Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
OK, folks, for everyone who wanted to put forth your favorite theory about how downwelling radiation from the atmosphere is a fantasy, or how a cool atmosphere can’t leave the surface warmer than no atmosphere, or how pyrgeometers are fatally imprecise … this is the thread for you.
However, I’m going to ask that before you start, you understand my actual position on these questions. So I strongly request that before you comment, you read the following four posts. That way, you’ll be clear about my thoughts on the matter.
Can A Cold Object Warm A Hot Object? 2017-11-24
Short answer? Of course not, that would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics —BUT it can leave the hot object warmer than it would be if the cold object weren’t there. Let me explain why this is so. Let me start by introducing the ideas of individual flows and ne…
Radiating the Ocean 2011-08-15
Once again, the crazy idea that downwelling longwave radiation (DLR, also called infra-red or IR, or “greenhouse radiation”) can’t heat the ocean has raised its ugly head on one of my threads. Figure 1. The question in question. There are lots of good arguments against the AGW consensus, but this…
The Steel Greenhouse 2009-11-17
There is a lot of misinformation floating around the web about the greenhouse effect works. It is variously described as a “blanket” that keeps the Earth warm, or a “mirror” that reflects part of the heat back to Earth, or “a pane of glass” that somehow keeps energy from escaping. It is none of these things.
People Living in Glass Planets 2010-11-27
Dr. Judith Curry notes in a posting at her excellent blog Climate Etc. that there are folks out there that claim the poorly named planetary “greenhouse effect” doesn’t exist. And she is right, some folks do think that. I took a shot at explaining that the “greenhouse effect” is a…
OK, now that y’all have read those four posts, and you are all clear about my position, let me offer some data to focus the discussion. Figure 1 shows the month-by-month surface shortwave (solar, “SW”) and longwave (thermal infrared, “LW”) radiant energy flows at the SURFRAD station in Goodwin Creek, Mississippi. The US maintains something called the SURFRAD (Surface Radiation Budget) Network of eight surface measuring stations. These have a variety of sensors that, as the name suggests, measure a variety of surface radiation flows. Each station has a Downwelling Pyranometer, Upwelling Pyranometer, Downwelling Pyrgeometer, Upwelling Pyrgeometer, UVB Sensor, Photosynthetically Active Radiometer, Normal Incidence Pyrheliometer, and a Shaded Pyranometer. These are calibrated annually to assure accurate measurements. They collect data on an almost continuous basis, 24/7/365. The stations have data from 1995 to the present.
So I picked a SURFRAD station at random, Goodwin Creek, Mississippi. And I picked a year at random, 2014, and downloaded the monthly average data from here. After I plotted it up I thought “I wonder how well this agrees with the CERES satellite-based dataset?” So I added the corresponding CERES data to the chart. Here is the result.
Figure 1. SURFRAD and CERES data, Goodwin Creek, Mississippi. The CERES data is for the 1° latitude by 1° longitude gridcell where the SURFRAD station is located. The background shows the Goodwin Creek SURFRAD station.
Now, folks have been questioning lately whether the CERES data is accurate enough for the type of analyses that I do, whether it is fit for the purpose … this should allay some of their concerns.
With all that as prologue, here’s the important part of this discussion.
The red|orange lines show the amount of solar energy that is absorbed by the surface. It’s the net of the downwelling solar minus the solar that is reflected back upwards from the ground. As you can see, the annual average solar energy absorbed by the surface is about 150 watts per square metre (W/m2).
The yellow|gold lines, on the other hand, show the upwelling longwave (thermal infrared) energy, energy that is radiated upwards from the surface. The annual average upwelling longwave energy is about 395 W/m2.
Now, for all of you that think that downwelling radiation from the atmosphere is a mirage, here’s the question.
If on an ongoing basis the surface is only absorbing 150 W/m2 of solar energy and is radiating 395 W/m2 of energy … why isn’t it frozen solid?
Seriously. If it is constantly radiating far more energy than it is absorbing … why isn’t it a block of ice?
To me, the obvious answer is, the surface is also absorbing downwelling radiation from the atmosphere. In Figure 1 above, the blue|cyan lines show the total of the net solar (SW, red|orange lines), plus the downwelling longwave thermal infrared (LW) from the atmosphere.
The annual average of the net downwelling radiation at the surface (SW +LW), the total energy absorbed by the surface, is about 490 W/m2. This is about a hundred W/m2 more than the energy that is lost to radiation, with the rest of the surface energy loss being in the form of the net of the sensible and latent heat lost gained and lost by the atmosphere via convection and conduction.
So there you have it. If you don’t think that downwelling LW radiation leaves the earth warmer than it would be if there was no atmosphere, you need to explain the mystery source of the additional energy necessary to keep the earth from freezing. And no, it’s not geothermal heat. We know from borehole measurements that geothermal heat, in general, is on the order of a tenth of a W/m2 or so … and we’re missing about 395 W/m2 emitted minus 150 W/m2 absorbed equals 245 W/m2 necessary to prevent freezing.
So what is the mystery source?
Let me add that the most excellent agreement between the SURFRAD and the CERES data means that it’s not instrumental error, or scientists who don’t know what they are measuring.
So where is the energy coming from?
My best to all, let the bunfight begin, and please, keep it civil … I may be wrong, but I’m not an idiot …
w.
As Usual I Politely But Loudly Request: QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE DISCUSSING. I can defend my own words. I can’t defend your interpretation of my words.
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Hi Willis,
“So there you have it. If you don’t think that downwelling LW radiation leaves the earth warmer than it would be if there was no atmosphere, you need to explain the mystery source of the additional energy necessary to keep the earth from freezing.”
I think your quote above has encouraged the conflation of two questions, which has confused this discussion thread:
1) Is the earth warmer with an atmosphere than without one?
2) Does adding CO2 to the atmosphere raise surface temperatures?
These are entirely different questions which are best answered separately.
The first question is easy to answer. An atmosphere made up of non-radiative gasses will increase the earth’s temperature because of the extra mass of the atmosphere. During the day, sunlight warms the surface plus the atmosphere – so there is more warmed mass which will take longer to cool during the night than if the atmosphere did not exist. That is a simple concept and does not prove the greenhouse effect exists.
The second question is more complicated. If you have some combustion and replace one molecule of O2 in the atmosphere with one molecule of CO2, what will happen to the long term temperature? A molecule of CO2 is more massive than an O2 molecule, so by adding mass to the atmosphere, you will increase temperatures because of the mass effect described above. However, CO2 happens to be a radiative gas which means it tends to absorb and emit more radiation than a non radiative gas such as O2. Since CO2 emits radiation isotropically (in all directions), then some will go upwards and be lost to space. So, intuitively, the total system will lose more heat energy to space than if the CO2 molecule did not exist. This would imply the total system would have a lower temperature because of the introduction of the CO2 molecule.
However, I’m sure you would argue that the extra downward emissions from the CO2 molecule would warm the surface more and that is what is important in the greenhouse effect discussion. If you do argue this, then if the temperature of the total system goes down due to the CO2 molecule emitting to space, but the surface temperature goes up due to the downward emissions, then the temperature of the atmosphere must be lower than it was before the CO2 molecule entered the atmosphere?
Here is where the answer to the second question becomes more contentious. Just because a CO2 molecule emits some radiation to the surface, it does not mean the temperature of the surface will change one iota. For example, if you have an object at 100 degrees C and introduce another object at 100 degrees C, the temperature of the first object does not go up one iota … despite the arrival of the new emissions. Temperatures are not additive. So, how do you prove that the temperature of the surface increases when the emitting CO2 molecule has a lower temperature than the surface? Please don’t answer this by saying that it slows the cooling of the surface, because then you would be conflating the two questions above again. Try to form a hypothesis that does not rely on the mass effect, which does slow cooling, rather than the greenhouse effect, which does not. Because a new CO2 molecule is a radiative gas, some of that radiation goes to space when it did not before. It is therefore arguable that the new CO2 molecule would in fact have have a cooling effect.
