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.
Do the CO2 calculations account for air density?
Here is the graph hat solves the puzzle.
The (extra) heat is not coming from the CO2. It is coming from the north and slowly moving south.
We are looking at an increase at the arctic seas by about 0.05C per annum over the past 40 years. Obviously something is brewing underneath the arctic. That means that every year less CO2 goes back into the solution. That to me explains the zig zag of the CO2 concentration noticed in Hawaii, always leaving about 2.2 ppm more in the atmosphere.
Now Keeling did an investigation where he wanted to show the loss of oxygen.
By me I think he came to about 0.6 ppm O2 loss per annum but he used an insane yardstick to measure the missing O2 (to throw me off guard?) . Mysteriously, his graphs end in 2017. I noticed somewhere on WUWT that the atmosphere is contracting. That would imho be due to the cold, and not as alleged, due to more GHG. It would explain why Keeling’s “missing O2” graphs end in 2017…..
Willis
I don’t have time to go further into this today, but I would point out that your map of percentage absorbed looks remarkably similar to maps of TPW (total precipitable water) in the atmosphere. I just had a quick look at earth.nullschool.net, and even though it’s an instantaneous map, the similarity is striking. The only difference is that the highest TPW is currently over the Indian sub-continent (where it’s monsoon season)
If H2O is the dominant greenhouse gas, this would be more or less what you would expect.
H2O is the dominant greenhouse gas, like Jupiter is the dominant planet.
You should just ask Dr. Ramanathan … https://ramanathan.ucsd.edu/
Thanks, ICU, done:
I certainly hope he answers.
w.
“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?”
Because we under-estimate the effects of various forms of heat transport that moves energy away from the Earth before it is re-emitted as radiation, and we under-estimate the power of clouds to reflect in-coming radiation back outwards.
And by-the-way we keep treating the incoming radiation as if it were all equal…it isn’t. Various types (wavelengths) of radiation will affect Earth in different ways, and these bands of light do show variance over time. The fact that the total in-coming radiation energy does not change much does not mean that certain bands of incoming radiation experience greater changes as a percentage of their bandwidth. As an example: I suspect but do not know that ultraviolet light may play a bigger role then we know at this time.
Spot on..”transport mechanisms” not being paid enough attention.
Try this and more.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/07/12/a-co2-puzzle/#comment-3290242
Your “emergent climate phenomena” is the daily formation of clouds, particular thunder clouds. Here is how it works. The sun heats up the ocean surface water. When the surface temperature exceeds the atmospheric dewpoint at the surface, water evaporates. Evaporation is an endothermic process which tends to cool the water surface. The evaporated moisture is lighter than air and rises and pulls the air with it. The temperature of the air decreases as it rises and tends to cool the water vapor. At a height where the temperature is lowered to the dew point, clouds begin to form as the water vapor condenses.
Condensation is an exothermic process and most of that energy is transferred to the air. The air rises faster. There is not much difference between the dew point at the water surface and the dew point at the bottom of clouds so there is not much net energy transfer by radiation. Clouds are acting like a blanket at night.
Dear Willis,
In the last 30 years the partial pressure of CO2 rose by about 30ppm, while the absorbed upwelling Radiation increased by roughly 0.2%, how did you get to climate sensitivities of 3.7 or 1.8 W/m2 ??
3.7 W/m2 is the canonical value for the change in the “greenhouse effect” from a doubling of CO2. That’s the red line in Figure 4.
The 1.8 W/m2 is what the actual trend is showing in relation to the net change in CO2 over the period.
As I said above, I’ve converted the CO2 forcing in W/m2 into % of upwelling the same way I convert the (surface_upwelling – TOA_upwelling) into % … by dividing the theoretical change in CO2 forcing over the 20-year period by the surface_upwelling.
Regards,
w.
How is cloud cover calculated moment to moment?
