Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I’m a visual guy. I understand numbers, but not in tables. I make them into graphs and charts and maps so I can understand what’s going on. I got to thinking again about total absorbed radiation at the surface. Total radiation absorbed by the earth’s surface is a mix of longwave (thermal) and shortwave (solar) radiation. In my last post, Putting It Into Reverse, I looked at the correlation of that absorbed radiation with temperature.
So, being a visual guy, I created a global map of where this total radiation is being absorbed at the surface. But before showing that result, let me digress for a moment about the downwelling shortwave (solar) and downwelling longwave (thermal) radiation. (Note that “downwelling radiation” is radiation headed toward the Earth’s surface and “upwelling radiation” is headed to space.)
Solar radiation starts out as relatively constant at the top of the atmosphere. It’s around 340 watts per square meter (W/m2) as a 24/7 global average. It only varies about ± 0.1 W/m2 over the sunspot cycle.
Next, at any given time and location, somewhere between a little and a lot of the incoming solar is reflected by clouds and aerosols. The amount reflected varies by date, season, temperature, location, altitude, and local weather.
Next, of the remaining solar after reflection at that location, somewhere between a little and a lot of the downwelling solar radiation is absorbed in the atmosphere, mostly by clouds, water vapor, and aerosols (smoke, haze, volcanic aerosols, mineral dust). Again, the amount absorbed varies by date, season, temperature, location, aerosol type, and local weather.
Finally, when the sunshine reaches the surface, somewhere between a little and a lot of it is reflected back into space by the surface itself. Again, the amount reflected varies by date, season, water state (liquid vs ice vs snow), windiness, ground cover, location, altitude, and local weather.
In short, the amount of sunshine absorbed by the ground varies hugely in space and time on all scales.
Downwelling thermal radiation, on the other hand, is radiation emitted by several things in the atmosphere above us—by greenhouse gases such as water vapor and CO2, by aerosols, and by clouds.
The big variations in downwelling radiation are due to varying amounts of clouds, water vapor, and aerosols. CO2 is a fairly well-mixed gas, while on the contrary, water vapor can vary in a short distance from almost none to amounts large enough to condense. Again, the amount of thermal radiation emitted by water vapor, greenhouse gases, aerosols, and clouds varies by date, season, windiness, location, and local weather.
And as with solar radiation, clouds are the big variable. Clouds are almost a perfect blackbody with respect to thermal radiation. On a clear winter night when a cloud comes over, you can instantly feel the warmth. And as above, the amount of thermal radiation emitted by clouds varies by date, season, temperature, location, and local weather.
In short, just as with sunshine, the amount of thermal radiation absorbed by the ground varies hugely in space and time on all scales.
So with that as prologue, here is Figure 1, showing the total amount of radiation (shortwave + longwave) absorbed by the surface of the earth.
Figure 1. A 1° latitude by 1° longitude map of the total amount of radiation absorbed by the earth’s surface.
I gotta admit, I looked at that graphic when I first made it, scratched my head, and said “How very curious!”. I love surprises in science, and this was one of them.
Here’s what I found odd. The southern hemisphere is mostly water, with a block of ice-covered rock at the bottom. It’s very different from the northern hemisphere, which has much more land, and water instead of icy rock at the top.
From Figure 1, per square meter, the ocean is absorbing about 20% more downwelling radiation than the land. So you’d think that the southern hemisphere, with significantly more ocean, would be absorbing significantly more energy than the northern.
But it’s not. In fact, the two hemispheres are the same to the nearest tenth of a W/m2 … which is why I scratched my head and said “How very curious”.
Naturally, I wanted to know whether this was just a coincidence, or whether this hemispheric equality is an enduring feature of the climate system. So I looked at the changes over time. Here are annual averages for the period of the CERES satellite data.
Figure 2. Annual averages, total absorbed radiation, shortwave, and longwave.
Curiouser and curiouser. Year after year, the annual northern and southern total energy absorbed are nearly identical—half of the years, the two hemispheres were within a tenth of a percent (~ half a watt per square meter) of each other.
The longwave and shortwave components are equally interesting. Every single year, slightly more longwave radiation than shortwave is absorbed in the northern hemisphere. However, the reverse is true for shortwave radiation. Possibly because of the larger amount of ocean, in the southern hemisphere, more solar energy is absorbed than longwave. In any case, when longwave and shortwave are added, the total radiation absorbed by the two hemispheres are nearly identical.
Now, I started out by saying that because both solar and thermal radiation are functions of a variety of factors, with clouds leading the pack, they constantly vary in time and space. So a priori, we have no reason to assume that the two hemispheres would absorb the same radiation at the surface, and every reason to assume that they would not.
