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.
You know, not trying to suck up here but I sure like WE posts and follow up answers.
Seems like how it should be done. Done care if he might be 100% wrong, seems to be following the process.
That counts for a lot.
Should do a clockwork orange thing on Mikey Mann, strapped to a chair with eyes propped open, forced to read all these posts in an endless loop until he gets its.
In the end he curls up on the ground throwing up whenever someone says consensus or settled science.
I know, he never will.
Added bonus points.
That it is accepted that CO2 is a well mixed gas is something I wonder about. Why is it so?
I can understand how H2O can move in and out of the atmosphere given how it changes state in the natural variations of temperature, but what is the mechanism for CO2. Given that all life on earth is carbon based, the natural residence of CO2 should be at the earths surface.
Is it just by random that any CO2 molecule happens to find itself captured when it comes too close to the surface much as insects are captured in a trap or is there some other mechanism that ensures that any that is sequestered is replenished, or is it that the current low inventory of CO2 in the atmosphere is not really a standard condition in the evolution of life on earth?
It is not perfectly well mixed, as the CO2 sensing satellite shows. But for all practical purposes over any significant extent and time it is, via wind and weather.
The opposite of water vapor, very low at the poles and over deserts, over 4% over tropical oceans.
Upper atmosphere CO2 may be well-mixed. I’ve never seen anything that actually proves that assumption for the first 6′ of the atmosphere. Gravity is going to create a CO2 gradient from the surface upwards. The high end of that gradient will be at the earth’s surface and, therefore, dependent on the generation of CO2 at the surface which is not equal everywhere.
Think gravity. What does gravity do to a CO2 molecule?
Is it a type, third paragraph. Shouldn’t the incoming radiation at the top of the atmosphere be 1340W/m2?
typO. Damn sticky fingers, or is it spell check?
In climate science they try to integrate sunlight over the 24 hour day (half of which is dark) and say it is an “average” that is about 1/4 of the instantaneous noontime whole. 1/4 is actually a pretty close first order estimate of that integral.
Not a typo. That’s what proponents of the 4 weak suns hypothesis believe. They add, subtract, multiply and divide solar fluxes They even add radiations of different wavelengths together. It’s great fun.
Don’t even ask what they do with temperatures and their intensive properties.
Area of a circle is pi * r^2. Area of a sphere is 4 * pi * r^2. The Sun’s “view” of Earth is a circle. The ratio of the entire surface area to the view circle is 4 times. The solar constant is taken as something like 1360W/m^2 at Earth’s average distance from the sun over the perpendicular “view” surface. That becomes 340W/m^2 when averaged over the surface area.
It is just geometry. You can test it out with a solar panel watching how the output varies as the angle shifts relative to the line to the sun or any light source.
Not exactly. Your explanation means everywhere gets the same average radiation from the poles to the equator. That isn’t true. The radiation absorbed varies by latitude and longitude. A point on the earth doesn’t begin absorbing the “average” at sunrise and doesn’t continue to absorb the average until sunset. It wouldn’t matter if there wasn’t that T^4th term in the radiation equation. There are sin and cos terms that must be applied to apportion the radiation accurately to each point on the earth so that temperature and enthalpy variations can be explained.
