Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Back in 1987, V. Ramanathan noted that we can measure the very poorly named “greenhouse effect”. This effect has nothing to do with greenhouses. Instead, what happens is that some of the upwelling longwave radiation from the surface is absorbed by “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere, mainly CO2 and H2O. This absorbed energy, of course, is added to the thermal energy in the atmosphere, which is then radiated again with about half going to space and about half going back to the ground.
What Ramanathan noted is that to calculate the size of the “greenhouse effect”, you simply subtract the longwave emitted to space at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) from the longwave emitted upwards at the surface. Here’s Ramanathan’s drawing of the concept:
Figure 1. Drawing by Ramanathan showing upwelling surface longwave of 398.6 watts per square meter (W/m2), TOA radiation to space of 267.5 W/m2, and atmospheric absorption (greenhouse effect) of 131.1 W/m2. Note that Ramanathan has also calculated the absorption as a fraction of surface radiation (0.334, or 33.4% of radiation absorbed).
The use of a percentage to measure the “greenhouse effect” eliminates one of the variables. Where it is warmer the ground emits more radiation, so naturally more will be absorbed by the atmosphere. That means if we want to compare different areas of the earth, we need to use percentages instead of absolute values. Below are two graphs showing the percentage of the upwelling surface longwave radiation absorbed by the atmosphere, shown from two opposite sides of the planet.
Figure 2. Percentage of upwelling longwave absorbed by the atmosphere, Pacific-centered and Atlantic-centered.
There are a few things of interest here. First, where it’s very cold, almost no upwelling longwave is absorbed by the atmosphere. Second, in the cloudy areas around the equator, about half of the upwelling radiation is absorbed. Third, you can see the Gulf Stream along the east coast of the US …
Much is made by climate alarmists of the fact that the percentage of the upwelling surface radiation absorbed by the atmosphere is increasing. This indeed shows that the greenhouse effect is real … but it shows nothing about whether that affects the temperature. Figure 3 shows the rate of increase.
Figure 3. Change in absorbed upwelling surface radiation from March 2000 to February 2021.
Now, I entitled this post “A CO2 Puzzle”, and true to my word, here it is. The increase in the absorbed upwelling radiation is supposed to be from the increase in CO2 … but in fact, the increase in absorbed upwelling longwave is slightly less than half of what we’d expect from CO2. And that’s without the claimed increases in absorption due to methane and other minor greenhouse gases, from”water vapor feedback”, and from “cloud feedback”, all of which are said to increase the slope of the trend in absorption.
Figure 4. As in Figure 3, but also showing the expected trend from the increase in CO2 over the period.
So there’s the mystery. Between CO2, methane and minor greenhouse gases, water vapor, and cloud feedback, the percentage absorbed should be increasing far faster than it actually is … why isn’t it?
And what is the answer to the puzzle? I don’t know, other than to note that as I’ve pointed out in a number of contexts, emergent climate phenomena act to minimize factors that tend to warm the earth. However, I have no idea exactly what is occurring here, all suggestions welcome.
Me, I’m currently in Florida with my gorgeous ex-fiancee, enjoying the rain, the sunshine, and the pleasant and friendly people here. Our profound thanks to the most interesting and kind WUWT folks who have hosted, educated, and entertained us on our peregrination, you know who you are, much appreciated.
My best to everyone from the land of oranges and bikinis …
w.
PS—Two things. First, I implore you not to turn this into a discussion of whether a cold object can warm a hot object, or whether the greenhouse effect is real. There are plenty of places for you to have those discussions. This is not one of those places, and I will snip comments that go over the line. And please, if you get snipped, don’t whine about censorship or the like. It is merely my effort to keep the conversation focused on the topic of the post, you’ve been asked in the strongest terms to stay away from those topics, and if you don’t, it’s on your head, not mine. Oh, and please, leave out the politics … there’s plenty enough division of opinion in the climate world, no need to increase it by including politics.