I mean, we have volcanoes and floods and droughts and forest fires and a whole bunch of things that affect downwelling longwave and shortwave radiation … and despite that, each hemisphere receives the same amount of radiation as the other, year after year.
Setting that oddity aside for a moment, the climate can be profitably analyzed as a giant heat engine. It turns incoming solar energy into the endless physical work of driving the motion of the oceans and the atmosphere against turbulence and friction. These oceanic and atmospheric movements carry heat polewards from the tropics, where it is radiated into space.
This unexpected stability over time of the total energy absorbed by the surface clearly indicates that this is a heat engine with a governor. And not only is there a governor. The governor works in part by controlling the climate heat engine’s throttle.
A “throttle” is any mechanism that regulates the amount of energy entering a heat engine. In your car, the throttle is what is controlled by your gas pedal. The clouds perform that function for the climate. They control the amount of energy entering the system by rejecting some of that incoming solar energy back into space. And not just a small amount. Hundreds of watts per square meter. Here’s an example, a day’s record from a moored TAO buoy on the Equator at 110° West (eastern Pacific Ocean).
Figure 3. Downwelling solar energy by the time of day, December 30, 1998.
You can see the clouds changing the amount of downwelling solar energy by several hundred watts per square meter within an hour or so.
And this throttling of the incoming solar energy must be a major part of what is behind the year-after-year stability of the amount of solar energy absorbed by each hemisphere individually and by both hemispheres together.
My hypothesis is that a hierarchy of emergent climate phenomena, mainly in the tropical oceans but elsewhere as well, regulate incoming energy. As can be seen in Figure 3 above, a typical tropical day starts out clear.
Figure 4. Typical tropical ocean early morning conditions. Cloudless sky.
Once a certain temperature threshold is passed, a cumulus cloud field is quickly established. This immediately reduces the amount of solar energy making it to the surface.
Figure 5. Typical tropical ocean late morning conditions. Cumulus field is developing. Cumulus clouds form at the top of the ascending parts of the circulating cells of air.
Then, when a higher temperature threshold is passed, some of the cumulus clouds develop into towering thunderstorms. These cause further reflective losses, as well as directly refrigerating the surface.
Figure 6. Typical tropical ocean afternoon to night conditions. Thunderstorm field develops.
All of these emergent transitions increase the amount of sunlight that is either reflected back to space or absorbed before it gets to the surface. And the timing of emergence, the number, and the strength of those phenomena are all temperature-threshold regulated.
The net result of all of this is that as temperatures go up, clouds form in response and cut down the total energy being absorbed by the surface. The following graph shows a gridcell by gridcell scatter plot of the temperature versus the surface net cloud radiative effect (CRE). The surface net cloud radiative effect (CRE) is the average change in total surface downwelling radiation that results from the presence of clouds.
Figure 7. Scatterplot, gridcell by gridcell temperature versus net cloud radiative effect (CRE). Gridcell size is 1° latitude by 1° longitude. There are a total of 64,800 gridcells shown above.
As you can see, when the temperature gets high, the clouds act strongly to reduce the energy reaching the surface. In many gridcells, clouds are cutting out more than 50 W/m2 of downwelling energy at the surface.
In any case, that’s my explanation for why, despite the hugely variable nature of clouds, water vapor, and aerosols, both in time and space, about the same amount of total radiation is absorbed by the two hemispheres every year. Temperature-threshold-dependent emergent climate phenomena act to cap the possible energy absorbed.
I’m more than happy to hear alternate theories for the unusual stability of the absorbed radiation at the surface. Please don’t say “thermal inertia” unless you can explain how “thermal inertia” is controlling the amount of downwelling solar energy.
Late summer afternoon here in our clearing in the redwood forest. Can’t see the ocean today, foggy at the coast, but no clouds here. My nine-month-old grandson cries in the kitchen, my daughter consoles him. My three-year-old granddaughter explains how she dropped her sock in the cat water. She wants me to play Arlo Guthrie’s “City of New Orleans” on the computer. Done, little lady, done.
The sun is slanting across the house clearing to the tall redwood forest trees visible through my window.
Bedtime for the girlie. She wants to fade out to “Mercury Blues“. I’m not complaining.
My best to each and every one of you, may your lives be full and overflowing.
w.
PS—When you comment, please QUOTE the exact words you are discussing. I can defend my own words. I can’t defend your restatement of them. Thanks.
Willis. I wish I had you as a resource when I was teaching science … As we know climate studies cover a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines , as your explanation above does. Hoping your family is well and you are blessed by it . I recently became a great grandfather twice, and one mor coming in October .