Willis: The Sun emits radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum which runs from long wavelength radio waves to short wavelength gamma radiation. You say: ” Downwelling thermal radiation is radiation emitted by several things in the atmosphere above us.” In fact, of the light that reached the Earth’s surface from the Sun, infrared radiation makes up about 50%, visible light makes up about 40% and about 10% is ultraviolet radiation. This 10% UV radiation is enough to sterilize the surface of the Earth were it not reduced by about 70% in the ozone layer. Planck”s equation states that the energy of a photon depends on it’s frequency ( e=hf,) It is the more energetic UV-B and UV-C which are absorbed by the ozone layer. Ozone, O3, is very reactive and would quickly disappear if it was not continuously renewed by photosynthesis. So we have the anomaly that life on Earth could not exist until there was life on Earth. Even so, a photon of UV-A has an energy of about 4 electron volts. ( a photon of infrared has an energy of 0.04 electron volts.) Which do you think will cause more heating? (A wee hint: which gives you sunburn? ) And what about the energy of UV-A and UV-B? That goes to make the thermopause and the thermosphere. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that heat will only flow down a temperature gradient, from a warmer body to a colder body. Implicit in this is the fact that the rate of heat loss depends on the temperature difference between the warmer body and the cooler body. The presence of the thermosphere, it seems to me, implies that the rate of cooling of the Earth is slowed down. We see this on a cloudy day, (or night.) As water vapor condenses, it releases the latent heat of evaporation, about 540 cals per gramm of water vapor condensed to a gram of liquid water. This raises the temperature at the cloud condensation level, and reduces the rate at which the Earth cools, ( something er have all experienced!) So I think you were wrong to say that downwelling thermal radiations is radiation emitted by several things in the atmosphere above us. Of the bandwidth of solar radiation, about 50% is infrared (thermal) radiation. Presumably this solar IR is also captured by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and re-radiated in random directions, and it would be impossible to say which downwelling IR radiation originated on the Earth and which on the Sun
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.
What is the significance of this statement? How does a global average solar radiation (W/m2) have any meaning?
I switch my 2kW electric fire on for an hour, then off for 2 hours, then on at half heat 1kW for 2 hours. So the average over the 5 hours is 800W. But the average is not what I did and neither did the sun.
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”.
Or it could be that the DLR part of the Downwelling Radiation Absorbed is just more back radiation BS.
Figure 2. Annual averages, total absorbed radiation, shortwave, and longwave.
Earlier, you were averaging solar fluxes and now you are adding together radiation with different wavelengths. You’ve taken apples and oranges and made a fruit cocktail.
Figure 3. Downwelling solar energy by the time of day, December 30, 1998.
That’s the reality. That’s what really happens. That’s what evidence looks like.
You know, Willis. This is what I call Science.
Making things as simple as possible, but no simpler.
The thresholds observed over oceans are:
30C ocean surface is WOT for the atmosphere. It is the point where cloud persistence limits the available energy to the heat engine to drive the convective towers. It can go higher over land because the surface temperature can respond in a day. Once the open ocean surface reaches 30C the surface energy flux is zero. All the surface solar input goes into evaporation at the hot end of the heat engine.
26C is where the surface sunlight reaches its maximum. SST is negatively correlated with solar EMR when surface gets above 26C. This is due to low level divergence to warm pools. It is the lower limit of the Nino34 region because it is either a divergent zone below 30C or a convergence zone at 30C.
22C is where you will observe change in clouds because that is the temperature where the atmosphere above the LFC can be fully saturated and where cloudburst forming anvil towers can occur.
15C is required to produce an LFC where the clouds transform from grey and lifeless to fluffy.
4C is the sea ice limit. Water cooler than this on average will form sea ice annually and that dramatically reduces the heat loss.
More details here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/23/ocean-atmosphere-response-to-solar-emr-at-top-of-the-atmosphere/
Deep convection is the process that regulates Earth’s energy balance. It has nothing to do with a “greenhouse effect”.
The most important question to answer is – why do oceans ever have clear skies. Why aren’t oceans in thermal equilibrium with their atmosphere and the atmosphere fully saturated? There are thousands of kilometres of open water from any significant land mass and yet oceans still get clear skies. Why isn’t the atmosphere over oceans always fully saturated?
RickWill: “why do oceans ever have clear skies”
WR: Oceans can have clear skies because of descending dry air that warms when it descends. Because of the Hadley Cell or, more generally, because of convection elsewhere.
P.S. A request: please stop using uncommon abbreviations. For a foreigner, all abbreviations in languages that are not his/her mother tongue are a disaster: we have to learn an extra ‘secret language’ for each writer who makes his own abbreviations. The standard rule for an author: every new abbreviation makes you lose 80 or 90% of the understanding of your audience. For the individual reader: a lot of his brain cells have to be used for trying to find back the exact meaning of the abbreviations used: a lot of abbreviations have tenths of different meanings, depending on the place they are used and the language used. I prefer to use my brain cells for the content, not to try to find the meaning of abbreviations that could have been avoided.
I love to read Willis’ plain language: I can use all of my brain cells to couple what he is writing with my image of reality.