Best regards
Bernard,
All of that is in line with a lot of my thinking also.
First question, I disagree with your answer, because you have not defined where you are measuring temperature. If you are measuring ground temperature, I think you have it the wrong way round. If you add an atmosphere (with a low thermal capacity) you get less heat effect than if you use another layer of earth which has much more mass and more thermal capacity. But I assume that you then want people to live at the new surface and measure temperature there.
The second question for me comes back to a summary of what CO2 actually does. Theory says it can capture IR radiation and move to a more energetic state, which can be synonymous with a heat increase if you measure temperature. (This is like Callendar did). But then, the CO2 will typically emit radiation, but when and under which conditions? Does the gas mixture surrounding CO2 have to be cooler before emission happens? Is emission blocked if surroundings are hotter? Or does excited CO2 emit spontaneously at random times? How long does a CO2 molecule in a typical case remain excited? Does it remain excited long enough to move from just above Earth’s surface to several km up where an emission can make it to space?
Several years of my science life were in spectoroscopy, but that episode was mainly with atomic not molecular, so I am somewhat undereducated to be discussing CO2. I see a big problem is upon us because there has been so little experimentation. In my days, you tried to devise experiments with cause and effect simplified to the max to avoid exogenous variables. So did many scientific forebears, hence expressions like the age of ‘sealing wax and string’. Where are the present day simple experiments to measure, with our modern superb instrumentation, just how much temperature change a gas shows when IR is passed through it?
Here I am on side with Ric Will who favours getting measurements out of the weeds of the surface of the Earth and going to top of atmosphere. I have been since about 1992 quite critical of the use of traditional weather station observations designed for purposes like farming and aviation, to be used for all-earth modelling. They are mostly too inaccurate or not adequately relevant to the modelling use, as colleagues and I have been stating – like Bill Johnston at bomwatch.com.au blog, noting the exogenous effect of rain on temperatures measured that way. Geoff S
IIRC, an “excited” CO2 molecule will transfer the vibrational energy via collisions with other atmospheric molecules quicker than it reradiates the energy. The impacted molecule will rise in temperature from the received collisional energy. That temperature rise will increase the IR emitted by the impacted molecule.
“That temperature rise will increase the IR emitted by the impacted molecule.”
Unless it’s O2 or N2 in which case there will be no extra IR emitted.
Dude. More energy > hotter. Please engage brain before opening mouth.
Thanks Geoff,
I was assuming the temperature was being measured at the current surface level and then adding an atmosphere to that. I was not comparing the thermal capacity of surface vs atmosphere.
On the second question of what happens when you deduct O2 and add CO2 to that atmosphere, I actually have done some simple experiments that I will describe below in an answer to Charles Cemenzuli below.
Hi Bernard,
To clear up your first question – ” 1. Is the earth warmer with an atmosphere than without one?”
This can be explained very clearly by looking at all the planets with an atmosphere and seeking for the common denominator.
Essentially it can be seen that an atmosphere of any composition, green house gases or inert being irrelevant, will create a temperature gradient due to the compressive forces generated by the planets gravity. look up Charles and Boyle’s laws.
This temperature gradient has its origin (base point) at the radiative surface, which is in equilibrium with the incoming solar radiation, in earths case this is -18*C. From this point the compression effect due to gravity calculates to be the adiabatic lapse rate. If this rate is extrapolated from the radiative surface in the atmosphere it gives the earth’s surface temperature as it does for all planets with an atmosphere.
A study, one of many, highlights the gravitation pressure causes the rise often attributed to the GHE.
See this example – https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/n-z-paper.pdf
The calculation is consistant for all the planets irrespective of teh chemical composition of the atmosphere.
Therefore if the gravitational induced thermal gradient accounts for all the heating experienced in the atmosphere, then by default there can’t be any practical heating from some hypothetical and unproven GHE.
It is not a matter of proving or disproving the GHE, if the heating can be accounted for by some other process there can’t be any heating from some other process. the GHE may exist, but from the above it could be that the GHE is so insignificant that it is not in the order of magnitude to have any effect. It may well be a second order and insignificant process , if it exists.
However, if there is a mechanisim of heating caused by the GHE, I would like to see an experiement performed that exhibits this effect. Todate there has not been such an experiement and the process has not been proven. Full stop.
I welcome comments after having read the link, otherwise thanks anyway.
Thanks Charles.
I have read several papers discussing that temperature is due to gravity compressing the atmospheric gases. I have to admit I don’t understand the logic of those papers. For example, when I pump up a bicycle tire, the temperature does increase as the pressure increases, but when I stop pumping, the temperature drops back down again, even though the temperature does not. Similarly, a planet with an atmosphere at a certain pressure would have a different temperature depending on how close it is to the sun? I would love it if you could explain the concept to me in a way that does not require advanced math knowledge.
On your second point of wanting to see an experiment that demonstrated heat being caused by downward CO2 emissions, I would love to see the same thing. I have personally done a simple experiments that I think prove the opposite … that CO2 emissions could not warm the surface.
In this experiment, I placed an object with a temperature of X next to an object with a temperature of Y and and then measured to see if the temperature of Y went up. The results were predictable. If the temperature of X was warmer than Y, then the temperature of Y went up. If X was cooler than Y, the temperature of Y did not go up. This happened for all possible temperatures of X and Y. I started with Y being significantly cooler than X and then raised the temperature of Y by one degree each time to see if it increased the temperature of X when I introduced it. For every temperature of Y that was below X, introducing the object Y did not increase the temperature of X. But, as soon as the temperature of Y was higher than the temperature of X, introducing the Y object did increase the temperature of X every time.
This proves that none of the temperatures of Y that were lower than X were able to raise the temperature of X. If you think about this, it proves that an object with a lower temperature does not increase the temperature of the warmer object, OR EVEN SLOW IT’S COOLING!
Best regards
None of that is an appropriate analog to what is claimed to happen in Earth’s climate.
* * *
Instead, try this: get a fixed-wattage electric heater, put it, along with a remote-read thermometer, in a styrofoam cooler. Instead of a top, put plastic wrap over the top to prevent air flow out.
Let the system run until there is a steady-state temperature.
Now place a reflective mylar film behind the plastic wrap. Measure the steady-state temperature.
Then, place another reflective mylar film behind the first layer, with some separation. Measure the steady-state temperature inside again.
If you can, measure the temperature of the mylar film. (Maybe just touch it to try to get a rough sense?)
Each time you add a layer that impedes thermal radiation from leaving, the temperature should rise.
This will happen even if the outer layer is cooler than the air inside the cooler
If you think it’s unfair to use a reflector, try using a sheet of heavy black paper instead.
* * *
You could also try reading my essay Atmospheric Energy Recycling, which offers the math to show how of cool atmospheric layers can warm a planetary surface. Or, read the blog posts Willis wanted us to read.
Consider a highly simplified system consisting only of the surface and a CO2 molecule.
Imagine that the surface absorbs and re-emits every photon it receives and that the CO2 molecule absorbs every photon the surface emits. Further assume that of the photons the CO2 molecule absorbs it re-emits half upward to space and half downward to the surface.
That means that for every two photons the surface receives from the sun it receives another from the CO2 molecule and thus must emit three molecules for every two it absorbs from the sun directly. Without the CO2 molecule it would need to emit only two. This tells us the surface is warmer with the molecule than without it.
The number of photons the molecule emits to space equals the number the surface receives directly from the sun: energy is conserved. But at the surface the same energy is “counted” one and a half times.
Hi Joe,
It sounds like you think all photons increase the temperature of what ever they hit? They don’t. All photons are not created equal.
Photons only increase the temperature of an object they hit if the source of the photon is warmer than the object that the photon hits.
For example: ice cubes give off photons so, how many ice cubes would it take to boil a cup of water?
We’ll have to agree to disagree about your view of physics.
