process engineers with thermodynamic phase change models involved
This is not difficult
it is done all the time for petrochemical and oil and gas plants
not simple spreadsheets with correlations
proper Equations of state with proper computers
PS
Oil and gas reservoir modelling grid cells are much smaller than 100s of km and they definitely model phase changes in space and time
get proper petrophyscists not ecomonists to do the work
Experienced engineers are the only ones who should be allowed to build climate models.
That should be chemical engineers who understand thermodynamics, heat&mass transfer and fluid dynamics. Unfortunately, civil engineers do not have a clue (except some fluid dynamics) and give real engineers a bad name.
Rud, the main reason for the failure of climate models is their incorporation of CO2 which has an insignificant effect on climate other than promote the growth of vegetation both on land and in the oceans.
They would refuse to do something as so stupid as to attempt to model the Earth’s climate.
The significance of water lies in the fact that water vapour is lighter than air.
Consequently it facilitates convection wherever temperature declines with height.
Since it aids convection and allows radiation to space from the condensate at higher levels (and increases global albedo) it reduces the rate at which convection needs to run in order to return energy back to the surface in adiabatic descent so the convective overturning cycle can run less fast in a water world.
Mars has a thin atmosphere but no water so the convective overturning cycle has to run faster than it would with water vapour. The consequence is violent planet wide dust storms at regular intervals despite the thin atmosphere.
The importance of returning energy to the surface in adiabatic descent is that that is the process that enables radiation to space to match radiation in from space as per the Dynamic Atmosphere Energy Transport model created by me and Philip Mulholland.
When cold air descends onto the surface it doesn´t return energy to the surface. It´s the same as a fan blowing air on a surface, it cools. Add to that, it descends from altitude of very low temperature, so it´s more like a fan with an air conditioner blowing really cold air on a warm surface. Add to that, when rain falls it´s cooled water hitting the surface. *Everything* in the atmosphere cools the surface, there is no return of energy from the atmosphere, just cooling.
Descending air does not cool the surface because it warms adiabatically as it descends.
Therefore it actually reduces the cooling effect of surface radiation to space and the surface ends up warmer than it otherwise would be.
In the case of descending air that had previously been carrying water vapour it actually ends up warmer at the surface than when it first lifted up from the surface because the adiabatic lapse rate slope is different for descending dry air than it is for rising moist air.
That is why one gets high temperatures on the drier lee side of mountains.
I think Lit was just talking off the top of his/her head and has no actual knowledge of meteorology or atmospheric physics, because what he said is patently false and contrary to common experience.
…and maybe you and Stephen are trying to be too intellectual, and forgetting first principles?
But I await your demonstration of the exact:
Care to share your personal experience where adiabatic warming was proven to outpace energy absorption from near-surface? You do see how the two might “look the same”? Or how this would transfer heat upwards?
Just asking, I but sit at the footses of the goodly masters…
I have no idea what you are talking about.
“It´s the same as a fan blowing air on a surface, it cools.”
Fans do not automatically cool whatever surface they are blowing air onto.
Fans blow air.
If they are blowing hot air onto a cool surface, they warm that surface.
Like what happens in my convection oven, which cooks food far faster than the ones that do not have a fan in them blowing hot air onto the food.
If disagreeing with something someone says that is wrong, seems “too intellectual” for you, then you have a different definition of the word than I do.
As for first principles…my first principle of commenting is to say things that are true.
You attecked a layman using lay terminology, while anyone with half an understanding of the subject matter could deduce that the writer meant to question the issue of the cold upper air being “blown” (convected) onto the warm ground.
Now be nice and answer his question, maybe start by explaining to us the totally counterintuitive and stupid-sounding paradigm that high altitude gasses trap heat because they don’t radiate enough to outer space, but too much to the ground.
To a layman, it seems none of you think in 3d, all your theories are built on things you see on your screens. And none of you seem to have a friggin’ sense of humour! History is full of crackpot scientists, ya’ll sourpusses get so upset when challenged by outsiders.
There are numerous specific and common circumstances where warm winds blow over cool surfaces, or over cold air near the ground.
Every warm front does this.
Every cold front that passes through Florida brings cool to cold air.
At some point in the days that follow, the high moves east of the state and the winds swing around to an Easterly component.
Very often we wake up to a cold morning, and shortly after Sunrise, a warm winds blows in and heats up everything very quickly.
In Winter time when it is very cold with snow on the ground and rivers covered in ice, sometimes a cold front will have a stiff breeze from the south ahead of it, but no rain. This leads to some of the densest fog I have ever seen along the East River Drive in Philly, as the warm air is cooled below the dew point by conduction from the cold ground surfaces, and ice and snow.
Siroccos are hot winds from the Sahara Desert that blow over the colder waters of the Mediterranean and into Europe…
Freezing rain: When water that is above freezing falls onto ground surfaces that are below freezing.
I grew up in a place where it was common for snow to change to rain in the middle of a snow storm. Rain melts the snow, because it is warmer than the snow, and wet…
Are you done?
Specifying conditions where hot air is introduced to a cooler surface, has little bearing on the general case, where cold air is convected down onto warm surfaces, as is the general, median, non-specific situation on your general, median, non-specific day.
I still await your demonstration of
that shows how adiabatic heating surpasses the general cooling effect of COLD air convected down onto a warm surface.
Is there a question in there?
You do realize no one was talking about what you just said, don’t you?
Maybe since you imagined a conversation no one was having, you can just imagine my reply to you.
Otherwise, state what you are talking about in a coherent thought, and ask what you want to know.
Say air descends from the upper troposphere. The descending air warms adiabatically by as much as 9.8 C per km. of descent, which is a faster rate than the moist ascending air. It is also very dry, TOT being 10-20 ppm water content. When it reaches the sea surface, the resultant relative humidity is a measure of how much moist ascending air has been mixed in. But in general that descending air will have a low RH, which causes significant SST cooling by evaporation. That descending atmospheric parcel will also be relatively cloudless, this increasing incoming sunlight, which causes even more evaporation.
Net result a few random weather fronts, thunderstorms, and warmpools later is a heat balance achieved at about 65% cloud cover for the planet.
If the descending air contains cooled water droplets and/or ice/snow, it does indeed cool the surface if it makes it that far — cold downdrafts from a Tstorm are an obvious example.
Yes, that is an example of a local exception to the general rule.
A fan blowing onto a surface does not necessarily cool it.
If the air being blown around is warmer than the surface, it warms the surface.
Our perception of the effect of moving air is biased by the fact that our skin is always perspiring to some degree, and our body temp is generally warmer than the air temp, and the relative humidity is often less than 100%.
Where relative humidity is 100% or greater, it is impossible for evaporation to cool our body. In supersaturated conditions, water vapor condensing on our skin will actually warm us, in the inverse of the evaporative cooling process.
So, fans do not cool surfaces.
Air that is cooler than a surface does, and movement of the air brings more of it into contact with the surface and moves transferred heat away so the air in a thin layer clinging to the surface, does not stop the cooling process.
Evaporation of moisture can cool a moist surface very quickly, if the dew point is below the air temp. Otherwise not.
Air descending from aloft can very definitely warm the surface.
If you doubt it, check out a chinook or other katabatic wind sometime.
Chinook means “snow eater” in language of the Blackfoot people of the Columbia River basin.
High pressure alone can bring air to the surface that is warmer than the surface itself.
Santa Ana winds are an extreme example of what happens when you have high pressure at altitude and downslope winds.
Ask people that live where those winds blow if it feels like air conditioning.
You are letting your biases and limited viewpoint or experience to color your thinking on this subject. Or else you just forgot, IDK.
Rain brings cool water to the surface for several reasons, all of which relate back to the fact that rain starts out fairly high in the atmosphere, and most of the rain that falls starts out as snow or ice. Even in the Tropics and in Summer, air is almost always below freezing at any altitude above 5000 meters. 4000 to 4500 is more common and widespread over the globe as the max freezing height.
Rare conditions like atmospheric rivers can sometimes raise the freezing height by a few thousand meters, to as much as 8000 meters.
Between 20° S and 20° N latitude, the freezing level is within 300 meters of 4800 for most of the year.
Air compresses and warms as it descends. Water does not, plus it can undergo evaporative cooling as it falls, and can be rapidly transported to the surface from aloft by gravity plus downdrafts.
Another common phenomenon that occurs with precipitation is, the falling precip drags cold air from alonft down to the surface, even without any downdrafts.
Every couple of years in places like Philly, this phenomenon, which computer models have a hard time predicting, results in a surprise heavy snowfall where rain had been forecast. Typically in Early to mid Spring.
Santa Ana winds can be like a blast furnace.
Chinook winds can raise the surface temp 50 degrees in minutes, and melt a foot of snow like an ice cube tossed into an oven.
These occur all over the world.
Utterly ridiculous to state flatly that the atmosphere cannot warm the surface.
Exhibit 1,000,001 that the comments on this site are a true net benefit. It’s like a web site with great recipes, with comments from readers on how they improved the initial recipe with this or that ingredient or family secret, etc. Like that, but times a thousand.
(Didn’t this excellent three-part series arise from RickWill comments? Perhaps I have that wrong)
Three parter, yet brief and easy to understand. Well done.
I still maintain that “greenhouse effect” also mis states how a real greenhouse works. Null statement from every direction.
Thanks.
Dk, you are correct. A real greenhouse works by inhibiting convective cooling. The atmospheric GHE works by inhibiting radiative cooling. But we have been stuck since decades with the physically incorrect analogy. Similar to ocean acidification. Perhaps best to fight on other grounds.
Rud,
As usual, I am dragged slowly to a reasonable approach. I reserve the right to be grumpy about it. Cheers.
The atmospheric GHE of inhibited cooling also is dependent on sign of the adiabatic lapse rate.
In the stratosphere with a positive lapse rate (T goes up with increasing alt) the addition of a well-mixed, noncondensing IR-active gas (CO2) enhances cooling. There are effectvely no clouds and very tiny amount of wv in the stratosphere to complicate this radiative transfer process with convective heat transfer processes. The satellite-derived AMSU datasets (UAH for example) confirm the stratosphere has been cooling as expected.
The troposphere is another story and it is of course where we and all living things reside and the subject of the multi-trillion dollar climate scam by climate dowsers. The presence of copious amounts of constantly moving water vapor, with evaporation and condensation and albedo altering clouds at varying heights, are all consequential physical processes that a computer will never in our lifetimes be able to model on first principles. So the climate dowsers just fudge it. And they know it.
”GHE works by inhibiting radiative cooling.”
Can someone please explain to me exactly how this happens?
Considering….
1 Radiation moves at the speed of light
2 GHGs do not store the radiation but move it on at the same rate they absorb it.
3 If down-welling radiation warms the surface (as according to Wiki….”Part of this radiation is directed towards the surface, thus warming it”), would this not increase the radiation from the surface?
4 To put it another way, doesn’t the surface’s rate of radiation depend on how hot it is?
5 If it does not ”warm the surface, where does the energy from down-welling radiation get ”stored” or ”held” and in what form, and why and for how long?
Sorry for the simple questions.
It happens exactly like this: https://virakkraft.com/Modtran-surf.pdf
GHGs do not warm the surface. They reduce the net emission, i.e. reduce the cooling.
This raises minimum temp at night. But minimum temps are not a control knob for maximum temps, the sun is.
