Submitted to Geophysical Research Letters, 6/21/21. Published here at the request of the author.
Howard C. Hayden1
1Prof. Emeritus of Physics, UConn, now in Pueblo West, Colorado (corkhayden@comcast.net)
1. Introduction
A recent GRL paper by Loeb et al [1] contains a serious error in physics that is compounded by some extreme exaggerations to the press and in another GRL paper [2].
2. Basic Physics
With frequent but small, ephemeral exceptions, the radiant heat that a planet emits to outer space equals the heat absorbed from the sun. Indeed, this is true for Earth within 0.3 percent [1]. For Earth, the incoming/outgoing heat rate amounts to about 240 W/m2, averaged over the surface; for Venus, owing to its high 76% albedo, only 156 W/m2
The surface of the planet emits IR according to the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law. The surface of Earth at 288 K emits 390 W/m2, some 150 W/m2 more than the earth emits to space. That 150 W/m2 of heat retention is the cause of the 33 ºC temperature rise over the non-GHG Earth with the same albedo. Venus at 737 K emits 16,730 W/m2 from its surface, but only 156 W/m2 into space. The 16,574 W/m2 difference, due to the composition of the extremely dense atmosphere of Venus is what determines the climate of Venus: 511 ºC hotter than the hypothetical Venus with the same albedo but no greenhouse effect.
2.1 The Error in Physics
The serious scientific error of Loeb and colleagues is contained in this sentence, quoted verbatim:
“Climate is determined by how much of the sun’s energy the Earth absorbs and how much energy Earth sheds through emission of thermal infrared radiation.”
Climate is determined by the very large difference between surface radiation and planet radiation, and is most assuredly not determined by minor positive and negative imbalances between absorbed solar energy and radiated IR.
2.2 Unjustified Assertion
Mr Loeb is quoted in numerous news articles (Washington Post, CNN, and others) as saying, based on about 15 years of CERES data, that the minor disequilibria between incoming and outgoing heat fluxes is “unprecedented.” The same claim is made in the title of a GRL article by Mr. Loeb [2]. Perhaps he can provide us with data from the last 4.6 billion years of Earth’s history to back up that claim.
[1] Norman G. Loeb, Gregory C. Johnson, Tyler J. Thorsen, John M. Lyman, Fred G. Rose, and Seiji Kato, “Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth’s Heating Rate, Geophysical Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL093047 [2] Loeb, N. G., H. Wang, R. P. Allan, T. Andrews, K. Armour, J. N. S. Cole, et al., 2020: New generation of climate models track recent unprecedented changes in Earth’s radiation budget observed by CERES. Geophys. Res. Lett., 47, e2019GL086705. doi:10.1029/2019GL086705, ci
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Really, that is THE problem? I mean while the surface emissivity = 1 blunder is perfectly fine, cause it has been repeated often enough? How many times do you have to repeat non-sense to make it a “fact”?
Sorry, but surface emissivity is only ~0.91. Surface emissions only about 355W/m2.
https://greenhousedefect.com/what-is-the-surface-emissivity-of-earth
I agree that emissivity of 1.0 is not correct, but even MODTRAN, which is pretty reliable as a calculator of radiative effect, uses something like 0.97. It is not a blunder of the same sort as others I encounter.
I guess people have never realised how significant this question is, I mean apart from those who actively downplay it. It is about the implicit logic of the GHE and it equally applies to ECS and so on.
Let us say surface emissions were a 100% and TOA you measure 70%. Then you would logically conclude the GHE are these 30% emission reduction. But the 100% are not measured, rather they are just an assumption. Then a more accurate 91% in surface emissions are just 9% less, obviously. But these 9 percentage points relative to a 30% “GHE” will reduce it by a 30% (9/30), as it drops from 30 to 21%. That difference is HUGE!
The same thing applies to all the overlapping of GHGs with other GHGs, clouds and aerosols. These issues are accumulating. All it takes is understanding this logic, and eventually both the greenhouse gas effect and ECS will blow up like a balloon.
The measured energy leaving the surface of the Earth is greater than the measured energy leaving the TOA. The GHE is the difference and it is that energy that provides for our climate. Man, get over it. Your definition of words doesn’t matter.
That is very smart, since you need to get all these details correct in order to even assess ECS. But hey, why would anyone care about the physics, when we have firm beliefs..
And you have all those details “correct?” Measurements show more energy leaves the surface of the Earth than leaves at TOA. In what way do those observations violate any physical principles? Speculating as to a particular value of ECS is a separate subject. ‘Picks your methods and takes your chances.’
Downvoters, please explain to me where I am wrong.
Define “More Energy is leaving”.
I think the voters have it right that leaving, as in “energy loss” is not defined by the SB Radiation, as you try to make it out.
Joe, are you purposefully obtuse? You need to think in complete sentences: “More energy leaves the surface of the Earth than the energy leaving at TOA.” The energy is carried by LW radiation in both instances, but the Earth’s energy releases also include conduction and convection. These are not difficult concepts unless one makes them so.
Energy that leaves a body is a true heat loss.
Energy that leaves by radiation is not the same as heat loss.
Not sure if you meant to include a /sarc tag with that, but just in case you didn’t…
“Heat” is nothing more than an energy flux. There is energy flow from warmer to cooler that we call “heat”.
Energy is energy, it behaves the same whatever form it takes, it obeys the same fundamental physical laws and the same constraints upon its behavior.
Energy cannot flow unless free energy exists, free energy is related to the ability of that energy to do work, if no work can be done, no energy can flow, which is why energy always and only flows down an energy density gradient (unless external energy does work to push system energy up the energy density gradient)… and warmer objects have higher energy density at all wavelengths than cooler objects.
This is why we can derive the S-B equation by going all the way back to the Quantization Rule (ie: the number of de Broglie waves in a bound electron’s orbital)… that entails power, which entails force, which is related to work.
Energy does not flow willy-nilly without regard to the energy density gradient… an analogy is water… water does not flow against a pressure gradient unless external energy does work to pump that water against the pressure gradient, which is why water only ever spontaneously flows downhill and water does not flow furiously back and forth in a placid isothermal lake. Same concept for energy. No pressure differential, no flow… except in the case of energy, that pressure is radiation pressure, which is a manifestation of the energy density.
“Heat” is nothing more than an energy flux”
No, heat is energy content, not flux.
What fresh stupidity is this?
By ‘content’ do you mean ‘density’? Because temperature is provably a measure of energy density. Are you confusing heat and temperature? Sure you are. LOL
Temperature is equal to the fourth root of energy density divided by Stefan’s constant. Heat is definitionally an energy flux.
You are yet again wrong. Don’t you ever get embarrassed by continually being wrong? LOL
Clausius mistakenly assigned the word ‘heat’ to what we know today as ‘temperature’ in his first memoir, and you climate tardlings cling to that ancient mistake because it supports your CAGW narrative, just as you cling to the long-debunked Prevost Principle and Planck’s statements about the emission of an object depending only upon internal state (in keeping with the Prevost Principle… in fact, in the immediately preceding sentence to that statement, Planck invokes the Prevost Principle)… but your own Bob Wentworth disproved Prevost (and by extension, Planck) right here on WUWT.
Perhaps, if you were able to gain proper historical knowledge, rather than clinging to bits and pieces of history that are errors but which support your skewed take on reality, you’d understand reality a bit better… as it is, you only embarrass yourself further with each deluded post you make.
Clyde, I’m happy you have overturned the entire scientific basis of modern technology all by yourself.
Amazing, isn’t it? That so many yammering idiots have gotten it wrong? I feel almost as I’m sure Einstein felt when his theory of relativity was corroborated via gravitational lensing. LOL
Oh, are you one of the ‘highly-educated idiots’ who forgot to check his math? Sure you are… check below:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/22/serious-error-of-physics-in-recent-grl-paper-loeb-et-al-on-earths-unprecedented-heat-retention/#comment-3281525
Down voters never explain and they never apologize. According to John Wayne that would make them seem weak.
What percentage of that difference is from water vapor and from CO2?
That never seems to be broken down in statements about the GHE, leaving many with the assumption that all that extra warmth retained by slowing its movement to space, is due to CO2 alone.
This should not be considered to be a criticism of anything you have said, I just wanted to insert water vapor into the conversation.
Thank you, Tom. There are too many arguments about the relative differences in the effects of CO2 vs H2O such that I just go to the measured end results. There is no evidence that the globe is warming unduly; we are comfortably within past variations. CliSciFi has so muddied the facts/assumptions that it will take decades to sort things out after fear has run its course and economic and political realities take over.
Part of the problem is how much actually leaves the earth. Averages cover details. If there is already an argument that at 288K the CO2 molecule is saturated, what is it when 1300+ is leaving the earth at midday? Does an average really tell you the difference in radiation between midday and midnight?
Does the earth shed more energy at noon that what is expected? Climate scientists seem to be enamored of simple algebraic sums and differences of things that really need calculus.
Well, Jim, just go ahead and show them how to do it. I’m sure they will appreciate to learn the correct way to go about studying these physical processes.
Please pardon the snark, Jim. But I’m just fed up with evidence-free assertions of physical and mathematical theories, from both camps.
I have neither the time nor the budget for doing the research to determine an accurate mathematical depiction of what happens. However, a major contribution to my wealth might convince me to do a better job that is currently done.
As to the veracity of my assertions, I do believe after researching and spending much of my free time the last 8 months studying Planck’s thesis on heat radiation that performing a simple average over a flat earth leaves much to be desired. When I see a “scientist” using simple algebra with an average power density to prove what occurs in the atmosphere I cringe.
But, Jim, if that is how they do it, your I months of study will not change their practices. See if the UN IPCC CliSciFi AR6 people will accept your proposals.
Surface emissivity = 1 is an approximation, not a blunder.
The quote that Hayden is complaining about is worse than a blunder.
Ok, it is not a blunder, but an epic blunder! And it is easily a 1000times worse than what Hayden is (rightfully) complaining about.
link
71% of the planet is covered by water so that’s what determines most of the emissivity. Where are you getting 0.91 from?
The article I linked is to the SOD article as a Ferrari is to a Trabant. So I suggest you read it if you want to know 😉
The article I linked is mostly based on instrumental data. By comparing it to a crappy East German automobile you’re implying that it’s somehow defective. In what pray tell?
Again, it is all in the article I linked. I will not copy paste it into the discussion here.
Lazy, lazy, lazy.
Commie B
The emissivity of water is about 0.99.
It is incorrect that the surface emits everything. GHG’s near the surface are also quite capable of emitting upwards. GHG’s intercept radiation coming into the atmosphere and send it back. Ultimately this shades the ground. If all GHG’s were removed from the atmosphere the amount if radiation reaching the ground would be about double.
I got an emissivity of 0.93643 from NASA’s ISCCP project.
http://phzoe.com/2019/11/05/what-is-earths-surface-emissivity/
Do you know what these data cover? Is that including water/snow surfaces? If so, how does NASA measure that, when vertical angles are useless? What about the far-IR, where the atmosphere is too opaque for satellite measurements?
“the far-IR,”
far from what?
far-IR is the common term to describe IR beyond 15µm. It accounts for roughly 50% of the terrestial emission spectrum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_infrared
It covers entire surface. 5 to 200 microns. I don’t see your sources as better. I’m also doubtful you multiply emissivity to stated surface upwelling IR. I think it already includes emissivity. I’m open to being wrong on that.
The problem is, you can not measure hemispheric emissivity of water with a satellite looking straight down. There is no alternative to using some kind of integration of fresnel derived data, which in itself are of course confirmed by observation. And again, the result hereto is 0.91 (actually 0.908 with higher resolution). And there is a number of sources confirming this figure.