Abbreviations in science look intelligent, but they are stupid. A kind of secret language.
(The above is not meant personally to you, but sometimes I feel the need to say this again. I hope all authors will use real words. There is no reason why they shouldn’t.)
Interesting as always, and surprising.
Isn’t there an imbalance between the total radiation flux for the hemispheres?
And I’ve always assumed that clouds had a net warming effect now because hot-house periods on Earth and Venus.
Hot-house periods likely have more clouds because the climate is generally wetter. Same goes for glacial periods and interglacial periods where there is certainly more clouds during the warmer interglacial period.
So either the system warms despite the feedback or something causes the CRE to rise and it has something to do with forcing the cycles.
No the solar intensity is different but both hemispheres average the some energy.
Spring to fall equinox in the NH takes 186 days compared with 179 days for the SH in the present era. Earth orbit around the sun slows down when it is further from the sun and speeds up when it is closer.
In the present era, with perihelion occurring early January, the SH gets the higher solar intensity but the average energy over an annual cycle is near enough to the same.
I’m talking about the net energy in and out.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320918200_Measurement_of_the_Earth_Radiation_Budget_at_the_Top_of_the_Atmosphere-A_Review
Figure 2. The deserts in the Northern Hemisphere receive energy from elsewhere and emit it into space. There doesn’t seem to be a SH equivalent to offset this.
Willis, Your figure 3 has some interesting implications. Time/cloud dependent control of rejected heat. If you could make a graph like that which is the average of a large number of buoys, probably separated by season or latitude, etc, you could quantify the instrumental result of your hypothesis. If most of the buoys have a similar characteristic most of the time, you could put a number on how much heat is not being accounted for in models.
Willis,
Judging from your analysis of the CERES data your statement that
“In short, the amount of sunshine absorbed by the ground varies hugely in space and time on all scales.”
is false. What the CERES data shows is that all the effects you describe average out over timescales greater than a month or so. And as for why the northern and southern hemispheres are so similar the answer would be because the amount sunlight reaching each hemisphere is identical.
Maybe read it again
Land and sea absorb and reflect differently, and the north has much higher ratio of land to water than the south, hence different.
Because …… different.
With the same amount of sunlight.
Or should be
Pat,
most of the land in the Northern Hemisphere is realatively far north. Looking at the tropics where the sun is most intense the proportion of land in each hemisphere is quite equal. Since the surface receives less sunlight the further from the equator you go the extra land in the northern hemisphere is perhaps not as significant as you think.
Izaak, a most interesting conjecture. Of course, after reading that I had to run the numbers myself. Here are two charts.
The first shows the land area of each 1° latitude band, in units of million sq. km. It also shows the average TOA solar energy for each latitude band, as a 24/7/365 average, in units of W/m2. Here’s that graph.
Multiplying the two gives the total TOA energy per degree latitude.
As you can see, the amount of solar energy striking the land is largest in the northern temperate zone. So the extra land in the NH is indeed significant.
And this is particularly true because the temperate zone in the SH has very little land. As a result, the northern hemisphere temperate zone land receives 5 times the solar energy as the SH temperate zone land.
w.
Izaak Walton August 25, 2022 6:01 pm
Thanks, Izaak. Let me reiterate:
I see absolutely no reason that all of those variables should somehow magically “average out over timescales greater than a month” every year for 21 years.
Finally, you say:
And as for why the northern and southern hemispheres are so similar the answer would be because the amount of sunlight reaching each hemisphere is identical.
Yes, I acknowledged that at the start. See above. The curiosity relates to all the different things that affect incoming solar energy after that, once it enters the climate system.
Regards,
w.
Below 500mb the atmosphere is opaque to incomming and outgoing SW. It is convection and conduction that does the leg work.
That is why the hemispheric radiation appears balance. It ignores the true origion of the energy flux. For all intents and purposes the radiative surface of the earth is 500 mb. Ingoing and outgoing radiation are balanced at that altitude.
How do we see?
Does the SW refer to short wave? If it does then I wonder why we get SUNburnt.