Rising minimum temps will increase mid-range temps but have little effect on anything other than increasing nighttime vegetation growth (i.e. better grain harvests and more food) and lowering deaths from cold temps.
This is why the mantra “the earth is burning up” is so false. It all stems from assuming that rising mid-range temps have to be from increasing max temps. Just look at all the studies on higher temperatures affecting grain harvests.
There is still cooling occurring by radiation even during the day — clear blue sky is quite cold infrared-wise even on a sunny day. So the surface is still radiating away more heat to that sky than it is receiving from it. Of course, even the small area of a blazing sun at a high angle will easily overcome that heat loss, but note that temps fall in the evening when the sun is still up but at a much lower angle — cooling then is greater than sun heating. Then obviously a clear sky at night is even much colder in infrared.
I don’t disagree with you. But it is still the sun (and clouds) that determines the maximum temps during the day. It is not the minimum temps at night that is the control knob for max daytime temps.
Max temperature also typically occurs after the sun has passed its zenith in the sky. And minimum temp typically occurs after the sun has risen as well.
Point 3 is wrong. from the 2nd law of thermodynamics in just about all places on Earth temperatures in the atmosphere are less than at the surface so there is no radiation directed from the atmosphere to the surface. Inversion occasionally occurs but the heat transfer form these are insignificant. It is a big lie promoted by some so-called “climate scientists” that radiation is equal in all direction. Heat flows from hot to cold and more heat will flow in the direction of biggest temperature difference. From the atmosphere eg clouds heat will flow to almost zero temperature space and not to the surface.
Point 5 The only down-welling radiation is from the sun and when the Earth has rotated away from the sun (ie at night) there is no down-welling radiation. .
The 2nd law is irrelevant in regards to this issue — anyone mentioning it means they don’t know what they’re talking about. Energy balance/conservation (1st law) is all that matters in this issue.
real greenhouses (the ones with Glass panels and wooden frames) are closed systems
the real world is an open system with absolute zero in space
If you want to cool objects on earth use your cold sink as space
a greenhouse only cools against glass through convective heat transfer through the glass
What is with all these downvotes today?
On comments that do not seem to have any sort of controversial content?
An atmosphere does act like a greenhouse in two ways.
Descending air (half the atmosphere at any given time) inhibits upward convection beneath it as does a greenhouse roof.
Descending air is clearer because clouds dissipate which allows solar energy in just as does a transparent greenhouse roof.
So, if an atmosphere is convecting as it must then the two necessary requirements are present.
Back in the 1960s that was my understanding of the use of the greenhouse analogy at that time. It was subsequently hijacked by radiative physicists who appear not to know any meteorology.
One minor quibble with “half the atmosphere at any given time”: Significant parts of the atmosphere are stable settled air at any given time (or nearly so or relatively so) and another large part is logically moving laterally at any given time.
Not that these motions are all operating separately of course…air can and does moves in every different which way, i.e. sideways and down, both at once.
Each parcel of moving air is displacing other parcels around it, shoving them aside, pulling them along behind, pushing them out ahead, etc.
And then there is turbulence…
Over time, air rising is balanced out by an equal amount of air descending, but not necessarily simultaneously.
Just sayin’.
Analogies do not have to be perfect to have value, and I see your point about “acting like” a greenhouse in the aspect you described.
But it can also be said that the atmosphere is unlike a greenhouse.
A greenhouse is an enclosed structure that does not allow lateral movement of air, or mixing of the air in the greenhouse with air adjacent to the greenhouse.
Greenhouse do physically trap air, and so impede greatly the ability of the air inside them that is warmed by solar energy, from being dissipated in all of the the same ways that occur in the open air.
Personally, I never got hung up, distracted, or misled by such terminology as “greenhouse effect”.
Because I have always understood it to be a mere analogy.
Other such analogies in common usage abound, and do not seem to cause people to become confused or angry, or insist others stop using them.
We use figures of speech and idiom all the time in nearly every thing we talk about.
But others seem to think that some people are misled, and do get hung up, or that it is distracting to use such terminology or analogies.
One reason they think this is because analogies can be carried too far, or taken literally, or be used to make unwarranted leaps of logic, such as speaking about CO2 “trapping” heat.
Inside a greenhouse, it is far warmer than outside, during the daytime, even when it is a cloudy day. I know this not from reading it but by building(personally, hammered every nail, wrenched every bolt, set every post, bought and connected every pipe and wire…many miles of each) over 80,000 square feet of enclosed structures, and working inside them all day long for years on end.
But it can also be colder inside one at night than outside.
Not by a lot, and I am not talking about from the air outside getting warmer in the middle of the night either.
Just that the glass or plastic itself can be a better radiator than the ground outside I suppose.
The only way anyone would ever know this, unless one read it, would be to have oodles of thermometers everywhere, and to be the kind of person who walked around looking at thermometers all day and all night, every day, for years on end.
Although a random look or two every now and then would allow one to notice it eventually.
And in case you think I am making that up, or am the only one who ever saw such a thing…
https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/grapevine/forum/on-the-plot/undercover-operations/4813-colder-inside-the-greenhouse-than-out
https://www.growingreenhouse.com/my-greenhouse-is-colder-than-outside-why/
Of course, it is easy to keep this from happening, and only occurs under certain conditions, but generally an unheated greenhouse will be close to the outside temp at night, once the heat of the day has had time to dissipate, if no provision for heating it, or storing daytime heat, is made.
Concrete floors work great, as does adding humidity.
Both also work to keep daytime temp from getting as hot.
To be fair, it’s a metaphor, not a misstatement.
Nobody (outside of a few poorly informed journalists) claims that physical greenhouses and the atmospheric greenhouse effect work the same way at a literal level.
Everyone knows that greenhouses inhibit cooling by blocking convection and the atmospheric greenhouse effect inhibits cooling by slowing radiative cooling. This was even explained in an IPCC report.
Slowing cooling of something subject to ongoing energy input results in warming, regardless of the mechanism by which cooling is reduced. It’s at this level of metaphor and high-level similarity that the effect is referred to as a “greenhouse effect.”
Bob,
My grumpiness has to do with giving up an unnecessary point by using the metaphor as if it was actually a good one.
Indeed, when I tried to articulate the reason for my grumpiness recently, on WUWT, I got pushback, even though as you say “everyone agrees” on how a greenhouse really works.
I agree that nobody really means that the metaphor works, I just get grumpy when even I get a sense that some people are allegedly reasoning as if it were literally true, and I have to go along with it.
Thanks, I believe you, and agree with you and Rud about it not being a useful approach. But I think I will continue to be grumpy about even using or hearing the term. I appreciate your attempt to help, but my condition is probably terminal.
At this late date, not much point in getting in a snit over it, dk.
I wish I had a nickel for every fruitless and pointless argument, discussion, explanation, or explication of this topic that has occurred.
I would have long since accumulated every nickel in existence.
Nicholas,
Sir Thomas More
Blocking cooling at night only affects minimum temperatures. The sun is still the control knob for maximum temps. Minimum temps going up doesn’t mean maximum temps go up by the same amount or even go up at all.
What this does is cause mid-range temps to go up – which it seems everyone assumes means maximum temps are going up and the earth will turn into a cinder.
If the CGM’s would actually predict max and min temps (or even max and min anomalies) instead of mid-range anomalies they would give a far better picture of what is happening to the earth’s climate.
“If the CGM’s would actually predict max and min temps (or even max and min anomalies) instead of mid-range anomalies they would give a far better picture of what is happening to the earth’s climate”
As Pat Frank has shown, the GCMs are a priori hopeless at giving a picture of what is happening to the earth’s climate due to the compounding of model error through time. However, I agree it would be interesting to know if the models are overstating CO2’s warming effects via over estimation of Tmax, Tmin or both.
The GHGases let the sunshine in, and inhibit the escape of heat. As long as you stick to this bit of simple analogy, GHE is appropriately descriptive shorthand. I don’t think anyone would have any objection to a better descriptive term…..got one ?
DMac,
Actually, since you brought it up, the generalization is also a problem for me. Water vapor obviously acts differently than CO2, which is also different than CO, and NH3, O3, and HFCs have yet different effects, although journalists can’t seem to decide which way those are supposed to go, and apparently not all HFCs are created equal. So yes, I think that the proper way to address the behavior of each, scientifically, is as their proper chemical names, mostly H2O or CO2.
We’ve seen in these pages numerous times from several lines of reasoning that each substance behaves slightly differently under different conditions. Claims made for GHG generally don’t apply to all of them, so, while I still admit to grumpy pedantry, I don’t think that the generalized term should be used in a scientific conclusion. Maybe a fake journalist, but not for precise usage.
I’ve already lost this argument, I know. But my grumpiness is terminal. Thanks for trying to help.
There is a lot to like in this three part quantification of water vapor as an important GHE.
Qualitatively, the WV GHE is easy to describe and verify. Night time temperatures drop much more sharply in desert conditions than coastal conditions, because there is little desert water vapor to inhibit night time radiative OLR cooling.
Quantitatively, there are some additional things to consider not mentioned in this series:
AR4 made clear that models assume humidity remains constant with lapse rate. That assumption is almost certainly false, as was shown in the climate chapter of Arts of Truth. It declines, a reason models run hot and a reason the modeled tropical hot spot does not exist observationally.
Water vapor is also responsible for cloud feedback. Models assume positive (working back from AR4 ECS~3 (so Bode f/(1-f) 0.65), and AR4 saying water vapor feedback about doubling the no feedback ECS (using 1.2C no feedback from Lindzen 2012 UK lecture and Bode model) 1.2*2=2.4=> Bode 0.5, meaning (since Bode is linear additive) AR4 cloud feedback must be 0.15, since AR4 had everything else cancelling out to about net zero.
Dessler actually showed in 2010 that cloud feedback was about zero.
That leaves the question, how much WVF in reality. ARGO salinity suggests about half of modeled, since we can now show with reasonable certainty that ocean precipitation, one of the three main ARGO design goals, (which reduces mixed layer salinity) is about twice what CMIP5 modeled. So Bode WVF must be about 0.5/2= 0.25, which using Lindzen 2012 gives an ECS of about 1.7, just about what the observational energy budget models provide.
Interesting but not logically surprising finding here in part 3 that atmospheric water vapor follows SST fairly closely with a bit of a lag. Any farmer knows rate of evapotranspiration is a function of temperature; this post shows that also holds true for ocean simple evaporation, not just land.
I have wondered about ocean rain and evaporation, not much to do watching the ocean most of the time. Is the latent heat of evaporation the same for salt water? Even if so how do you measure it with all the differences in mixing, pans don’t stay very stable either on a boat or water surface? Are the available evaporation averages, etc. based more on assumptions than measurements?
Nobody knew. That is why one of the three main design objectives of ARGO was upper ocean salinity, aka ‘ocean fresh water pool’. For details see my long past WUWT essay ‘ARGO, fit for purpose?’.
There are a few aspects that can be nailed down. Earth does not lose a high amount of water compared with what gets cycled. That means what goes up has to come down. For it to come down, it must cool. Really the only way the atmosphere cools on a large scale is by long wave emissions. There can be some cooling near the surface when warm air moves across cooler surface but that does not happen to any significant degree over oceans.