Willis, I feel sorry for you in that your effort to educate people fall on so many deaf ears. It seem that peoples’ natural distrust of CliSciFi practitioners’ twisting science to serve a political master has led them to deny basic physics concepts. Somehow it appears that CliSciFi’s twisting of feedback concepts to get 3X CO2 warming has made some people deny the existence of LW downward radiative propagation from the atmosphere (including clouds) to the Earth’s surface.
I don’t know what else to say except than I am appalled at what I have read up to 10:45 PM PDT.
Dave,
I for one have no doubt that radiation from photon emission of an energetic molecule is isotropic in all but unusual circumstances that do not apply here. I suspect most bloggers here agree. However, that does not eliminate the very many questions that still cause confusion some 50 years+ of research down the track. Some of us wonder why there has not been a single, simple, seminal paper concluding with an estimate of climate sensitivity to CO2. Some of us wonder at the absence of a single, simple, step-by-step explanation of the parts played by each component involved in greenhouse gas theory. Such people are here, IMO, expressing confusion and consternation about how incomplete the big GHG picture seems to be. Geoff S
Geoff, there is no confusion as to the operation of the misnamed GHGs. Because of the confusion caused by the inability of UN IPCC CliSciFi climate models to include all of the actual climatic operations occurring in the oceans, on the land and within the atmosphere we have a whole ideology (with Marxism thrown in) and industry built upon feared catastrophe. Denying physics does not help counter CliSciFi lies. It gives ammunition to the liars.
Dave Fair: Another Willis groupie.
And proud of it!
Haha! 🙂
You’re just jealous because no one will be your groupie. 😉
Typo: “…heat lost gained and lost…”
As this post is addressing easily confused people, better no typos…
The concept of back radiation is easily shown by looking in the sky and seeing the moonlight.
So back radiation is an easily provable concept.
Both light and IR radiate back.
It is easy to see that this second lot of energy would have very little warming activity but it must have some.
–
This one easily observable fact alone should demolish the notion that back radiation does not exist.
–
Yes, the moon does warm the earth, it has been measured. But the moon is hotter than the Earth and that warmth on the moon is caused by the SUN.
In fact what are the W/m2 coming off the surface of the moon at it’s maximum daytime temperature and where is it in the atmosphere balance calculations?
The amount of energy involved from moonshine (pun intended) is below the uncertainty of the other energy flows in, within, and out of the massive energy flows of Earth’s climate systems.
Have you worked out the Radiation energy flux of the moon’s surface at 390K?
Which is 100K higher than the earth’s surface.
I have no interest in and will not do any calculations, radiative or otherwise. It makes no difference due to the distances involved.
Where in the Radiation calculations in a vacuum is the “distance” incorporated?
I seem to have missed it.
Yes indeed. You did miss the whole concept of “view factor”, which is a very basic concept in radiative heat transfer.
Why doesn’t it apply to our atmosphere then?
The view factor of our atmosphere to the surface is 1.0. That is, all the surface “sees” is the atmosphere. Since multiplication or division by 1 does not change the value, it is often left out of the equations.
By contrast, the view factor of the sun to the earth is so close to 0 (about 0.000002 by quick calculation), it is often just treated as a point source.
Yet a distant star just doesn’t seem to heat like our local star.
Ask Greta, she understands this stuff
🤣
The behaviour of radiation has got to be consistent – and if a theory fails on a simple example, then it’s wrong (to misquote Feynman)
The GHE assumes that the radiation flux from the Sun is added to that of the radiation flux from GH gases and the result is an increase in temperature of the Earth’s surface from -18C to +14C.
Short summary of the GHE central process: two or more sources can create a temperature at a target greater than any single source can create at the same target.
It is easy to see how that cannot be true; take the following example:
Therefore, we have the situation where a source of 35C is able to increase the temperature of another object from 40C to 42C.
That cannot happen – and if it cannot be seen how that is impossible, I give up.
The conclusion is as follows:
Radiation fluxes cannot be added together to create higher temperatures than any one flux can create on its own. Further, there are no known experiments or demonstrations that show such an effect.
BTW: the Sun was used as one of the sources to deal with some GHE supporters claiming that the Sun is in a different “frame of reference” or something – and therefore not subject to the normal laws of thermodynamics.
“Therefore, we have the situation where a source of 35C is able to increase the temperature of another object from 40C to 42C.”
–
There are 2 sources of heat in your example yet you only focus on the effect of one with your set and conveniently forget example.
–
Lets take a bowl of soup heated first by your heat source which only puts enough energy in to raise it to 25C.
Lets say it is a Bunsen burner
Take it outside and the sun puts enough energy into it to raise it to 40C.
Do both together.
You are getting energy from 2 sources.
The heat of the soup may go up to 42 C.
Take the bowl back inside, cool down and apply the burner again result 25C.
Now add a second Bunsen Burner.
Result increased temp say 27 degrees but certainly more than 25C.
2 sources of energy gives extra energy and more heat.
You are confusing the energy derived from the source to the temperature of the source.
The sun for instance temp 5,505 °C is only raising the temperature 20 C, A small energy input from a very hot source and also, though you did not mentioned it, responsible for most of the ambient temp of 20C or 293K.
–
Sorry I don’t follow your example at all – I have no idea what it is trying to prove or where it is going. I don’t follow the logic at all.
Are you saying that in my example the target will raise from 40C to 42C or not?
That is the critical question.
If you think it does, I have nothing more to say and suggest you try something like it for yourself as a practical exercise before you say any more.
If not, my example stands.
Are you saying that in my example the target will raise from 40C to 42C or not?
That is the critical question.
You cannot ask for an answer to a question when you have been deliberately vague in describing a situation.
A local heat source of 35 C is a fairly meaningless descriptor.
So is a target object that is warmed from 20 to 25 C by it.
Is it a glass of water or a swimming pool?
At least that would help you explain what you mean by a 35C heat source..
–
Lets take a silly example!
The solar pool heating through pipes on the roof to the pool.
Sun heats water to 40 degrees [shallow pool I guess] Sun heats water in pipes to 60 degrees , Pool heats to 42 degrees. QED
–
Or a sensible one.
Hot water heater at 35 degrees C the temp of the heater, not the amount of heat it puts out[ which depends on the size of the heater].
Next to a glass of water taking it from 20 to 25 C.
Take the roof of the building and let the overhead sun shine in warming the room to at least 40 C.
The room will be slightly warmer than 40 C because it is getting both the heat from the water heater and the sun.
Two sources.
The water will get to 42 degrees, it is 5 degrees warmer than a glass of water in an unheated room.
It is now getting two lots of heat one from a source whose temp but not output is 35 C and one from a source whose temp is 5500C but output is enough to raise the temp 20 from base. The glass of water is not at base temp due to the heater.
QED.
Please no more. I have no idea what you are talking about, I cannot follow your arguments at all. To date you’ve mentioned soup, Bunsen burners, solar pool heating through pipes, a glass of water, the roof of a building, a room and so on – and none of it make any sense.
Please understand there are only two ways to increase the temperature of anything:
That’s it – there are no other methods.
If you think there are – you will have joined the Perpetual Motion people.
Let’s leave it there and the readers (if there are any left at this point) can figure out which one of us is lost.
Zap it with a laser or a microwave?
Start an exothermic chemical reaction?
I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Your list is not anywhere near complete.
Or, remove the influence of a body at a lower temperature.
For example, if you are outside in wintertime, put a reflective “emergency blanket” between you and the cold environment. It’s fine if that emergency blank is a temperature lower than your body temperature.
* * *
Basically adding a LW-absorbing atmosphere removes some of the influence of space, which acts like a 3 K radiator.
Putting cold air between the planetary surface and space can produce a net warming because that cold air is so much warmer than what the surface would otherwise be “seeing.”
Your model is not correct. Two problems.
Using Bunsen burners is not the same as radiation, they primarily work through conduction/convection of the hot gas formed through a chemical reaction. If you place the Bunsen burners far enough away from your bowl so that radiation is the only heat transmission variable, you’ll probably never see a measurable temperature gain.