Willis. I wish I had you as a resource when I was teaching science
What have you got against science, Doug?
So are cosmic rays and clouds intermediaries for solar cycles?
RG, I’ve looked but found no evidence. My research into solar cycles is here.
w.
Time to review Henrik Svensmark’s salient research on reducing solar activity allowing more cosmic rays through, prompting more cloud cover–and cooling.
Otherwise, an interesting article.
Thanks, Bob. I’ve looked for Svensmark’s solar signal in a variety of cloud datasets. No joy. Can’t say it’s not there. Can say I haven’t seen any demonstration that it is, despite multiple claims. Some of my work below.
w.
Why Ireland Is Green
Clouds Down Under
More On Svensmark And Cosmic Rays
Cosmic Disconnections
Splicing Clouds
Willis, your Fig. 7, when I saw it first a few months back, really made the light come on for me as to what controls the average temperature of the planet……answer of course is the variability of cloud cover with surface temp….Climate science owes you a huge debt for the intuitive way your graph clarifies the cloud feedback issue.
Thanks, D. I’ve learned a lot by looking at that scatterplot with different variables.
w.
Hmmm. Doesn’t look like CO2 is the ‘principal control knob governing Earth’s temperature’ now, does it?
CO2 is one of many climate change variables
No one knows exactly what each variable does.
A lot of people claim to know
Are we saying that there’s some sort of cloud-forced limit to global temperature?
Well, a cloud based limit to solar energy.
Lionheart, clouds are the major but not the only thing limiting temperature rises.
w.
Would the relative humidity of the air change the way it forms or the timing of this system, Willis? Just wondering if drier air would cause the clouds to form later than more humid air, all other factors being equal(ish)?
When water vapor, among the lighter atmospheric components, cools enough, water/rain falls. Elemental O (~ 20% of sea-level air) comes along: fresh, sometimes bracing, fuel – for aerobic life.
Above the purple mountains, low pressure and temperature maintain our blue and green surface.
Eat hearty mate, and fear not.
I appreciate your comment but was really thinking about the situation over Europe and UK this summer when (here in the UK) we had dry air moving up from Africa, then about 2-3 days of increasing temperatures before the clouds formed and the air cooled with thunderstorms and rain. Willis’ article got me thinking that it was a similar process but over a longer period of time than he describes for the tropics.
I live in Arizona we had a very active monsoon; we went for over a month of not hitting out normal highs of 107 F. We had more days this summer where we did not hit 100 F as opposed to the days, we were above 110. Yet the patch of ground that I own missed out on most of the rain.
Most energy Earth surface absorbs is within the ocean, and tropical ocean absorbs most of energy. And tropical ocean has some sort of cloud-force limit.
We have been in an ice house climate for 33.9 million years [called Late Cenozoic Ice Age]
Our ocean has average temperature 3.5 C. We in a ice house global climate because we have a cold ocean.
The average global surface air temperature of about 15 C, is due to ocean surface temperature which has average surface temperature higher than average surface temperature of the land. Global land surface temperature is about 10 C. During a day land surface temperature can heat up quickly and then cool down quickly at night. Ocean surface takes longer to warm up and cool down.
Ocean surface waters can transported poleward.
Tropical ocean surface waters are transported upward towards Europe which increase the surface land temperatures Europe.
And heat from tropical surface waters warms global atmosphere- and is known as the global heat engine.
The average ocean temperature of 3.5 C is largely about keeping polar water warmer.
Or simply, if you had average ocean temperature of about 5 C. there would be no polar sea ice. And having polar ocean surface being liquid rather than frozen, keeps polar regions warmer.
Earth is warmest during interglacial periods, and warmest average temperature ocean gets is about 4 C.
Though we in coldest times of the Late Cenozoic Ice Age, millions of years ago the ocean average temperature could reached 5 C, and most of the 33.9 million year was with ocean 5 C or warmer. And were the ocean to have average ocean temperature of 10 C, we would not
be in an ice house global climate.
“And were the ocean to have average ocean temperature of 10 C, we would not
be in an ice house global climate.”
Which is not going to happen as long as East Antarctica is ice-covered and the katabatic winds off the ice-cap keeps creating more AABW (Antarctic Bottom Water)
So can we infer that rising temperature due to longwave radiation from CO2 would only achieve the result of decreasing the amount of solar shortwave and longwave radiation reaching the surface?
Thanks for this.
The warmist claim that increasing atmospheric CO2 results in a positive temperature feedback loop with water vapor is patently absurd and was one of the first obvious lies that made me question “global warming” decades ago. As an engineer we learn in first year that systems governed by positive feedback are unstable and fall apart very quickly. Historic CO2 levels have been orders of magnitude higher than they are today. If the assumed positive feedback actually existed we would have become Venus long before humans came along.