It is reasonable to consider all of the OLR leaving the atmosphere over tropical oceans and even subtropical oceans is solidifying or condensing water. The high level cloud over tropical warm pools limits OLR to average around 210W/sq.m. As noted in Part 2 that will condense 7.3mm/day. So on average, that is also the rainfall limit in those regions. Once the OLR is up around 280W/sq.m it may not be all emitted from the atmosphere so is not contributing completely to condensing water.
The warm pools record up to twice that rainfall due to the convective air converging moist air from adjacent zones that are a degree or two cooler.
The moored buoys provide a lot of useful data. For example the mixed layer is shallower in the diverging zones like the Nino 34 region than the converging zone like the Nino4 region. You can also observe a significant difference between air and water temperature in the converging zones because the rain cools the air more than water at 1m. The air and water temperature in the diverging zone is almost the same. They also have rainfall data. I regard the moored buoys as an accurate source of data but a bit unreliable because there is a reasonable amount of missing data.
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/drupal/disdel/
Attached shows difference between air and SST at 1m from a buoy often in a warm pool in the Pacific.
There are a couple of others ways to make reasonable estimates of evaporation rates looking at energy balance, atmospheric water content and average windspeed.
Remember, what goes up has to come down. The problem is that water does not necessarily come down in the same place it went up and the time can be way off. The atmosphere has about a 5mm annual variation in water content and it does not start every year at the same point.
Due to its latitude, proximity to deserts and enclosed body of water, the Persian gulf has one the highest salinities together with the Red Sea and eastern Mediterranean . These seas have saline concentrations of 39 parts per thousand. The average ocean salinity is 35 ppt. Dissolved salt lowers the vapour pressure of water, decreasing evaporation and increasing the temperature required to produce a certain vapour pressure. This should increase the surface sea temperature needed to produce the low density humid air needed for convection and resultant cooling.
The reason salinity is so high is because there is nothing limiting evaporation. The Persian Gulf undergoes such high rates of evaporation that it sets up a strong net inflow from the Arabian Sea during the boreal summer. The summer salinity is actually lower than the winter salinity because of the inflow.
The sea level relative humidity is similar to tropical waters;
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2020/08/26/0700Z/wind/surface/currents/overlay=relative_humidity/orthographic=-302.41,27.16,1951/loc=53.049,26.335
84% is typical for tropical oceans
The mid level RH is a different story and nothing like what is observed over tropical oceans.
Very interesting.
The question that needs asking is what are the real motives of the IPCC in clearly “Cooking the books”.
Is it all a Communest plot from the remaining ” true believers”” .
Or is it the “”bleeding hearts”” who want ever more from the once rich West to the so calked undeveloped 3 rd world countries.
Certainly it has nothing to do with climate & saving the pkanet.
So why do the politicians in the West go along with this giant Con Job.
Is it just the usual ” Vote for me””.
Vk5ellmje
You ask, “So why do the politicians in the West go along with this giant Con Job”.Not all politicians “go along”, In the USA most liberal democrats “go along”, actually promoting it by supporting funding for grant seeking scientists that spin the global warming/climate change narrative as payback for the funding. That is basically harmless, a few $billion/year, a hoax but an affordable one.
The big problem is these same liberal democrats use this non-existential, minimal anthropogenic warming as justification for spending $trillions on worth than nothing wind and solar. Which in turn provides generous campaign contribution from the sunshine and breezes fraudsters.
The West political leadership is dominated by liberals and consistently supported by the liberal MSM. Our general population continues to dumb down by the false climate narrative fed to our students at the Liberal Indoctrination Centers, formerly schools and universities, so we ended up with the Green New Deal. This economically inefficient insanity has the potential to lead us into a deep dark depression (IMHO).
Dessler also has surface temperature, water vapor and, albedo feedbacks that could easily be the result of cloud cover changes. So saying the answer is zero is really just a wild guess. See fig.1 here.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/26/1/jcli-d-11-00640.1.xml?tab_body=pdf
Rud – I appreciate your comment.
I thought I would state my heresy very clearly here.
I do not believe that “Greenhouse Effect” has any place in a scientific discussion on climate. It is misguided. It is not part of the puzzle. It is misdirection.
Water is the essential EMR responsive substance, in all phases, in the atmosphere. It is essential to driving the heat engine creating the “condensing” stage that pumps water up into the atmosphere. Ice, water and water vapour all provide the atmospheric cooling essential to deep convection. Water in the atmosphere is essential to forming the upper temperature limit of the ocean surface. Sea ice is essential to forming the lower temperature bound of surface water.
The “Greehouse Effect” is a convoluted story to explain how it is possible to have a radiating temperature colder than the surface temperature. It is based on averages that completely misses the big energy stores in the ocean. Remember the early models were just atmospheric. Dismissing the oceans in any study of climate is beyond naive – how long did it take for James Hansen to go looking for the his “missing heat” in the oceans.
There are many parallels between “Greenhouse Effect” and Ptolemaic astronomy. The story becomes ever more convoluted to fit observation with models. Global warming, climate change, climate weirding, global heating. Some might not distinguish between warming and heating but warming requires a measured temperature change, easily verified, while heating can occur without a temperature change – so heating appears to be the new scary term.
So what is more likely? Ocean temperature upper of limit of 303K and lower limit of 271K to give a surface area average somewhere in the middle near 287K – both limits observable any day at any time across the globe usually in all three tropical oceans and their poles OR a difference between the surface temperature at 287K and radiating temperature of 255K being set by some delicate balance of so-called “Greenhouse Gasses” setting the 33 degree difference while there is absolutely no variation in the incoming ToA insolation or change in reflectivity.
For a moment, just dismiss the”Greenhouse Effect” as flat earth nonsense and take a look at ocean temperature limits with the knowledge that the average surface temperature, as best as can be gauged, is smack in the middle. So you simply accept the obvious untainted by your education. Then I come along being paid a bundle of money to convince you otherwise. I prevent any open discussion on alternatives to my “Greenhouse Theory”. and I pay literally thousands of people to confirm my belief and they will only be paid while they confirm my belief.
All that to say how did ECS ever get into a scientific discussion on climate? Even using that term means you have been tinged by those paid to sell a religious belief.
I do not know if CO2 can alter cloud dynamics or other aspects that might mean there is something scientific behind the term ECS but I completely dismiss any notion of a “Greenhouse Effect”. ALL the evidence points to far more powerful forces at play that keep Earth cozy and will not be disturbed in significant ways by adding a few more molecules fundamental to life on Earth.
Huzzah!
Ptolemaic Model + Forced Acceptance = Lysenkoism
“The area of 30C warm pools expand and contract in response to variation in the top of atmosphere insolation due to the orbital eccentricity combined with the extent of water surface exposed more directly to the sun. “
orbital eccentricity????
I think you mean the current ~23º obliquity (axis tilt) which drives the hemispheric seasonal patterns of Winter-Spring-Summer-Fall over the Earth’s 365 days, 5 hours, 59 minutes and 16 seconds solar orbit.
Eccentricity, one of the other Malinkovitch factors, currently dampens the insolation effects of obliquity for the Northern Hemisphere seasons by placing aphelion in early July, and perihelion in early January.
Joel, I don’t understand the distinction that you make between insolation effects of eccentricity and those of obliquity. Short words, again, for my benefit?
When something is in orbit around Earth, the orbit could be the same distance from Earth, but it also can closer and further away from Earth, and how much difference of distances is called the eccentricity of it’s orbit. Or if no difference of distance of orbit the eccentricity is 0.0
When an orbiting object is closest to Earth it’s at perigee {close to Gee {Earth} and when orbit is furthest from Earth it’s called Apogee.
The Moon’s perigee distance from Earth is about 363,300 km and Moon’s apogee distance is about 405,500 km from Earth.
Moon’s orbital eccentricity is: 0.0549
And if talking about an orbit around the Sun instead it called Perihelion and Aphelion [helion = Sun- or our star which also called, Sol].
In Earth orbit around Sun, it’s Perihelion is 147.092 million km and it’s distance from the Sun at Aphelion is 152.099 million km
And Earth’s orbit around the Sun has eccentricity of 0.0167.
In terms of Milankovitch cycles, Earth orbit is will get less eccentricity or it had more eccentricity thousands of years ago.
Another way to express distance is AU, wiki:
“The astronomical unit was originally conceived as the average of Earth’s aphelion and perihelion; however, since 2012 it has been defined as exactly 149597870700 meters”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit
Earth at Perihelion is 0.9833 AU and at Aphelion is 1.017 AU
And solar constant is considered to be at distance of 1 AU and is 1.361 kilowatts per square meter.
And at 0.9833 AU, it’s 1,413 watts per square meter
And Aphelion, 1.017 AU, it is 1,321 watts per square meter.
The maximum extent of warm pools is in April. That peak insolation occurs early January – related to eccentricity. The maximum ocean surface exposure to the sun is also around January and this is a result of obliquity and the high proportion of surface water in the Southern Hemisphere.
Ocean heat uptake peaks in April after the sun zenith moves north of the Equator. Peak ocean temperature is reached in July or August as a result of warm water in the vicinity of the northern land masses at high latitude – probably a combination of warm runoff and poor ocean mixing due to the buoyancy of the fresh water. Some areas of the ocean near the big land masses increase by 6C from June to July. That means the mixing layer must be quite shallow and/or the water was warm as it entered.
I’ve enjoyed your analysis in this series. Yet, in the end, you seem to depart from that analysis and make unjustified logical leaps.
You seem to be insisting on a false dichotomy. Why couldn’t water in the atmosphere have both a heat trapping and a temperature regulating role? It’s almost certainly the case that water in the atmosphere has both these roles.
You’re deducing this based on observing that your Atmospheric Water Cooling Coefficient (AWCC) is, on average, positive? Or on something else?
If so, you seem to be applying suspect reasoning on a couple of levels.
You’ve looked at a correlation between Total Precipitable Water and Total Radiated Flux, in a context of geographic and seasonal variations.
It’s not necessarily valid to assume that they way these quantities vary together in the setting you examined (geographic and seasonal variations in the context of one overall set of climatic conditions) necessarily tells you how these quantities will relate in the context of changing climatic driving forces. (This is similar to the false assumption of equivalence that perceived Willis Eschenbach as engaging in, which my modeling showed did not necessarily lead to valid predictions in a context of changing climatic forcing.)
There is also a potential partial confusion of cause and effect. Higher insolation will tend to make both the surface and the atmosphere hotter, which will tend to drive more water into the atmosphere, and the higher atmospheric temperature will tend to increase OLR, on average. So, water vapor regulating the temperature, or are water vapor and OLR and cloud cover both varying with temperature? There is a relationship, but you haven’t clearly established anything beyond a correlation.
Well, no. Without greenhouse gases interfering with longwave emissions to space, there is no mechanism that could keep the surface as warm as it is. One can legitimately debate about the value of “climate sensitivity.” But, basic physics doesn’t leave room for any question that greenhouse gases overall are responsible for substantially warming the planet—and water vapor is the single most powerful greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere.
You’re looking at the a partial derivative of emitted radiation with respect to water vapor in one context and assuming that this tells you about the partial derivative of temperature with respect to water vapor in a different context. Unfortunately, complicated dynamical systems seldom reward imprecise reasoning by allowing such imprecise reasoning to give valid answers.