However in “climate science” it is highly popular to name wrong figures. Instead of hemispheric emissivity, only emissivity to surface normal (~0.96) is named. Or emissivity to surface normal within the atmospheric window, like the quote from “commiebob” above.
Just consider what fraction of reality a satellite “sees”..
On the other side, since we know about the 0.91 being true for water, you would need to set emissivity = 1 for the rest, that is land. Cause 0.71 x 0.91 + 0.29 x 1 = 0.9361. And so I know the figure you quote can not be correct.
Publish your calculation such that the broad scientific universe can critique them.
If you had read the article, you would know all that has been published by others long ago. For me it is just important to understand how the calculation works, and probably that should be true for anyone, so that I can tell fact from fiction.
So the fact/fiction divide is a percent or so. That does not change the fundamental facts on the ground. I believe it is more productive to attack the CliSciFi mongers on the big stuff. But, each to his own.
A satellite doesn’t just see “normal” radiation, it also sees non-normal radiation coming from the side, let’s call them “strays”. Monitoring strays and normals over a long period allows you to derive an average “normal”.
Your number doesn’t seem to be based from actual over-head observation of anything on Earth, but from extrapolations of lab experiments on materials. Great, but you need a world map of all the materials and their exact characteristics …
Good luck with that.
With five significant digits?
With all due regard, Zoe, five significant digits is simply not credible. Now 0.94 I could support.
Uhm, OK. I just averaged their equal-area data, which had 5 decimal places.
I didn’t know emissivity was limited to 2. Must be a silent rule in physics.
Us lay-persons are extremely pleased that the science is settled (a /sarc reference to all of the other responses to your initial comment)
Submitted to the Associated Press (Attention: Seth Borenstein).
In 2018 Loeb said
“The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) Earth radiation budget (ERB) is a key property of the climate system that describes the balance between how much solar energy the Earth absorbs and how much terrestrial thermal infrared radiation it emits.”
A little different to
“Climate is determined by how much of the sun’s energy the Earth absorbs and how much energy Earth sheds through emission of thermal infrared radiation.”
Since earth and venus are roughly the same size
Venus receives and emits 158 W/M^2
earth receives and emits 240W/M ^2
SOD says
“Venus effective radiating temperature” of 230K (-43°C). The same calculation for the earth gives 255K (-18°C).
I guess this means the TOA [average] for Venus should be closer in.
Does not make sense with that high temp and thick atmosphere and pressure but I guess the temperature differential with height is quite extreme compared to earth.
Note that IPCC started this game by coming up with new models that “showed” much more heat was being accumulated (their response and concern about the last six years of cooling). Then NASA pops up with more if the same and now these guys. The game is to rush to the head of the parade so that if the disturbing present cooling continues they have their new hidden heat accumulation to explain it all.
A study of the past history of earth’s climate should demonstrate that Milankovitch Cycles are far more of a factor in the long run than any theoretical physics calculations. The reality is that we are heading for the next ice age (see also Singer et al for more reasons why), and there is nothing we can do about it other than adapt.
And that happens to be the very base of explaining climate in the climastrology,
where the same climastrology also claims that besides the M. Cycles mechanism being a very high precision one, still climate happens to be nonlinear and chaotic.
Where in proposition of GHE on top of it, as a powerful dominater in climate, these guys can make up anything as it pleases them.
Maybe we need a new discipline dedicated to the early, accurate identification of D-O events and glaciation. Human society will need decades to adapt and it seems the current climate ‘science’ community is too addicted to agenda to produce anything with any confidence.
Trenberth has used deep ocean heat accumulation as an excuse for a long time. Of course, his conjecture might be a bit difficult to prove. link
I posted a calculation yesterday that shows that if a 1 W/m2 heat accumulation rate over the entire surface of the earth was completely absorbed in the oceans, it would raise the average ocean temperature by about 0.0003 degree C per year. This would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to measure using the best technology.
But you could after only 10,000 years, providing nothing else changed.
Steve,
I have not seen your post and your calculations about the 1 W/m2 imbalance.
But in consideration of the 1 W/m2 being a real imbalance detection,
and the implication of implying that it could mean an energy imbalance in reality reaching as far as a variation from 0 up to 20-25 W/m2 and back down to 0 during a century period, in a negative,
a loss of energy from the Earth system;
what do you think your calculations will produce?
Or maybe even for the same value, but in a positive imbalance, gaining of energy.
cheers
I calculate that an imbalance of 1 W/m² can melt 10 cm of ice per year or warm the ocean by 7.5 m⋅℃. In other words, it could warm the top 7.5 meters of the ocean by 1℃ or the top 75 m by 0.1℃.
This sort of change is potentially measurable.
It’s misleading to do a calculation related to the entire volume of the ocean, insofar as it can take a thousand years or more for temperature changes to reach the deep ocean.
The currently accepted theory is that it hitch-hiked around the upper ocean. They are now interviewing long-haul truckers to confirm the theory.
This is really simple. ‘They’ think, climate = global warming.Nope, not even.Even with a warming climate, the energy emitted by the planet will always be approximately equal to the energy received. Actually, it should be a bit more because of geothermal heat. It’s an equilibrium.
Apparently, somebody didn’t understand high school physics.
So if its always in equilibrium what causes ice ages then?
One might suppose less incoming energy and/or some factor that causes increased outgoing energy, though the later is likely more transient.
Milankovitch cycles.
Less incoming energy due to orbital mechanics is matched with less outgoing energy.
M cycles are still just a conjecture, for which no one can find the rapid on and off mechanisms. It could just be a chaotic oscillation driven by constant input. Chaotic oscillations do not require a change in forcing. All they need is a strong nonlinear negative feedback.
A strong nonlinear random effector.
Like YD, the unprecedented event followed by the other unprecedented one, Holocene,
another random event of some strange vulcanism plus human civilisation on top of it all, with some incredible mind blowing synchronisation with it all…
and then the finale…
the catastrofic manmade CO2 radiative GHE forcing… on top of it all.
You can not make this schist up, especially in the same main academic scripture of the climate “wisdom”, or any other mainstream claimed “wisdom”.
cheers
Plus, the cycles don’t seem to sync up all that closely with the physical changes. At the very least there is a large uncertainty interval.
Feedback cycles associated with something the size of Earth and with its capability of storing/releasing relatively vast amounts of energy means there will be a definite time delay in “matching” outgoing energy with incoming energy.
Hence, no equilibrium . . . only a quasi-equilibrium.
How much of an imbalance was need to create all he fossil fuel deposits?
Not really incoming energy is the same, it’s the distribution that changes, allowing increased ice to form changing albedo.
Yes, and periods of high and low volcanic activity would have an impact on the amount of energy leaving the atmosphere too.
To me it is a question of dominant and minor causes,and as David says below the feedbacks to the causes.
Summer snow in Arctic land areas in interglacials is on the verge of failing to melt. If local summer incoming insolation decreases enough (Milankovitch Cycles), then some snow remains and reflects light, and positive feedback slowly starts glacial building. It really has nothing to do with “equilibrium” one way or the other.
The only thing we know for sure is that it is NOT CO2.
DRW, excellent point!
As well: so, if it’s always in equilibrium, what causes the season’s then?
Moreover, if “it’s always in equilibrium” is to be taken literally, what causes days to be hotter than nights?
When it comes to Earth there is only quasi-equilibrium on any arbitrary timescale . . . there is no such thing as Earth having a true equilibrium energy budget . . . never has been, never will be . . . for, among other factors, the simple physical reason of the time lags inherent in the average of [Earth’s total non-water mass * average Cp + water mass * (nets of enthalpy changes from solid-liquid-gas phase changes and, predominately, liquid water Cp)].
“. . . they have eyes, but do not see.”—Psalm 135:16
Northern Hemisphere summer insolation?
Mr. Wells: Haven’t you been paying attention? Ice ages are caused by Global Warming. Obviously, what we have heah is, failya to climate communicate.
h/t cool hand luke.
Strother Martin’s greatest line.
And the Columbia School of Journalism, mega-donors and the MSM have combined to make damned well sure that we inmates get properly ‘communicated-with.’
Now that is a very good question. It would seem reasonable to look for periods of imbalance. The alarmists claim we are in one right now. I’m still looking for a convincing explanation of the snowball earth phenomenon.
Ya ya,
what you basically say is correct, but but,
not for the periods of turning…. like at the very top of Interglacial optimum, or the very depth of a glacial period.
In these periods the Earth system sheds, as it must, a considerable thermal energy to space.
~double of radiative energy accumulated during of previous period of 5K years.
Which it will consist with an imbalance very clearly higher than error tolerance of the system, with it’s own up and down trend covering a period of
~800-1000y
Ya, ya,
both periods mentioned here, are no warming periods.
🙃
cheers
There is no such equilibrium. Not thermal, not radiative. Not even a dynamical one.
It’s a system at non-equilibrium.
A radiative equilibrium is either a spectacular coincidence or physics-at-distance. The decision for all things on Earth to adjust their emission depending on what’s incoming must be instant and the order for those points to obey the decision must travel instantly.
I’m with Adrian on this one. Radiative equilibrium as an assumption is just plain ignorant. 40% of the planets in OUR solar system are severely out of balance. Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune radiate 2.4, 2.5 and 2.7 times as much energy as they receive from Sol … supposedly after 4.5 billion years?
“Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune radiate 2.4, 2.5 and 2.7 times as much energy as they receive from Sol”
That’s an interesting observation. I would love to know how this works.
While it’s true that the giant planets have large internal heat sources, the internal heat flow of Earth is small, about 0.092 W/m², or 0.04% as large as the energy flux received from the Sun.
So, the dynamics of the giant planets is really not comparable to that of Earth.
Yes indeed no equilibrium, the planet is constantly playing catch-up with what it gets, via how and what it uses and what it radiate away. The sun varies it’s output both in overall level and frequencies, the planet varies it’s albedo as overall life (the greening planet) and areas of frozen ice and/or desert extent varies, and as the clouds mass change.
The radiative model wrongfully applies a close unvarying system paradigm to how the radiative budget is applied.
It is not a closed unvarying system
It is a very dynamic system!
Also the Milankovitch Cycles do NOT align with all the ice ages nicely.see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100,000-year_problem
Yes, that’s true.
I don’t think that’s a fair characterization.
See, for example, this chart of Earth’s energy budget.
It asserts that, based on measurements, Earth is mostly in radiative balance—but not entirely.
That imbalance inherently means the climate is changing. See my comment above.
When climate scientists “assume radiative balance”, they are not assuming that radiative balance is precisely what is currently happening. They are saying “if you had radiative balance, this is the temperature/climate that would result; these are the steady-state conditions.” The Earth is constantly chasing those steady-state conditions. That’s what the system is headed towards.
That is the old cartoon I remember. The data is from 2009, although NASA published this one in 2017. It has the old 0.6 W/m^2 positive imbalance, but omits the +/- 17 W/m^2 uncertainty. Anyway, showing energy flows to a tenth of a W/m^2 is scientific misconduct.
I don’t know what the uncertainty for that prior data was. But Loeb et al assert a much smaller uncertainty, i.e., an imbalance of 0.50±0.47 W/m^2. Given that range of uncertainty, it seems justifiable to claim a likely observed imbalance.
A decadal imbalance of 0.50 +/- 0.47 W/m^2 calculated over a period ending on a Super El Nino. Count me unimpressed.
Also, Bob, please note that Loeb used a combination of CERES and ARGO to calculate EEI. I don’t know the esoteric calculations Trenberth used in 2009 to get his cartoon values to a tenth of a percent.