So I just went to the CO2 graph from the Mauna Loa website and see that, for the period of time on your figure 2, CO2 is shown to have risen from approx 380 ppm to 420. A nearly 10% rise didn’t seem to cause a blip on the absorbed radiation anywhere. Can we cue the band to start the funeral march for the war on carbon yet?
Willis, there is something I don’t understand about climate science: the usage of the term “energy”. It is invariably given in units of W/m2, but a Watt is the unit for power not energy, which is Joules.
The data is given a time frame from 2001 to 2021. What Willis is showing is a power flux average for those 21 years. The 508.7W/m^2 is from the make-believe world where “greenhouse effect” exist and the “laws” of physics get tossed aside.
Willis has 340W/m^2 coming in from the sun and the atmosphere amplifies that to 508.7W/m^2. Such amplification, without a nuclear reaction, only occurs in climate “physics”.
A watt is: (kg-m^2) / t^3
A joule is a (kg-m^2) / t^2
So a watt is joule/sec.
Divide a watt by m^2 and you get kg/t^3.
Divide a joule by m^2 and you get kg/t^2
That’s some kind of density measurement? E.g. kg/t = mass flow rate. So what would flow-rate/t^2 be? Divide the joule and you get flow-rate/t. What is that?
This should be easy, but I’m drawing a blank…
“So a watt is joule/sec” = dW/dt.
Joule is the unit for work = force x distance or
W = (integral)F ds = (integral) ma ds.
(something)^3 units like this can pop up when taking derivatives. An example is the derivative of irradiance (W/m2) with respect to wavelength, which is spectral irradiance. Strict SI usage would require this quantity to be W/m3, but this unit is very inconvenient and never used. On paper it looks like a volumetric density unit, but it isn’t. Instead it is done as W//m2/um or /nm.
How “work” comes out of electromagnetic radiation is the key.
Figure 1 shows the total surface power flux in your world being 508.7W/m^2. And yet you state it started out at 340W/m^2 entering the system.
I love the way your world can create energy. It is able to convert a surface average 340W/m^2 at top of the atmosphere to surface average 508.7W/m^2 by the time it gets to the surface.
The only way energy can be created is by the conversion of matter to energy. So your atmosphere must be a nuclear reactor – I doubt this is so.
It’s quite simple really. It’s how I heat my room. I have 6 flat surfaces and each emits. Five surfaces emit to the sixth. Many watts per square meter.
In Australian homes, we are not permitted to build “rooms” that do not have windows or vented to the outside. Do you think this is a deliberate government mandate so we have higher energy bills?
How do you stop the temperature from running away in your fully closed rooms? Surely it is dangerous running the risk of thermal runaway.
I use an air conditioner to prevent the runaway effect.
Seriously though, my room doesn’t self-heat. The math says it should work but it doesn’t. Maybe my walls are emitting fake radiation or I shouldn’t be summing things when it’s inappropriate.
The maths of climate physics might say the room will self heat but climate physics do all sorts of wonderful things that defy observations. Climate scientists are busy rewriting the laws of physics to suit their models.
You are omitting the cosine effect of latitude, as modified by the tilt of the earth’s axis and orbit around the sun. Start with the earth viewed as a disc from distance, which has an area of πr^2, defining the area of solar energy flux it intercepts. However, the overall average is about a quarter of this, because rotation ensures that the surface of the sphere, some 4πr^2 is rotated to face the sun each day. But latitudes near the poles are not vertically under the sun’s rays: they hit at an angle that depends on latitude and time of year (and of day), spreading them out over a wider area and slicing through more atmosphere obliquely, reducing intensity by the cosine of latitude adjusted for axial tilt.
In the tropics where the sun gets to be directly overhead, its rays travel more directly to ground, and are not spread out save by seasonal axial tilt if there were no tilt or atmospheric absorption/reflection then the equatorial region would receive an average of half the TOA radiation – nothing at night, and then a cosine effect average over the day. Meanwhile at the poles the insolation would be close to zero.
Willis states that 340 watts/sq M (solar) is at TOA. This is before albedo and other effects. His graphic says 508.7 watts/sq M is the average ABSORBED by the surface.
That is Rick’s questioning.
The sun’s altitude is with respect to the center of the earth is
sin(α)=sin(L)sin(δ)+cos(L)cos(δ)cos(h)
where L is the latitude, δ is the declination, and h is the hour-angle for the location.