If your hypothesis were valid, this would not be a refutation of the “Greenhouse Effect”; it would be an elaboration of the total context in which the “Greenhouse Effect” operates. The “Greenhouse Effect” needs to be operating for the average temperature to get above 0℃.
Maybe, it could be the case that the dynamics you talk about modulate the net effect of the “Greenhouse Effect” to regulate the Earth’s temperature within the range 2-30℃. It wouldn’t be about eliminating the Greenhouse effect, but about modulating it.
And, this regulation, as far as I can tell, remains simply a hypothesis, rather than something you’ve in any way proven.
I’m interested in the argument that you’re making, but I don’t think you’ve proven your case.
I’m curious about how your hypothesis explains SSTs during the Cretaceous era? Apparently there is evidence for SSTs greater than 35℃ during that period.
Such evidence would seem to suggest that an SST limit of around 30℃ is in some way an artifact of modern climatic conditions, and not an inherent limitation imposed by the physics of deep convection.
Bob
There is heaps of this that I can take apart with real information but I will just choose a couple:
This is incorrect. You are conveniently forgetting what water does as clouds. They reflect 30% of the incoming insolation. You simply dismiss all of that energy as not being available. It would nearly all make it to the surface if there was no water in the atmosphere. Take all the insolation to the surface and then do an EMR energy balance of full insolation at all latidudes and see what the average becomes.
You asked:
It is based on the average over a year. Certainly the year analysed, it was not heat trapping. It was cooling. Without water in the atmosphere, the surface would have been warmer.
I wrote this above and repeat here:
So what is more likely? Ocean temperature upper of limit of 303K and lower limit of 271K to give a surface area average somewhere in the middle near 287K – both limits observable any day at any time across the globe usually in all three tropical oceans and their poles OR a difference between the surface temperature at 287K and radiating temperature of 255K being set by some delicate balance of so-called “Greenhouse Gasses” setting the 33 degree difference while there is absolutely no variation in the incoming ToA insolation or change in reflectivity.
For a moment, just dismiss the”Greenhouse Effect” as Ptolemaic nonsense and take a look at ocean temperature limits with the knowledge that the average surface temperature, as best as can be gauged, is smack in the middle. So you simply accept the obvious untainted by your education. Then I come along being paid a bundle of money to convince you otherwise – educate you in the new religion. I prevent any open discussion on alternatives to my “Greenhouse Theory”. and I pay literally thousands of people to confirm my belief and they will only be paid while they confirm my belief.
In you case you have just waved off 30% of the incoming insolation as not being regulated by water in the atmosphere. You take cloud cover as fixed unmoved by surface temperature. I have demonstrated that cloud cover is tightly linked to surface temperature.
They reflect 30% of the incoming insolation. You simply dismiss all of that energy as not being available.
He quite correctly dismissed it. It is reflected, THEREFOR it is not available. Arguing that it would nearly all make it to the surface if there was no water vapour is pointless. There IS water vapour and it IS reflected. As you’ve just admitted, it DOESN’T make it to the surface. You CANNOT do an energy balance at surface by including energy that you’ve just admitted is reflected and doesn’t get there in the first place!
You’ve constructed a circular argument that is self falsifying.
What is reflecting the SWR? That is my point. Take clouds out of the picture (water as condensate or solid) and near all insolation makes it to the surface.
That is the point I am making. To view atmospheric water as warming is absurd when water is the fundamental composition of clouds with enormous reflective power.
What is reflecting the SWR?
It doesn’t matter in the least what is reflecting it. The only thing that matters is that it is reflected. As it is reflected, it is not involved AT ALL in the energy balance at surface. Which leaves you with a whole lot of explaining to do as to how the surface got to that temperature without any of that reflected energy. This is an absurdly simple concept.
Where do you get that number from? According to numbers I’ve seen, clouds reflect 17% of incoming insolation, 8% is backscattered by the air, and the surface reflects around 6%. (Ice doesn’t account for too much of that surface reflectivity because it’s mostly in areas where insolation levels are relatively low.)
If I take all the insolation to the surface, the temperature comes out at about 9℃, which would still leave 5℃ of warming to be explained to get to the Earth’s mean temperature.
But, if I account for non-cloud albedo, the temperature comes out to -1℃. So, there’s about 15℃ of warming that needs to be accounted for, in the absence of water and other GHG in the atmosphere.
Yes, clouds do “regulate” 17% of insolation. But, that’s a cooling effect that needs to be offset by some warming effect (totaling around 33℃), in order to explain the observed temperatures.
Ok, you averaged AWCC over a year.
With respect, AWCC doesn’t provide any information to allow one to assess whether heat trapping was occurring. Why do you assume it does?
To figure out how much, if any, “heat trapping” is occurring, you would need to have some sort of model which relates “heat trapping” to the observations. You seem to have simply assumed that a positive AWCC means “no heat trapping” without any underlying theory to justify assuming that AWCC relates to “heat trapping.”
How does the idea of it being natural that there is “a surface area average somewhere in the middle near 287K” explain the large variations in in the “surface area average” temperature over various geological eras?
As far as I’m aware, nobody claimed that there is “no variation in the incoming ToA insolation or change in reflectivity.”
Again, you seem to be setting up a false dichotomy. There is no reason whatsoever why it can’t be the case that both water cycle effects and greenhouse gas effects play roles in determining planetary temperature.
Unfortunately, accepting what is “intuitively obvious” has been leading people to false conclusions since the the beginning of the human race. It’s the sort of logic that leads people to believe in a “flat Earth”, despite educated people having known the Earth was round for thousands of years.
Nobody is paying me to believe anything. I’m doing my best not to believe or reject anything without checking assumptions.
I’m checking the logic of things I hear with what I learned as a physicist and as a mathematician before any of the current controversy about climate arose.
I’m not saying there couldn’t be some merit in what you’re saying.
But, I’m saying that you haven’t made your case yet, as far as I can tell.
I didn’t say that the 17% reflected by clouds is “not being regulated by water in the atmosphere.”
What I said that this cooling effect needs to be compensated for by some warming effect to explain Earth’s temperature.
And that, from first principles, it is clear that greenhouse gases have a warming effect, even if some detailed dynamics are up for debate.
You seem to simply assume that I’m doing that. I do not “take cloud cover as fixed unmoved by surface temperature.” That’s not part of any of the arguments that I’m making.
I’m not disputing that the water cycle impacts climate and temperature.
Up to a point, I’m completely agreeing with you. Then, at some point, you’re making some logical leaps.
I’m sorry if it’s frustrating, but I’m not prepared to follow you across some of those leaps.
I want to be with you. I’ve just had too much experience of how easy it is to reach false conclusions, if one isn’t careful enough of one’s logic.
Sigh.
I agree that that’s the case, within the context of our current climate.
I’m curious about how that relationship between cloud cover and surface temperature would change if, for example, the average temperature of the upper troposphere increased. Would the same relationship between cloud cover and surface temperature hold? Maybe, maybe not. I’d need to learn more to be confident about the right answer.
“and the surface reflects around 6%.”
But that’s of the 340. 12-13% of the available solar at the surface is reflected, so I think the no-water atmosphere would give more like -4 C.
Or wait, 341*0.92*0.875=274.5 absorbed by the surface. That’s down to -9 C
Bob wrote:
In Part 3, I identify that atmospheric water is able to BOTH warm and cool the surface of the oceans. For the year I considered, I found a net cooling.
The key point you are not getting is that the open ocean surface is limited to a peak of 32C and an annual average peak of 30C. It is OBVIOUS that this occurs and it is not going to change. The heat engine that creates this condition has enormous power.
I have given sound evidence for the actual process using data from the moored buoys and what I consider to be the exact process based on atmospheric physics.
If you took the time to go through the atmospheric physics I present, you would know that I have already provided the answer to your question:
The average temperature of the upper troposphere is fixed by the surface conditions. They are temperate and pressure. Both essentially fixed at warm pools.
The upper troposphere RH over warm pools cycles from 100% at cloudburst to something less than that before the next cloudburst. Nothing is going to change those conditions. The driving force is powered by a 210W/sq.m heat engine – in no way trivial.
The LFC is a function of the surface pressure, surface temperature and vapour pressure of water at various temperature – a physical property of water that is not going to change. When the LFC approaches the altitude of freezing, the clouds become persistent and radiative balance goes negative. – meaning that state will not persist.
You have to get away from”Greenhouse Effect” mindset. The ocean surface temperature has a fixed range – lower limit 271K; upper limit 303K (with temporary spikes to 305K). Who needs a “Greenhouse Effect” to make up the difference from the 255K radiating temperature to the “cozy” 287K when the 287K is right in the middle of the ocean surface temperature limits?
You established that AWCC can be either positive or negative, and you found a net positive.
With respect, you have not clearly established the significance of AWCC relative to the claims that you are making.
I am totally getting that that’s your premise. I’m (mostly) not disputing that premise.
It’s obvious to me that it occurs.
As far as “it is not going to change”, that’s obvious to you, and not yet obvious to me. The idea that it’s an invariant that could never change is difficult to reconcile with data from the Cretaceous Era. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Agreed.
I carefully went through your Part 2 posting, but I found it unclear or at odds with other sources in some places (hence my questions).
You discuss the physics in the vicinity of a warm pool. However, in the current atmosphere, the upper troposphere temperature is relatively stable across latitudes. It seems to be a global phenomenon, not just a feature of the warm pools.
It’s not obvious to me how that global phenomenon changed during ice ages and “hot house” periods in Earth’s history.
Nor, is it obvious to me how the global phenomenon might have interacted with the atmospheric dynamics near “warm pools.” Maybe it had little affect—but maybe it did. (If it did, that might explain the data from the Cretaceous Era.)
Thanks for summarizing.
One question I have about this is why the LFC needs to approach the altitude of freezing. Why wouldn’t it suffice for the altitude of freezing to be anywhere in the zone between the LFC and the EL (equilibrium level)?
You might be right that this process doesn’t depend on anything else in the planetary climate. But, until I know how to explain the higher SST temperatures during the Cretaceous Era, I’m going to find it hard to relax into trusting that that is the case.
I’m not in a “Greenhouse Effect” mindset. I’m in a mindset of “Any valid answer to a physics problem better be able to address any valid questions, or at least point the way towards how such questions could be answered.”
There are multiple valid and very important questions that your hypothesis does not yet answer:
Rick,
I think I’ve you’ve some nice work in organizing your data and presenting this series of posts. Given my limited background, I will need to review these again in depth, but my initial take is that you have provided evidence, as have Wille Eschenbach and Richard Linden, that the hydrological system in its entirety provides a powerful negative feedback to any increase in atmospheric CO2. This means that rather than overthrowing the “Ptolemaic” Green House Effect, you’ve demonstrated that the “Keplerian” interpretation of GHE is incorrect.
Here are a couple of calculations for you to ponder.
Insolation on tropical ocean surface is taken same as the ToA at 1360W/sq.m – no cloud reflection because there is no atmospheric water. Average of 24 hours is 1360*0.32 = 435W/sq.m. Emissivity of ocean surface 0.9. Radiative balance 304K. About 1 degree warmer than observed. Atmospheric water is a cooling agent over the tropics.
Take global area average of 340W/sq.m gives 286K. About 1 degree cooler than observed. So water in the atmosphere is cooling the tropics and warming the higher latitudes.
There are a variety of issues with those calculations.