You are also heating an intermediate substance, the bowl, that contains the soup. Of course the soup will reach the same temp as the bowl, but through conduction/convection, not radiation.
Thanks Jim for considering the examples.
No problems.
Zagzigger did not specify, amongst a lot of things, what type of heat source he was using or how it worked.
Using Bunsen burners, a hot water bottle, a radiator etc, etc .
those three examples are conduction , convection and radiation.
all achieve the same effect.
Raising the temperature of the target because it absorbs extra energy from the extra energy input.
The target is warmer because of the source.
The source does not go away when you expose the target to sunshine or warm it by convected warmer air.
the target warms up more than the surroundings because it has a second active heat input.
This is where Zagzigger throws in the confusion.
With a steady single source all objects will warm to the laws of physics to the right balance for that substance.
but add another power source and it has to warm to the combined power source.
Back radiation.
bunsen’s.
whatever.
The argument is not about what temperature things settle to with a single source
It is about if multiple heat sources exist
If back radiation exists it has to be taken into account
The moon does not go black at night in a full eclipse
you can still see it by reflected earth shine.
Each water molecule is a little moon.
Imagine if there were millions of millions of them reflecting nearly half their heat back.
Not much?
now imagine that effect multiplied a million million times as that was only the skin layer of the earth.
How much of an effect would that be?
Already known and works according to the rules of back radiation
Called the GHG effect.
The conclusion of your explanation is that when considering radiation only, heat is only transferred in one direction, hot to cold. A cold object does not radiate sufficient energy to “raise” the temperature of the hot object. It can only reduce the gradient, i.e., the speed with which the hot body’s temperature reduces. In other words, “dT/dt” is smaller but remains positive. The only way to raise the temperature of the hot body is to make “dT/dt” negative, and you can only do that if T2 in the equation (T1 – T2) becomes larger than T1.
I see where your confusion is.
there are objects which are losing energy.
Having been heated but having no energy source.
Your example would be fine.
Both would constantly lose energy at a reduced gradient.
–
What you refuse to see is we are talking about power sources where the temp of one cannot drop.
Got it?
–
The second object, by dint of the first, now becomes a second smaller power source because it now gives some power back to the first object.
–
Hence the first power source can actually become hotter than what it started out at.
–
Clear?
No it doesn’t work that way. If anything, the earth is the power source for the atmosphere.
And the atmosphere returns the favor.
Yes exactly Zigzagger
If pyrgeometers actually do what everyone has convinced themselves that they do do, why do us humans bother with coal, oil, gas, nuclear, biomass etc et.
Why don’t we just rip the ‘sensor’ out of these things, put them somewhere outside (or does that even matter) and harvest all this downwelling energy
You/me/no-one can generate an electrical signal, any signal, simply by placing a ‘black-painted object under the sky.
Pyrgeometers are single-ended heat-engines. Thus nonsense
Even Willis himself says as much.
He tells us that heat energy does not flow from cold objects to warmer ones
The atmosphere at whatever altitude you care and due in no small part to Lapse Rate, is always colder than anywhere & everywhere below it.
Including the insides of pyrgeometers
The only truly black object would be something with a temperature of Zero Kelvin
Black Paint doesn’t make the grade
There is no flow from sky to dirt. Thus, there is no ‘net flow’
~~~~
Willis tell us that ‘most substances have near unity emissivity‘
Bollox
The Major Players in all this have very low emissivities ## and thermal conductivities
That is why the air near the surface, where we put thermometers. is as warm as it is
The biggest blindness is surely:
If all the Earth’s atmospheric energy is moving around via radiation, what exactly is left to power “Emergent Phenomena”?
Not just thunderstorms and other big-boy toys.
An imperceptiblely gentle breeze would also count – while being capable of moving huge amounts of heat energy over very large distances, exactly because of the low emissivity & conductivity.
There is your Trapped Heat.
Trapped by low conductivity and low emissivity.
Not trapped between, what effectively are, 2 mirrors facing each other
Simple enough experiment:
Strip off in front of a full length mirror
Do you feel colder or warmer?
You feel colder.
Clothes (and atmospheres) do not keep you warm via ‘radiation’
## Oxygen Nitrogen combined = 0.02
CO2 at atmospheric temps & pressure and to 3 decimal places = 0.000
Do you know how a pyranometer works?
How does your radio work?
Peta of Newark
I ask people to QUOTE MY EXACT WORDS, specifically because there are always charming folks like you who want to twist what I say. I said NOTHING about some mystery object called “heat energy”.
Heat is the NET flow of energy flowing spontaneously from warmer objects to cold objects.
Radiative energy, on the other hand, is emitted by all solid objects and most gases. It just gets radiated by one object and eventually absorbed by another object regardless of their temperatures.
Note, however, that the NET flow of radiative energy is ALWAYS from hot to cold as required by the Second Law.
Stop twisting my words to fit your thought processes. QUOTE MY EXACT WORDS!
~~~~
“Very low emissivities”?? Sorry, not true in the slightest.
My bible for many things climatish, including the emissivity (which is equal to the absorptivity) of common substances, is Geiger’s The Climate Near The Ground, first published sometime around the fifties when people still measured things instead of modeling them. He gives the following figures for IR emissivity at 9 to 12 microns:
and so on down to things like:
You can see why the error from considering the earth as a blackbody in the IR is quite small.
I must admit, though, that I do greatly enjoy the idea of some boffin at midnight in his laboratory measuring the emissivity of common substances when he hears the snap of the mousetrap he set earlier, and he thinks, hmmm …
Alternatively, you could look here, where it says:
Regards,
w.
“I must admit, though, that I do greatly enjoy the idea of some boffin at midnight in his laboratory measuring the emissivity of common substances when he hears the snap of the mousetrap he set earlier, and he thinks, hmmm …”
There is a complete field of science regarding Reflectance and integrating spheres. NASA has a list of substances and so does Johns Hopkins.
However, you are quite right about emissivity of common substances being close to blackbodies.
Your method of applying an average emissivity to substances differs from mine, where I apply emissivity to individual wavelengths and then integrate.
There is a difference, albeit a small one. You may be satisfied to measure things with a tape measure. I prefer to measure things with a vernier.
Thanks, Alexy. You are 100% correct. However, since I’m interested in things like the overall average emissivity of the earth’s surface of a 1° latitude x 1° longitude gridcell, it’s like I’m measuring a house … and for that, I use a tape measure, not a vernier.
My best to you,
w.
At last, someone talking sense.
Zagzigger, do you deny reality out of a warped sense of humor? You are ‘not even wrong.’ I’m just going to skip over your comments on any and all forums.
Yep. The beauty of this thread is that it has let me identify who I can safely ignore.
w.
Anyone accepting the contrived ‘proofs’ of these kooks is left dumber than before. Denying the existence of physical facts is not a good way to start an argument. Whether energy penetrates 100 meters in the ocean or 1 millimeter doesn’t change the fact that the ocean is receiving energy is just one example.
“Yep. The beauty of this thread is that it has let me identify who I can safely ignore.”
Yep. Anyone with a grasp of thermodynamics.
I am in agreement with this assessment.
Dave Fair puts his hands over his ears and goes lalalalalalalala!
Actually it works sometimes.
Only when Big Brother is on the viewscreen.
You’ve distorted the GHE beyond recognition, so of course you can disprove it. That’s not the “GHE central premise.” That’s a “straw man” cartoon distortion of the GHE.
That’s where you are going wrong.
The Sun does not inherently create any particular temperature “at a target.”
It imparts energy at a certain rate to that target.
The temperature of the target will then be determined by how hot it needs to get to overcome the “thermal resistance” between it and whatever heat sink is cooling it.
If there is little thermal resistance, the temperature will be low.
If there is more thermal resistance, the temperature will be higher.
This principle applies to houses, when you increase the amount of insulation, for a fixed rate of heating (without a thermostat).
It also applies when something impedes the radiant loss of heat.
That is the GHE.