You only get full radiation at the point directly under the sun.
‘I love the way your world can create energy.’
It doesn’t. The only requirement is that SW energy absorbed (surface or atmosphere) has to equal LW energy out at TOA. By most accounts this is true. The difference between LW emitted by surface and LW energy out at TOA is the so-called GHE.
You need to clarify this – with actual numbers.
As far as I can determine you are suggesting that the surface takes in 508.7W/m^2 and the top of atmosphere rejects close to the same 508.7W/m^2.
However there was only 340W/m^2 available at the top of the atmosphere. So you appear to be suggesting that the Earth’s atmosphere is an energy creator. Same as Willis has done.
Ok. LW out at TOA equals SW absorbed by atmosphere and surface, equals about 239 w/m^2. And LW emitted by the surface equals about 398 w/m^2, so the so-called GHE is about 159 w/m^2. (All globally averaged numbers per the IPCC). The net SW / LW flux at TOA is balanced, so there is no energy being created by the Earth’s atmosphere.
Note, this is not to kowtow to the IPCC. On the contrary, per Howard Hayden, it’s one aspect of the Earth’s energy balance that has to be satisfied to lend credence to the IPCC’s surface temperature and ‘forcing’ projections for increased CO2 – and the short answer is that they fail to do so, as shown here:
http://www.sepp.org/science_papers/Climate%20Physics%204.pdf
This just doesn’t work.
If the earth absorbs 239 from the source (sun) it will emit 239. This based on kirchoff’s Law that emissivity and absorptivity are equal. Remember, atoms and molecules tend toward a neutral state and do not remain in an excited state indefinitely.
Planck proved that a hot body receiving energy from a cold body “compensates” by immediately reradiating the cold bodies absorbed energy within the radiation it is already emitting.
What happens? The hot body DOES NOT RADIATE MORE, it simply COOLS AT A SLOWER RATE.
Climate science has turned this upside down by adding fluxes as you have also done. S-B tells you that the net radiation is controlled BY THE DIFFERENCE IN TEMPERATURE, not the sum.
‘If the earth absorbs 239 from the source (sun) it will emit 239.’
Tim,
I’m about 99 44/100% sure that’s what I said. Boundary conditions are important. TOA is one that we seem to have a pretty good handle on. The Earth’s surface is much more complicated, but S-B applies and tells us what the average surface emitted LW has to be given some estimate / assumption of GAST.
There’s a lot ‘going on’ between these two boundaries, including the so-called GHE, which is strictly a long-wave phenomenon. What I like about Hayden’s approach, and I think he understands Planck, is that it requires the alarmists to make internally consistent physical predictions to be credible.
For example, if they say that doubling CO2 will result in a 3C increase in surface temperature, they need to come up with about 16.5 w/m^2 of combined ‘forcing’ and/or reduced albedo to be physically consistent. But they can’t demonstrate this, which means all of their alarmism is just hand waving.
Frank
Whoops, I meant ‘Jim’ not ‘Tim’. Sorry!
None of this shows how Willis ends up with his energy multiplier taking the 340W/m^2 that is available at the top of the atmosphere becomes 508.7W/m^2 by the time it gets to the surface. Energy multiplication only happens in climate scientology.
‘None of this shows how Willis ends up with his energy multiplier taking the 340W/m^2 that is available at the top of the atmosphere becomes 508.7W/m^2 by the time it gets to the surface.’
I’m don’t see any multiplication here. Looks like he’s adding 161 W/m^2 SW (340 W/m^2 TOA less 79 W/m^2 absorbed by atmosphere less 100 W/m^2 reflected from surface and atmosphere) and 342 W/m^2 downwelling LW, or thereabouts.
RickWill 26, 2022 3:50 pm
Rick, I fear you misunderestimate the greenhouse effect. Have a look at my posts below, and if you have questions, come back, quote exactly what I said in the post, and ask your questions.
The Steel Greenhouse
People Living In Glass Planets
My best to you,
w.