Second, as always, I request that you quote the exact words you are discussing, so that all of us can understand just who and what you are referring to.
Wouldn’t that mean that the effect is primarily driven by water vapor which is far less at the poles?
Hot air balloons rise. Is convection of the reabsorbed (multiple times) energy in the equation?
Is their a consensus in the scientific community that the governments of the world can control global climate change by eliminating the use of fossil fuel around the world? What is the plan? Do the computer models tell us what will happen next?
As an aside, I have a magic 8 ball if they need an assist.
Though provoking as usual, Willis.
My first thought is whether it is legit to “average” percentages of radiative flux. It’s an informative way to visualise the effect over the globe but ( assuming your graph is the average of all the points on your maps ) I think that %ages are not “fungible”. You should probably be plotting average W/m2 .
For example low % at the poles pull down the average but the absolute contribution is probably minimal anyway.
You do not explain how you convert to plot the CO2 “forcing” in W/m2 on to the graph in % but that looks like something to check.
Also, I can see where the TOA data comes from but how is upward surface radiation measured at ground level ( is it measured? ). Could you explain where that part of the data comes from?
Sorry if some of that is wrong but the description of the method used is a bit too cursory to comment in more detail.
> “I have no idea exactly what is occurring here, all suggestions welcome.”
It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong. ~ Richard P. Feynman
We don’t have to come up with an alternative to disprove the forcing theory.
I would like to see those graphs with zero at the origin on the ordinate. Otherwise great article, luv ya Willis.
I am stunned when I consider how complex a single inorganic water molecule and its different forms can be and even more so at a tiny living organism like a ciliate – one of which has 16,000 chromosomes compared only 46 in a human. These can be studied in a lab. However, when it comes to the different climate zones and the enormous complexity of the systems and their interaction is it unadulterated intellectual arrogance to think we can distil this into some mathematical formulas. The most brilliant minds cannot let alone some Swedish teenager activist.
It would seem that if we had a long enough time series that had daily highs and lows at the appropriate level of the atmosphere, fitting the dellta-Ts should show that the time variant dynamic range would correlate with increasing atmospheric GHG constituency. In other words, converting the temperature times series to instantaneous amplitude, we use a similar process to find Oil & Gas from seismic data by utilizing the Hilbert transform.
Ramanathan is mostly right and is describing a gray body, where the ratio between the emissions at TOA and the RADIANT emissions by the surface is the emissivity. Many get confused by non radiant energy like latent heat, failing to understand that it has a zero sum effect on this ratio. If a Joule emitted by the planet can trace its source to latent heat, a Joule of radiant surface emissions that would have ultimately contributed to TOA emissions will need to be returned to the surface instead in order to offset the lost latent heat.
Surface emissions attenuated by an emissivity before leaving TOA must either be returned to the surface or sent into space, so the emissivity is a complete representation of the GHG effect and all that contributes to it.
Because he’s missing the fact that only about half of the surface emissions absorbed by the atmosphere are returned to the surface, he’s underestimating absorption by about a factor of 2 and is also over estimating the emissions at TOA. Although, his absorption value would be more accurate if he was trying to reconcile absorption by GHG’s alone, which is only about 1/3 of the total absorption, while clouds absorb the rest. If A is the total absorption by GHG’s and cloud and half of this is sent into space, the equivalent emissivity can be calculated as 1 – A/2, or visa-versa, as in practice, the equivalent emissivity is much easier to measure.
I would add to that, the percentage change in absorbed upwelling surface radiation has had a general negative trend since about 2016 (El Nino), and more steeply negative since about 2019, all the while CO2 has been increasing.
Where it is very cold, the water vapor tends to have very low concentrations.
Could the cooling have something to do with upwelling air = adiabatic cooling (low pressure system or cyclones) vs. downwelling air (anticyclones, adiabatic heating) in the atmosphere.