It’s impossible to measure other than by taking perhaps, an informed guess at how much total cloud cover one might expect On Monday 12th July at 12 noon.
But what about where the clouds are? Over the equator, or over the poles? How dense is it, what type of cloud is it, how high or low is it? How dynamic is that process and how quickly does it change?
To get an accurate measurement, we would surely have to stop the world and measure them all at 12 noon today, start the world revolving, give it an hour, stop the world again and recalculate the whole thing at 1pm.
I stand to be corrected but I suspect ‘climate modellers’ dream up a number for cloud effect, plug it into the spreadsheet, and every one of them is different.
HotScot
July 12, 2021 12:47 pm
The answer is simple … a number of satellites are constantly measuring a host of variables about the clouds 24/7/365.
w.
constantly estimating …
Emergent phenomena is the ideal culprit when things underperform the expected. Long interested in the Le Châtelier Principle and it’s much broader application (LC himself derived it from perturbed chemical reactions and hadn’t thought about other systems).
A simply stated example: when you have a system with, say, two or more chemical reactants in solution at given concentrations, pressure and temperature and you change one of the conditions , the whole system interacts to ‘try’ to resist the change. What happens is the change to the system is much muted.
In its broader form principle may deserve to be elevated to a encompassing general law. The economist, Samuelson saw an analogue in supply-demand- price relations (his first degree was in physics ). Newton’s 3rd Law is a perfect candidate for inclusion. Back EMF in starting up an electric motor is another and, Willis, your emergent phenomenon.
A simple practical application to climate of LC’s Principle would advance the science hugely. The more complex the system, the stronger the resistance to change (it’s possible the number of components to a system is mathematically related to degree of resistance) . One could calculate what we expect to happen with our models and then know the actual result will have a much lesser effect.
Temperature projections by climate science 30 years ago, for example, turned out to be 300% too high. A wiser forecaster may have judged that for such a multi component system he would use an LC coefficient of 0.5 and the forecast would have been reasonable.
I agree totally, Gary. I’ve been unwilling to invoke Le Chatelier’s Principle because I know it would lead to infinite arguments about definitions and equilibria and the like … but in fact I do think that Le Chatelier is working overtime.
I say this because inter alia, the temperature varies by tens and tens of degrees over the course of a day most everywhere on earth, but over the 20th century, the average only varied by ± 0.1%. Something is regulating the temperature, and it was my long search for that “something” that led me to emergent phenomena.
My best to you,
w.
Downwelling IR does not exist.
That is an illusion.
… [REMAINDER SNIPPED]
As I said, there is a place for arguing that, but this isn’t the place. There are dozens of sites where you can argue that idea. Please take it to one of them.
w.
Willis the cancel culture coward.
[]
“percentage of the upwelling surface radiation absorbed by the atmosphere is increasing”
Allow me to be the first to use the word “albedo” on this page.
http://phzoe.com/2021/06/01/on-albedo/
Zoe, nowhere in my post am I discussing albedo. So I’m not sure what you think it has to do with this issue.
Thanks,
w.
I was thinking that lower albedo leads to higher upwelling radiation. No?
Lower cloud coverage leads to more radiation that successfully leaves Earth on the first try.
The albedo of surficial materials is of no consequence. It is the emissivity at IR wavelengths that is important in determining the outgoing IR flux.
Clyde, Willis and I are talking about upwelling IR from the surface. And my post is about atmo albedo, not surface albedo.
What I’m saying is that more sun has been reaching the surface. I don’t see your 2 points as relevant.
Zoe, are you familiar with the paper from Judith Curry’s husband, Peter Webster?
It showed the northern and Southern Hemispheres have remarkably similar albeido.
I’ve remarked on the same oddity myself, which I ascribe to emergent phenomena … it’s an oddity because in the SH there’s far more ocean.
w.
1) Would that be atmospheric albedo? Why wouldn’t it be? Air has ~composition North & South.