So, you’ve basically “cooked the books” to get the temperatures you’re reporting. Valid calculations yield significantly lower temperatures for radiative balance.
I’d also like to point out that, even if your calculations were correct, and water had a net cooling effect in the tropics, that would not mean that water wasn’t contributing to heat retention in the tropics. It would mean that the net cooling effect was slightly exceeding the heat retention effect of water in the atmosphere.
Because of the reflection of sunlight by clouds, the radiative-balance temperature in the tropics would be considerably lower, and heat-retention by water vapor would need to compensate for that lost insolation to explain the observed temperatures. You’d need both GHG effects and other effects to explain what is happening.
Given that your calculations are wrong (overestimating radiative-balance temperatures), this is even more true: both GHG-warming and water-cycle cooling play roles in explaining the observed temperatures. There is a net warming effect at all latitudes, though the warming is higher at higher latitudes.
Using your numbers for the parameters and taking the average insolation at 1366W/sq.m to be more precise, the temperature of the tropical oceans without water in the atmosphere would average at 293K and global average 278K. Both are well above the claimed 33 degrees Celsius attributed to the “Greenhouse Effect”
I have shown in Part 3 that atmospheric water is BOTH a cooling and warming agent about 18.5C average SST. On average, it is was a cooling agent for the year I looked at.
What is plainly obvious, is that the ocean surface warm pools never exceed 32C and they average at 30C. The area extent of the warm pools is indicative of the excess of the available energy being rejected.
The average temperature of the Earth is not some delicate balance as the result of the “Greenhouse Effect”. It is quite simply the result of warm pools regulating to 303C and sea ice forming at 271K.
That result isn’t fully using “my numbers.” It appears you’re using a non-cloud albedo of 0.08. (Even then, your 278K appears to be a degree too high.) My source had asserted a non-cloud albedo of 0.14. The 0.08 number was for the air back-scatter or ocean-surface reflection; you’ve included only one of these.
If one assumes a non-cloud albedo of 0.14, one gets 288K for tropical oceans, and 271K globally.
True, and not particularly meaningful.
The 33℃ is the claimed greenhouse effect including water-cycle effects. You’ve removed the hydrological-cycle effects, so there is no reason to expect a match to that number.
The 271K figure is 17℃ cooler than the observed mean global temperature.
When you add hydrological-cycle effects, that produces an additional 16℃ of cooling (due to increased albedo), which leads to the requirement that greenhouse effects account for 33℃ of warming to explain observed temperatures.
What you showed was that the AWCC, the slope of radiated flux vs. precipitable water, is positive above 18.5℃ average SST, and that the AWCC was positive when averaged over the year.
I think where we’re differing is that I don’t agree that you’ve established that AWCC is a valid measure of the net cooling or warming effect of atmospheric water vapor.
I agree that this appears to be true in Earth’s current climate.
I also agree that this is likely to moderate increases in Earth’s global climate.
I don’t agree that it has been shown that this would place any relevant limit on possible increases in the average global temperature.
I get that this makes sense to you.
That doesn’t make it so.
Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. You’ve still got a long way to go before you’ve proven this hypothesis.
* * *
And, even if water-cycle effects regulate temperature, they would have to do so in a way that interacts with GHG effects. Water-cycle effects can’t magically eliminate GHG effects, though they might regulate them.
Nor can planetary temperatures be explained without acknowledging an effect from GHG warming. Water-cycle effects don’t include a mechanism for warming beyond the radiative balance point, unless you’re including the radiative warming effects of water vapor and clouds.
You want the water-cycle to regulate temperature? Fine (if you can prove it).
You want to eliminate the “Greenhouse effect”? Not going to happen. The GHE is an artifact of fundamental principles of physics. You might establish that the planet self-regulates to be relatively insensitive to changes in GHG concentrations. But, you’re not going to eliminate the effect as one of the factors that contributes to planetary temperature. I think if you made peace with that, you’d have more ease in focusing on your core investigation of planetary temperature regulation.
Bob – I was going to write a lengthy refutation but you beat me to it and hit all the main points plus a few more.
I’ve debated the writer enough in comments in other threads to know he’s got a massive blind spot. His theories about processes that regulate temperature may in fact have merit. But he jumps straight from there to claiming that this proves the GHE doesn’t exist.
I might point out also that this site at one time banned the “Sky Dragons” for pretty much exactly that, and Nikolov and Zeller got an extremely rough ride from highly qualified physicists for a theory that ultimately broke the same laws of physics as this theory does, and were also asked to take their theories elsewhere.
I prove that water has a net cooling effect.
You are the one with the blindspot assuming that 30% of the incoming insolation is still going to be reflected without clouds.
So far you have not made any point that invalidates the simple observation that oceans operate between two temperature limits 271K and 303K and the average temperature of the Earth sits smack in the middle.
You would rather contemplate the Ptolemaic like fantasy of “Greenhouse Effect” that has been responsible for global warming, climate change, climate weirding, global heating and now global emergency. An ever more convoluted model to support a religious belief.
If water has a “net cooling effect” then the fact of the planet being warmer than its nominal radiative balance temperature would seem to be inexplicable.
What warms the planet beyond the equilibrium temperature it would have in the absence of a LW-absorbing atmosphere?
(In another comment, you seemingly argued that no warming is necessary because current temperatures are near the radiative equilibrium. But, as I explained, you used inappropriate values in your calculations, yielding unphysically warm results.)
I don’t think anyone is assuming that.
There are two distinct questions:
You’re certainly right that reflection from clouds plays a role in question #1. However, that in no way means one can simply ignore reflection from clouds in answering question #2.
I have yet to hear you address the issue that the average temperature of the Earth has not always sat “smack in the middle”, but has experienced significant variations.
You are the one with the blindspot assuming that 30% of the incoming insolation is still going to be reflected without clouds.
Uhm… no. I’m assuming that the earth does have clouds. I have substantial observational evidence that this is true.
Bob made the claim:
If you have read Part 2 you have not absorb it. I clearly demonstrate the process for the temperature limiting. Look at Table 1. It shows how the cloud cover becomes increasingly persistent as the surface temperature increases due to the LFC approaching the level of freezing. The open ocean never gets to 306K because it will never see sunlight.
If there was no convergence the temperature will limit at 32C but the average is a little lower because cool moist air is drawn to the warmest pool. The resulting precipitation adds to cooling – clearly observable in the moored buoy charts in Part1.
Before you make false claims, at least take the time to read and understand the process. Challenge me on that detail but suggesting I have only shown a correlation is just WRONG. I having given extensive detail on the process of the thermostatic upper limit. AND none of it is based on parameters. The nearest aspect to parameterisation is using the August-Magnus-Roche relationship for the partial pressure of water. The rest is just maths.
I’m sorry. I probably need to try to be a bit more nuanced in what I’m saying.
Certainly, you’ve explained certain mechanisms at a significant and useful level of detail.
Your observation of AWCC is an observation of a correlation.
You’ve explained some of the mechanisms that lead to there being a relationship between atmospheric water levels and OLR.
So, in general, you’ve done more than establish a correlation. But, with regard to the Atmospheric Water Cooling Coefficient (AWCC) in particular, I don’t perceive you as having tied this in to your explained mechanisms in a clear way, nor have you offered any explicit model for what sort of AWCC values would be predicted, nor what implications we should draw from these values.
Does the model of deep convection you presented lead to a model of the expected relationship between Radiated Power Flux and Total Precipitable Water?
Why is the slope (AWCC) negative in December? In general, what determines the slope? What significance do you associate the slope? Why?
You claim water in the atmosphere is not “heat trapping.” Before I agree with that conclusion, I’d be curious if you have a definition of what this term means to you? How would one know if “heat trapping” was happening?
I’m still trying to fully digest it. I have some questions, if you’re willing to support me in understanding.
However, I think I understand much of the gist of it.
It seems as if you’re arguing that deep convection processes will cap the maximum possible temperature of tropical ocean surfaces. That’s the bottom line, right?
That’s a very interesting result. I’d like to understand the physics better (hence my questions), because I want to understand if this is a fundamental limit that applies regardless of the climatic context, or if it is a limit that applies only in the context of our current climate. I don’t yet understand the assertion well enough to assess which way this is likely to work.
As I mentioned in a prior comment, there is evidence that in the Cretaceous Era SSTs in the tropics exceeded 308K: “Our data compilation (Fig. 8) indicates that during most of the Cretaceous Period, temperatures of the warmest surface waters were significantly greater than the maximum surface temperatures recorded in the modern ocean (~ 28–30 °C)… Our compilation (Fig. 6, Fig. 7, Fig. 8) indicates that warmest Cretaceous surface-ocean palaeotemperatures (> 35 °C) occurred from the late Cenomanian to Turonian…” This suggests that any rule that “The open ocean never gets to 306K because it will never see sunlight” may be linked to something specific to our current climate, and not be a rule that is universally valid.
Even if it were a universally valid rule that SSTs can never reach 306K, this would not establish that there is anything preventing the overall global temperature from getting much warmer than its current value of 288K.
I can’t find it right now, but I believe I’ve seen models in which temperatures near the poles were around 15℃ even while tropical SSTs didn’t exceed 30℃. What, in the mechanisms you’ve discussed, would prevent this from happening?
You’ve given a lot of detail, and I appreciate that. But, I don’t yet have enough details that I can verify your logic, and I’d love to do that.
I’m also concerned that, even if there were a cap on maximum tropical SSTs, this wouldn’t clearly establish any relevant cap on global average surface temperature.
Bob stated:
All three parts clearly showed that atmospheric water had a profound affect on BOTH reflected SWR and OLR. The increased reflection of SWR dominates the reduction in OLR over warm pools. That might be the point you are missing.
Tell me what the ocean surface pressure was in the Cretaceous period and I will tell you what the warm pool temperature would have been? If the pressure was not substantially higher than now like 1100mb then look for the error in their temperature proxy.
The physics of the atmosphere cannot change. It is set by physical properties of the constituents. The radiative responses of the all the gases is negligible over tropical oceans. It is the radiative response of atmospheric ice that dominates by orders of magnitude since it has such high OLR absorption and SWR reflection.
There is no “Greenhouse Effect” controlling the energy balance. There are upper and lower ocean surface temperature limits that limit the range of the average surface temperature.
With the current distribution of surface water, insolation, and probably a myriad of other influencing variables, the area average is regulated around 18.5C. I only know for certain that the ocean water surface cannot get warmer than 305K (annual average 30C) and cooler than 271K. These are hard physical constraints. There could be no sea ice and there could be no warm pools limiting at 30C. But there is no water surface colder than 271K because it is solid and there is no open ocean warmer than 305K because atmospheric physics limits. The upper limit has some dependency on the atmospheric pressure like the lower limit has dependence on the salinity.
I totally get that, and have gotten that all along. So, it’s not “the point I’m missing.”
Thanks for the clues. One source says the oxygen content was 30% instead of 21%. That could have changed some of the physical constraints? I haven’t seen anything solid about a higher atmospheric pressure, beyond some casual speculation that doesn’t necessarily seem credible.
That makes sense. And… I wonder if you’ve considered all the “corner” cases that could change things? For example, if the atmosphere as a whole was hot enough, that would seem to potentially be a barrier to convective instability ever developing?
But, even if you were 100% right about there being a hard limit on tropical SSTs, and even if the ocean can never be outside the range 271K to 305K, that doesn’t establish the hypothesis that this actually sets the mean planetary temperature.