Here’s a known experiment which proves you wrong:
Take a thermocouple and put in gas turbine and measure the temperature, then surround the ThC with a quartz tube and measure the temperature. The measured temperature will increase as a result of replacing the cooler inner wall of the gas turbine with the quartz tube which will be hotter than the wall but cooler than the ThC. It’s known as a Radiation Compensating thermocouple.
Check out https://www.jstor.org/stable/26174404?seq=1
Planck was at his wits end working on the UV catastrophe problem of Maxwell radiation. That problem was a 600lb gorilla under the carpets of academia for years. His constant h , means hilfe, help! The world was never the same again!
That quantum later called photon is taken very seriously by Einstein. Radiation involves photon momentum. Einstein’s insight in 1917 seems to have gone right by most.
Here is the original paper (english) :
Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung – INSPIRE (inspirehep.net)
No need of assumptions about a big bang, nor any modern popular embellishment.
Einstein wrote there :
….During absorption and emission of radiation there is also present a transfer of momentum to the molecules; this means that just the interaction of radiation and molecules leads to a velocity distribution of the latter. This must early be the same as the velocity distribution which molecules acquire as the result of their mutual interaction by collisions, that is, it must coincide with the Maxwell distribution. we must require that the mean kinetic energy which a molecule (per degree of freedom) acquires in a Plank radiation field of temperature T be kT 2 ; this must be valid regardless of the nature of the molecules and independent of frequencies which the molecules absorb and emit. In this paper we wish to verify that this far–reaching requirement is, indeed, satisfied quite generally; as a result of this our simple hypotheses about the emission and absorption of radiation acquire new supports…..
What is ironic, is that Maxwell´s distribution is used to refute Maxwell´s radiation theory and solve a major physics problem. Talk about scientific jiu jitsu! What a mind!
The solar flux to Earth is more by 90W/m2 every northern hemisphere winter and there is no runaway greenhouse catastrophe, so why some people get their knickers in a twist over a potential reduction of surface ULWR to space of 3W/m2 even with a doubling of CO2 to 800ppm seems a bit strange.
The most important energy flow is not up and down here. It is the heat transport to the Arctic. You need to integrate all energy flows all over the earth over a year to find the energy balance of the Earth that year. I guess that is impossible. In Missisippi there should be missing energy in the vertical direction because you have a loss to the North (the Arctic).
Thanks, Kristian. The movement of heat horizontally is called “advection”, and as you point out, overall it is from the tropics to the poles.
However, Goodwin Creek Mississippi is right about at the inflection point in the transfer. As a result, it receives (not loses but receives) about 1.6 W/m2 from the tropical zones. Here’s the map showing average advection flux.
Best regards,
w.
“Once again, the crazy idea that downwelling longwave radiation (DLR, also called infra-red or IR, or “greenhouse radiation”) can’t heat the ocean”
IR cant penetrate water, it can only cause the top new microns to warm. This warming cant penetrate down because of the cool layer, thus it cant heat the ocean.
It can cause the ocean to retain more heat, heat it obtained form shortwave though.
Dams, bricks and water. You can raise the lip of the dam with bricks, and cause it to retain more water.
Shortwave solar radiation can’t penetrate rock, it can only cause the top few microns to warm. This warming can’t penetrate down because of the cool layer below, this it can’t heat the rock.
This is why rocks in the desert do not get hot on a summer day…
Huh?
I happen to live in a semi desert that is hot and dry in the summer, the rocks on the surface do get hot!
Oh, did I forget my [/sarc] tag? Sorry!
I was simply using the equivalent logic of people who claim that because LWIR is absorbed in the top surface layer of water, it cannot affect the temperature of the water. And yes, that argument is also ridiculous.
Better get a tune-up on your sarcasm detector, Tommy.
Having a rocky day of it…..
Rock doesnt evaporate. Your analogy is stupid.
Moist soil has evaporative cooling as well as the conductive/convective and radiative cooling that a dry rock has. It absorbs solar radiation in the top surface layer. But it gets hotter significantly below this depth in the sun each day.
He said rock, not soil, but in any case, visible light does penetrate, and warm, water, to a temperature higher than that of the surface air temp, 3 C higher on average.
It is the evaporative cool layer that totally halts the ability of IR to warm water. Its just physics, you cant get round it.
Please re-read my post entitled “Radiating The Ocean“. It gives four separate arguments why downwelling longwave does indeed leave the ocean warmer than it would be without it. You need to counter all four of those argument to make your case. Please show your logic etc. Saying “It’s just physics, you cant get round it” is MEANINGLESS without specifics of which physics and why.
w.
Matthew:
Evaporative losses are just a third mode of thermal loss, in addition to conductive/convective and radiative. If you have them, they compensate a little more for incoming power flux, but it’s completely wrong to say that “it totally halts the ability of IR to warm water.”
You can boil water with an LWIR laser. If you were correct, this would not be possible.
Radiation heats matter.
Heated matter radiates.
So cause-effect inversions are easy if you snatch at atmospheric data with a preconceived intention of what you will “find”.
Cause-effect inversions are everywhere in the warmist CAGW narrative, they are its most consistent feature.
For example – a recent paper measures an increase in downwelling IR.
So increasing CO2 is increasing downwelling IR and the CO2 back-radiation theory is confirmed! The job’s a good-un!
Or … just possibly … the atmosphere has warmed for an unknown reason (throughout history it continually warms and cools for unknown reasons).
And this warmer atmosphere is radiating more IR – because it’s warmer!
Hatter,
Referred to as ‘reverse causation’. First explained to me in the context of lead (Pb) poisoning of children. One theory says that some children who ingest Pb have a later impairment to their IQ. Reverse causation says that some children with mental impairment ingest Pb from places like old Pb paint on putty around widow glass, more than kids with normal IQ do.
Millions after millions of $$$ were spent trying to support the first hypothesis. Very little was spent on the latter. Outcome – everyone now knows that Pb poisons children, even at the tiny levels that used to be in gasoline, so industry is ordered to take the tetra-ethyl lead knock improver out of gasoline or else.
Science itself has got sick from people pushing contested ideas and cornering the funding. Often done by claiming it will cause the end of the earth, or death to small children, or anything else that invokes that horrible ‘precautionary principle’.Geoff S
If the world had an opaque atmosphere with an emitting and absorbing surface 10 km up, similar emissivity and absorbing 150 Wm-2 and emitting 150 Wm-2, that surface would be 236 K. According to a dry adiabatic lapse rate, the atmosphere at the solid surface would be 334 K – only about 300 K if estimated from the average temperature gradient observed. Far from freezing but 0 incoming radiation energy and emitting 600 Wm-2.
I appreciate that there still must be radiative transfer of energy or there wouldn’t be convection and the actual solid surface would be 0 K – its far from a model of Earth – but hopefully you understand why its not as straight forward as you argue.
On my far-from-right-or-even-useful model, doubling of the gas making it opaque would double the height of the effective radiating surface above the solid surface and increase the temperature near the ground by another 100 degrees, so I’m not arguing that there is no GHE. Its irrelevant that the incoming radiation is SW or LW in this world, a bit like Venus.
An explanation why earth absorbs 150 watts of incoming solar energy and emits much higher amount of 395 watts. Compression heating is 98 watts, latent heat 87 watts and 61 watts is max to min. For Goodwin Creek Solar input averages 615 watts (not SW + LW) 55.3/90*1001=615 x emissivity 0.63 = 390 watts. When you average solar input over where no sunlight. Making the average 4x lower your fudging the real energy absorbed. The device measuring downwelling is measuring air emitting energy as as it decreases w/ height and appears at 850hpa level (well measured level).
The original more correct NASA energy budget chart sends a lot more energy directly into the surface, as the real sun does on the lit half of the planet, it does not contain any back radiation { perpetuum mobile energy amplifier}. That was invented later by alarmist mathemagicians to justify their antropogenic warming claims.
The key flaw is they turned the earth flat and divided sun radiation evenly over the whole planet surface including the night side, everything is wrong from there.