What you are describing is, of course, a negative feedback that helps to keep the system stable.
Any engineer that believes in global warming should have their accreditation revoked.
the Northern Hemisphere seems to be experiencing significant drought conditions in areas of North America, Europe, and Asia this summer. Is this more likely to be happening in a warming hemisphere or a cooling hemisphere?
I have no idea. My (admittedly limited) research on droughts indicates they are highly variable and have not shown a distinct pattern of increasing or decreasing over the past several decades. The US experienced significantly higher drought conditions in the 1930s than what they are experiencing today. This appeared to correspond to higher overall temperatures in the 30s until those temperatures were “corrected”.
Much of the areas that are experiencing drought today, at least in the US, are classified as semi-arid deserts. They have *always* had droughts. That’s why the prairie grasses of the Great Plains evolved with root systems that go 8′ or more deep looking for water. It’s why cactus and desert flowers developed the way they are today.
Nothing new under the sun?
Exactly.
“the Northern Hemisphere seems to be experiencing significant drought
conditions in areas of North America, Europe, and Asia this summer”
As usual, the first step is to verify whether what the MSM reports
is accurate. The Southern Plains were having a heat wave & drought
but those seem to have broken a bit. This spring, N US & S Canada &
the UK had a very late, cold spring. The MSM’s reporting there’s also
drought in New Mexico & Arizona. Both states are getting record
rains so the reports are Fake News. What’s happened in Europe &
Asia has happened before & will happen again.
The Arctic & Greenland are also doing just fine so the lie
of massive ice loss is falling apart & they need the
heat/drought hype to keep up the scare factor. Since the
MSM are known serial liars, it’s more than likely at least
some of what they say isn’t true and/or they’re not reporting what doesn’t fit their narrative!
https://realclimatescience.com/2022/08/not-hype-or-exaggeration-2/
https://realclimatescience.com/2022/08/inverted-journalism/
2Q winter sports: favorable conditions – persisted later in NH, commenced earlier in SH.
? Recipe: drought (less water) downwind < longer ski-season (ice and snow) upwind?
I had a good friend say the drought in Europe was from global warming. He did not know how to answer the warning from the 13th century that was carved into the rock on the river bottoms in Europe. Yet they had remained unread until now.
Would you have a link to these? What did they say?
There’s some good articles on the net, lots of history of them even though they’re only from a very small stretch of the Elbe on the German/Czech border and on the Rhine. One says “If you see me, weep” (1616) another had “When you see this stone again, you’ll cry, so shallow was the water in the year 1417” others: “Girl, don’t cry and moan when it’s dry, water the fields instead” from the 1930’s, “When this stone submerges, life becomes more cheerful again”. The earliest known stone is from 1115 and, predictably, Greenpeace got in on the act in 2018 having one inscribed “When you see me, the climate is in crisis” despite the obvious evidence that this has been happening quite often for over 900 years.
Thanks Richard.
if u can rd ths u can b a sctry and get a gd jb?
https://nypost.com/2022/08/23/dinosaur-tracks-discovered-in-texas-after-drought-dries-up-river/
While it is certain that other geological factors were at play it appears that climate has also been a factor, e.g. the amount of rain in the area over a long period of time. The tracks were laid down in a period of low surface water depth and then covered during higher levels of surface water depth. They have now emerged. So the climate must have been about the same as today over time or the tracks would have disappeared sooner or later.
“The MSM’s reporting there’s also drought in New Mexico & Arizona. “
Both of these are semi-arid or arid deserts. Guess what happens in those type of environments?
Whatever is happening in any part of the planet has to be considered together with what is happening on the other side of the planet. Currently Australia is in a period of above average rain and floods. A friend recalled how Utah was experiencing floods in 1981, at that time Australia was entering a period of below average rain leading to widespread drought in 1982-1983.
Well the glacial periods are much dryer than interglacial periods that we are in, so cooling.
Not to mention a more likely scenario when the Pacific is in La Nina.
Not in Pakistan or India: regional floodings.
Was a drought, still is to some extent but it has been a relatively wet year here on the canadian prairies as evidenced by the rolling fields everywhere
And as noted previously every day when I open my weather radar app i see rain all across the USA west except for the coast.
Seems to me like the drought in much of the west might be over, although I’m sure that too is the fault of us as well.
How could it not be, everything is
The people claiming that additional CO2 in the atmosphere would create a positive feedback loop with water vapor have overlooked one of the basic tenets of engineering: at the start of a problem, do a mass and energy balance.