Has somebody done any statistical work comparing the relative number (and maybe pressure differences) of weather systems vs. surface temperatures. These are also “emerging phenomena” although not as “compact” as thunderstorms, but huge volumes of air (and water vapor) are involved…
Willis,
When I look at your graphs, I don’t really see a linear trend. What I see rather is no trend between 2000 and 2015, with a sudden short-lived increase around the 2015 – 2019 El Ninos.
As you have previously shown that atmospheric water vapor content increases with EL Ninos, could the phenomena that you describe in this post simply be an effect of increasing atmospheric water vapor due to the El Ninos?
Ja. Ja.
Is what I said from the start I investigated the probkem….
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2018/05/04/which-way-will-the-wind-be-blowing-genesis-41-vs-27/
The radiation from the surface is not the same as the radiation flux as it progresses through the atmosphere. Radiation is absorbed, passed back and forth with other molecules and reradiated in all directions. The net of these activities is a radiation flux.
A lot of the radiation activity does no warming. It simply passes energy from one molecule to another in a similar manner to conduction. There’s a lot more molecules lower in the atmosphere and hence more of this activity.
The surface skin is part of this passive energy movement just as it is part of energy movement via conduction. If all the energy conducted back/forth between gases and the surface was measured, it would likely be millions of w/m2. Yet, it does no warming. This is also true of the passive radiation.
To really understand the movement of energy to space you will need to remove the passive movement of energy in the same way you do for conduction. Of course, since none of the kinetic transfers result in energy going into space it is easy to remove them. You just ignore them. Not so easy with radiation.
Because of the density differences the amount of passive radiation is highest near the surface. A lot of that 398 w/m2 is passive radiation. I suspect that when you do remove it you will end up with an interesting result.
I believe the flux essentially works inversely to the ALR. The flux itself is a constant ~160 w/m2. The poorly named greenhouse effect is simply a measure of the passive radiation. The radiation exists and there’s no reason to deny it. But, it remains fairly constant (globally) and does no warming.
As an analogy think of musical chairs. During every musical period the people move around and all but one of them ends up in a chair when the music stops. Only one person is left standing. All the people located in chairs are like the passive energy. They moved around just like the person left standing but their status ended up unchanged.
I don’t think Willis will find an answer to his question since it is based on an incomplete view of what is actually happening.
One might almost be led to the heretical idea that CO2 increase results in a negative feedback effect, with obvious implications for the TCS and ECS estimates. Could this be a globally averaged result of your emergent phenomenon hypothesis? Interesting.
I’ll offer my take on this question.
First, I’m not challenging the greenhouse effect. I do, however, question the enhanced greenhouse effect. Here is how the FAR puts it:
“An increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases is expected to raise the global-mean surface-air temperature which, for simplicity, is usually referred to as the ‘global temperature’. Strictly this is an enhanced greenhouse effect – above that occurring due to natural greenhouse gas concentrations. The word enhanced is frequently omitted, but should not be forgotten in this context.”
Second, I refer to the prediction of a tropospheric hotspot as a feature of models with significant climate sensitivity to CO2. This is a prediction of a rate of increase in temperature in the tropical troposphere which exceeds the rate at the surface. The ratio of the rate of temperature temperature aloft compared to the surface was referred to as the “Scaling Ratio”. In 2010, Christy et al noted the Scaling Ratio was predicted at about 1.4, but measurements produced an observation of around 0.8. Rather than amplified warming aloft, Christy observed attenuated warming.
There are good reasons for this. Even starting with the word “amplified”. Amplification is a dimensionless measure. It means “start with X, and you get more of X”. When you start with something and end up with more of the same thing, energy must have been added.
Therefore the enhanced greenhouse effect (characterised by the GCM prediction of a tropospheric hotspot) must answer the question: where did the extra energy come from?
IF there is a non-zero enhanced greenhouse effect, and an increase in radiative energy arriving at the surface, there must therefore be a radiator aloft. For any resulting warming effect at the surface, the radiator aloft must have increased its temperature by more than the surface. (That’s why the models must produce the hotspot.)