The existence of limits wouldn’t establish what determines where in that interval between those limits the mean planetary surface temperature will be.
That’s the trillion dollar question.
Bob stated:
The atmosphere cannot be warmer than the surface as long as there are radiative gasses present to cool it – they guarantee a lapse rate although the conditions of the lapse are notionally adiabatic. The only variable that can alter the point where clouds become persistent is the surface pressure. All the profiles are based on 1010mb, which I omitted to state.
There was a point made down thread about the formation of clouds above the freezing level but the cirrus clouds that give the persistency follow cloudburst. And convergence to warm pools makes it a messy picture in 3-D but also brings moist air that is going to be cooling the surface when it precipitates.
If will run Table 1 at a higher surface pressure – post it here and will include in the paper. Maybe an extreme case like 1100mb to give you an idea of the sensitivity.
Otherwise I am not claiming that the temperature cannot be anywhere in that range from 271K to 303K. That is excluding the snowball case, which I believe would be difficulty to get into. Fortunately the oceans still have ample areas limiting at 303K. Atlantic always appears marginal.
I am at complete odds with any notion of a “Greenhouse Effect”. Atmospheric water can BOTH cool and warm so it regulates with strong negative feedback. Last year it provided net cooling – I do not know why and do not know if that has always occurred in the satellite era. There is no “Greenhouse Effect” required to keep the globe cozy warm. The average temperature is a result of the way atmospheric water works and the global distribution of surface water.
“And convergence to warm pools makes it a messy picture in 3-D but also brings moist air that is going to be cooling the surface when it precipitates.”
The net effect is warming the surface, and it will increase in the future.
I’m not suggesting an atmosphere warmer than the surface, just a lapse rate closer to zero than the moist adiabatic lapse rate (i.e., a “subadiabatic” lapse rate). There are certainly places on Earth where this is the case, e.g., in the polar regions. It’s not clear to me that the presence of radiative gases necessarily precludes the possibility of a lapse rate that wouldn’t support convective instability forming.
(I’m not sure what you mean by “the conditions of the lapse are notionally adiabatic.”)
I would think that clouds would form throughout the zone (between LFC and EL) where moist convection is happening, so that a freezing level any where in that zone would yield ice crystals in the upper portion of the cloud.
Is there some reason why it is necessary for most of the cloud to be frozen in order for there to be persistency? (That seems to be what you’re achieving by requiring LFC to be near the freezing level.)
I just reviewed what you wrote in Part 2 about cloud persistency, and I’m really not following the logic at all. In Table 1, you give the fraction of water vapor above 273K as the metric for “cloud persistency.” I’m afraid I have no idea why this is a relevant metric.
Would you be willing to enlighten me?
Ok.
That’s helpful to know.
What do you believe prevents that?
What does it mean that these areas are “ample”? In what way is this “fortunate”?
The conventional interpretation of this would be that atmospheric water can warm through its trapping of LW radiation, i.e., via the so-called “Greenhouse Effect.”
If you believe that atmospheric water can warm, but reject any notion of a “Greenhouse Effect,” how do you propose that atmospheric water can warm?
I strenuously object to your assumption that that is what your AWCC means, that AWCC is a valid measure of the “net” warming or cooling effect of water.
You keep treating this as if it’s a fact, rather than an interpretation, that AWCC signifies this, without acknowledging the issue. I find that rather frustrating.
Yet, the way that water in the atmosphere produces warming is through impeding the flow of LW radiation from the Earth’s surface, i.e., via the Greenhouse Effect.
So, I find your position on this extremely perplexing.
Bob Stated:
I know I am right about the upper limit and lower limit but the lower limit could disappear if there was enough heat uptake – unlikely because the tropical oceans can exceed the upper limit.
And I know the climate models are all wrong, even the FGOALS, because they run to ridiculous ITCZ temperatures.
I did the analysis for the surface pressure at 1100mb and attached here.
Basically that change would push warm pools and the absolute limit 3C higher. So 306K annual average peak and 308K peak. By 309K the cloud is persistent; clear sky unlikely.
If you can find any proxy for Cretaceous period surface pressure, I would really like these conditions verified. It is encouraging to see parts of a puzzle come together.
I wouldn’t call that the lower limit “disappearing”, but the lower limit not being reached.
Not sure what you mean by that. Was it a typo, intended to say they “cannot” exceed the upper limit?
Even if that’s the case, why would that preclude the polar ice melting?
There have certainly been times in geological history when there were no polar ice sheets.
* * *
I don’t see why the existence of limits would preclude the need to look at the dynamics of LW radiation (i.e., the so-called “Greenhouse Effect”) as a component of figuring out where, between those limits, the planetary temperature would settle.
Ok. I gather that the models do better at predicting some things than others. I do get that, if they’re really off in what they say about a major component of the climate, that’s reason to be suspicious of their results.
Interesting.
But, I’d really, really like to understand the criteria you’re using for assessing cloud persistence, and why they make sense. I currently have no idea why Table 1 is an appropriate measure of this.
I notice that air having over 30% oxygen means a dry air molar density higher by about 1.25 percent. I don’t know if that affects the calculations.
Maybe we could estimate pressure change by assuming that the atmosphere has had a relatively fixed total mass of nitrogen and argon, and then only the total mass of atmospheric oxygen has changed? (It’s not clear if there are processes, e.g., volcanism, that affect the total mass of atmospheric nitrogen?)
If that were the case, then increasing O2 from 20.95% to 30% would imply about a 10% increase in total atmospheric mass, implying a 10% increase in surface pressure.
Though, the assumption of constant nitrogen might be false, as
BTW, I recently learned that SSTs are believed to have reached 308K during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. So, that’s another warm period, not as far back as the Cretaceous, where there may be a need to explain how the tropical SSTs could get so high.
Bob
A typo as you identified. I attached the chart in a reply and could not then go back and correct.
Hans raised this point. The deep ocean data points are similar to now. One shallow proxy on Bali did show as high as 36C but you could probably find those temperatures in nooks and bays around any tropical coastline now. I have swum in shallow water near Dampier in Western Australia where the temperature literally takes your breath away. It is bearable for less than a minute. It is only a local and temporary condition based on neap tides but it does occur. I am not sure what proxies from that bay would show in 60M years.
I used the 1100mb based on similar reasoning to yours.
The 308K is consistent with 1100mb and plausible. No cloud parameterisation involved – just a tried and tested approximation for the vapour pressure of water and simple maths.
By the way, I’ve been thinking about how to articulate why it’s not logically valid to assume that AWCC necessarily tells us about the net cooling effect of atmospheric water.
Let’s consider a simplified model that will be wrong but illustrative.
Suppose it were the case that (1) higher SST leads to more Precipitable Water, that (2) higher SST also leads to higher LW emission to space and (4) no change in reflection of SW insolation and (3) Precipitable Water in the atmosphere has zero affect on temperature. (The first two assumptions a likely, and the third and fourth are wrong but useful.)
Assumptions 1 and 2 would lead to there being a positive correlation between Precipitable Water and Total Radiated Flux, i.e., a positive AWCC value.
Yet, by assumption, Precipitable Water is not warming or cooling the surface.
Although this example involves a few incorrect assumptions, it proves a point:
A positive AWCC value could result from a positive correlation between temperature and Precipitable Water and a positive correlation between temperature and Total Radiated Flux, even if atmospheric water didn’t have a warming/cooling effect.
Thus, AWCC does NOT definitively tell us if atmospheric water is having a warming or cooling effect.
The temperature limiting mechanism is as solid as a rock. Actually as least as effective as the lower limit in terms of limiting excursions above 303K.
Atmospheric water can both warm and cool. But it does not really matter what it is doing because the open ocean surface will never exceed 303K on annual average or 305K in short term peaks. There are thermostatic limits with powerful negative feedbacks at the limits of the range.
For the upper limit, there is an incredibly powerful heat engine that can operate over the entire ocean surface if needed to reject incoming insolation. It is powered by insolation that makes it to the surface at about 210w/sq.m. The working fluid is lifted between 7 and 14km up into the atmosphere at 7.3kg/day where it is cooled to solidify/condense at a rate of 210W/sq.m to regulate the heat input. It is an incredibly powerful circulating pump doing immense work when considered over the extent of deep convection – more than just warm pools. Nothing trivial like a a few molecules of CO2 is going to stop that engine.
So the upper surface temperature is limited. It can be colder. Colder is always the risk. It can only get warmer on average by more surface hitting the upper limit.
You should spend some time to study the physics of deep convection. I have quantified what meteorologists have observed for a long time. Pilots even on large aircraft get worried about CAPE. Climate modellers are too busy with cloud parameterisation and a heap of other trivia to try to understand the physics of deep convection and its immense power.
There is no “Greenhouse Effect” that makes the earth cozy 14C. It is the myriad of attributes of atmospheric and surface water that regulates the surface temperature. The rest is misdirection.
I have been doing a lot of reading on the physics of deep convection. I’ve also acquired some computational tools for meteorological calculations.
My background reading addresses a lot of what we’re talking about (e.g., CAPE). But, I’ve found nothing at all so far that addresses some of your key assertions.
I wish you had supplied references for your work, and clarified what is your unique contribution vs. what is general knowledge. Those would make it easier to follow your exposition.
As it is, your explanations mix things that, to me, are in some cases clear and consistent with what other sources say, and in in other cases seem backwards to what other sources say (e.g., you seem to suggest that LFC is the top of the convective zone, instead of the bottom), and in yet other cases what you say seem mysterious and too unclear for me to be able to tell if you’re making sense or not.
It’s your prerogative to not engage in detailed discussion at a level that would clarify these points.
But, that choice does make it harder to confirm that you’re making a valid argument (in Part 2), with regard to your specific conclusions about cloud persistence.
* * *
If you do choose to address any details…
I would particularly love to know how you calculate Table 1 in Part 2.
Is this table based on observed data or on theoretical constraints? If the latter, what are you assuming? I get that you’re looking at the “CAPE development phase”, but that doesn’t make it clear what leads to your calculated values.
How do you calculate the LFC? I’ve generally seen LFC defined in terms of the observed atmospheric temperature profile. I haven’t seen any treatment that allows one to predict a theoretical value for LFC.
Also, you say that 30mm water vapour is required for convective instability to occur, and your Table 1 shows no water vapour values higher than 15.9 mm. How do these observations relate to one another? I get that the table relates to the “CAPE development phase”, but do these numbers mean that no CAPE can develop, because the water vapour value is not above 30mm?
I notice that you don’t acknowledge or respond to my concern that AWCC is unable to tell us if atmospheric water has a net warming or cooling effect.
I’m not pointing that out to try to make you wrong, but because I want whatever argument is made to be as strong and rigorous as possible.
I’d like to understand what is known and what isn’t known.
That’s likely the case (though I wish you would address the details that would allow me to verify your conclusions).
I accept that deep convection is an extremely powerful phenomenon.
While the heat engine certainly globally affects cloud formation, and hence insolation that reaches the ground, that observation only establishes that the water cycle is likely to moderate global temperature changes, not that it necessarily regulates or limits global temperature changes.
Maybe it does (regulate and limit), maybe it doesn’t. I haven’t yet seen any strong evidence of such a hypothesis.
Limiting the extremes of temperature does not automatically imply limiting the average temperature (until it gets close to an extreme).