If additional CO2 in the atmosphere is supposed to (according to warmist theory) lead to more water vapor in the atmosphere, the additional water vapor has to come from somewhere, presumably by evaporation from a body of liquid water. Evaporating water requires a large amount of heat–about 580 calories per gram of water at 25 C. By comparison, warming a cubic meter of dry air at 25 C and sea level-pressure by 1 degree C requires only about 290 calories.
Suppose that a rise in CO2 level led to a cubic meter of air being heated by 1 C, thereby absorbing 290 calories. This would be enough heat to vaporize 0.5 grams of water, which would increase the humidity (mole fraction water vapor) in that 1 m3 of air by 0.068%, and the air is back to its original temperature.
The mass of air over a square meter of ocean is equivalent to a column of air about 10.3 km high at sea-level pressure. Even if the additional water vapor is distributed only over the bottom 3 km (above which it would likely condense and form clouds), if the entire column of air is warmed by 1 C, it would provide heat to vaporize enough water to increase the humidity by 0.068% / 3000 = 0.000023%.
Since the air over the tropical oceans usually contains at least 2% water vapor, this would only increase relative humidity by about 0.001%, so that the “positive feedback” of IR absorption from additional water vapor in the air would be extremely weak. The heat required to vaporize the water represents a strong NEGATIVE feedback, tending to suck heat out of the air over bodies of water.
By the way, I am a chemical engineer, and the above calculations are based on the ideal-gas law and thermodynamic properties of air and liquid and vapor water, which most engineers learn during their freshman year. Why is it that the geniuses at IPCC never learned them?
I would have considered CO2 to be completely irrelevant to the amount of water in the atmosphere. As to your last point, most ‘climate scientists’ no longer study courses that would give them the answers because, apparently, the maths is too difficult. Instead their courses just give them overly simplistic statistics and ‘cos it’s CO2’ answers to regurgitate at will.
That is because half of the incoming solar is near IR and readily absorbed by water and very little by CO2.
Far too many climate “scientists” are mathematicians, statisticians, and computer programmers. Many of today’s climate scientist-physicists never learn any thermodynamics beyond what is Physics 101, they would be able to use a set of steam tables if their life depended on it.
If they learned to use enthalpy in their models instead of a linear regression of temperature, they might get closer to actually understanding the biosphere. But that’s *never* going to happen, too much money is at stake.
Fixed it for you.
Thank you.
A different way to explain the Earth’ thermostat that you explained much earlier.
Very nice Willis. Could you please make three separate graphs out of your figure 2? It would be nice to see the variability and the trends (with different y axis scale).
Thanks, Edim. That’s the subject of a future post.
Regards,
w.
Willis, I’ll second Edim’s comment that this is very nice work. As it’s been five hours since you posted this piece, I’m curious that none of our GCM friends have yet to respond. Specifically, I would have expected something along the lines of ‘nothing to see here, our models show the same NH / SH equivalence’. So a question for those more quantitative than me is ‘are the GCMs consistent with your findings’?
Short simple answer, since I looked at CMIP4, 5, and to the extent available 6—NO. They are not consistent.
Clouds wrong.
Rainfall wrong factor 2x.
Tropical troposphere hotspot modeled where none exists thanks to mechanisms WE yet again shows.
Confessions of a climate scientist by Mototaka Nakamura is enlightening about the lack of science on the oceans in the GCM’s. It is on Amazon for free. Search for his name or try this link. Although it is in Japanese, he has included a lot of English sections.
https://www.amazon.com/kikoukagakushanokokuhaku-chikyuuonndannkahamikennshounokasetsu-Japanese-Nakamura-Mototaka-ebook/dp/B07FKHF7T2/ref=zg_bs_8407550011_sccl_1/140-8548110-5661532?pd_rd_i=B07FKHF7T2&psc=1
You will quickly see why GCM’ists don’t want to address the shortcomings.
Willis: “That’s the subject of a future post.”
WR: It would be interesting to know temperature, SW and LW for 10N-10S on the one hand and 80N-90N and 80S-90S on the other hand. Seasonal data also will be interesting given the relationship with temperature.
So kind of a self-governing system. Makes sense for me. the planet’s been occupied by various lifeforms for very long time, and they haven’t fried yet.
And with variable and increasing sun output the whole time.
Along with major variations of atmospheric CO2 levels that have NEVER shown ANY influence on the Earth’s temperature.
The BBC has had an item on several News broadcasts complaining about Google changing their method of calculating the climate impact of your flight. In particular they (Rowlatt was the reporter I think) were concerned because contrails have an impact on warming, by implication a permanent effect a la CO2. Now I thought that the 9-11 flight grounding for three days showed the effect of contrails was to reduce the range between day-night temperatures.