Call it dynamic equilibrium, call it something else, but it’s there, and must be, given conservation of energy.
No, there is not precise instantaneous balance. But, averaged over time and space, things must largely balance.
Empirically, global energy flows are surprisingly balanced over averaging periods as short as a year. Over longer periods, the balancing is more precise.
The principle is pretty simple, and is based on conservation of energy and the nature of temperature as a reflection of “internal energy”:
As a result of these dynamics, there are only two logical possibilities: EITHER the time-averaged energy-in and energy-out are in balance OR the Earth is experiencing a net change in its internal energy and a consequent change in climate.
Those are the only two possibilities.
One can’t argue that climate isn’t changing because there isn’t radiative balance. If there isn’t radiative balance, that MEANS climate is changing.
“given conservation of energy” You confuse conservation of energy with conservation of energy transfer. The later does not necessarily exist, as net energy can leave a place (how do you think things cool or a battery depletes?) or net energy can accumulate in a place (how do you think the Sun was formed, something is warming, or a battery is charged?). There is no law of physics to interdict those.
Now, don’t confuse my reference to ‘warming’ that incoming energy can go only into warming. For example, it can go into chemical energy as well, how do you think fossil fuels were formed?
Your 2 point is utterly false, internal energy is much more than thermal energy. There is that pesky chemical energy… latent energies also play a role. Quite important for climate.
Point 3 is also false. There is no law of nature to dictate that. That is only true if emissivity does not change in the warming process. Typically it does change. Along with the albedo. Check out the actual article you are commenting to. Venus has higher temperatures on the surface, but energy loss to space is lower than for Earth.
Your 4 point is ok, just that ‘chasing’ does not mean ‘reaching’. Never, in our not-at-equilibrium system.
No, I’m not confusing these.
Due to conservation of energy, the energy in a system as a function of time is given by:
E(t) = E(0) + integral_0_to_t { P_in(t) – P_out(t) }
That is what I’m asserting. Any imbalance in energy flows leads to accumulation of energy in the system.
My statement isn’t “utterly false”, though it does oversimplify.
The above sort of “energy accumulation equation” applies not only to the system as a whole, but also to the distinct pools of energy within the system: thermal energy, latent heat, chemical energy, atmospheric kinetic energy, etc.
A full analysis of climate change does need to examine these different energy pools, to see if there is a systemic change in any of these pools, and if so how large that change is.
For many of these energy pools, one can put bounds on how much energy they hold. If that pool never exceeds a certain limit, then it can’t account for ongoing absorption of an energy imbalance. Or, if that subsystem does absorb more energy, then that in itself implies climate change. So, for example, if there were substantially more energy stored in atmospheric kinetic energy, or latent heat, that would in itself constitute a notable change to climate.
Sure, emissivity can change.
None of that negates the point that I was trying to make: if there is an imbalance, this will drive the system to keep changing until something happens to eliminate that imbalance.
If emissivity changes with temperature, that will typically end up amplifying or attenuating the temperature change that is needed to eliminate the imbalance, without changing the overall principle.
I can’t make sense of what you’re meaning for me to see.
Yes. So what? How does that have relevance to the current discussion?
I didn’t intend to be making comparisons between different systems (or different planets). I was asserting that in a given system, as you increase the temperatures, that tends to lead to increased heat loss (i.e. increased emissions). I was talking about thermoregulation within a given system.
Even so, calculating a steady-state result is indicative of the region of phase space around which the system will likely fluctuate.
“That is what I’m asserting. Any imbalance in energy flows leads to accumulation of energy in the system.”
Yes, it can accumulate for a while. Then, it can emit more than it receives. And so on… not really an equilibrium.
Also remember that for graybody objects, radiant exitance goes as the differential of the fourth power of the warmer object’s temperature and the fourth power of the cooler object’s (or ambient’s) temperature, modified by emissivity.
The S-B equation isn’t meant to be used to subtract a fictive ‘cooler to warmer’ energy flow from the incorrectly-calculated and thus too high ‘warmer to cooler’ energy flow, it’s meant to be used to subtract cooler object energy density (temperature is a measure of energy density) from warmer object energy density. Radiant exitance of the warmer object is predicated upon the energy density gradient. The climate loons misuse the S-B equation.
So if we start with the assumptions:
1) 287.64 K starting T_h
2) 0.93643 emissivity (ref: NASA ISCCP program)
3) 255 K T_c
Scenario 1:
We get 138.96498763246012 W m-2 radiant exitance.
———-
Scenario 2:
If we increase T_h by 1K, we get 144.04603577623033 W m-2.
That’s a differential of 5.08104814377021 W m-2 from our base radiant exitance.
———-
Scenario 3:
If we increase T_h by another 1 K, we get 149.1801694920843 W m-2.
That’s a differential of:5.13413371585397 W m-2 from Scenario 2 (an increase of 0.05308557208376 W m-2 over the Scenario 1 –> Scenario 2 1K temperature increase), and a differential of 10.21518185962418 W m-2 from Scenario 1.
———-
Scenario 4:
If we increase T_h by another 1 K, we get 154.3677572488676 W m-2.
That’s a differential of 5.1875877567833 W m-2 from Scenario 3 (an increase of 0.05345404092933 W m-2 over the Scenario 2 –> Scenario 3 1 K temperature increase, and a differential of 15.40276961640748 W m-2 from Scenario 1.
———-
So not only does the radiant exitance increase, the increase of radiant exitance increases, and vice versa. This quickly damps temperature excursions.
Besides… all this is academic… CO2 is a net atmospheric coolant at all altitudes except a negligible bit of warming right at the tropopause (where it absorbs more cloud-reflected solar insolation and radiation from water condensation):
That’s from an atmospheric research scientist at NASA JPL.
That’s from the Clough and Iocono study.
The climate loons are provably diametrically opposite to reality.
And by the way, stop thinking in terms of averages for complex systems (or rather, for any system whatsoever, except those at equilibrium where the average is equal with the equilibrium value because there is no other there), because if those averages involve intensive quantities, you have a great chance of getting wrong results.
I’m getting increasingly annoyed by hearing that argument again and again.
Yes, it’s possible to do things involving temperature averages that lead to nonsense and wrong results.
The answer is NOT to never average temperatures, but to avoid doing WRONG calculations involving averages of temperatures.
The argument that one should never average temperatures is analogous to arguing that one should never take medicines, because medicines could be harmful if taken inappropriately.
No, it’s not analogue with that at all.
Can you give me an example of computing with the average temperature that is not wrong? For example, I have a huge container, a part being filled with melted iron and the rest with quite cool air. The average temperature is 300C.
Compute something physical out of that pseudo-temperature.
You seem to be making an incorrect assumption that “computing something physical” is the only use that an “average temperature” has.
An “average temperature” (in our case, an area-and-time-based average) is a particular statistic that characterizes a system.
One thing you can do with a statistic about a system is use that as an indicator that something about the configuration of the system has changed.
If a statistic, X, is the same for two systems, then those systems might be the same. However, if the value of X is different for two different systems, then you know that the two system must be in different states. If the difference in X is larger, then you know that — at least in some respect — there is a larger difference between the states of the systems.
* * *
Suppose a doctor measures a person’s white-blood-cell count per milliliter of blood. That’s just one of countless statistics that a doctor might examine. It certainly doesn’t tell you about the totality of what is going on in that person.
But, if the white-blood-cell count has changed significantly, that’s a clue that something possibly significant has changed in the physiological processes inside the person.
You don’t need to “compute something” with the white-blood-cell count for it to be useful.
You haven’t defined what you mean by an “average temperature,” which makes it a bit harder to work with this example.
I suppose you could mean a volume-based average temperature.
I could work with that, but I think it would be more meaningful to talk about what one can do with an average-based average temperature of the surface of a planet.
One can, if fact, calculate some things based on a knowledge of an initial global distribution of surface temperatures, and knowledge in the change in the global average surface temperature.
For example, if you know that, after some change, the area-based average surface temperature will have increased by 5℃, then one can rule out certain post-change surface temperature distributions. For example, it can’t be the case that “no place has gotten warmer.”
One can also deduce other constraints, e.g., “If the maximum increase in temperature at any one location is no more than 10℃, then one can deduce that at least half the surface area of the planet must be warmer than it was initially.” And “If the maximum increase in temperature at any one location is no more than 15℃, then one can deduce that at least one third of the surface area of the planet must be warmer than it was initially.”
So, if you know something about a change in the global average surface temperature, that places certain constraints on what could be true about the resulting distribution of surface temperatures.
These are examples of mathematically legitimate things one can do with information about an average surface temperature.
For clarity, I meant “what one can do with an area-based average temperature of the surface of a planet.”
“An “average temperature” (in our case, an area-and-time-based average) is a particular statistic that characterizes a system.”
There are statistics that characterize a system and there are those that aren’t.
Statistical physics deals with the former.
There is no way of physically defining a temperature for a system that is not at equilibrium (except by extension for some very particular ones that are in steady state and are not changing like Earth – see for example the negative temperature for lasers).As such, a ‘global temperature’ does not physically characterize a such a system.
Perhaps it characterizes it anti-physically, metaphysically, in any other form but not physically.
‘How to Lie with Statistics’ deals with the later.
‘Global temperature’ is a misnomer and it should be called differently to avoid confusion. For example, ‘bullshit statistic’. Statistic to emphasize that’s a statistic and bullshit because it’s really bullshit.
“There is no way of physically defining a temperature for a system that is not at equilibrium”
Utter nonsense. If I go out for a long drive, the cylinder block of my car will get hot. When I get to where I am going and switch the car off, the cylinder block will start to cool. It is not at equilibrium (if it were, it wouldn’t be cooling), but the temperature of the cylinder block is conceptually well defined at all times and you can measure it with a thermometer.
quite easily
In my office it is a bit warmer near the south-facing window than it is at the side next to the corridor. The average temperature in my office gives a reasonable indication how comfortable my office it regardless where I am in it. I f the average temperature is 30C, then it is reasonable to conclude it is a bit too hot.
Lets say we can’t average. There are about 9 met office weather stations in Norfolk. Are you really saying that the average of the temperatures measured at those 9 stations is not a reasonable estimate of the temperature where I happen to live (which isn’t right next to any of the stations)? Are you really saying that the only way I can get a useful indication of the temperature where I am is to have my own weather station?
Averages make sense if you average over a reasonably homogeneous region. Of course if you choose one that is as hetrogeneous as you could possible make it then an average might not make sense but that is just a rhetorical hyperbole that ignores the fact that more reasonable examples that we could consider.
I hope you realize that we could provide you with experimental conditions that you would die in excruciating pain but with the same ‘global temperature’. And you would die from the real temperature field, nothing else fancy.
Yawn.
Edited to add, your lack of any cogent response to the answer to your question is noted. Asking questions and ignoring answers is the very antithesis of scientific skepticism.
BTW, for gasses, at least, temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules. It is already a statistical measure. Taking a spatial average of temperatures (say global near surface atmosphere) is thus just taking the average of a larger set of kinetic energies, and so is completely well defined.
If the Earth does warm up according to Loeb’s hypothesis, will the rate of emission of energy increase and restore the equilibrium?
I remember from school being taught about how a dynamic equilibrium will appear to be static, but is the result of processes running in opposite direction and balancing out..
“will the rate of emission of energy increase and restore the equilibrium?”
Yes, hopefully. But the higher rate of emission will be supported by a higher surface temperature.
Or the Earth could absorb less sunlight for the same effect.