Superficially plausible if one assumes the atmosphere (including clouds) radiates in only one direction. What would the diagram look like at nighttime?
The yellow SW arrow on “absorbed by atmosphere” continues around the corner down turned LW red and width of LW red shows amount of LW radiation heading down from atm. to “absorbed by land and oceans” so Eben cannot understand Eben’s own posted diagram does contain back radiation.
I have hard time following your words ,
Are you possibly saying the short “orange” line at 45 degrees on the far right marked radiation absorbed by atmosphere 15% is heading back to the ground ?
Yes Eben, you have missed the change from SW atm. absorbed (orange 15%) to LW atm. emitted (red) is headed to the ground from atm. as shown by the arrow into the ground and the larger width of the LW (red) right most line.
No, you have it backwards, the 15% orange line is a split part of from the ground outgoing radiation getting absorbed by atmosphere and flowing into the thick 64% red line, it has no arrow on it but you can check it by adding all the numbers going into the thick red line,
it is 16+3+7+23+15= 64
Eben, refer to the incoming solar arrow pointing to the right into the “absorbed by atmosphere” SW orange 16% horizontal line that turns down thereby pointing to the ground and becoming emitted LW (red) by atm. downwards after the solar SW 16% was absorbed.
The emitted by surface “radiated to space from earth” is thin part of that line same far right red line with the down arrowhead at the end: would have been better, less confusing, to show it separate.
This cartoon showing backradiation combined into one line (a poor cartoonist) has confused you (and many others) and was later much improved.
“refer to the incoming solar arrow pointing to the right into the “absorbed by atmosphere” SW orange 16% horizontal line that turns down thereby pointing to the ground”
That is not one line turning downward , those are two different lines.
The proof is your numbers don’t add up.
Eben, it is one orange line turning down adding 16% to the large atm. emitted red line, 1% of which is shown emitted LW “radiated to space from clouds and atmosphere”, 15% SW added to far-right red line, 6% of which is “radiated directly to space from earth” & the balance atm. LW emitted toward the surface and absorbed there as DWIR as the down arrowhead shows making up total “absorbed by land and oceans”.
You cannot count to 64 , game over
Eben is misguided, the far-red arrow 21 LW emitted from surface doesn’t somehow undergo heating in a cooler atm. into SW solar incoming orange and curve off the far-red line into the big red arrow. Try again Eben.
This poorly constructed cartoon has thoroughly confused Eben, a modern one like L’Ecuyer 2015 (including the water cycle balance Fig. 4) would help Eben understand Earth’s energy budget.
Add up the numbers.
I hate to say it, but this time he is right, about the number on the cartoon.
Not about anything else he said.
This diagram represents net flows only.
There are three orange lines which are added to the big red outgoing arrow.
One is the 16% of incoming that is absorbed by the atm.
One is the 3% absorbed by clouds.
One is the 15% coming up from the ground that gets absorbed by the atmosphere on it’s way out. That 15% comes from the 21% emitted from the ground directly, leaving 6% to go directly from the ground to space.
The big red arrow that ends up being 64% emitted to space from the clouds and the atm, starts out with 7% conduction from ground to air which then rises, and 23% carried to clouds and atm by wv.
On the way out, the 23% and the 7% combine with, (in order from bottom to top) 3% that was incoming absorbed by clouds, 15% that was emitted from the ground directly, that is absorbed by air on the way up, and 16% that was incoming absorbed by the air.
The big red arrow is 64%, which is 23 + 7 + 3 + 15 +16 = 64
64% was emitted to space from clouds and air, plus 6% directly leaves from the ground (presumably through atmospheric window), 6% incoming reflected from atm, 20% incoming reflected by clouds, and 4% incoming reflected from ground (6 + 20 + 4 are presumably as visible light and some UV). These all add to 100. So it balances, which is not hard when one is making a diagram using whole numbers.
The diagram was badly done, for sure.
It should show the red outgoing arrow getting bigger as each other arrow joined it, just like the yellow one got smaller as each fraction separated out.
But none of that matters, because it is still just a simplified cartoon of the whole complex atmosphere, and shows zero feed backs, which of course happens in every energy stream to some degree.
It is net flows only, not evidence that the people who made it “knew” there was no such thing as energy leaving the ground looping back around before heading out.
Just like of course there is energy reflected not once but several times, such as from the ground into a cloud and then back to the ground, or from a cloud and up into another cloud and then down to the surface, etc.
Light is widely scattered, reflected, absorbed and reemitted, in all directions all the time. Budget diagrams like this that are net flows to not even try to capture everything going on, just the big picture, big ticket item net flows.
Warmistas are so intent on making CO2 out to be the devil molecule, they have gotten to the point of calling CO2 a deadly pollutant and some actually deny that having more of it enhances photosynthesis.
And in an unseemly display of like minded thinking, some skeptics (we need a name for this faction) seem to have the notion that they must disbelieve in even the known physical properties of CO2, which the warmistas use to make their idiotic case, by exaggerating not only the effect of it, but also inventing the notion that the Earth is too hot and we will cook if our ice age having planet warms fractionally.
And just like the warmistas have done over the years, they are inventing new reasons why back radiation is not a thing, some of which are mutually contradictory:
-CO2 can only emit upwards
-CO2 emissions can go down, but if they do, they cannot be absorbed and therefore will all reflect (as if that matters)
-It’s the emissivity, stupid
-Them pyromcgizmofanistanamahoozit instruments are big fat lying liars that lie
-Whatever they come up with next, as they think of it
“The diagram was badly done, for sure.” No kidding.
Actually, the cartoon shows one is the 15% coming up from the ground that, first encounters mystery heating to the equivalent solar incoming flux, and THEN gets absorbed by the atmosphere big red LW arrow.
Since that is illogical even for this cartoon, what they are showing is the 16% SW being reduced by 1% maybe absorbed by clouds, and then clear sky 15% continuing as SW, being absorbed by the atm. and radiated as LW increasing the width of window 6% red line.
Yes, the far-right arrow appears to include the NET of upwelling from the surface less downwelling to the surface (which Eben missed) plus the window for 21%. The reason Eben’s math added correctly is faulty.
To get the math to add correctly to 64%, an unknown, unnoted amount of LW from the surface must be added. It appears the cartoon maker meant the lower part of the cartoon’s red arrows to show radiation arrows from/to the surface.
The reason Eben uses this badly done cartoon (instead of more modern ones that are far less mysterious) is known only to Eben.
What he said.
That is not GHG “back radiation”. That is what might be be better called “indirect sun energy”. Look at the incoming solar and how much water (vapor) absorbs directly from the sun, not from Earth’s radiation.
Jim 5:08pm, it is not clear what you mean by “that”. The cartoon posted by Eben is so poorly drawn trying to discuss its contents is not really useful when much better Earth energy budget work is currently available. I’m guessing by “that” you mean solar absorbed by atm. shown as orange changing upon absorption to atm. emitted red.
My point was that the “78” shown as being absorbed by the atmosphere is included as “back radiation” when it really isn’t from energy radiation emitted from the surface. It is energy directly from the sun and shouldn’t be treated in the calculations for how GHG’s work. If CO2 were to disappear tomorrow, this energy would still remain and some of it would reach the surface.
Jim, all the atm. gas is illuminated by the solar rays so the atm. composition and pressure matter for the solar spectrum absorption (78) thus GHGs need to be included for solar absorption & modulate the poorly named “backradiation” (really the 333 is all-sky emission shown as downwelling).
Yes, if the atm. IR opacity is reduced (and/or surface pressure reduced) with less IR active gas composition, then more solar is incident on the surface so the 23 and 161 go up, the 78 atm. absorbed and 79 all-sky reflected go down.
And, yes, Eben should closely study your more modern cartoon.
The point being that it is NOT “back radiation” from CO2! It is basically radiation from the sun that reaches earth indirectly.
The level of CO2 is not going affect this value one iota. Reducing or increasing CO2 simply will have no effect. Spending trillions upon trillions won’t eliminate it.