The UK Government website says there’s been a fivefold increase in air travel in the last 30 years, I assume that this is passengers rather than flights and more efficient engines mean the increase in contrails is not fivefold.
Does your data go back far enough to show any effect, as I’d expect the Northern Hemisphere to have been affected more than the Southern?
Willis. Compliments! Fascinating uniformity in North vs South hemispheres from earth’s heat engine between warm equator and cold poles – especially with such large variations in the cloud, land, and ocean components!
I would welcome your further explorations & discussion as to why areas from -4C to -60C are Warming per Fig. 7 “temperature versus net cloud radiative effect (CRE)”
Good question. The net CRE is the net of two things. One is the reduction in surface solar due to increased reflection and absorption.
The other is the increase in surface downwelling longwave due to the fact that clouds are essentially a blackbody for longwave (thermal) radiation. They basically absorb all the upwelling longwave radiation from the surface. And because they are excellent absorbers at most longwave frequencies, per Kirschoff’s Law they are excellent emitters as well. They radiate something on the order of half of what they absorb back down towards the earth.
The total of the solar energy loss and the downwelling longwave energy gain is the net CRE.
Now, in the cold polar regions you reference, there isn’t much sun. So the clouds don’t block much solar energy.
In addition, the albedo of clouds and of snow/ice are in the same range. So clouds coming over won’t make a large change the amount of sunlight reflected from the landscape.
But on the gain side, the longwave warming effect is as strong there as anywhere.
As a result, the CRE is positive, meaning that on average overall, arctic-type clouds warm the frozen polar regions.
w.
And , if I understand Big Joe B . , polar warming is due to increased humidity from “global” warming .
Arctic warming only occurs in winter , from DMI site.
Willis, could that be a driver of Polar Amplification?
OK. So it looks like clouds.,
But let’s try and think of anything else it could be.
How about plants (or algae)? The more down-welling radiation hits the surface the more the colour changes. Maybe the reflectivity too.
Can anyone think of anything else to consider?
Thanks, M. There’s a very curious backstory to your suggestion, which is that plankton rule the clouds.
What happens is that when tropical plankton get hotter than their comfort zone, they release aerosols. These aerosols act as cloud nuclei, encouraging the formation of clouds over that region of the ocean.
… and those clouds work to keep the plankton from overheating.
What an astounding place this planet is!
Next, plankton play a curious role in the carbon cycle. Most solar energy that hits the ocean is converted immediately to heat. But plankton convert solar energy into carbon-rich organic compounds.
Then, when the plankton die, some part of that carbon slowly descends to the ocean floor. This carbon is removed from cycling for some unknown but long amount of time.
Next, plankton alter the thermal structure of the ocean. Sunlight penetrates clear water for a goodly depth. But a plankton bloom, which occurs near the surface, absorbs most of the energy. So it increases the surface temperature of the ocean.
Finally, some plankton produce oil to keep them afloat. During plankton blooms, an oil slick may form, which greatly inhibits evaporation. This further warms the surface. However, it would also likely increase the albedo of the ocean surface, reducing solar absorption.
Go figure.
In all, this is a good example of what I modestly call Willis’s First Rule Of Climate, which states:
“In the climate system, everything is connected to everything else … which in turn is connected to everything else … except when it isn’t.
w.
Fascinating!
I wonder what happened in the geological past when there were/was no plankton?
That would have been a VERY long time ago. The Great Oxidation Event (aka GOE or the ‘Rusting’) took place between about 2.4 and 2 billion years ago. The oxygen was produced by oceanic phytoplanckton and blue/green algal mats as shown by the stromatolites they left behind
Yes, Rud, you’re quite right. It would have been VERY, VERY long ago with the first stromatolites appearing almost 3.6 billion years ago! I guess there’s been life of one sort of another in the oceans affecting the climate since then. It’s obviously all their fault! We’re off the hook.
New experiment on ocean surface boundary, darn surfactants.
Rahlff, J. et al. 2019. Oxygen Profiles Across the Sea-Surface Microlayer—Effects of Diffusion and Biological Activity. Front. Mar. Sci., Sec. Marine Biogeochemistry. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00011
“Thereby, we found that plankton, but not neuston metabolic activity was the main driver of O2 gas exchange across the SML, although neuston activity may exceed plankton activity by one order of magnitude……While transferability from laboratory to field proves difficult, studying O2 profiles across the air-water boundary might further elucidate biological and physical aspects that act on gas fluxes.”
Thanks, H.D., interesting.
w.
Thank you for the reply. Very interesting.
But it does make the similarity between North and South even more curious.
There’s another more immediate feedback that pretty much eliminates the claimed warming effect of CO2. I mention it every now and then. Let’s call it boundary layer feedback.