Nick, scientists look for evidence which both supports and refutes their theories.
So what have you seen lately that refutes your theories?
“Even with a warming climate, the energy emitted by the planet will always be approximately equal to the energy received. Actually, it should be a bit more because of geothermal heat. It’s an equilibrium.
Apparently, somebody didn’t understand high school physics.”
Even in high school physics, you deal with calorimeters. You learn that if something gets warmer, there is an increase in internal energy, which has to come from somewhere. In fact, it has to come from an imbalance between energy entering and energy leaving. That is what Loeb et al are measuring. In fact, they match TOA imbalance to gain in internal energy (EEI).
EEI tells us nothing of ‘why.’ Now, everybody step up with their pet theory of ‘why.’
No Nick, our atmosphere is NOT some schoolboy experiment where nearly all the variables are controlled.
Our atmosphere is a very dynamic domain, even as I write some at NASA have noticed that the top of the troposphere it cooler than usual (IIRC by up to 10°C). NASA has also noted over the last 10 years or so, that the that the thermosphere has shrunk (IIRC by up to 1/3). So where is this TOA, show that is in a fixed and stable place as the sun waxes and wanes. And remember that the TOA’s area will vary greatly if it’s height were to vary even slightly. All else is just guesswork and assumption!
So riddle me this Nick where is the energy for the winds that blow around this planet accounted for? Wind that can carry millions of tons water carrying clouds thousands of miles.
“No Nick, our atmosphere is NOT some schoolboy experiment where nearly all the variables are controlled.”
Good advice for those who think that, because small increases in [CO2] in a greenhouse improve the productivity of selected foods and fibers, then we can ignore fungilence, pestilence, drought, floods, and other weather extremes, in the real world.
Show us where Man’s production of CO2 relates to “… fungilence, pestilence, drought, floods, and other weather extremes, in the real world.” Since there have been no change in any adverse climate metric in the last 100 years, from where do you get your ideas?
Percent/year increase in extreme max temp periods for the US, since 1980 – 0.85%/year, with a standard error of 0.23%/year
Percent/year increase in low or high moisture periods for the US, since 1980 – 0.18%/year, with a standard error of 0.11%/year.
Percent/year increase in extremes of days with or without precipitation for the US, since 1980 – 0.24%/year, with a standard error of 0.08%/year.
Feel free to check for yourself.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei/graph/us/01-12/5c
“Show us where Man’s production of CO2 relates to “… fungilence, pestilence, drought, floods, and other weather extremes, in the real world.”
OK. USDA ok? Or are they part of the Dr. Evil international AGW conspiracy as well?
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-environment/climate-change/
OK, here we go.
The NCDC/NOAA precipitation extremes graph shows that, other than a dip in the 1960s – 70s, nothing has changed in over 100 years. Likewise, the other extremes data fall apart the farther back in time one goes.
The USDA crap quotes the fictional National Climate Assessment concerning what might happen in the future. Have you actually read the NCA? It is unabashed lies from top to bottom. I will not consider anything that comes out of its propaganda.
Skipping around the NCDC/NOAA site shows that there are no trends in adverse weather metrics for the U.S. Your politicians and Deep State bureaucrats are lying to you about what the data actually show.
“Skipping around the NCDC/NOAA site shows that there are no trends in adverse weather metrics for the U.S. Your politicians and Deep State bureaucrats are lying to you about what the data actually show.”
The predictable retreat into fact free Dr. Evil, Kelly Conway alt. world. No facts, just whine….
The government sites show the data. The data show no adverse climatic impacts over any reasonable timeframe to any relevant climate metric. The CliSciFi Deep State bureaucrats play word games with heatwaves, heavy precipitation, etc.
There has been no worsening in hurricanes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, thunderstorms and etc. All of these climate features vary greatly on interannual bases, but there are no negative impacts on multidecadal timescales. Fact free?
“The NCDC/NOAA precipitation extremes graph shows that, other than a dip in the 1960s – 70s, nothing has changed in over 100 years.”
Try doing the actual evaluation of the last 40 years. I.e., the most relevant physically/statistically significant time period. And do the arithmetic. Quit trusting your Rorschachian eyeballs. It’s fundamental, but FU need help, I’ll be on call….
How does the data for the last 40 years differ from those of the first 40 years? Does the magic CO2 work in the past?
I don’t see that Nick in any way implied that “all the variables are controlled.”
I suppose one could define “TOA” in a stupid way such that it’s not fixed and stable. But, one doesn’t need to.
From an energy-balance perspective, what is most relevant is measuring the longwave radiative flux at a level outside the atmosphere entirely. That’s what I mean when I talk about TOA longwave emissions.
And that’s what satellites measure.
So, given my usage and given what satellites measure, there is no variation at all in where TOA is or what the area of TOA is.
Riddle me this: how is that even slightly relevant?
The energy-balance argument amounts to:
[Rate of change in total internal energy of the Earth] = [Total rate of energy absorbed by Earth] minus [Total rate of energy radiated by Earth]
The key question of climate change is: Is the total internal energy of the Earth changing in some direction?
“Energy for winds” is part of the internal energy of the Earth as a complete system and in no way alters the fundamental equation above.
Well, Bob, that “key question of climate change” was answered: The total internal energy of the Earth changes constantly at all timescales, both upwards and downwards. There is ample evidence that CO2 emissions by Man does not play a significant role in those changes. Early 20th Century warming, mid-20th Century cooling, late-20th Century warming and 21st Century flatlining would, in the aggregate, imply no measurable effect.
Probably read above Nicks answer is dropdead stupid an increased emission is not guaranteed to heat anything. That is like saying everything you put in a microwave will get hot.
LdB:
Nick’s answer said:
Where are you seeing Nick assert that “increased emission” is “guaranteed to heat” something?
Did you mean this prior comment?
If that’s it, then I don’t see the problem. Emissions are given by 𝜀𝜎T⁴. So, increased emissions mean an increase in T or (much less likely) an increase in 𝜀.
Mostly wrong there Nick.
For example, sensible heat can be realized from a phase change that converts potential to kinetic energy without any energy entering or leaving the calorimeter. A classic example is a temperature rise from crystallization of a super saturated solution of sodium acetate.
It’s even weirder with a thermal emission it is sensitive to all sorts of things but yes Nick is trying to use classical physics on something you can’t. He falls into that hole a lot because I suspect QM was not a thing when he did school.
Nick fails at physics again and you obviously did high school physics far to long ago.
Any high school will teach you are dealing with an thermal emission not stupid classical heat. The emission can do anything from cool to heat depending how they react with the media.
When you get to be big people we and go to university physics … we even show LASER COOLING which is a contrived version of an emission cooling to near absolute zero.
I am so glad you say that because intuitively that was my starting point as well.
And in my mind the same must be said for any given “layer” from the top of the atmosphere down to the centre of the earth’s core. And when you can explain the entry and emergence from the snowball earth you might have some chance of explaining why a small fractional change in one of the trace gases will have the affects some attribute to it.
Where I get thoroughly lost is when people directly compare energy leaving the earth’s surface and energy leaving the top of atmosphere and deduce what the average global temperature will be at the earth’s surface.
So all of that said I don’t follow the explanation of the basic error in physics. I think both the original paper and the correction are gross over simplifications.
S-B establishes the relationship between the temperature of the Earth’s surface and its emitted LW radiation.
So I hear, but I am constantly reminded of the spherical chickens in a vacuum joke. Hence my remark about gross over simplifications.
For goodness sake.
The GHE dudes should at some point figure out and agree among, about GHGs have warming or cooling effect.
It will help a lot with reducing fanaticism, I guess.
cheers
I have known of Howard Hayden since his days as a physicist at UConn where he really did “think outside the box.” And I mean that as a compliment. At one point he was reconsidering Einstein’s theories of relativity because the confirmatory experiments had all excluded particular circumstances. He and Petr Beckmann got me to investigate a whole range of issues, and what I concluded was that Einstein is correct. But the effort was worthwhile.
Hayden is correct to say that climate results from the big difference between surface and TOA LWIR — or, stated another way, the big difference between surface emissivity (0.97 or so) and TOA apparent emissivity (0.61 or so). What Loeb, et al, were trying to say, I think, and very imprecisely, is that the alleged changing climate is the result of the tiny imbalance between absorbed solar and emitted LWIR. So small is the imbalance, that the best of our radiometers don’t really have the resolution to measure it directly, and we are depending on a pile-o-statistics to make a case that it actually is so. As Mr. Schaffer says nearby, we can’t even assess the actual surface emissivity to the requisite accuracy, nor know that it is constant.
Without endless averaging, the climastrology game would be at an end.
Thank God for spherical horses…
Indeed!
Enter Bob Wentworth et al.
An amusing allusion, but few here may know the joke.
Without superstitious disbelief in averages, perhaps there could be more reasonable dialog.
Averaging is a powerful, well-established tool of statistical physics. The whole science of thermodynamics relies on the immense power of working with averages and their implications.
The numbers will be tortured until they yield the proper results.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I know Corky from Colorado American Chemical Society meetings (his wife is a chemist). He was one of the people that planted skeptical seeds in my thinking around global warming many many years ago. I very much enjoyed dinner conversations between him and Professor Stedman of the University of Denver, who shared many of Corky’s opinions. Professor Stedman was one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met.
Anyway, I also enjoyed Corky thoroughly destroying Pieter Tans (runs NOAA’s CO2 monitoring program) in a public debate at CSU in Ft. Collins. I wish that it were on tape. Toward the end of the lively “debate,” Dr. Tans went off into his support of 911 conspiracy theory. At that point, everyone had realized how he could not match the wits of Dr. Hayden.
That is interesting. I’d hate to have to match wits with him. You may know that Petr Beckmann from CU (EE dept) started a journal “Galilean Electrodynamics”. People thought it was a joke of some sort because electrodynamics are Lorentzian. If they were galilean we’d have all sorts of trouble with causality, but Petr had convinced himself that special relativity was too complex to describe reality. Howard, I believe, thought about Petr’s objections and concluded that all of the experimental evidence for SR had been gathered under similar physical circumstances and were therefore potentially “aliased”. He was working toward some air-tight experiments. I have no idea what the end of this effort was. He contributed occasionally to that journal as I recall. I had a few copies around but they were lost in some move decades ago.
Several people here, who needn’t be identified, are calling him “dumb” — he is anything but.
CERES acknowledges a 4 W/m^2 error margin, and warns against being sure of a ~0.8 W/m^2 “imbalance” directly in their documents.
Zoe.
Consider that there is an imbalance in the system for real.
Where do you think the value point of detection of such imbalance could be possible?
cheers
Exactly one of the points I was trying to make.
Kevin,
“What Loeb, et al, were trying to say, I think, and very imprecisely, is that the alleged changing climate is the result of the tiny imbalance between absorbed solar and emitted LWIR.”
They are saying that quite precisely. Howard Hayden’s objection is just dumb. If something is going to warm, an actual amount of heat must be retained (the increased internal energy, c*ΔT). That comes from the “tiny” imbalance. Loeb et al calculate what it should be (EEI) from the heat capacity of ocean and its ΔT, and a bit more accountancy about ice melting etc, and show that that matches the TOA net radiation, even though the latter is the difference of large fluxes and hard to measure precisely.
Well, gee. The Earth has not warmed in the 21st Century the way CliSciFi practitioners warned us it would. Arguing about the essentially unmeasurable EEI will keep alot of governmental, academic and NGO types in their paid positions. Why don’t we all just wait for the late 2020s to see what is happening before we all drive ourselves nuts.