2) If total albedo, then atmo still accounts for 88% [Donovan 2011]. See #1
No, I did not read that paper yet.
Zoe,
Note that the term albedo originated in astronomy where distant bodies were assigned relative brightness with retro-reflection. Wikipedia states that it is for diffuse reflectors such as clouds, regolith, sand, and tree canopies with leaves having random orientation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo
However, approximately 71% of the surface of Earth is covered with water, which while it can have diffuse reflectance resulting from waves and suspended particles, the dominant reflectance is specular. That means that for all but normal reflectance, the outgoing rays continue in the general direction of the incoming rays, but at a different angle.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/12/why-albedo-is-the-wrong-measure-of-reflectivity-for-modeling-climate/
It is no longer a secret where Ramanathan went wrong.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/728B93557E2BDC0771B38B30C9FA7A
Also we have a much more accurate representation of what the (emission sided) GHE looks like, or why that is respectively..
https://greenhousedefect.com/basic-greenhouse-defects/the-beast-under-the-bed-part-2
Since I’ve only dealt with total TOA net upwelling and I’ve made no attempt to ascribe the absorptions to clouds vs GHGs, I fear that your point, however valid it is or isn’t, doesn’t apply to my analysis.
w.
It absolutely does in so many ways..
In climate science, when the observed data is not as bad as the theoretical calculation, you should always cast doubt on the observations…… but seriously, do you have confidence limits on the data?
This paper uses density and temperature and the free path of radiation in its calculations. Anyone want to take a stab at understanding it? It’s beyond me.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6174548/
Linear effect with long optical pathways. Length of pathway needs measuring. AFAIK. Written worse than Dickens.
I am not sure that “some of the upwelling longwave radiation from the surface is absorbed by “greenhouse gases”” correctly explains the role water vapour plays.
The only reason water vapour is in the atmosphere is because water becomes less dense when it changes from a liquid to a gas, and being less dense where else can it go but up, that is until it becomes more dense and falls back down.
With CO2 given much of it is reabsorbed at the surface, is it’s buoyancy in the atmosphere also due to a change in density, obviously any CO2 emitted by burning anything must be less dense than the remaining ash and as such where else can it also go but up.
Is the atmosphere nothing more than a giant jig such as used in mineral separation where all material is separated by gravity based on density?
“where it’s very cold, almost no upwelling longwave is absorbed by the atmosphere”.
If that’s the case, how do the poles warm faster than anywhere else? Isn’t that what we’re told? I’m just try to understand this. If the IR isn’t absorbed/reflected, doesn’t that mean there’s little impediment to cooling? Apologies if I’m missing something obvious. I’m no scientist.
“where it’s very cold, almost no upwelling longwave is absorbed by the atmosphere”.
This depends on how cold “very cold” is. I suspect it refers to the South Pole which is at an altitude of nearly 3000m (9300 ft). The mean temperature there is slightly colder than the stratosphere which means the stratosphere actually warms the surface (a bit), rather than the other way round. In reality the temperatures are generally about the same which means there is no net heat transfer, and so no NET absorption of upwelling longwave radiation by the atmosphere. What goes in at the bottom comes out at the top.
The poles warm faster, when the climate warms by any means, due to atmospheric circulation moving heat from the tropics to the poles, and due to the cold, dry air masses of the poles being easier to increase the temperature of than the warm, moist air masses of the tropics (which it is much harder to raise the temperature of).
And none of it has a thing to do with atmospheric CO2, climastrologist fetishism of it notwithstanding.
I don’t understand how you can just subtract watts per square metre. The atmosphere has more area at the top than the surface due to being a sphere. Does one have to account for that some how?
[Snipped]
Willis the cancel culture coward.
The correct answer to your question is YES.
“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. ”
Energy per area unit? At 38%, we haven’t had a winter for eons.
What am I missing?