The boundary layer (lowest ~1 km of the atmosphere) is known to exist in thermal equilibrium with the surface. Hence, any IR transmitted from within the boundary layer and absorbed by the surface has minimal or no warming effect on the surface.
The reason is that the surface will almost immediately respond to any warming by moving energy from the surface back into the boundary layer. This is a requirement for two bodies in thermal equilibrium.
A very high percentage of back radiation from atmospheric CO2 which reaches the surface comes from the boundary layer. Probably close to 99%. Instead of producing warming, the energy is transmitted back into the boundary layer via conduction, radiation and enhanced evaporation.
Think of the boundary layer and the surface exchanging energy constantly. Probably 1000s of W/M2. It doesn’t produce warming because it goes in both directions. The change from doubling CO2 of 3.7 W/M2 just changes the directional exchange rate slightly.
Richard, I don’t think that’s true.
Sea surface temperatures typically run about 1°-2°C warmer than the atmosphere. This makes sense because the ocean is absorbing the overwhelming majority of the energy at the surface. So it warms more, and that in turn warms the atmosphere.
w.
Willis, nothing really changes if the sea surface is slightly warmer. There’s an energy flow balance maintained to create a stead state. Because of the direct contact of the two elements under consideration, any changes to that steady state would lead to changes in the flow of energy. Thus, you still get a return of energy to the atmosphere in addition to higher evaporation rates.
Kind of like the inner and outer wall of an outside wall. As long as the inside temp is constant and the outside temp is constant the flow of energy from inside to outside (or vice versa) remains the same.
Do I have this right?
Yes, that’s a reasonable analogy. The big difference would be the speed at adjusting to changes. The atmospheric boundary layer quickly responds due to direct contact.
This is what Planck calls compensation. It occurs because one body is radiating more than the other, i.e., hot and cold. The hot body radiates at its temperature continuously regardless of what energy is absorbed from the cold body. The net radiation is what we know as the S-B equation where (Th^4 – Tc^4) controls the net. What happens is the cooling gradient of the hot body is reduced so it continues to radiate at Th for a longer time?
That’s why at equilibrium, radiation is just passed equally back and forth with no net.
Well done Willis. Fairly easy to track what you were saying. Makes sense.
Interesting. Maybe it is just my faulty perception, but your discussion seems to have some correspondence to Andy May Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis III article.
What might be the comparative rates, between land and ocean, at which absorbed energy is re-radiated into space?
For how much time per day does a surface absorb radiation and how much time does it emit thermal radiation?
Is there a breakover (triple, quadruple?) point of incoming radiation, air density, air pressure, humidity, at which a material stops absorbing and begins emitting?
Is there a stability between the two states or is there a sharp cutover?
Water controls the climate. Water is why the climate is stable. Water and a stable climate is why there is life on earth.
Climate science & the climate hysteria treats the normal variation of the stable climate as catastrophic events which must have a “cause”. The money to be made says the “cause” is CO2.
One thing is missing: About half of absorped radiation over oceans goes into the oceans below 20 meters depth. And nobody can say what the time lag is until this energy appears measurably in C/F on the water surface/global temperature. It may be decades or centuries? -There also was, years ago, the topic of the “missing heat”, when tghe heat was “hiding in the depth”. Nobody knows when this heat is about to appear in the atmosphere and affect the weather/climate..
Therefore: Absorption is one side only, global warming effect has a time lag, which needs to be assessed.
Thanks, Joachim. First, the longwave radiation (about 2/3 of the radiation) is absorbed right at the ocean skin surface. Next, about half the sunlight is absorbed in the first 10 meters, not 20 metres.
Next, and most importantly, the upper ocean loses about as much energy every night as it gained during the day. If it didn’t, it would quickly boil or freeze. It does this in a curious way. In the same way that the atmosphere overturns during the day, the ocean overturns at night. Each night, Rayleigh-Benard cells of vertically circulating water form. These bring water warmed by absorbed solar energy from lower down in the mixed layer up to the surface. There, the water radiates and evaporates, cooling the surface. The cooled surface water then circulates horizontally to a descending column and moves downward into the depths.
As a result, no, there’s no great lag. The top layer of the ocean is called the “mixed layer” because it is constantly being mixed by both the nocturnal overturning mentioned above as well as by wind and waves. It averages about 60 meters in thickness, which includes the great majority of the solar energy input.
Best regards,
w.
“the upper ocean loses about as much energy every night as it gained during the day”
The key word is “about” as much.
Over longer periods, the vertical ocean currents could matter. The upwelling currents in the Pacific especially seem to have a large impact on the radiation balance.