Jim, it really is CO2 et. al. gas emissions from absorbed solar & the more CO2 an iota more that emission is incident on the surface since the atm. is not 100% transparent to solar illumination. In fact, no way to tell if an observed DW ~3.5micron photon came from the sun or the atm.
Again, there is very little solar radiation with wavelengths greater than 4um.
“Very little” is not none. The sun emits all wavelengths of light as does all matter.
At 50um the AM0 irradiance is effectively zero. It increases slowly at shorter wavelengths so that by 4um it is 0.04% of the peak at 0.45um.
The integrated total in the 4-50um band is only 11.7 W/m2, which is less than 1% of the TSI. And this is less than 4% of a downwelling IR of 300 W/m2.
Water absorbs a lot of direct energy from the sun. Look at the values on the y-axis and compare them to what is emmitted
Off the end of this graph, the AM0 declines from the 0.026 W/m2/nm at 3um down to just 0.008 W/m2/nm at 4um.
At 15um the AM0 is only 5×10^-5 W/m2/nm.
Very little of the 11.7 W/m2 in the 4-50um band makes it to the surface, it is pretty much unmeasurable and lost in other signals.
(Minor point–the label about the yellow areas is a bit simplistic, the visible loss is mostly scattering, Rayleigh and molecular. The magnitude changes a lot with solar position, i.e. the atmospheric path length.)
The point is that it isn’t “back radiation”, that is radiation that was first radiated by the earth’s surface and then returned. It is not part of the greenhouse effect, especially CO2. It may be going thru radiative gases rather than directly from the sun, but it didn’t originate from the surface and was then returned. Radiative diagrams should show it as a separate input to the earth. The “greenhouse effect” should be shown separate.
The main point that many do not understand is that Earth would be at 200 deg C in daylight and -100 deg C at night if there was no atmosphere, like the Moon. Thus, having an atmosphere serves to cool the day and warm the night. It’s that simple.
That said, the climate alarmist claim is that the tropical upper troposphere is warming, emits IR (with half lost immediately to space) and then warming Earth’s surface with downwelling IR. As the surface is warmer than the upper tropical troposphere during daylight, downwelling IR must be reflected and sent back upward where it is lost to space. This follows the laws of thermodynamics.
This does not say that having an atmosphere does not change the movement of insolation energy from the surface. With no atmosphere, all heat loss from the surface would have to be radiation. Having an atmosphere adds conduction and convection, which are effective at lower temperatures than the surface with no atmosphere. The result of having an atmosphere is indeed a much more stable climate.
Charles writes ” .. emits IR (with half lost immediately to space) and then warming Earth’s surface with downwelling IR.”. I keep insisting that you have to take this further. Half (or so) is lost to space. The other half is said to go back to the surfave and heat. This heated surface in turn later emits LWIR to the atmosphere, with half of it lost immediately to space. You then have a simple series that sums to 100% lost to space if you do a lot of these mini-cycles.
So we have all of that upwelling IR lost to space. The question is, is it ALL lost to space or does some fraction stay behind as increased surface heating?
My basic question is, why would it? Geoff S
With an emissivity/absorptivity of 0.95+, not much would be reflected. To reflect all downwelling IR, the earth would have to have an absorptivity of zero.
Willis quote from the 2nd link: “If DLR were heating the air we’d all be on fire.”
😂😂😂
This discussion is not relevant to the “CO2 causes massive atmospheric heating” argument.
Conflating SW and LW radiation, Upwelling and downwelling radiation of both types in the argument is just twirling nonsense around.
The real argument is whether or not there is downwelling IR in the 15 micron band. this is what needs to be addressed because it is precisely the argument that alarmists use to claim that CO2 is the control knob of global warming.
http://klima-fakten.net/?page_id=2690&lang=en
please address your arguments to the statements made in this paper. You can also address William Happer’s statements that IR in the 15 micron band absorbs to extinction. It absorbs to extinction upwards and downwards for any emissions. That is the reason for the missing IR in any TOA spectral plot that you see, within the 15 micron band.
We understand that there is downwelling IR generated. However not in the 15 micron band. There are 19 molecules of CO2 in the ground state for every one in an excited state. Practically All of the IR in this band is absorbed whether or not it is upward or downward.
This Thread has pulled in all the kooks. It appears that dragons inhabit the vast regions of their willfully ignorant wasteland voids. They develop elaborate schemes and ‘mathematical proofs’ to deny accepted science. Kooks and the easily led.
All of the skeptical physicists recognize the accepted operation of the misnamed GHG theory. Read Drs. Linzden and Spencer, Sr. on the subject.
We used to have people like RGB from Duke laboring for what must have been hours at a time keeping it real. Him and others.
We have lost many voices over the years, to our detriment.
Another valuable voice was DB Stealey (“Treat me good and I’ll treat you better, treat me badly, and I’ll treat you worse”)
I miss him and RGB from Duke, and so many others.
But we have gained new voices.
Threads like this are a good thing.
We see who can at least be civil while having disagreements, and who can be ignored.
But we have to always correct the misstatements and erroneous points of view, both to keep conversations grounded in reality, and for the benefit of lurkers and those who are reading and might be taken in by bullshit arguments.
Looking back at the history of science, it is very evident that WUWT operates like science is supposed to, that what we see here is how it has always been in the world of ideas, and it is one of the only places with a critical mass of properly informed and educated contributors and commentators.
It would be very interesting to see the spectral distribution of the >4um downwelling flux, and how it changes from day to night. This is a really tough measurement, though.
Here’s my standard thought experiment that should cause some folks to do a little deeper thinking:
Suppose you replace all the GHGs in our atmosphere with a special molecule that is gravitationally locked to the planet. This gas absorbs IR only at its planet facing bottom and emits it only towards space. It also transfers energy via kinetic collisions just like GHGs. Furthermore, let’s assume it absorbs/emits at half the frequency of current GHGs to keep the radiation rate to space the same.
What would the temperature of Earth be?
I believe the correct answer is the Earth would be warmer. How is that possible without back radiation?
Simple answer is there are other means of energy transfer and the real reason the surface of the planet is warmer is because GHGs warm the atmosphere. They absorb energy and pass it on to the other molecules. Since there are more molecules near the surface, the surface is warmer.
The surface would also end up warmer due to conduction which would essentially replace back radiation. Overall, the higher albedo due to no clouds would lead to a warmer Earth.
All that back radiation is doing on Earth is changing the conductive flow of energy. Whatever additional back radiation from increases in CO2 will simply decrease the conductive energy flow.
Another slightly different form of this thought experiment:
What if the surface reflected all IR from gases?
The energy would generally be absorbed by other gases low in the atmosphere. This would make it warmer than the surface and conduction would work to equalize the energy. Once again we see the energy from downwelling IR has very little to do with the temperature of the surface.
It is the energy absorbed by GHGs and transferred within the atmosphere that is most important.
This magical (highly non-physical) property makes that gas appear, from the surface, to be at absolute zero, for purposes of radiative heat transfer.
This guarantees that the surface will lose energy via thermal radiation at the same rate that it would in a vacuum.
If any heat is lost through conduction/convection, the surface would lose heat even faster and be even colder.
No, this is clearly wrong.
Willis,
The CERES sensors are satellite mounted and detect radiation leaving TOA. Those sensors do NOT know surface downwelling and surface upwelling numbers. Those are calculated from surface sensor parameters. So there is a good reason for the match to SURFRAD data….
AFAIK, the CERES datasets do NOT include surface sensor parameters. There is a list of the data sources for the CERES dataset here. None of them are “surface sensor parameters”. Not one.
So that is NOT the reason for the good match between CERES and SURFRAD data.
w.
