Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In my recent post “Putting It Into Reverse” I discussed the relationship between temperature and total surface radiation absorbed. By “total surface radiation absorbed”, I mean the total of the downwelling longwave radiation from the clouds and the atmosphere, plus downwelling sunlight at the surface, minus the upwelling reflected sunlight.
Here’s a graphic from that post. If you haven’t read it yet, you might do so as an intro to this post. Not necessary, however, as this one stands on its own.
Original Caption: Figure 1: Gridcell by gridcell correlation of surface absorbed radiation (shortwave + longwave) and surface temperature. Gridcells are 1° latitude by 1° longitude.
I focus in this post on the radiation balance at the surface—how much radiation is absorbed versus how much is emitted. I’ve done this because it is a very simple and transparent part of the whole. There are no intermediate steps—the surface absorbs radiation, it warms, and it emits radiation.
According to the CERES satellite data, as a 24/7 global average, upwelling (headed to space) thermal radiation from the surface is just under 400 watts per square meter (W/m2). Downwelling (headed to earth) thermal radiation from the clouds/atmosphere absorbed by the surface is about 345 W/m2. And net solar (surface downwelling less surface reflected) energy absorbed by the surface is just under 165 W/m2.
This gives a global 24/7 average of just over 500 W/m2, about half a kilowatt/m2, of radiation absorbed by the surface.
But only about 400 W/m2 are radiated away. What about the other 100 W/m2 of absorbed energy?
Well, first, something on the order of three-quarters of that energy is used to evaporate water from the surface. It’s called “latent heat”. This, of course, leaves the surface cooler than it would otherwise be if there were no latent heat loss.
The other quarter is lost via conduction to the atmosphere and subsequent convection away from the surface. It’s called “sensible heat”. This also leaves the surface cooler than it would be without sensible heat loss.
Here is a scatterplot showing the relationship and the trend of upwelling emitted surface radiation with respect to absorbed downwelling radiation.
Figure 2. Scatterplot, where each dot is a month. For each month, the bottom “X” scale shows radiation absorbed that month, and the vertical “Y” scale shows the radiation emitted in that same month. The seasonal swings have been removed from the data in all graphics.
Figure 2 shows that for each watt per square meter absorbed, only three-quarters of a watt per square meter is emitted as upwelling radiation from the surface. The rest goes to sensible and latent heat loss. (Yes, there is a tiny residual term, less than 1/2%, of energy from/to storage, mainly in the ocean. However, because it is so small, it is typically ignored in this type of first-order analysis.)
So … why is any of this of interest?
Well, back around 1880 a couple of very smart guys named Joseph Stefan and Ludwig Boltzmann figured out that there is a mathematical relationship between the temperature of an object and its thermal radiation. The relationship is given by the “Stefan-Boltzmann Law”. Using that law, if you know the radiation, you can calculate the temperature and vice versa. Figure 3 shows the same data as in Figure 2, but this time I’ve used the Stefan-Boltzmann Law to convert the upwelling surface radiation shown in Figure 2 to temperature. So in Figure 3, the vertical “Y” axis is in degrees Celsius.
Figure 3. Scatterplot, where each dot is a month. For each month, the bottom “X” scale shows radiation absorbed that month, and the vertical “Y” scale shows the temperature of that same month.
What this says is that because only part of the absorbed radiation turns into upwelling surface longwave emission (AKA temperature), it takes almost 7 watts per square meter of extra energy to raise the earth’s surface temperature by 1°C.
And that’s a lot. A doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels is said to increase downwelling radiation by 3.7 W/m2. So if that extra energy to raise temperatures by 1°C comes solely from increased CO2, it would be almost two doublings from our present level of 410 ppmv of CO2. The CO2 level would have to be ~ 1,500 ppmv to get a 1°C rise from the present temperature.
Here’s a graph showing how the surface temperature and the absorbed radiation at the surface are closely related.
Figure 4. Absorbed total radiation at the surface (blue, right scale) versus temperature (red, left scale). Total radiation is the sum of the downwelling longwave (thermal) radiation from the atmosphere, plus the shortwave (solar) radiation. Also shown are the theoretical forcing increase due to CO2 over the period (yellow/black line), and the trend of total radiation absorbed (dashed cyan/black line). Dashed black line is horizontal, showing what would happen with no increase in surface absorbed radiation.