”Why don’t we all just wait for the late 2020s to see what is happening”
We don’t really need to. The Earth is doing what is does and co2 is a spear-carrier peeking from behind a tree in the far far distance.
At every location in the planet’s atmosphere, at any point in time?
You’re forgetting the spherical horse.
I must apologize here as I seem to have missed the ferry leaving the harbor.
Nick, do you recall exothermic and endothermic reactions? My point in asking is that making oversimplified and overgeneralised statements such as you have done here is the road to much unhappiness.
We don’t really know if “the Earth has warmed”, because we’re measuring the wrong things. You can’t take temp measurements from all over the planet, average them, and call it a “global temperature”. That’s just wrong.
Nick,
Forget “precisely” please.
“Accurately” is they key word.
At the present base of this technology is the assumption that the latest satellite system is delivering unquestionable accuracy, when the history of the satellite measurements is one big difference in accuracy after another.
What makes the latest one correct when all previous were wrong to a degree? Geoff S
Geoff,
I was speaking of their language, as was KK. That is both precise and accurate. I said that fluxes were hard to measure precisely. Add accurately, if you wish. But Loeb’s result is that the difficult measurement of flux imbalance matches the much more accurately measured EEI.
Doubly apropos to measure statistics in terms of “piles.”
KevinK,
You were fortunate to have mixed with Petr Beckmann. The world needs realists, especially recently.. Geoff S
Petr was iconic to say the least. Actually, some labeled him a kook, but he truly cut his own path in life. He was clever as one could imagine and could speak about five languages fluently — tremendous mathematician and knew a great deal about EM propagation. He did go off the deep end in his book “Einstein plus two” but even so that book showed a great deal of imagination in arguing against the complexity of special relativity, and was very amusing in places. Why he so disliked special relativity is a wonder. The last time we corresponded it was only to tell me he was too ill to see me in person.
You undoubtedly know this, but others here may not. Beckmann emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1963. He had seen the workings of a centrally planned society firsthand. This gave him contempt for such, and he was a vocal advocate for the U.S. system of free markets and free people. In academia, of course, this will get you labelled a kook.
Loeb is right.
Hayden is barely analphabet.
Thanks Alex, a very convincing argument you make. Perhaps to help me understand it even more clearly you would kindly take your phone out of your pocket while typing.
And, Mr. Anonymous Alex, we should believe your opinion why?
Why?
That sounds alphabet.
Did you just had a brain fart?
The main point of Loeb being right or not, with this work of his,
stands with the validity of the find, the tiny imbalance.
Of whether it is a valid correct find or not.
The rest is simply ‘history’. A history of hard spooning fight among GHE fanatics.
cheers
Great, another drive-by idjit.
Yes, no doubt the bogus consensus misrepresents Venus. Unlike Earth, whose clouds are tightly and quickly coupled to the surface below via the hydro cycle, the Venusion couds are an independent thermal system from the solid surface below. As a result, once these clouds have established equilibrium with the Sun, the temperature of the surface below is dictated by the PVT profile of what’s between the matter in DIRECT equilibrium with the Sun and the surface below. The same is true for the solid surface of Earth below the deep ocean and the temperatures of both exhibit no diurnal or seasonal variability. In principle, the Venusian atmosphere has more in common with Earth’s ocean then with Earth’s atmosphere.
This model is often denigrated because by failing to understand the importance of the coupling between the clouds and the surface, it’s been misapplied to establish the Earth’s surface temperature; however, other than the fact that the Venisuan atmosphere is comprised of gasses, it has nothing else in common with Earth’s atmosphere and references to a run away GHG effect on Venus as being analogous to something that can happen on Earth are completely wrong and highly misleading.
But it’s obvious that it’s CO2 wot dunnit!
Mars’ atmosphere, although it is only 1% of Earth’s atmosphere, is 95% CO2. That means there is about 25x as much CO2 in Mars’ atmosphere. And that is why Mars is so hot!
Consider the empirical evidence that no such imbalance as Loeb asserts can be diagnosed reliably. A while ago I downloaded and plotted the CERES outgoing longwave (emitted) and shortwave (reflected) radiation for a gridcell near where I live. See the image linked here for those plots of hourly data for the year 2018, along with LW+SW. The point is to illustrate that the atmosphere performs as a highly active variable emitter/reflector. Each location on the planet, whether closer to the equator or the poles, will look similar with obvious differences in the overall shape of the seasonal cycles. It doesn’t perform like a “trap.” The highly variable emitter/reflector at altitude looks like it must be supplied from below by a highly variable heat-engine operation. I can’t see realistically how a precise determination can be made of global results. In concept, the planet is an array of such emitter/reflector elements. What does the “imbalance” do? Does it clip the peaks, or depress the dips? Does it shorten the pulses of high emission or high reflection? Some might say, “That’s just an argument from incredulity.” But there is no sound basis for claiming a reliable value for an “imbalance.” So yeah, I don’t buy it. I know this has been posted before in comments, but I thought it would be good to repeat it here on this topic.
?dl=0
David, that’s very interesting. Thanks for posting – the ranges on those figures are large. It would be interesting to combine these figures with the spatially explicit CO2 figures recently presented on this site.
Yes, the longer-term averages don’t help us much to understand how it works actively. The hourly data shows it clearly. I’ll have to think about your suggestion on the CO2 data.
The instantaneous imbalance per hemisphere (i.e. output_emissions – solar_input @ur momisugly TOA) varies by over 150 W/m^2 p-p in both hemispheres centered around 0, but with opposite phase. Since the hemispheres respond independently to solar input, the asymmetry between them means they don’t exactly cancel which makes the global imbalance vary by over 20 W/m^2 p-p during the year.
For each hemisphere and for the planet as a whole, the energy imbalance is exactly zero twice per year, sometime after each equinox, but not necessarily at the same time for all 3 metrics since there’s between about 1 and 2 W/m^2 of net transfer from the N hemisphere to the S hemisphere owing to its slightly warmer average temperature.
Good point. It would be difficult to isolate any location on earth where the incoming solar and outgoing longwave + reflected shortwave are actually balanced up-and-down. There is too much lateral transport to expect that. So why agonize over the supposed global summation?
“It would be difficult to isolate any location on earth where the incoming solar and outgoing longwave + reflected shortwave are actually balanced up-and-down.”
None the less, the monthly averages of each point on the planet will pass through exact balance twice per year. During the summer, emissions are less than what arrives and the planet warms. In the winter, it’s more and the planet cools. It’s more than just the up/down balance, it also has to be in balance with the requirements for maintaining the surface average temperature.
With all due respect,
Real empirical evidence in engineering, tons of it,
does not support your claim.
cheers
Honestly I invite you to change my mind on whichever point or points you think I am missing something.
Great insight. That is what I’ve come to realize. 1300+ during the day simply can’t have the same effect as 0 at night. Does a higher percentage of energy during the day escape than at night? Are the processes totally different? Is CO2 the controlling factor in both cases?
Looking at the large variability at a particular place misses the point that the difference between [total energy into the system] and [total energy out of the system] matters.
Yes, there is enormous variation from time to time and place to place.
But, if you add up all those times and places you get a total value, and that total value has far less variation.
And, the imbalance at that total, overall level leads to changes in the total internal energy of the Earth as a thermodynamic system. Changes in total internal energy inherently mean changes in climate.
Thank you for your reply. “But, if you add up all those times and places you get a total value, and that total value has far less variation.” Sure. And my point is therefore that the summing and averaging obscures what is actually happening in real time. Emission and reflection exhibit highly dynamic performance as seen from space (i.e. the satellite sensing systems from which CERES data is derived.) Sure, the “heat trapping” greenhouse effect is real in the static sense of absorption and emission of longwave energy as experienced at the surface. But the greenhouse effect also implies that the conceptual emitter is at high altitude, so whatever is happening to supply the energy is important to grasp. (This is not a clever insight – the effective emission altitude is a well-known feature of the atmosphere’s nature.) That is why the hourly data reveals its operation more clearly. It’s not a “trap” so much as a high-performance variable emitter, and variable reflection occurs as a consequence largely of clouds. And if so, one sees that the land-ocean-atmosphere system is not a single operating entity as though its averaged performance has any real meaning. Rather, the system is more accurately conceived as a huge array of actively powered emission/reflection elements. One then realizes the importance of the heat-engine performance of the atmosphere at all scales from local to global circulations. And that means the incrementally stronger radiative coupling of the atmosphere to the surface (from increases in GHG’s) modifies not only the static effect toward space but it incrementally improves the addition of energy from the surface into the working fluid of the heat engine at the “hot” end.
I think the problem here is that the paper deals with energy imbalance not how hot the surface is ,the energy imbalance of Venus is reduced by heat circulating between the surface and the atmosphere. Venus has a high ambient temperature which does not change between day and night but the Earth heats up and cools down daily as well as seasonally.
There is a big difference between a 33 C rise caused by the GHG effect and an imagined TOA deficit happening every day with the heat “”going into the oceans”
God does not play dice with the universe.
The atmosphere does not count up the amount of CO2 and say we have to have an imbalance at TOA every day until the temp matches the CO2 increase.
–
The fact is that each and every day, energy in tries to match energy out.
Yes there are lags, the only way heat goes straight in and out is by reflectance.
But the changes are reasonably quick.
Each day the Temp goes through a rise and fall with the sun which reflects exactly what the current level of CO2 and water vapour is on that day.
There is no continual daily lag heat building up for centuries.
A cloud goes over, the surface cools.
–
The Trenbath [or Willis] diagram imagines a constant retention of 155 W/M^2 because it conflates a surface emission of 390 w/m^2 at the earth surface to a
radiation to space at TOA of 235 w/m2.
and subtracts the difference.
The TOA is from a much larger surface area as it is higher up.
The two figures match exactly when T^4 is applied as it should.
Yet everyone persists in making the basic error of saying that there is a retained heat amount every day by subtracting the figures based on energy per meter squared.
They cannot be subtracted from each other as the meter squared values are for different surface areas.
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Somehow this gets transformed into needing an imbalance at the TOA permanently to explain this bit of dodgy maths.
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The TOA has minor imbalances every day. Clouds, day, night, Upwelling currents, downwelling currentsm Dust storms and volcanoes, Extr ice sheets on a colder day. It rapidly makes the adjustments and re balances. There is no permanent ongoing need to justify GHG effect.
It is what is is.
As I’ve been studying Planck’s thesis, this same thought occurred to me. The power density at a 1m^2 square on earth is different when measuring what power density is at a 1m^2 square at altitude both because of the inverse square and increase in area. I haven’t had the time to sit and calculate the difference, but there has to be some.
Nick Stokes (IIRC) declared there was ###.## W/m2 from the earth recently, but didn’t bother to state at what altitude. It does make a difference.
You have no idea what it’s going to do because they didn’t even give a spectral analysis of the extra energy. Everything matters when you are dealing with an emission and it’s just rubbish without those details.
In the right frequency I can pass several KWatts per square meter thru the air and absolutely nothing will happen.
While the atmosphere does not “count up the amount of CO2”, it does count up the number of Joules of energy it is holding. Every day that the number of Joules received exceeds the number of Joules lost, the temperature will increase, raising the temperature and increasing the rate of Joules being lost, until a temperature is achieved such that the rate of energy being received equals the rate of energy being lost.
If an increase in CO₂ concentrations reduces the rate at which energy is being lost, that creates an imbalance, which leads to a temperature increase through the mechanism I just outlined.
So, while the atmosphere doesn’t directly “count up the amount of CO2”, the net effect is as if it did, because it’s counting Joules.