Yes. And, that will tend to moderate increases in mean global temperature.
But, there is no reason that this would necessarily prevent changes in mean global temperature, even significant changes. Certainly, mean global temperature has varied significantly over Earth’s history.
This seems to be a “straw man” argument. Nobody has suggested that increasing CO₂ concentrations would stop the Earth’s convective heat engine.
I’ve seen you assert this again and again. I gather that this is really important to you.
I wonder what you mean when you say things like that. I could imagine you might mean one of the following:
Do any of these capture what you’re trying to say?
If it’s #1, then, okay. Though, that places us outside the realm of having a conversation about science.
If it’s #2, then I don’t believe that’s scientifically defensible. The scientific principles underlying LW absorption and re-emission contributing to warming are really, really fundamental to well-established physics.
If it’s #3, then that’s a really interesting hypothesis. Yet, your arguments are still a very long way from establishing this hypothesis as valid.
Or, maybe there’s a fourth interpretation that I haven’t named.
I don’t suppose you’d be willing to clarify why your thinking lies on the spectrum (or outside of it)?
Bob
This is getting old now. How about you send Charles a story on your understanding of the “Greenhouse Effect” and I will show you in detail why it is wrong. Ask him for my email if you do not want to expose silly ideas to public scrutiny.
I am not arguing that there are no EMR responsive gasses in the atmosphere.
I have clearly stated that atmospheric water warms and cools. A subtlety that you may have missed is that deep convection cannot be supported unless the TPW is above 30mm and does not become cyclic unless above 38mm ; realistically not much happens till 45mm.
The switch from heating to warming occurs when deep convection sets in. That is why it is pointless going into a heap of detail until you attempt to understand this and do some of your own analysis.
If you’d like to critique my understanding of such things you could look at my essay Atmospheric Energy Recycling (though I’m not sure I’ll be notified of new comments) or my Quora essays on Gerlich and Tscheuschner or allegations that the GHE violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
That’s nice to know.
I haven’t missed that you’ve said that. What I’ve missed is any explanation or reference that would make this more that an interesting but unexplained and seemingly irrelevant assertion.
I’m curious as to why this “subtlety” is important to the other points you’ve been trying to have be understood?
I’m guessing you mean the switch from warming to cooling?
I’m afraid that doesn’t help me understand why you’ve chosen not to answer any of the questions I’ve asked about your Part 2.
I’m happy to do my own analysis, but I haven’t yet been able to find a fruitful starting point.
Despite having done a fair amount of reading on deep convection, I don’t yet have any idea how you’ve reached your key conclusions, given the gaps in your explanations.
I guess I can get a little cranky, when I don’t understand and don’t understand the barriers to relevant information being provided.
I don’t suppose you’d be willing to put me out of my misery and address any of my questions, so I can get a foothold on a path towards developing a fuller understanding?
I have added a Part 4. Not sure if Charles will post it. You can find a copy at this link:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNhEHYjRZSpDL-N0Oi
I have also made additions and corrections. There were some basic errors that are corrected.
Part 4 is short but ties together Parts 2 and 3. It should improve your understanding why the “Greenhouse Effect” does not exist..
Thank you for the link. I’m seeing some new clues regarding your logic. (It will take me some time to digest, in part because of a system failure that’s requiring me to reinstall various software.)
Regarding your assertion that ‘the “Greenhouse Effect” does not exist’, what is becoming clear to me is that there is some sort of semantic disconnect in play. You seem to be debunking a presumed meaning of the term GHE which doesn’t match my understanding of the term. At this point, I’m feeling fairly hopeless about achieving a shared understanding of the term.
* * *
I remain concern that AWCC is not a valid metric for assessing the heating or cooling effect of atmospheric water.
The problem is that it relies on TOA Total Radiated Power Flux, and TRPF will rise in any of the following situations:
Items #1 and #2 would reflect TRPF increasing because atmospheric water is cooling the surface.
Item #3 would reflect TRPF increasing because atmospheric water is heating the surface (or perhaps having no effect, in a context where other factors are changing the temperature).
You are interpreting increasing TRPF as always meaning cooling. However, when item #3 is in involved, increasing TRPF could actually be the result of a heating effect.
In summary, TRPF muddles together heating and cooling effects in a way that renders these indistinguishable via your current mode of analysis.
Because TRPF is a muddled metric for assessing heating and cooling, AWCC is also a muddled metric which conflates heating and cooling effects.
Bob wrote:
This is just wrong.
Take away atmospheric water and most of the 1368W/sq.m will make it to the surface. Lets say the water surface has an emissivity of 0.96. Then the equilibrium temperature will be 299K.
Oceans are good stores of heat and will distribute the energy collected in the tropics over the planet surface. There is more tropical ocean water than polar ocean water so averaging insolation over the entire globe does not work to calculate the energy balance. You also need to consider the heat transport and distribution of water as it is the energy store.
So this is one point you have wrong to start with.
Then I see that you have the atmosphere radiating LW back to the surface. The absorption of LW in a tropical ocean atmosphere for example is so high that the LW goes no where.
How far does the OLR travel when it is raining cats and dogs.
All of the insolation arriving at a tropical warm pool limiting to 30C is transported as latent heat from the surface, gets blasted up into the atmosphere at 7.3mm/day where it releases OLR from the very top of the cloud to space. What is the infrared absorption of ice? LW goes nowhere in a tropical atmosphere because the absorption is so high. The water is the heat transfer medium, not radiation. Insolation at the bottom of the column and OLR at the top.
The “Greenhouse Effect” talks only about water vapour. What about water liquid and particularly water ice that all occur in the atmosphere. They are conveniently neglected.
The surface temperature is limited to 30C in tropical warm pools. The surface temperature is no colder than -2C at sea ice. The area average global temperature is about 14C. There is no need to have a “Greenhouse Effect” to explain the average. It is the result of the two limits and the distribution of water and land.
Bob
I have happy to carry on this discussion if you wish but not through this tedious process. You can email me at:
rickwill@bigpond.net.au
I see you took up the invitation to consider one of my Quora answers.
Regrettably, your comment demonstrates the sort of “semantic disconnect” I referred to.
When you read my words, you apparently assumed they meant something other than what was intended. You have refuted the meaning you invented, not the meaning I intended.
I agree with many (though not all) of the things you write.
But, your comment isn’t in any way responsive to what my words were intended to mean, nor to my understanding of what others mean when they refer to the “Greenhouse Effect.”
You appear to be refuting a “straw man” you have constructed, not what others are actually asserting.
* * *
You also appear to be engaging in some sort of black-and-white thinking in which only one thing can matter, not multiple things.
Tropical deep convection playing an important role in climate doesn’t mean that other factors can’t also play an important role in climate.
* * *
For what it’s worth:
–“I’ve enjoyed your analysis in this series. Yet, in the end, you seem to depart from that analysis and make unjustified logical leaps.
You seem to be insisting on a false dichotomy. Why couldn’t water in the atmosphere have both a heat trapping and a temperature regulating role? It’s almost certainly the case that water in the atmosphere has both these roles.”–
I guess it depends what meant by heat trapping.
It seems our cold ocean is vast heat trap. One can say heat is lost. Lost for thousands of years, or maybe only a few months. But since ocean is cold rather hot, one might agree it’s lost but not heat which is can be imprisoned for a long time.
I also regard the mass of our atmosphere as trapping heat. And one think water which has lot energy added and becoming a gas which has ability to warm when it’s returned to a liquid state as something one call “trapping heat”, but it seems this kind of meant by “increases radiating power when the surface warms and reduces radiated power when the surface cools.”. I might say that water does get hot like land surface, and hot land surface will radiate more to space as compared to water surface gets sunlight energy and it’s cooled mostly by evaporational loss, rather radiant heat loss of hot land surface. But you could call it “trapping heat”.
Yes, water in the atmosphere is a surface TEMPERATURE regulating medium. In that sense it can increase heat take up or increase energy rejected by reflecting it in the first place.
My departure from the belief is that there is a “Greenhouse Effect” where a delicate energy balance controls earth’s temperature. The average temperature is the result of an upper average ocean temperature limit of 303K and 271K.
When there are no warm pools limiting at 30C then there is an energy deficiency. That is observed in the Atlantic Ocean. The other two oceans currently always have areas limiting to 303K.
When my body gets too warm for some reason (e.g. sunbathing, vigorous exercise, standing too close to a furnace, etc) it sweats H2O which evaporates from my skin thus keeping my temperature within safe limits. The overall message I take from this paper is that the Earth, just like my body, ‘sweats’ H2O from its oceans to remove excess heat and regulate its surface temperature.
Perhaps, it is time to replace the GHG metaphor with an ‘Earth Sweating’ metaphor. This concept would be readily understood by most people on our planet as it is something everyone experiences in their everyday lives.
Why is there this either-or thinking that assumes one metaphor needs to replace another?
There are multiple simultaneous processes going on, and the existence of one does not negate the existence of another.
I just wanted to correct, for the record, a mis-statement in the article.
It is not the case that when water vapor condenses in the atmosphere, that it behaves like a macroscopic quantity of water.
For pure water to condense directly into an ice crystal, the temp would have to be about -35°C.
Water droplets that condense in cold clouds in the sky generally consist of mixed phase drops of supercooled water droplets and ice crystals, mixed together.
In fact, this was/is thought by many to be the mechanism for the majority of precipitation that falls onto the surface.
The process is variously called the “Wegener–Bergeron–Findeisen process”, the “cold-rain process’, etc.
What occurs is that, due to a peculiarity of the vapor pressure curves of supercooled water and ice crystals, which cross each other at the temperatures common in cold clouds, ice crystals grow rapidly as they scavenge water from the vapor phase before it can precipitate. IOW, ice crystals grow while droplets of water evaporate.
Wegener–Bergeron–Findeisen process – Wikipedia
In short, clouds are not segregated by temperature into purely ice portions and purely water droplet portions. There is a huge amount of overlap, and so even at very cold temps, supercooled water droplets and ice crystals coexist in the same cloud regions. This happens in virtually all thunderstorms. In fact, this may be related or even integral to how the charge separation occurs, which leads to lightning, in the first place.
In more detail:
“Cloud droplets initially form by the condensation of water vapor onto condensation nuclei when the supersaturation of air exceeds a critical value according to Köhler theory. Cloud condensation nuclei are necessary for cloud droplets formation because of the Kelvin effect, which describes the change in saturation vapor pressure due to a curved surface. At small radii, the amount of supersaturation needed for condensation to occur is so large, that it does not happen naturally. Raoult’s law describes how the vapor pressure is dependent on the amount of solute in a solution. At high concentrations, when the cloud droplets are small, the supersaturation required is smaller than without the presence of a nucleus.”
Cloud physics – Wikipedia
And this is important:
“In warm clouds, larger cloud droplets fall at a higher terminal velocity; because at a given velocity, the drag force per unit of droplet weight on smaller droplets is larger than on large droplets. The large droplets can then collide with small droplets and combine to form even larger drops. When the drops become large enough that their downward velocity (relative to the surrounding air) is greater than the upward velocity (relative to the ground) of the surrounding air, the drops can fall as precipitation. The collision and coalescence is not as important in mixed phase clouds where the Bergeron process dominates. Other important processes that form precipitation are riming, when a supercooled liquid drop collides with a solid snowflake, and aggregation, when two solid snowflakes collide and combine. The precise mechanics of how a cloud forms and grows is not completely understood, but scientists have developed theories explaining the structure of clouds by studying the microphysics of individual droplets.”