Clearly, much more than CO2 is at play … I’ll leave this all here for further contemplation and discussion.
Evening now, dinner is over here on the hillside. Three generations live here in a rambling house I built with my own hands. We eat together every night. My gorgeous ex-fiancee and I make our dinner. Our daughter makes dinner for her husband and two kids, a 3-year-old girl and a 10-month-old boy. Works perfectly, we all get to eat together and I’d starve on what they eat …
Here’s my ex-fiancee at this very moment as seen from my window, tending her beloved garden …
With the hope that your lives contain joy, laughter, family, friends, and true sweethearts, I remain,
Yr. Obt. Svt.,
w.
Math Note 01: As is common in the field, I’ve used an emissivity of 1.0 to convert radiation to temperature. I could refine that, but a) Earth’s emissivity is quite high, on the order of 0.95 or greater, and b) changing the emissivity changes the absolute values, but it makes very, very little difference to the trends of interest.
Math Note 02: Because there is uncertainty in the “X” axis values (total radiation absorbed) in Figures 2 and 3, I’ve used Deming Regression to determine the correct trend, rather than Ordinary Least Squares Regression which underestimates the trend when there is uncertainty. And if you don’t know what Deming Regression is, don’t worry—most folks don’t know either, including most climate scientists.
My Note: When you comment, please quote the exact words you are responding to. This avoids many misunderstandings. It is also the only way to refute someone’s idea.
You have reconfirmed Loeb et al (2021) and Dubal and Vahrenholt (2021). Most warming is from increased absorbed solar radiation.
Willis,
Your calculations are wrong, at least in part because you are using transient values for temperature instead of equilibrium temperatures. You didn’t account for the growing energy imbalance. If you differentiate the S-B equation you get dT/dF = 1/(4σT^3). This means if you solve for dT/dF using the Earth’s effective radiating temperature you get:
dT/dF = 1/[4σT^3] = 1/[4*5.67 x 10^-8*255^3] = 0.266 C/Wm^-2
That means it takes about 3.76 W/m^2 to increase GMST by 1 C, about the same as the forcings of 3.71 W/m^2 for doubling CO2. This is non-controversial, and it’s the reason why scientists say that sensitivity from CO2 alone is about 1 C for 2xCO2.
That of course ignores feedbacks. We’ve experienced about 2.1 W/m^2 from CO2, while forcings for other GHGs and aerosols have roughly canceled each other out (total anthropogenic forcings are ~2.2 W/m^2). Natural forcings have been comparably negligible since the industrial revolution. If you plot CO2 as radiative forcing (using 5.35*ln [rCO2]) on the x-axis and GMST on the y-axis, you get a good correlation (r^2 = 0.87) and a slope of 0.625 C/Wm^-2, which implies a TCR of 2.3 C. Given that EEI is currently about 0.8 W/m^2, that implies an ECS of about 3.3 C.
https://woodromances.blogspot.com/2022/05/estimating-ecs-from-logarithmic.html
Scott J Simmons
I have no idea what you are calling “equilibrium temperatures”.
As to the “growing energy imbalance”, I’m looking at monthly values on the order of 400 – 500 W/m2, with average monthly changes of 0.75 W/m2. Meanwhile, the monthly increase in the energy imbalance is 0.003 W/m2 per month, two orders of magnitude smaller.
Which is exactly why I ignored it. And in fact, seeing someone like you coming, in the head post I said:
(Yes, there is a tiny residual term, less than 1/2%, of energy from/to storage, mainly in the ocean. However, because it is so small, it is typically ignored in this type of first-order analysis.)
True but not meaningful. As I showed above, for each W/m2 absorbed by the surface, only about three-quarters of a W/m2 are expressed as temperature. The rest leaves the surface as latent and sensible heat.
And that means that you can’t blindly apply the S-B equation to the earth’s surface as a whole, because the energy flows at the earth’s surface are much more complicated than are encompassed by that equation.
Regards,
w.
If you agree that “you can’t blindly apply the S-B equation to the earth’s surface as a whole,” then why did you do precisely that? That’s exactly what your post did, and you did it wrong. The actual value for Planck’s feedback about half what you calculated.