Willis,
Are you finally escaping Kookiefornia and looking for new digs? There are likely many more rolling black outs and high electricity prices coming your way if you stay.
“My best to everyone from the land of oranges and bikinis”
So have you turned orange & are you wearing a bikini ? (:-))
Only if he’s using one of those 1970s tanning lotions…
What a great chef Willis is. The number of ways he can serve up his signature dish of Back Radiation BS is astonishing. …
[Remainder of the comment snipped. As I said, there are lots of places you can debate whether “back radiation” exists. This isn’t one of them. Take it elsewhere. And from here out, I’m just gonna snip the whole comment without comment. You know the reason why, or if you don’t, so what?
w.]
Willis Eschenbach: Cancel culture coward. …
[Remaineder of leitmotif’s ugly whining and crying snipped. As I said, leitmotif, there are lots of threads on the intarwebs, both on WUWT and elsewhere, where you can babble on endlessly about your bizarre ideas.
BUT AS I SAID AT THE START AND AS YOU’VE REPEATEDLY IGNORED IN A MOST UNPLEASANT FASHION, this thread isn’t the place for that, and it never will be. Take it elsewhere, there’s a good fellow.]
Censorship now?
Aren’t you proving his point?
Griff, I said I would snip irrelevant off-topic posts. I did. So sue me.
w.
You’re a coward Willis. You cannot stand any criticism of your back radiation sophistry.
[SNIPPED—all I’m trying to do is to prevent you from sidetracking this discussion into a meaningless food fight about your bizarre claims re downwelling radiation.
Don’t like it? Sux 2BU.]
[snipped]
[snipped]
All I’m asking you is to stop trying to derail the conversation. But noooo, not you. Everything has to be about you.
Look, if you want to discuss YOUR ideas, YOU write a post and send it in here or to any number of websites and see if they’ll publish it. Then, the discussion will revolve around your ideas.
But trying to twist MY thread so it’s all about YOUR ideas, after you’ve been repeatedly asked not to do that? That is the act of a total asswhole.
w.
[SNIPPED]
No need to be so nasty. Willis may well not be correct.
Willis is not even wrong.
When you base your “theories” on false laws of fizzix your numbers will never add up the right way, and most certainly will never make any valid future climate prediction. The details are irrelevant , just a waste of time.
Could it be that the most rigorous and accurate modeling of a subsystem may not reflect or predict the behavior of the more complex system of which it is a part?
e.g.:
There is a simple reason that where it is cold, there is a reduction in upwelling. Absorption has temperature as one of its dependent variables. Same thing with pressure. You can see the pressure dependency in the higher altitude locations on the earth (which are also generally cooler temperatures..
Loudon’s “Quantum Theory of Light, is the best source to understand these phenomena.
To understand the effects of forcings it only makes sense to look at temperature derivative. Temperature derivative is a representation of energy balance at any given time.
For example, here is the past 30 years where we see that energy imbalance (rate of temperature change) peaked over a decade ago. https://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1990/derivative/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1990/derivative/trend
Overall energy imbalance (rate of temperature change) has been decreasing and approaching zero over the past 30 years using OLS.
It is temperature derivative where we should be seeking correlations. The black line depicted in Figure 3 and 4 is a linear function of temperature measured from CERES, somehow normalized, so, it is false to try to correlate this with hypothetical forcings. It will, indeed, appear puzzling.
Think of it this way – if we assume CO2 is a forcing – experimentally put it up to 500ppm now and leave it at 500ppm for 20 years, we should expect temperature to increase while CO2 stays at 500 for 20 years. In this scenario, we would not see a correlation. CO2 would be flat with temperature increasing. The only way to see the correlation would be to look at temperature derivative. Temperature derivative would be a flat line somewhere above zero, which correlates with CO2 flatline at 500.
Do you see why temperature derivative is the only way to detect any greenhouse effect changes on temperature? We must look at imbalances which can only be measured by temperature rate of change (derivative).
JCM