But, the enhanced greenhouse effect claims the surface is the source of the additional energy being absorbed in the atmosphere. Be careful here, it is only changes we are considering – the fact that the sun radiates to the surface is a constant, and has not changed. We therefore cannot consider the sun a a source of additional energy.
This is circular reasoning. The surface warms the hotspot, and the hotspot warms the surface. At very best, this is a perpetual motion machine: energy being supplied to the atmosphere and being (perfectly) returned to the surface.
However the atmosphere has no sense of up-versus-down. Any change in radiated flux and absorbed within the atmosphere will be radiated in all directions. This could be aggregated to 50% up and 5% down. So 50% of any additional radiative flux from the surface due to the enhanced greenhouse effect would be lost (not returned to the surface). This is a process which cannot sustain a rise in temperature.
By this reasoning, the enhanced greenhouse effect cannot sustain a rise in surface temperature by radiative exchanges of energy (which it is supposed to be). (Note, this does NOT say the underlying GHE does not exist.)
I like to envisage it in terms of energy in LW photons. Consider 2 photons coming back to the surface from the atmosphere SOLELY due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. After being absorbed in the surface (rise in temperature), consider the energy in 2 photons then leaving the surface as the warmer surface does not retain the extra energy. If both photons are absorbed and re-radiated within the atmosphere, one would be expected to be radiated back to the surface, and one would be expected to be radiated off to space. The enhanced greenhouse effect has therefore lost half of the energy in “one loop” of the energy exchange between the surface and the atmosphere.
As I said, the enhanced greenhouse effect would need to be a perpetual motion machine to sustain a rise in temperature at the surface. And that’s the mistake I believe the GCM’s make. They all claim to conserve energy, but they only do so at the TOA. Whatever goes on below the TOA can be whatever is programmed into them by the modellers. The enhanced greenhouse effect predicts a tropospheric hotspot because, I believe, the GCMs have energy exchanges which depend on a perfect (loss-free) exchange of energy between the surface and the predicted hotspot.
When Christy checked to see if the tropospheric hotspot could be observed by real-world data, it should come as no surprise that he observed an attenuated rate of warming aloft.
That’s my take on things. OK guys, shoot away and pick holes in it. I’d be interested to hear your views.
Two comments.
First, your figure two proves that water vapor is the main GHG. Near the equator where it is high (specific humidity), LWR absorption is higher than ‘average’. Near the poles were it cold and specific humidity is low, LWR absorption is low, presumably mostly from CO2.
Second, I cannot figure out how you computed your red line in Figure 4. The canonical 3.7w/m2 CO2 forcing per doubling leads to about +1.16C in the absence of feedbacks (I use Monckton’s equation and his standard inputs -Lindzen just uses 1.2C). We know ECS is likely about 1.7C observationally, mainly because the WVF is positive (see my recent ECS post for details derived using Bode 1/(1-f) and cloud and precipitation observations. So about 1.7/1.16 about 47% higher than CO2 alone. The yellow line in figure 4 is observationally everything Ceres ‘sees’ absorbed, including by water vapor. So logically, the red line should be about 70% of the yellow, not twice. Perhaps an assumptional or calculational translation error in estimating the red line?
Okay, Willis, if you can persuade The Doctor to lend the Tardis to me so that I can go back to the Carboniferous period and take some real-time measurements in that hot, sweaty, dismal swamp that was land surface back then, I might be able to come up with an answer to your question.
Maybe we just don’t have enough treelike ferns doing their thing by absorbing mass quantities of CO2 and releasing O2. Don’t know. But if someone wants to build a HUUUUUUGE greenhouse with all sorts of plants crowded together – oh, wait: we’re already living on a planet like that.
Maybe the Sahara could be plumbed for subsurface water deposits and lots of trees, grasses and other plants could be grown there, but how long would it take to make the difference? And why IS the Sahara just a sea of sand but still gets snowed on?
Maybe it’s just how it is.
So many questions…..
Have a nice vacation.