If one considers the oceans (which cover 70% of the Earth) and the ice sheets, of course there is a “continual daily lag [of] heat building up for centuries.”
The temperature of a thin layer of the ocean will change over the course of a day. The temperature of a larger portion will change over the course of a year. But, for the oceans as a whole to change temperature takes centuries.
No. There are two problems with this idea.
First, the surface area is only perhaps 1 percent larger at the top of the atmosphere. That’s not “much larger.”
Second, the numbers for TOA radiant emissions are (I would expect) normalized to the area at the surface of the Earth, not the area at altitude. So, the numbers for surface and TOA emissions ought to be entirely comparable.
Yes. Each imbalance leads to an increase or decrease in the number of Joules of energy in the system.
If, over the course of a year and over the entire surface of the globe, there is a significant imbalance, then this means there is a change in the total internal energy of the Earth as a thermodynamic system. When the total internal energy changes, the temperature or the temperature distribution changes, i.e., the climate changes. There is no getting around that.
This is true only in parts of the system where there is little heat storage capacity. So, it’s generally true on land.
But, when one considers ice sheets and oceans, there is enormous heat storage capacity. There is no “rapid adjustment” to achieve balance.
Actually, the thickness of the atmosphere is very small compared to the radius of the Earth. While there is a difference in surface areas, it doesn’t amount to much, especially considering the uncertainties of all the measurements and calculations.
Just saying. I have no dog in the fight over climate minutia; I don’t care enough to get down in the weeds sufficient to have an opinion on the esoterica. People seem to be more driven by ideology in these arguments.
In terms of the surface heating and cooling “daily and seasonally”, Earth is more of a middle ground between the extreme heat-trapping effect of the atmosphere of Venus and the pure black-body behavior of the Moon.
The Moon is about the same distance from the sun as Earth is, and receives about the same radiation intensity from the sun. But its surface has much larger fluctuations in temperature between day and night, since the Moon has no atmosphere that can reflect away some solar radiation during daylight, and absorb some of the IR surface radiation at night. The surface temperature of the Moon can fluctuate by some 300 to 400 C between day and night, while daily temperature fluctuations on Earth are limited to about 30 C in desert areas and about 10 C near oceans.
Some of the Mars rovers have discovered evidence that rivers of water flowed on Mars in the distant past, but Mars’ gravity is too weak to hold much of an atmosphere, so any liquid water on Mars’ surface would evaporate at low pressure and escape into space. If a planet with about double the radius of Earth (with stronger gravity than Earth) was in Mars’ orbit, it may have been able to retain a thicker atmosphere and liquid water at the surface, due to absorption of IR radiation by water vapor.
Venus has a gravitational pull similar to that of Earth, but it receives far too much solar radiation for water vapor to condense into clouds and rain back to the surface of Venus.
If Earth had been a dry planet (with its current gravity and distance from the sun, but without any water), most of its surface would remain below the freezing point of water. The fact that about 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water leads to a substantial amount of water vapor in the atmosphere (on the order of 0.1 to 1% by volume), which absorbs some of the outgoing IR radiation and keeps the surface temperature above freezing at night in tropical areas, and in temperate areas during spring and summer. The fact that the upper atmosphere is frequently below the dew point ensures that water vapor can condense and rain back to earth, and not escape into space.
Some of the global warming scare-mongers fear that accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere would lead to overheating the Earth like Venus, but having 0.041% of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere has much less effect than Venus’ atmosphere which is mostly CO2 and receives about twice the solar radiation as Earth.
Also, water vapor absorbs IR radiation at some of the same wavelengths absorbed by CO2, and is present at higher concentrations than CO2. If an IR photon is absorbed by a water molecule and converted to kinetic energy (thus raising the temperature of the atmosphere), it is not available to be absorbed by a CO2 molecule. This is the “filtering” effect of water vapor, so that increasing the CO2 concentration would have only a tiny effect on the temperature of the atmosphere.
Not to mention the asymmetrical ups and downs of “homogenization.”
How do you trap heat?
Heat is energy flow and one cannot trap flow. But climastrology has denial of physics built in.
Thanks Adrian,me with me grade ten have trouble understanding how you trap running. So I’m dependant on trained climatologists to explain it to me
You might think of some ‘clever’ way of trapping running, but heat is not running. It’s a process dependent, not a state function of the system. As such, it cannot be contained in the system.
Exactly it’s hard to have much belief in people when they use terminology like there being more heat trapped in the atmosphere. Have a great day
Actually trapped energy is what causes objects to raise their temperature. How they cool after heating is what all this is about.
‘Trapped energy’ and ‘trapped heat’ are two different notions. The problem is that people do not know what heat is in physics (that also applies to climastrologers). They think of heat as being the caloric from the caloric pseudo theory, falsified long ago. It’s not.
Ghost peppers?
Seriously burns by morning.
A Thermos works pretty well for a while.
Thermos bottle is world’s greatest invention. If you want it to keep something hot, it keep it hot. If you want it to keep something cold, it keep it cold. Thermos bottle can read your mind!
What happens if you put something hot and cold at the same time? Your mind must be confused.
Put an ice-cream bar inside a bear trap.
CO2. DUH! /sarc. Sorry. I had to say it.
The term “trap heat” refers to a reduction in the rate at which thermal energy can be dissipated across a given temperature difference.
A blanket is an example of something that “traps heat.” If reduces the rate of flow of heat.
BOB,
Blanket. Seldom discussed that the blanket causes somewhere outside it to be cooler. Alarmists are reluctant to use the word cooling, let alone analyse it as the logical pair to warming. Geoff S
I think it’s “seldom discussed” because it doesn’t have obvious relevance.
It does happen that increasing greenhouse gases are predicted to lead to lower temperatures in the upper atmosphere (i.e., stratosphere and mesosphere).
But, so what?
In what context do you see this as something important to analyze?
Yeap. Physics is driven by gradients in energy. It’s the local gradient that matters, not the gradient from elsewhere. In the case of the climate system, it’s the gradients inside the system, not from somewhere else.
Nice spotting.
I appreciate the opportunity to read the letter to GRL and the interesting comments above.
Do you think this letter will be published by GRL?
1) Emperor’s Clothes…
that The Surface we walk about on (that actual thing the soles of your feet touch) is not The Surface that Earth does its radiating from.
If pushed, I’d say that Earth’s radiating surface is not A Surface at all.
It is radiating from the bulk volume of the stratosphere or at a real push, the tops of clouds.
The water comprising the clouds has near unity emissivity and the because the stratosphere is dry.
The Troposphere is wet, and thus quite opaque to IR.
You would not use a radiative technique or measurements to analyse torch-light shining into or through a house-brick for example, so why use one for the Troposphere?
2) Earth is not a flat plate facing the Sun – it is a rapidly rotating sphere with very large heat storage capacity (because of so much liquid water) and that the water absorbs solar energy to (circa 100 metre) depth from where it can only escape via convection or conduction. Slow compared to the ate of Earth’s rotation.
3) Without clouds or plants (manifestations of water/climate), Earth would have a very low Albedo,
Water = 0.00 and bare rock, as per Moon, 0.12
Take 70/30 percentages gives an Albedo of 0.04
4) Taking (2) and (3) into account with a solar power of 1370, gets you 370 Watts per square metre absorbed averaged over the whole planet
e.g. 466 W/sqm at the equator and 140 W/sqm at 85 degs latitude
Then with emissivity of 0.94, do a Stefan power/temp calculation and a numerical integration of area/temp in whatever latitude steps you like to yield a Global Average Temperature of 13.4 Celsius
Well within the limits of contemporary adjustments and perfectly not requiring input from any Green House Gases
We’re all sitting here in front of a spreadsheet program that, with a modicum of care & craft will tell you that inside an hour of work.
What you waiting for?
The next Ice Age maybe? Better get yer finger out then.
Once you’ve played with those numbers, scratched around outside in The Great Outdoors, you will realise what causes Ice Ages and how/why the Next One is coming at us a great deal faster than anyone imagines……
King Henry 8th is your clue…..
You may then work out how to slow or even avert its arrival completely…
Is.nt then the £70 outlay on a solar power meter worth it?
The albedo of water is 0.066 and absorptivity is 0.934 respectively. Emissivity of water is ~0.91.
Peta,
“that The Surface we walk about on (that actual thing the soles of your feet touch) is not The Surface that Earth does its radiating from.
If pushed, I’d say that Earth’s radiating surface is not A Surface at all.
It is radiating from the bulk volume of the stratosphere”
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worth saying.
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nobody wants to listen
Uh, so absorptivity is not equal to emissivity? Funny, that.
Hayden is right in his statement: “With frequent but small, ephemeral exceptions, the radiant heat that a planet emits to outer space equals the heat absorbed from the sun. Indeed, this is true for Earth within 0.3 percent.” Because the Earth follows the law of energy conservation, it means that what comes in, must go out. There has been a significant positive SW radiation anomaly especially after 2014 (the end of the pause). This anomaly caused very warm years of 2019 and 2020 with a temperature increase of about 0.4 … 0.5 Celsius degrees.
“Because the Earth follows the law of energy conservation, it means that what comes in, must go out.”
No. The law says that if there is a discrepancy, then internal energy U will be increased accordingly. U is basically proportional to temperature, so that means that it will get a whole lot hotter. Generally, that hasn’t happened in the past, which is why we can say that the fluxes balance. But it is happening now, and sure enough, the fluxes are unbalanced, as Loeb said.
One thing is sure. The accuracy of SW and LW radiation measurements is about +/- 3 W/m2. Based on these measurements it is impossible to prove that there is an imbalance. There is no other way to do it.
Nick,
please do correct me,
but according to tenets and the scripture of climate “science”, there has being a 8 to 12C warming from the depth of the Ice Age to the Interglacial optimum.
Kinda of the average earth’s temperature moved up from:
~9-11C up to ~18-20C.
To ~3-5C higher than what consists as present average temperature of Earth.
So, I guess this does not consist as a lot of warming to you, does it!
cheers
“ U is basically proportional to temperature, ”
Errr. Nope. Chemical energy, for example.
Latent heats, very obvious in melting ice, evaporating water. It’s very wrong to put the equal sign between internal energy and temperature.
That is why I said “basically”. Phase change can vary the rate of rise, but it is still the case that, contra Antaro, you can have an imbalance which will then go into internal energy, and it will get warmer. It does, after all, need the extra warmth to make the phase changes happen.
Bravo Nick. You put in a weasel word to use as a trapdoor exit when challenged. Very poor stuff.
Basically, shmasically. No, it’s proportional with the mass. Which is NOT basically temperature. Although you might find some (very tiny) change of mass due of a small change in temperature (as in climastrology). Not something very measurable, because in fact, internal energy is BASICALLY NOT temperature.
Nick, You can not sit on two chairs. The GHE effect and its increase are based on the energy balance of the Earth. When the GHE increases and LW radiation decreases at the TOA, the energy balance comes back to its balance value by increasing the surface temperature; this is the univocally correct description. Now Loeb et al. and you write that the enhanced GHE increases the OLR value. No, it does not go that way.
“When the GHE increases and LW radiation decreases at the TOA, the energy balance comes back to its balance value by increasing the surface temperature”
Yes, that happens. But to increase the surface temperature requires the gain of a certain amount of heat, because it has heat capacity. The imbalance (reduced OLR) exists on the time scale needed to supply that heat. That is what Loeb et al are tracking.
“Nick, You can not sit on two chairs.”
If someone has an obese ego they have to sit on two chairs
I do not see Nick “sitting on two chairs.”
Sure.