The steel greenhouse was debunked by Joseph Postma many years ago.
https://climateofsophistry.com/2014/11/18/the-pseudoscientific-steel-greenhouse-debunks-the-climate-greenhouse-effect/
This was the Joseph Postma that you couldn’t remember although you were all over his blog.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/05/surface-response-to-increased-forcing/
Joseph Postma is an astrophysicist. You are not.
As Postma pointed out, you have no training.
An excellent well written Willie E. article.
If CO2 impedes Earth’s ability to cool itself, and a warmer troposphere holds more water vapor, as a positive feedback, then something must limit that positive feedback to prevent eventual runaway global warming. A logical answer would be more clouds, limiting incoming solar energy.
Where do I apply for a Nobel Prize?
Or at least a participation trophy?
I don’t think they have a category for stating the bleeding obvious.
True. But unfortunately they award prizes for the ‘bleeding’ incorrect. For example, they recently awarded the prize in economics to a group of Keynesian Klowns who ‘overturned’ the law of downward sloping demand
Syukuro Manabe was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in physics for his work creating climate models that connect global warming to CO2.
Can you imagine the amount of sacred cows that would need to be slaughtered to award a Nobel prize to someone pointing out that it CANNOT be CO2 and other “greenhouse” gasses because it would cause thermal runaway. All the existing high priests of the climate religion will need to die off before physics re-enters the realm of climate scientology.
‘Where do I apply for a Nobel Prize?’
No prizes for you! But if you’re willing to lighten up a bit on the climate howlers, they might be able to get you a sinecure with a small, but corrupt, energy company in eastern Europe.
I’ll change my last name to “Biden”
Then the money will flow !
Yes indeed, Willis. Lovely stuff.
The ocean is warmed by solar irradiation at SW, which penetrates to maybe 800 meters – most as you said in the top 10 meters or so. The IR (back-radiation and solar) to the surface warms the top few microns of water (71% of the earth’s surface) which then evaporates, removing 540 cal/gm – 2257 J/gm – from the surface water, and deposits that heat in the upper troposphere by condensation, where it is easily transmitted out to space, mostly by CO2, virtually the only GHG in the stratosphere.
Warming of the land raises its temperature and disproportionately raises its IR transmission upwards (minor conduction downwards) at the fourth power of the increase in temperature, the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. So a 0.3% increase in land temperature of 1K (288K-289K) will produce a 1.3% increase in outgoing IR.
Not a bad brake on “runaway”, “tipping point”, eh? A little rise in temp produces a lot of cooling. Thus energy back-absorbed is radiated out at the fourth power. Like a bucket that leaks faster the more water you add to it.
And then there’s that exponential decline in the GHG effect of CO2, noted by Arrhenius, with the math now correct. 50% of GHG in the first 20 ppm, declining logarithmically. See Modtran at U of Chicago.
“”deposits that heat in the upper troposphere by condensation, where it is easily transmitted out to space, mostly by CO2, virtually the only GHG in the stratosphere.””
Why do you say only CO2 is the only gas that radiates? As water vapor condenses it too radiates, a lot. Since the radiation is a spherical EM wave, some energy is downward but at least the same (actually more at altitude) is radiated to space.
DLR, “measured” with pyrgeometers. This is the raped S-B equation that pyrgeometers use:
Ts=surface
Ta=atmosphere
DLR=σ(Ta^4-Ts^4+Ts^4)
For example:
DLR=σ(255^4-288^4+288^4)
This is not how the SB-equation works.In the case of heat transfer it should be:
σ(Ts^4-Ta^4) for transfer from surface to the atmosphere
and
σ(Ta^4-Ts^4) for transfer from atmosphere to surface
It calculates the temperature of the atmosphere from the rate of heat transfer from the instrument, and then infers that it´s DLR.
You can see for yourself here, download instruction sheet under downloads:
CGR 3 Pyrgeometer – Kipp & Zonen (kippzonen.com)
People don´t know that a pyrgeometer is essentially a thermometer, it has no ability to detect radiation from low temperature. The sensor is a thermopile, when a thermopile is directed towards a low temperature like the atmosphere, it only measures the heat transfer FROM the instrument. From that measurement it can determine the temperature of the measured object, but that´s not radiation from the atmosphere.