Don’t forget the effect of the DLS’s daily up/down migration. That’s millions of tons of living matter moving in/through the mixed layer every night.
Over recent years l have noticed there has been a increase in jet stream activity over the tropics. With increased jet stream activity comes the chance of increased wind shear.
Am wondering if increased wind shear at the top of the head of storm clouds makes them more efficient at removing from the surface ?. As this forces the storm to work harder and with wind shear the heat that is pumped up into the upper air by the storm is more likely to be spread over a larger area and so become more efficient at losing this heat.
” makes them them more efficient at removing heat from the surface ?.
Is what l should have wrote
WE, an interesting supporting factoid to your figure 1 is that observationally the northern and Southern Hemisphere albedos are almost exactly identical despite great differences in ocean/land ratios. This was shown in a paper by Dateris and Steven’s in AGU Advances in 2021. Easy to find on line. Just Google hemispheric albedos.
Thanks, Rud. I discussed that in a post called Symmetry And Balance three years before the Dateris/Stevens paper came out. Don’t know if they saw my work or not.
w.
Plotting Figure 1 divided by surface temperature over the CERES period will yield the spatial variation of surface dissipation in units of W m-2 per K. Or the amount of radiant energy used per unit of K.
Brilliant. Thank you. The comments about family are appreciated as well.
Very nice, easy to understand.
A good post with useful information.
The reality is that it is a variable rate of convective overturning within atmosphere and oceans that keeps the system so stable and that variability neutralises any thermal effect from radiative material in the atmosphere.
The clouds and all other emergent phenomena are simply the visible manifestation of that variability in convective overturning.
Willis’s hypothesis is perfectly correct but the underlying mechanism is the variable rate of convection.
Indeed, as shown by the articles posted by me and Philip Mulholland the so called greenhouse effect is actually a product of convective overturning within atmospheres and not due to back radiation at all.
Any excess energy created within an atmosphere by radiative gases or particulate material simply accelerates local convection.
Since what goes up must come down there is an instant enhancement of descent elsewhere so that additional energy is simultaneously delivered back to the surface in that other location.
Having been returned to the surface beneath the descending column it is immediately radiated to space thereby neutralising the thermal effect of additional energy within the rising column.
Convection both creates and modulates the greenhouse effect so as to indefinitely maintain hydrostatic equilibrium for the atmosphere as a whole. If it were not so then very few planets would have atmospheres but we know that virtually all of them do and they have infinitely variable proportions of radiative gases.
The radiative greenhouse proposition is, quite simply, bad science.
“Any excess energy created within an atmosphere by radiative gases or particulate material simply accelerates local convection.”
That’s what it looks like.
No Run-a-way Greenhouse effect.
“Any excess energy created within an atmosphere by radiative gases or particulate material”
Yes the fact that there is no observed ‘super radiative feedback’ from the particulate material of the Sahara/Arabian Deserts is one of several direct observations that disprove the back radiation feedback hypotheses. Instead, these regions lose more energy to space than they get from the sun.
Willis,
Not much if anything I can add other than to say you’ve got it covered. I know, I know I’m just being a chearleader but the clouds are what does it! And the phase change is what does the clouds.
Dear Willis, about “Curiouser and curiouser.” It’s indeed very curious both NH and SH equally absorbing electromagnetic radiation when averaged over long period of time, because of the reasons you’ve mentioned.
The question I have for a long time w.r.t. all your analyses is, how confident are you about the certainty that your input indeed represents the physical quantities you presume you’re dealing with? I mean, there’s quit some data processing required from the radiation that’s been picked up by satellite sensors and a fit for purpose data file representing quantities like LW, SW, temperature, moist level etc.
Please don’t get me wrong, I consider your analyses (I’ve read most of them for the past 8 years) highly valuable, most interesting and must more worthwhile than all GCM’s and IPCC reports combined! But, is there any chance (or risk) that there might be a screw-up due to for instance data processing that contains iteration or circular reasoning? Might be a silly question, but I’m just a layman. I’m sure you’ve got an answer. Thanks in advance.
typo….much more worthwhile
Thanks, Arjan. As to the reliability of the CERES dataset, near as I can tell it’s the best we’ve got. I’ve checked it against various other datasets, and it’s been very close in all cases. Nor have I found any obvious “Hmmm” results. Everything makes sense … so far.
However, there’s more that I haven’t checked than those that I have checked.
I also think it’s the best because of papers like Validation and Spatiotemporal Analysis of CERES Surface Net Radiation Product and others …
w.
Clear, thanks for taking the time to respond.
Thanks for this excellent post, Willis. Very interesting about the NH and SH equal absorption at the surface.