To me, that sounds exactly like the preceding statement, but with less detail. It just left out the intermediate details of the OLR value initially decreasing and the surface temperature rising to restore the OLR value to a level that balances the incoming energy.
What’s the problem you’re seeing?
Nick adds the additional detail that for the surface temperature to increase, the imbalance must supply enough Joules of energy to address the thermal inertia (heat capacity, enthalpy of fusion and vaporization, etc.) of the matter involved.
Sounds entirely self-consistent to me.
U = m*c*ΔT
I would call that more than proportional to Temperature. Mass and specific heat have a large part to play. Solve that for ΔT. The mass and specific heat of water takes a lot of joules to raise the oceans much at all.
Sure ’nuff! A study period beginning on relatively cool years and ending on a Super El Nino. Now, how would that affect EEI?
“Generally, that hasn’t happened in the past”
Apart from glacial periods on the large scale, the mwp and lia on the small scale and regionally you mean?
In physics and chemistry, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be conserved over time.
Nick Stokes says No.
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Suddenly the Law is wrong.
Why?
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Ah.
He adds an if in.
The Law does not allow ifs.
It says nothing about discrepancies.
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This is the same person who Uses an anomaly graph ” NCEP/NCAR reanalysis surface temp anomaly area weighted global average made 2021-06-25 ”
which displays anomalies with a deliberate -0.2 c baseline instead of zero.
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Why, Nick?
Why?
6 months and still puts up this misleading graph.
As for basic physics, the first law of thermodynamics dictates that radiative imbalance is what melts the glaciers and sea ice and heats up the ocean water? If not, the top of the atmosphere would heat up a little more as to restore the balance. “Climate” is a sort of ill defined vague perception of some sort of stability in regional weather patterns over a certain period and is the result of numerous geophysical processes. The (temporary) imbalance is the consequence of the atmosphere heat buffers ice (freeze and melt) and water (temperature increase / decrease). So if anything it works the other way around. The change / increase in surface temperature causes the buffering of energy and therfore the imbalance.
“The surface of the planet emits IR according to the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law. The surface of Earth at 288 K emits 390 W/m2, some 150 W/m2 more than the earth emits to space. “
288 K = 14.85 C
The surface of earth is not 14.85 C.
The average global surface air temperature is about 15 C.
The average surface air temperature of southern hemisphere is about 1 C cooler than Northern hemisphere.
The average surface air temperature of land surfaces in northern hemisphere is about 11 C and average surface air temperature of land surface in southern hemisphere is about 8 C.
And there is more land surface in northern Hemisphere so average global land surface air temperature is about 10 C.
The global average ocean air surface temperature is about 17 C. The global average ocean surface temperature determine the global average surface air temperature of about 15 C.
The global average ocean surface of Earth has not been accurately been measured- one can the same thing in regards to global land average surface temperature, but ocean covers 70% of Earth surface, and it’s average temperature controls global average air surface, and ocean is more poorly measured than global land surface air temperature.
We if measured global ocean surface air temperature more accurately than land surface air temperature we have a better idea of what global surface air temperature, is. But instead we have measuring land surface air temperature “better” than ocean surface air temperature.
But anyways global average surface air temperature is about 15 C.
And if you were not poorly educated and stupid, you know that indicates we living in an Ice Age. But you don’t need anyone to tell you the global air temperature- elementary school will tell you we are living in an Ice Age. PBS has told you we living in an Ice Age:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/chill.html
But of course NOVA and science in general is boring, you say while living a world “ruled” by science. Or science caused us to live world governed by technology- a global warming classes are for people who can’t do hard science.
But anyhow, Earth surface doesn’t radiate at 15 C. When sun are closer to zenith [that would be roughly, summer time- for morons] the land surface is about 60 C, and highest is about 70 C. And highest ocean surface temperature gets is about 30 C. And the temperature of the ground or ocean surface affect the surface air temperature 5 feet above it.
But air surface above the surface is control by the temperature of global air mass, which controlled 70% of the surface which is ocean. Or global average air temperature [or ocean global average air temperature affect whether air temperature is closer to the surface which heated by the sunlight. When ground surface much hotter than air temperature, one gets more convectional heat transfer to the atmosphere.
Or try to make simple, convectional heat transfers are controlling factor of what make earth average global temperature about 15 C. But how hot surface of ground is does effect how energy to radiated into space, and therefore 60 C maybe more important rather average temperature. Though earth is most ocean and ocean control surface air, warmest it’s surface gets is generally around 26 C.
Getting back to the fact we in Ice Age, what controls whether in Ice age is temperature of the entire Ocean, which currently averages about 3.5 C.
If your ocean was warmer, say 5 C, we would be in the warmest global temperature of interglacial periods. But we would still be in an Ice Age. If ocean was instead 10 C, we would not be in an Ice Age. One could call Earth’s normal climate. And if ocean became 15 C, then we be in hothouse or greenhouse global climate- which tend only last millions of years.
And we been in our Ice Age for 34 million years, it’s called the Late Cenozoic Ice Age.
I actually agree with the statement, “Climate is determined by how much of the sun’s energy the Earth absorbs and how much energy Earth sheds through emission of thermal infrared radiation.”
CERES data show very clearly that recent warming (read climate) is caused by an increase in solar SW absorption, and that energy shed through IR emission to space is INCREASING.
Reply
I would have thought that the statement is incomplete given the thermal gradient from the centre of the earth. After all I don’t think the earth commenced its existence as a ball of molten rock because of energy absorbed from the sun. My best guess is that some of that energy is still finding its way out of the earth and into space.
The statement is technically incomplete, but the influence of energy coming from inside the Earth is of little practical significance. The heat flux “still finding its way out of the earth and into space” is estimated to be about 47±2 TW total or 0.092 W/m².
Compared to every other energy flux talked about in climate science discussions, that number is negligible.
Thanks for the response.
If you want to make any sense of the statement (which in itself is pretty meaningless, which climate where when?) it is the wrong way around, earths enegy buffers freezing /melting and water heat storage / release allow a radiative imbalance.Increase in surface temperatures do not result in the expected increase in top of the atmosphere temperature and radiation bacuase some of the energy is buffered.
Looks like a nothingburger to me
Calling this a “serious scientific error” is ridiculous hyperbole and just a failure to use common sense to try and understand what was meant. It seems to me that by “climate” they mean “global warming” – an obvious substitution (especially in the context of “heat retention”) that renders the sentence correct. Fourier could have told you that.
If you take climate to mean the circulation of the atmosphere then “Climate is determined by the very large difference between surface radiation and planet radiation,” would be more accurate. However that clearly isn’t what Loeb is talking about.
I suspect if this is a letter submitted to the journal it will be a desk reject for being uninformative pedantry.
“Looks like a nothingburger to me”
Yes, it is just juvenile. It is true that the climate state to worry about is one where the surface has warmed and is radiating more heat. But to get there, extra heat must arrive to create that higher temperature. Loeb et al are tracking, in two ways, the flux imbalance that supplies that heat.
If the (positive) imbalance results from reduced SW reflection, was it CO2?
And they wonder why we are sceptical.
If only irony could be harnessed as an energy source….
Why bother when the freely emitted CO2 is doing all the heating for you.
This “letter” completely misses the point and is completely irrelevant. Prof. Hayden states that:
“The serious scientific error of Loeb and colleagues is contained in this sentence, quoted verbatim:”Climate is determined by how much of the sun’s energy the Earth absorbs and how much energy Earth sheds through emission of thermal infrared radiation.”
Climate is determined by the very large difference between surface radiation and planet radiation, and is most assuredly not determined by minor positive and negative imbalances between absorbed solar energy and radiated IR.”
Now firstly the statement that Prof. Hayden objects to is in the “plain language summary”
of the article and so is an attempt to explain things in a nonscientific manner. Secondly and more importantly it is completely irrelevant to the paper itself. Loeb et al. show that satellite measurements reveal an energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere and that the earth is thus storing energy. This is an observational fact and whether or not it is true does not depend on any way on how you want to define climate.
So today, you believe the CERES satellite data. But yesterday, you said the UAH satellite data is untrustworthy and should not be believed.
Since both satellites use microwave sensors to collect data, all one is left with is to say “Go figure?”
It matters if you define climate as a reduction in SW reflection rather than an increase in LW emission. “I don’t think that [EEI] means what you think it means.”
Not much greenhouse radiant warming over Altnaharra in Scotland during midsummer night, June 21 – temperature minus 2.4 degrees C.
https://youtu.be/nljwilseEaU
With frequent but small, ephemeral exceptions, the radiant heat that a planet emits to outer space equals the heat absorbed from the sun.
Not so. Jupiter emits about twice the radiant energy that it receives from the sun. Because of gravity. Yes – suck that up and like it. Heat from gravity.
Saturn and Neptune also emit more than they receive? Why? Hint – it’s that G word again
Howard Hayden’s article is good. Within the framework of the “atmosphere heat is only about radiation” paradigm. But this paradigm is wrong. The above error is only one of many that arise when this false paradigm is adopted. Love and peace
https://lasp.colorado.edu/outerplanets/giantplanets_interiors.php
Yes, it is called the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism and is the result of Jupiter steadily shrinking so some gravitational potential energy of the atmosphere is being converted to heat and radiated away. However once it is radiated away it is gone for good. Gravity does not result in heating of an atmosphere that is not shrinking (like that of the Earth).
Planets exist in a vacuum, which means they can’t lose heat by conduction or convection, but only by radiation. The above error isn’t an error, it is just hyperbolic adversarial interpretation of a slightly ambiguous sentence.
The fact that Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune are radiating more energy than they receive from the Sun means they are experiencing global cooling. Fourier was right after all.
Sad comment. From a physicist as well.
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The global cooling of a planet is dependent on a number of factors.
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A planet can experience global cooling despite emitting its own energy to space.
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The fact that it gets some heat from the sun and some more from its own physics does not mean that it cannot be cooling.
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Yes exchange of heat between a planet and space is by radiation only, since it’s surrounded by a vacuum. That is trivially true.
The conjuring trick is to jump from that to the assertion that within a gaseous atmosphere, heat exchange is also by radiation only. This is the false foundation upon which the entire CO2 warming narrative rests – in the virtual sense.
No, the greenhouse effect assumes no such thing. In fact the lapse rate, which is set up by convection is a key component of the greenhouse effect. Also outbound IR that is absorbed by GHGs are not immediately re-radiated, but transferred to the bulk atmosphere by collisions between molecules. This means that radiation, convection and conduction are all involved.
HOWEVER, whether the planet gains or loses heat is fixed by radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere as that (as we agree to be trivially true) is the only way heat can be exchanged with space.
Sorry dude, the lapse rate is not “set up” by convection. It’s pretty much the other way around. Ask yourself why air at the surface is more dense than air in the stratosphere. Would it be that way even without convection?
“Ask yourself why air at the surface is more dense than air in the stratosphere”
because it has greater weight of atmosphere pressing down on it?
“Would it be that way even without convection?”
yes, it would.
But fair enough, perhaps I should say that convection is important in determination of the lapse rate. My point remains that conduction, convection and radiation are ALL involved in the greenhouse effect. This means the statement
is factually incorrect – no such assertion is made.
(and the gravitational field is stronger at the surface)
The air at the surface is more dense than the air above it because of hydrostatic equilibrium, such that d𝞀/dz = -𝞀⋅g. The weight of the air above guarantees the air below will be more dense.
But… that has nothing at all to do with establishing an adiabatic lapse rate.
The atmosphere exhibits an adiabatic lapse rate only in portions of the atmosphere where convection occurs.
So, yes, an adiabatic lapse rate is “set up” by convection.