Downwelling radiation is within the solar constant level of radiation.1418 watts 398 K. Has wavelengths at 7.3µm, considered longwave. It is definitely not from greenhouse gases which purpose is to cool the earth not warm it. It is well known that dry air is warmer than moist air. Water vapor is a product of evaporation. Takes heat from the ground making air above the ground cooler. Dew point is much cooler than the ground, therefore doesn’t increase ground heat. The gas constant for air is 0.287 Joules/gram providing the atmosphere the minimum energy of 98 watts. The gas constant can go up to 0.7 Joules/gram earths effective temperature of -18°C. And to 1 Joule/gram, earths thermal ideal blackbody normal temperature 5.3°C. Land absorbs far more from the sun in parts where moisture is low increasing global temperature (Feb-Aug) in the summer. And cools the earth where land snow is extensive (Sept-March), lowering the constant to 0.946 Joules/gram. Atmospheric air gas constant has a minimum 0.287 at tropopause, 0.70 effective temperature and 1.01 J/gram global average.
At 7.3um, the solar irradiance at the top of the atmosphere is only 0.8 W/m2/um, which is just 0.04% of the peak at 0.45um, 2100 W/m2/um.
“It is well known that dry air is warmer than moist air.”
You seriously have no idea what you are talking about.
Just about everything else you have said is equally loopy or ridiculous.
He has never been to South Vietnam.
Or Antarctica.
This is the explanation.
.
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7j.html
Physical geography is very important as where one must start one’s study of the physical parameters of the Earth.
It is a prerequisite course program prior to studying meteorology, climatology, oceanography, hydrology, etc.
It does not get bogged down with detailed examinations of atmospheric physics.
Most students taking these classes have not finished introductory courses in physics, or chemistry, etc.
Take a look at the links at the bottom of this textbook page:
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/readings_ch7.html
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/studyguide_ch7.html
INTERNET WEBLINKS – Chapter 7: Introduction to the Atmosphere (physicalgeography.net)
Just like no one studies physical chemistry prior to completing general chemistry and general physics, no one studies atmospheric physics or climatology prior to completing physical geography.
Downwelling IR is real of course.
Measuring it amounts to nothing more than a measurement of atmospheric temperature.
CO2 absorption length (to 1/e) is 25 meters with complete absorption well before 1km. Following the implications of saturation forces the warmists to retreat to the far upper atmosphere where the sky above is transparent. But here in the super thin air of the meso- and exosphere the heat and radiation fluxes are negligible.
What matters is transport of heat to the emission level at the troposphere-stratosphere boundary. A big error is the assumption that this is only radiative. It’s not. It is more from convection. Heat exchange between turbulently circulating air, water vapour, sea and land surface and soil are all factors at least as important as radiation flux.
No one thinks it is only radiative.
What you seem to be overlooking is, the amount of change in the balance of energy flows being debated as consequential or not, are a small fraction of the total flows of energy.
After all, warmistas are claiming a 1.5° rise in temps over 140 years is an actual catastrophe with existential implications.
I skim read all the comments: you all have it wrong. Read my papers, the titles give my key points:
The Greenhouse Gases and Infrared Radiation Misconceived by Thermoelectric Transducers https://vixra.org/abs/1811.0499
Quantum Mechanics and Raman Spectroscopy Refute Greenhouse Theory
https://vixra.org/abs/1811.0498
Why is no one talking about what the Raman Lidars are measuring in the infrared? It is the technology of our age and it is ignored.
I have just recently conducted an experiment no one else has ever done. It shows CO2 does not at all absorb any IR radiation as claimed, nor does glass. Water does. And germanium – said to be transparent to IR – is totally opaque. We have fooled ourselves. http://www.fractalnomics.com/2021/05/refuting-greenhouse-theory-experiment.html
In an age of quantum mechanics and laser-based instruments, there are no special gases, only special instruments and systematic error.
Please define the exact wavelengths you are labeling as IR.
There are QM predicted spectra lines throughout the IR range of the EMS by all atmospheric molecules. They are either detected/inferred by thermo-electric detectors or laser Raman scattering. The thermo-electric modes are termed IR and the Raman detected modes, Raman. The BB curves in the diagram are produced by thermoelectrics.
Those N2 and O2 lines are Raman lines not IR absorption lines.
Who is the “you” that has it all wrong?
You said that after saying you skim read all the comments.
So you were referring to, what…all the commenters above?
Who you admit you only skimmed over?
Are you trying to be funny?
Or insulting?
Your impression is no one has any idea what they are talking about, and after saying this, you advise we should go to your site to be set straight?
Good luck wit’ dat.
“…there are no special gases, only special instruments and systematic error.”
And presumably, a very few “special people”, eh?
Glass does not absorb IR?
Some wavelengths it does, and some it is known not to.
Are you seriously suggesting we need to throw away every study ever done on the spectroscopic properties of CO2?
And glass?
By ‘you’ I mean everyone.
Yeah, ‘good luck with dat’.
I was skimming for discussion on ‘Raman instruments’ and I saw nothing. If Tyndal had a Raman spectrometer he would have concluded all the gases absorb and emit IR. And he would have used glass (silica) instead of salt crystal to contain his gases. Glass is thermoelectric: it transduces IR radiation to electricity very well.
As I said, your BB curves are thermoelectric curves. They are correct, but misleading if you don’t combine them with Raman inferences as I have. Without that they are incomplete. To see the other IR emission spectra lines you need Raman spectrometer. When that’s done, all the gases radiate, as they should by quantum theory.
Using my diagram, I am filling in the area y. That is the way it is.
I have an experiment to test my theory. I want to radiate pure N2 or O2 with focused IR sunlight and measure them (at their 2338cm-1 and 1556cm respectively) with a Raman CARS spectrometer.
I have been told by experts it will work in principle but there are laser ‘noise’ problems.
I have papers that show similar experiments have already been conducted in a similar context.
Besides, the N2-CO2 laser works on the radiation of N2 at its 2338, so it does absorb. and it does for IR photons also.
So GH theory as we know it is wrong.
Besides, air is not a thermal conductor (0.024WmK), so it must radiate; else there would be no convection.
“Besides, the N2-CO2 laser works on the radiation of N2 at its 2338, so it does absorb. and it does for IR photons also.
So GH theory as we know it is wrong.”
No the CO2 laser does not work like that. The N2 is excited by an electrical discharge but the transition is forbidden so the long-lived excited state transfers its energy collisionally to the CO2 which then radiates.
“Read my papers …” and you will become dumber.
No. Not dumber, enlightened. Pun intended.
Willis Eschenbach
Thank you for this short, but excellent exposé.
It might appear on this blog as a kind of ‘inconvenient truth’ 🙂
Rudolf Clausius was already aware of much of it, as he published in 1887
DIE MECHANISCHE WÄRMETHEORIE
von R. CLAUSIUS
DRITTE UMGEARBEITETE UND VERVOLLSTÄNDIGTE AUFLAGE.
ERSTER BAND.
https://archive.org/details/diemechanischewr00clau
*
Therein we can read (translated into English using Google)
SECTION XII.
The concentration of heat and light beams and the limits of their effect
…
1. Subject of the investigation.
…
” What further regards heat radiation as happening in the usual manner, it is known that not only the warm body radiates heat to the cold one but that the cold body radiates to the warm one as well, however the total result of this simultaneous double heat exchange is, as can be viewed as evidence based on experience, that the cold body always experiences an increase in heat at the expense of the warmer one. ”
Rgds
J.-P. D.
Thanks, Bindidon, always good to hear from you.
What you point out is both true and interesting. And despite the fact that this has been known since 1887, there are still people on this post arguing strongly that cold objects cannot radiate energy to warm bodies.
More curious still, in most cases the lack of basic knowledge is inversely proportional to the passion with which they propound their incorrect understandings.
w.
When people have understandings different to the conventional scientific findings (and therefore usually wrong), there is an understandable tendency to yell louder to try and convince those they think are deaf.
Even before 1887. Almost a hundred year prior in fact.
Just that back that long ago, people’s intuition and old ideas that had yet to be discarded made a morass of what was being elucidated by careful experimentation:
Pictetâ•Žs experiment: The apparent radiation and reflection of cold (pugetsound.edu)