“And what is the answer to the puzzle?”
Could it be the “mysterious X factor” that David Evans (husband of Jo Nova) was seeking? I followed his posts (https://sciencespeak.com) with interest until they ended abruptly in 2015 without any conclusion. I thought some of his ideas (illustrated by Jo) were excellent. I thought he was on to something — then: silence. Perhaps he discovered he was chasing a phantom, perhaps he fell ill, I don’t know. Do you have any knowledge or ideas about this?
I’m no mathematician but I do not understand how HALF can get back to earth. I assume that the radiation is a 360′ event. As a radiative molecule moves away from the surface, the surface will take up a reduced % of the irradiated area. Unless the molecule is on the surface, Earth cannot occupy 180′ of the output area.
Thank you Willis for this puzzle!
I’m a newbie – so sorry for my silly questions!
My first thought was – if co2 is a “well mixed gas” – how can the chart show no ghe on the south pole? Could it be that water vapor is the main ghe and co2 is only a minor player?
(several scientist suggest ECS<1)
kind regards
SteenR
“…which is then radiated again with **************** about half going back to the ground.”
Without added work – just flat not possible.
“The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.””
Richard P. Feynman, “Six Easy Pieces”
https://principia-scientific.org/debunking-the-greenhouse-gas-theory-with-a-boiling-water-pot/
The non-radiative heat transfer processes of the contiguous participating atmospheric molecules prevent the surface from upwelling LWIR as a BB and supplying the “extra” energy required by the GHGs to warm as advertised.
Maybe it is due to the installation of solar panels having an absorptive effect and emoting less bad juju
https://www.treehugger.com/ask-pablo-do-solar-panels-contribute-to-the-heat-island-effect-4857811
Judging from the graphs, I’d say CO2 doesn’t have any effect (the percentage was flat on average though the first half of the graph though co2 was steadily increasing) and only increasing water vapour from the last El Nino caused the percentage to dramatically rise above average, but then settle back down once El Nina took over, which would have been impossible under co2-doomsday physics.
Why do we insist on putting linear trend lines on these types of graphs, and then making profound conclusions/interpretations from them? The “trend” prior to 2015 is flat. The “trend post-2015 is higher, but still flat (or a curve). The linear trend only exists by gluing two periods of low flat to one period of high flat. If in the next 5 years the temperatures are up-and-down about a flat, the longer term trend will be flat but somewhat higher than previously, but not necessarily showing a linear trend of any substance or validity.
The constant insistence on creating linear trends to non-linearly increasing data, in my opinion, is a bad idea as it reinforces the false idea that a linearly increasing trend necessarily exists. I understand that linear trends are easier for the under technically educated public to grasp, but they fit into the not necessarily correct CAGW narrative of CO2 as a unitary control button. Here I don’t see a linear trend except for a manufactured, grossly simplified, mathematical product.
I’m a geologist. We have a term for changes over geologic time: “punctuated equilibrium”. That is what I see in the temperature records. Periods of not-much punctuated by periods of a-lot. IF there is a significant linear trend due to CO2 or other factor, it is well hidden in the records (though NOAA/GISS/Schmidt has done a good job of creating one with homogenization, corrections, data removal etc). A punctuated equilibrium says that extraordinary events precipitate sudden changes. Our focus in geology is on what those events are (mostly we don’t know but guess widely and wildly). For these climate/temperature records, we should do the same: why the sudden jump? Episodic temperature release from the oceans? Cloud cover patterns?
I think we should be showing these trends closer to how they are, and showing the public that linearity is a mathematical production. I don’t find a discussion of linear trends in (especially recent) temperature trends meaningful when we don’t first address why we have the “hiatuses” with subsequent jumps, and that the data shows this, and any linear trend is a third order gross simplification.
Of course the GISS global temperature plots don’t show this at all, which should be an overarching discussion as the alarmists and the skeptics simply don’t show/use the same temperature progressions over time, and so there is no possible meaningful discussion of what is going on.