It´s fascinating to see how many climate “scientists” use pyrgeometer data to support their argument, but they don´t even know how the instrument works.
Willis, a thermopile doesn´t have the ability to measure heat transfer from a cold atmosphere, it can only measure heat transfer FROM the instrument in that case. A thermopile can measure heat transfer from a HOTTER object, but not a cold object.
Your whole reasoning is bunk, it´s based on your lack of understanding of the instrument.
Climate scientists are rewriting the laws of physics so their physics is consistent with their models. Observation is a thing of the past. The only real data comes from climate models.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a broad spectrum EMR panel that could convert all that 508.7W/m^2 that is reaching the surface to electric power?
Excellent.
It´s fascinating to see how many climate “scientists” use pyrgeometer data to support their argument, but they don´t even know how the instrument works.
Roy Spencer bases his whole hypothesis of back radiation on this misunderstanding.
The problem here is the window material, which is silicon, a semiconductor with a 1.14eV bandgap. This translate to a wavelength of about 1200nm, so the instrument cannot respond to shorter wavelengths.
According to the NASA information (https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/instruments/), the CERES data is not from thermopile instruments like a pyrgeometer. Although not stated explicitly, these are very likely all semiconductor instruments.
As always, a thoughtful and curious exposition, thanks again Willis.
Richard Lindzen proposed an ‘iris’ and I’m trying to recall how that was put.
This reminds me of whatever that was that I read … (looks for files…)
I can’t wait for someone to claim that this mechanism, of course, mostly relates to human emissions, and please send more money… (!)
(I always wondered what the W/m^2 meant – at the equator with clear sky sun exactly overhead would have parallel lines of solar radiation and a meter square at TOA is just that, a meter squared; it very slightly diverges from 1 x 1m to 1.000001 x 1.000001m at sea level, say, – but at the pole it must be tangentially reaching a very large area; and sine/cosine function between those points ; point being I’m surprised at the substantial amount of incident shortwave plus longwave- said to be 175 W/m^2 in graph above for Antarctica – and I assume that is mostly longwave)
You are forgetting the earth’s axial tilt. In summer at the poles when there is continuous sunshine the sun angle reaches 23 degrees. If you want a graphic illustration, try setting your location as close to a pole in e.g. Stellarium and fix it to centre the view on the sun. Run it speeded up.
Thanks Willis. The equality is rather counter to simple expectation. Maybe geometric hemispheres is not relevant cutoff. We can clearly see the trace of ITCZ in figure 1, somewhat above the equator over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Indian ocean less clear. Anything south of that line is in the climatic southern hemisphere. Any heat absorbed in the NH stip below ITCZ is going into the southern hemisphere climate system.
Is the position of ITCZ part of the natural balancing act ?
Figure 7 is the killer graph here. This is the most clear and undisputable proof of what Willis has be suggesting for years. Almost 90% of the Earth’s surface is covered by the “cooling” part of the graph. There have been many attempts to muddy the waters on this by saying that different types of cloud act differently at different heights and for different wavelengths and we don’t really know what the net effect is. This graph shows that we clearly do know the net effect of all cloud cover globally.
It is also interesting that where it crosses from warming to cooling is about -4 degrees C: the freezing point of sea water.
In Willis’ fig 7 there are some interesting loops from 5-25 deg C. a bit like a rib cage. These are a clear and persistent feature over a significant portion of the Earth’s surface. It may be worth trying to determine what this tells us about the cloud/temperature relationship.
This is a scatter plot of all data, plotting points with a colour indicating some third variable, like year, or latitude may give some useful insight what is causing these loops.
UAH date shows decadal length humps in surface temperate. Is that what is causing this, or is it cloud patterns shifting in latitude from year to year in a repetitive way?
Has anyone explained the inflection points at about -15, 0, and + 25C?
Willis,
I would appreciate a more detailed description of absorbed radiation and how it is measured practically.
Many have been claiming that IR hardly penetrates water and some also claim that it evaporates a skin, so causing evaporative cooling. Does this have any place in your description of absorption?
Ta. Geoff S
Willis, this is very, very good.
Looking at https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/instruments/ it would seem that surface absorption is a calculation, and probably a rather complex one.