Both the dry and “wet” lapse rates occur because of gravity, not because of convection. The values may change due to “what” is being convected, but the change in temperature occurs because of density due to gravity. Without gravity (and ignoring other effects) the atmosphere would become homogenous with no lapse rate.
Sure, gravity is needed for an adiabatic lapse rate, but so is convection, and the need for convection is more specific.
All parts of the atmosphere experience gravity, but only the parts that experience convection have an adiabatic lapse rate.
Correct. The lapse rate is a result of the tradeoff between particle (atom / molecule) kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy.
As long as the system receives energy sufficient that the particles remain in a gaseous state (ie: they still have kinetic energy), then there will be a lapse rate, convection or no.
The environmental lapse rate is defined as the lapse rate of a stable atmosphere, after all. One would think a physicist who is propounding upon a topic would at least get his definitions and concepts correct beforehand, but apparently in Liberal La-La Land, that’s no longer de rigueur, such is the sorry state of climate ‘science’ and higher education these days. LOL
L = -dT/dz, with T being the variable, and T is a measure in this case of the kinetic energy of the particles.
L_e < L_h : stable
L_h < L_e < L_d : conditionally unstable
L_e > L_d : absolutely unstable
Where:
e: environmental
h: humid
d: dry
———-
The effective emission height is ~5.105 km.
7 – 13 µm: >280 K (near-surface).
>17 µm: ~260 – ~240 K (~5km in the troposphere).
13 – 17 µm: ~220 K (near the tropopause).
There no single emission height (IOW, TOA is the altitude at which the atmosphere becomes effectively transparent to any given wavelength of radiation… and for some wavelengths, TOA is very near the surface), but the emission is still equivalent to a blackbody with a temperature of 255 K, and thus an effective emission height of 5.105 km.
Combine that 255 K effective emission height temperature with the lapse rate to get the surface temperature, and you’ll find there is no “greenhouse effect” (as described by the climate loons), thus no CAGW.
The lapse rate is said to average ~6.5 K / km.
6.5 K / km * 5.105 km = 33.1825 K
That is not the ‘greenhouse effect’, that is the tropospheric lapse rate. The climate loons have conflated the two.
Polyatomic molecules such as CO2 and H2O reduce the adiabatic lapse rate, not increase it (for example: dry adiabatic lapse rate: ~9.81 K / km; humid adiabatic lapse rate: ~3.5 to ~6.5 K / km).
9.81 K / km * 5.105 km = 50.08005 K dry adiabatic lapse rate (due to homonuclear diatomics and monoatomics), which would give a surface temperature of 255 + 50.08005 = 305.08005 K. This would be an atmosphere consisting nearly solely of homonuclear diatomics and monoatomics. Sans CO2, that number would be even higher.
Water vapor (primarily) reduces that to 272.8675 K – 288.1825 K, depending upon humidity. Other polyatomics (such as CO2) also contribute to the cooling, to a much lesser extent. The higher the concentration of polyatomics, the more vertical the lapse rate, the cooler the surface. Also remember that the atmosphere is stable as long as the actual lapse rate is less than the adiabatic lapse rate… and a greater concentration of polyatomic molecules reduces the adiabatic lapse rate… thus convection increases.
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How do polyatomics reduce the lapse rate? By dint of their higher specific heat capacity (and latent heat capacity for some such as water) as compared to the homonuclear diatomics, they convectively transit more energy to the upper atmosphere, which has the effect of attempting to warm the upper atmosphere toward the temperature of the surface (decrease temperature change with altitude), while at the same time radiatively cooling the upper atmosphere faster than they can convectively warm it.
A higher proportion of radiative molecules (polyatomics) in a parcel of air means more emitters in that parcel of air, thus the potential for more emission per unit volume.
That’s why water acts a a literal refrigerant (in the strict ‘refrigeration cycle’ sense), why the humid adiabatic lapse rate is lower than the dry adiabatic lapse rate, and why both CO2 and water are net atmospheric coolants.
That’s from an atmospheric research scientist at NASA JPL.
That’s from the Clough and Iacono study.
The climate loons are yet again provably diametrically opposite to reality.
It is the monoatomics and homonuclear diatomics which are the actual ‘greenhouse’ gases… remember that an actual greenhouse works by hindering convection.
Monoatomics (Ar) have no vibrational mode quantum states, and thus cannot emit (nor absorb) IR. Homonuclear diatomics (O2, N2) have no net magnetic dipole and thus cannot emit (nor absorb) IR unless that net-zero magnetic dipole is perturbed via collision.
In an atmosphere consisting of solely monoatomics and diatomics, the particles (atoms / molecules) could pick up energy via conduction by contacting the surface, just as the polyatomics do; they could convect just as the polyatomics do… but once in the upper atmosphere, they could not as effectively radiatively emit that energy, the upper atmosphere would warm, the lapse rate would necessitate that the surface also warms, lending less buoyancy to convecting air, thus hindering convection… and that’s how an actual greenhouse works, by hindering convection.
The surface would also have to warm because that 76.2% of energy which is currently removed from the surface via convection and evaporation would have to be removed nearly solely via radiation (there would be some collisional perturbation of N2 and O2, and thus some emission in the atmosphere)…. and a higher radiant exitance implies a higher surface temperature.
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The chance of any N2 or O2 molecule colliding with water vapor is ~3% on average in the troposphere, and for CO2 it’s only ~0.0415%. Logic dictates that as atmospheric concentration of CO2 increases, the likelihood of N2 or O2 colliding with it also increases, and thus increases the chance that N2 or O2 can transfer its translational and / or vibrational mode energy to the vibrational mode energy of CO2, which can then shed that energy to space via radiative emission. (And yes, t-v and v-v collisional processes do occur from N2 to CO2… if you doubt me, I can post the maths and studies which prove it.)
Thus, common sense dictates that the thermal energy of the 99% of the atmosphere which cannot radiatively emit must be transferred to the so-called ‘greenhouse gases’ (CO2 being a lesser contributor in the lower atmosphere and the largest contributor in the upper atmosphere, water vapor being the main contributor in the lower atmosphere) which can radiatively emit and thus shed that energy to space.
So can anyone explain how increasing the concentration of the major radiative coolants in the atmosphere (and thus increasing the likelihood that N2 and O2 will transfer their energy to those coolant gases and then out to space via radiative emission) will result in more ‘heat trapping’, causing global warming? I thought not.
Upside down, backwards, inside out and diametrically opposite to reality… the natural state of every single liberal. Almost as if there’s something wrong with their brains. LOL
No. That’s entirely a “straw man” argument.
Nobody assumes that “within a gaseous atmosphere, heat exchange is also by radiation only.” That is not required nor assumed by those talking about the greenhouse effect (GHE).
I think you’re mistaking a sociological phenomenon for a scientific argument.
The sociological phenomenon goes as follows:
Some people then make the mistaken inference that those talking about the GHE only take radiative heat transfer into account.
That’s not true at all.
What’s true is that that talk about radiative heat transfer more than other types of heat transfer. But, that’s only because that’s the part of the the science that many people don’t seem to understand.
Indeed. It made a great deal more sense to me once I found out that IR absorbed by GHGs isn’t immediately re-radiated, but is lost to the bulk atmosphere by collisions (i.e. conduction), and hence there is a much greater heat capacity available. Sometimes collisions with the bulk atmosphere transfers energy to a GHG molecule which can then re-radiate it. This is a point that is often not mentioned in basic explanations of the greenhouse effect, but it is part of the physics. The problem is that if you are just looking for a reason to reject something, you have less incentive to take the basic explanation and look for a less basic explanation rather than just find fault with the dumbed down version.
Yes. An awful lot of “skepticism” seems to involve critiquing “dumbed down” explanations as if they were the real logic that scientists are applying in their work.
When something “doesn’t make sense” that’s often because one is looking at an oversimplified explanation. I wish there was more willingness to dig deeper and seek fuller understanding, rather than assuming that a popular-science sort of explanation reflects the full depth of understanding that exists.
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” (attributed to Einstein, but I’m not sure he actually said it)
much better explanation of part of GHG effect.
thanks DM
“exchange of heat between a planet and space is by radiation only, since it’s surrounded by a vacuum. That is trivially true.”
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Sorry, Hatter.
True is true.
The usual way for heat in is from radiation and usually the way out is by radiation.
There are trivial exceptions.
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“the assertion that within a gaseous atmosphere, heat exchange is also by radiation only.”
That s changing the goal posts from how the heat gets out to space and sounds suspiciously like a GHG effect.
Which I believe in.
“Heat from gravity.” A perpetual motion machine. Good luck selling that on Amazon.
“The surface of the planet emits IR according to the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law. The surface of Earth at 288 K emits 390 W/m2, some 150 W/m2 more than the earth emits to space. That 150 W/m2 of heat retention is the cause of the 33 ºC temperature rise over the non-GHG Earth with the same albedo.”
When cold air is in contact with a hot surface, the cold air doesn´t retain heat, it drains heat from the hot surface. The reason for the atmosphere reducing the surface emission on it´s way to space isn´t heat retention, it´s because the atmosphere is cold. Cold air emits less heat than a warm surface. Cold air cools warm surfaces, it doesn´t warm them.
“ The 16,574 W/m2 difference, due to the composition of the extremely dense atmosphere of Venus is what determines the climate of Venus: 511 ºC hotter than the hypothetical Venus with the same albedo but no greenhouse effect.”
Planck doesn´t agree. According to Planck and Prevost the emission of a body depends only on what happens INSIDE the emitting body.
But the empirical law that the emission of any volume-element depends entirely on what takes place inside of this element holds true in all cases (Prevost’s principle).
Page 9:
The Project Gutenberg eBook #40030: The Theory of Heat Radiation
And here is Prevost´s statement which he refers to:
Prevost also showed that the emission from a body is logically determined solely by its own internal state.
So you´re wrong. According to Planck & Prevost the emission from the surface can´t depend on the atmosphere, because the atmosphere is not inside the emitting body. The surface emission depends only on the internal state, and the atmosphere is by definition the external state.
The Sun is also external to “the emitting body.” So, by your logic, the Sun can’t have any effect on the temperature of the Earth.
Planck & Prevost are right that “the emission from a body is logically determined solely by its own internal state.”
But, what determines that “internal state”? The internal state arises as a result of the interaction with the environment. So, things in an object’s environment (like the Sun or the atmosphere) can affect the object’s internal state, and consequently it temperature (an attribute of internal state), and consequently its thermal emissions.
The first glimmer of a clue alights in Bob’s eyes as he disproves Prevost (and by extension, Planck, who clung to the long-debunked Prevost Principle (core principle of the Prevost Theory of Exchanges from 1791, which postulated that energy flowed willy-nilly without regard to energy gradient, and to which the climate alarmists cling because it supports their “energy flows willy-nilly without regard to energy gradient” narrative, which bolsters their “backradiation” narrative, which bolsters their “CAGW” narrative))… now all Bob must do is query, “What is the physical mechanism by which that interaction with the environment takes place, and how is that interaction moderated?”, and he’ll have to move his toes off the warmist-narrative line.
Progress. LOL
Prevost postulated that the emission of an object depended only upon the internal state of an object but that internal state is affected by the external state, so in fact, emission doesn’t depend upon only the internal state, except in an isolated system, which doesn’t really exist anywhere in the universe… isolated systems are fictive idealizations, just as idealized blackbody objects are fictive idealizations. Predicating your scientific beliefs upon fictive objects (which are often not even consistent in the description of their behavior, as in idealized blackbody objects) results in nothing but confusion… and the warmists are thoroughly confused. LOL