And for emphasis…the money sentence:
“The precise mechanics of how a cloud forms and grows is not completely understood…”
And this is why, even with sufficient computer processing capacity and speed, it is not currently even theoretically possible to model clouds directly.
Because no one understands exactly what is going on inside of clouds!
I did not realise how precisely the ocean surface temperature was limited until after I had worked out how to quantify the LFC. It was only then that I started to look for why it was so precise. Every bit of reliable tropical water temperature dataset I looked at confirmed the 32C maximum and 30C average. The only notable exception was the Persian Gulf.
And I am not meaning to say or imply that this aspect of clouds and mixed phases is central to the macro scale thermoregulation.
I just wanted to add some clarification and detail to what you had said in your essay.
It may have some role, or it may be largely irrelevant what the microphysics of the cloud droplets and ice crystals are.
To make an analogy, we had a good idea of how the immune system functioned before anyone had ever even discovered that there were molecules called cytokines.
As we had an understanding of how reproduction and even some aspects of inheritance worked, prior to the discovery of the structure of DNA.
The atmosphere is so complex, and has so many factors that influence the dynamics of it.
It is however axiomatic that the same processes and physical principles that have operated in the past, continue to operate today and will in the future.
We have a lot of Earth history to look at, and more to discover and elucidate.
There are a multitude of ways to deconstruct and disprove notions of CO2 induced global warming, tipping points, etc.
We have much to learn about how the various factors interact, as well as, at this point, much to “unlearn” (some of us more than others, eh?).
We have known for some time that there has always been immense variability in such parameters as the climate regimes of the planet, the small scale patterns and cycles of weather and weather regulation, the temperature and humidity regimes that have prevailed and cycled over time, etc.
And also that, even through all of these changes, some things have remained incredibly constant, or operated in an astoundingly small range, even while there were simultaneously huge variations going on elsewhere in the climate system.
One great example of this is indeed how constant the tropics have been in terms of temperature and other climate variables, even while the whole planet has seen titanic and often cataclysmic shifts between glacial and interglacial periods.
And numerous converging lines of evidence lead to this conclusion, including biological evidence that is apparent when one considers the small range of conditions that can be tolerated by many ancient species of plants and their respective intricately balanced biomes.
A huge number of tropical species have seeds that cannot even tolerate a a short interval, let alone a year or more, of inhospitable conditions without being rendered 100% unviable.
Many can be pollinated only by some very specific sequence of events involving one or more certain species of insects or birds (for example), which themselves can only survive along with that specific host.
For many such reasons, it is impossible that conditions in the recent or even distant past were, for any length of time, a whole lot different from what exists now in the areas these species inhabit.
And of course this is an entirely separate line of evidence from other methods of paleoclimate reconstruction and inference.
Such complex interactions of factors is one reason I decided early in my education and edification, that I had to take a multidisciplinary approach to the sciences. We (people, that is) have separated biology from chemistry and from geology and from physical geography and physics and physical chemistry…but the world does not, the universe does not. Biology is chemistry, and it is Earth history, and it is physical geography.
Whatever we can discover to be true, whatever we all agree or disagree on, what happened is what has happened, and the Earth will always do what it has always done whether or not we have come to understand the how’s, whys, and wherefores, of it all.
Which is perhaps the biggest reason that I am so astounded by the people that want to believe, or try to tell us, that a warmer world is a deadly world, or that climate change can be “tackled” (one of the more inane warmista taglines) via rigid adherence to a political philosophy or obeisant groupthink, or that belief trumps evidence, consensus is science, invented information is “data”, or any of the other reasons people have for buying into this religion of doomsday catastrophism.
To be a CAGW skeptic, all one has to do is pay attention to what is known about Earth history, or to adhere to the principles of the scientific method, or to doubt that for which no evidence can be presented, or even to simply disregard people and processes that have failed to ever make any accurate predictions.
But to be a warmista, to be a panic monger, to be one of the simpering ninnies that assure us all that the end of the world is nigh, one must do much more.
To be one of those people, one must ignore nearly everything real, and give credence to things that have never happened ever before, even once.
Mods, when you get a chance, I have a comment in moderation waiting for approval.
Thanks!
That is useful information.
I was struck by how well the cloud persistence and surface temperature cut-off actually are. There is literally no open ocean surface water above 32C.
I would be surprised to see ice clouds to have a sharp cutoff around freezing altitude. And I have read that cirrus cloud changes through the day.
Cloudburst certainly forces water vapour well above -35C and the air is supersaturated during cloudburst. I do not know what the transition from cumulus to cirrus looks like following a cloudburst cycle. My observation point is limited to the moored buoys. .
I will look at the references to better describe the persistence of the clouds.
“I do not know what the transition from cumulus to cirrus looks like following a cloudburst cycle.”
Watching how clouds form and change over time is fascinating, for sure.
We are lucky we live in a time where one can see stuff like that with a few clicks.
There are time lapse videos of the whole cycle of thunderstorms forming, maturing, and then dissipating.
Only the sun can heat the ocean and cause climate change. Sunlight penetrates to depths of up to 100 m. Long wave radiation from the atmosphere penetrates the width of a human hair. Any increase in downward IR will cause more cooling by evaporation.
That hypothesis seems to assume a static ocean surface. Even if LW radiation is absorbed by a thin surface layer, I would expect that, except under the calmest of sea states, movement of the surface would quickly mix that warmed water into a much thicker layer of warmed water. While some of that warming will be compensated for by increased cooling, a real calculation would need to be done to assess how much compensation occurs.
Thanks for the engagement, much appreciated.
Regarding the assumed static ocean surface.
To quote Roy Clark:
“Ocean cooling can only occur at the surface, so heat can accumulate in the subsurface ocean layers for extended periods of time and small changes in the solar flux are amplified by this accumulation process. There is no requirement that the solar flux match the cooling flux at the surface. Warm subsurface ocean layers can be recirculated and transported over long distances by wind driven ocean currents to high latitudes without significant interaction with the ocean surface.”
Also as I understand it, the whole “greenhouse” warming hypothesis assumes a static atmosphere and some sort of radiative equilibrium. In fact the thermodynamics of the troposphere are enhanced by the radiative properties of water vapour.
Again from Roy Clark:
“The Earth’s climate has to be described in terms of at least 6 separate energy transfer processes coupled dynamically to four thermal reservoirs. There can be no climate equilibrium on any time scale.”
Well, I don’t think “greenhouse effect” warming as a whole is a hypothesis, so much as an established consequence of basic principles of physics. How much climate sensitivity there will be to increases in anthropogenic GHG concentrations might be considered a matter of “hypothesis.”
The effect, and the hypothesis about climate sensitivity, do not assume a static atmosphere.
There are a variety of levels of modeling that can be used to try to assess the magnitude of GHG effects, ranging from (1) back-of-the-envelope calculations and (2) one-dimensional models to (40) GCM computer models to (50) Whole-Earth computer models.
Back-of-the-envelope calculations and one-dimensional models often assume a “static atmosphere.”
But, such simple calculations tend to be trusted only to the extent that their predictions align with those of more sophisticated models like the GCM or Whole-Earth models. The latter do not assume a static atmosphere or static ocean.
Does Roy Clark offer any proof for this assertion?
I think it depend on what is meant by “climate equilibrium.” Clark could probably define the term in a way that makes his assertion true, but the assertion might be a tautology, rather than something that really tells us something important.
The important question is, is there any meaningful way that one can talk about climate equilibrium? And, is there any basis for making valid statistical predictions about likely climate outcomes?
I’m pretty sure the answer to these questions is “yes.”
Does Roy Clark offer any proof for this assertion?
He describes the 6 energy transfer processes as:
1) Energy transfer at the air-land interface
2) Energy transfer at the air-ocean interface
3) Direct LWIR emission to space from the surface
4) Energy transfer between the lower troposphere and the surface
5) Upward convective transport to the middle and upper troposphere
6) LWIR emission to space
Then the 4 thermal reservoirs being:
1) The ocean
2) The land surface
3) The lower 2km boundary layer (Which acts as thermal blanket being heated by convection every day.)
4) The middle to upper troposphere
“The underlying assumption of radiative forcing, that long term averages of surface temperature are in some kind of equilibrium with the long wave infrared emission to space has no basis in physical reality. The tail does not wag the dog.”
While it’s certainly true that there are a variety of energy transfer processes, and a variety of thermal reservoirs, that in no way justifies the assertion that “The underlying assumption of radiative forcing, that long term averages of surface temperature are in some kind of equilibrium with the long wave infrared emission to space has no basis in physical reality. The tail does not wag the dog.”
That statement sounds much more ideological than scientific.
The idea that “long term averages of surface temperature are in some kind of equilibrium with the long wave infrared emission to space” is soundly rooted in physical reality:
“The solid phase dominates the reflection of short wave electro-magnetic radiation (SWR) thereby reducing the insolation reaching the surface and absorbed by the oceans.”
Ice absorbs solar near infrared, and water vapour absorbs about 16% of the total solar heating effect in the near infrared.
But the energy in the infrared is a tiny fraction of the total in solar EMR. Ice in the atmosphere reflects 30% of the incoming short wave EMR.
The near infrared is 48-49% of the total solar heating effect.
As this article shows, if you increase co2, and then increase h2o due to feedback, you might actually get cooling.
This is a very important article because it flies in the face of the belief that ECS is always greater than 0.
What this article shows is that ECS will eventually go negative as co2 increases due to water feedback.
More likely Ferd, is that additional CO2 causes a bit of sea surface warming that takes a thousand years or so to warm the sea surface by a couple of degrees, since at the same time the increased temp also causes a bit more cloud cover…
So after that thousand years, the SST is finally warm enough to generate 5% more cloud cover and start cooling the planet back down by a couple of degrees. Throw in a 60 year AMO, and a 24,000 year obliquity cycle onto that and you’ve got mathematical chaos.
SSTs falling in the North Atlantic???/
Ocean Analysis – Tropical Tidbits
I fail to understand why CO2 keeps getting discussed. It has bugger all influence, as shown by seasonal data.
https://reality348.wordpress.com/
There are lots of other posts with observations..not models to explain impact of pressure on temperature.
Not sure if your question is a rhetorical one.
If not, I can offer explanations for why we must discuss it, rather than just leave it to those who seek to steal our money, exert undue political and social control over our lives and how we live them, and who have invented the rubric of CO2 induced climate catastrophism to wrest control of the sources of energy that have given us our industrial and technological civilization.
Let me know.
Rick
Often at temperatures well below 0C. Super cooled water is a fundamental component of cloud structure in our atmosphere. The minimum observed temperature for super cooled water droplets is around -35C in the open atmosphere. Super cooled water droplets in the lower cloud layers are a key component in the formation of graupel.
During this past winter in January we had an easterly outflow of cold air from the Baltic passing over the UK. On travelling across the North Sea this cold air had picked up moisture and on arrival over Britain the orographic induced convection created falls of graupel. It is a sad comment on our times to note that this natural phenomenon was believed by some who had never seen graupel before to be due to government interference with our weather.
I have made a small change that indicates the phase change occurs above the freezing altitude. The point was raised above.