You didn’t compare forcings to equilibrium temperature, and you likely used an incorrect value for emissivity. You didn’t show your work, so we can’t know for sure. The Earth’s energy imbalance is ~0.8 W/m^2, so more warming must occur until equilibrium is reached. You didn’t account for that.
You also didn’t account for feedbacks that are dependent on warming from CO2. You just blindly (and probably wrongly) made calculations from the S-B equation.
Anders Ångström constructed his pyrogeometer from an idea of two-way heat flux E_in and E_out, while understanding that only the net flux E_eff could effectively be measured. But to determine DLR = E_in from (*) E_out had to be known and Ångström then simply assumed that E_out = sigma T^4 as if the Earth surface was radiating like a blackbody into a surrounding of 0 K. Since this is obviously not the case Ångström made an ad hoc assumption about E_out without physical basis, and then reported DLR with a terminology suggesting a physical meaning. But the DLR determined by (*) lacks physical meaning because E_out lacks physical meaning.
Anders Ångström thus opened to an unphysical misconception of two-way radiative heat transfer, while according to Stefan-Boltzmann there is only one-way heat transfer from warm to cold. Anders was not a physicist like his father Knut, and evidently lacked some understanding of the physics of the pyrgeometer.
The unphysical science by Anders Ångström opened to give the atmospheric trace gas CO2 an unphysical warming effect which was later efficiently exploited by climate alarmists.
Michael Moon said:
First, your terminology is wrong. Radiation doesn’t transfer heat. It transfers energy.
Heat is energy that flows spontaneously from hot to cold.
Radiative energy is a very different beast. It’s radiated by all solids and most gases. It knows nuthin’ ’bout nuthin’ … it just gets radiated, by everything from the sun to bananas, and the radiation starts its jouney.
And when the radiative energy is finally absorbed, the temperature of the absorbing object is immaterial. Might be hotter, might be colder.
Why doesn’t this violate the laws of thermodynamics? Because this is radiative ENERGY, not heat. Heat is the net difference between the radiation from A to B, and the radiation from B to A, and it only flows one way—from warmer to colder.
Remember that if A can see B, then perforce B can see A. Which means that if radiation from A is absorbed by B, then radiation from B is absorbed by A. It is the net of these two very real flows which is the heat flow between the two objects.
Finally, S-B says nothing about one-way vs. two-way.
Best regards,
w.
In the engineering world, we discuss radiative heat transfer as a lot of money is spent on this phenomenon. Temperature is the average kinetic energy of molecules. Heat is energy, in one of its many forms.
I suspect that pyrgeometers measure nothing. If one points an infrared thermometer at the sky one gets wildly differing readings depending on clouds.
Then by extension, pyranometers and pyrheliometers also measure nothing as these are also thermopile radiometers.
Pyrgeometers do measure something, Michael, it is just the heat flow from the sensor to (or from) whatever it is pointed at. That’s what thermopiles do, and it might be a positive or negative reading, depending on whether the sensor is hotter or colder than what it is looking at.
However, that measurement is not what the pyrgeometer scientists report. They add the aforementioned unphysical Angstrom adjustment first, and then report that. Of course the result of that operation looks nothing like the original measurement. At night, the original physical voltage measurement looking upwards is a negative number, because the sky is colder than the ground, but after the Angstrom adjustment, it is a much larger positive number.
Radiation doesn’t transfer heat. It transfers energy.
Well, heat is the process that spontaneously transfers internal energy from a warmer object to a cooler object. Therefore, in order for an object to transfer energy to another object that law must apply. If there is a transfer of energy it must be by the heat process. Radiation cannot transfer energy without that temperature gradient.
Heat is energy that flows spontaneously from hot to cold.
True. Clausius. As I said above. You just contradicted yourself.
Radiative energy is a very different beast. It’s radiated by all solids and most gases. It knows nuthin’ ’bout nuthin’ … it just gets radiated, by everything from the sun to bananas, and the radiation starts its jouney. Might be hotter, might be colder.
Okaaayyyy. So this radiative energy is different from the energy above that flows spontaneously from hot to cold? Does it reside in a secret pocket inside an object so that it doesn’t get transferred during the heat energy transfer process?
And when the radiative energy is finally absorbed, the temperature of the absorbing object is immaterial.
But you just said Heat is energy that flows spontaneously from hot to cold.
So how does energy flow from cold to hot if the energy flow is spontaneous from hot to cold?
Have you just discovered or invented a new branch of thermodynamics, Willis?
Why doesn’t this violate the laws of thermodynamics? Because this is radiative ENERGY, not heat. Heat is the net difference between the radiation from A to B, and the radiation from B to A, and it only flows one way—from warmer to colder.
Willis, it is the same internal energy of an object and it only flows from hot to cold spontaneously because of a difference in temperature.
I understand now why you think The Steel Greenhouse is a valid display of forcings and back radiations.
It’s because you don’t understand how thermodynamics works.
You have no training.
That’s actually not a bad description as far as it goes, Willis, although we can already see a hint of trouble in your phrase “radiative energy is a very different beast”. But to see where that trouble actually surfaces, let’s see if you can describe the relationship between radiation (which you correctly described as a form of energy) and power. Specifically, what units would you use to measure the radiation emitted by a colder object toward a warmer one? (or an object at the same temperature, for that matter)
Sorry, Steve, but you and leitmotif are on my “Do Not Reply” list. I’ve never seen anyone gain anything by interacting with you, and as a result, I just pass.
So please, direct your questions to someone else. For me, with you and leitmotif the First Rule of Pig Wrestling applies in spades.
w.
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” George Bernard Shaw.
Exploited by religious fanatics and politicians.
“The relationship is given by the “Stefan-Boltzmann Law”. Using that law, if you know the radiation, you can calculate the temperature and vice versa.”
You can calculate that here, we are looking at 508.7W/m^2:
https://www.spectralcalc.com/blackbody_calculator/blackbody.php
Willis,
It would be very interesting to see Figure 1, season by season. Thanks for a great post.
“So if that extra energy to raise temperatures by 1°C comes solely from increased CO2, it would be almost two doublings from our present level of 410 ppmv of CO2. The CO2 level would have to be ~ 1,500 ppmv to get a 1°C rise from the present temperature.”
Does this mean that the ECS is 0.5 degrees C?
yes in fact iirc, by joules, most of the “work” done by heat on Earth goes into lifting water into the air (and eventually a tiny fraction becomes hydropower on its way back down to sea level)
this is relevant to the earlier question of whether downwelling IR can heat the oceans… since the IR is concentrated on the surface skin, some amount (not all) of that energy goes into evaporation
as with sweating mammals and boiling pots, many systems achieve temperature plateaus despite increasing energy flux via increased evaporation
Willis, This is my first reading at WUWT in a long while, and I appreciate your essay.
Thanks for the kind words, Matt.
w.
A bit OT.
Anyway, Boltzmann did never derive any radiation law. Boltzmann showed that the energy density of radiation in a cavity is proportional to the thermodynamic temperature raised to 4.
Boltzmann did comment that this relation could be a support for Stefans experimentally observation that the cooling rate of heated objects seemed to follow a T^4 law.
Planck calculated the spectral distribution in a cavity.
All people who say that S-B law is correct and well proven. Please tell me what the source of thermal radiation is ? There is no explanation whatsoever in S-B law what generates the thermal radiation. It has to come from a source!
Where is the physics that relates the radiation to the source ?
A solid body is not a cavity.
First, the sun is the source. GHG theory says the atmosphere is basically transparent to the sun’s energy. This isn’t true, but necessary to have CO2 drive water feedback. The system is then like having a hot plate with the earth sitting on it. The atmosphere then becomes an insulating body that absorbs radiation from the surface and the atmosphere having a lower conductivity releases heat at a slower rate that then causes the surface to cool slower.
Think about a room being heated. The wall has a conductivity that establishes a gradient of cooling, say -10 W/m^2. You install insulation that has a higher conductivity that your wall. What will happen? Basically nothing because the wall controls how fast heat leaves. What will the temperature be on the wall side of the insulation? Whatever it was before you added the insulation.
Now add insulation with a lower conductivity. It will have a slower gradient of cooling than the wall, say -5 W/m^2. So, since heat doesn’t leave as fast, the wall side of the insulation will have a higher temperature than the first insulation. But, will the wall be heated? No, it too will cool slower. You just made a “wall” that looses heat a rate of -5 W/m^2.
I’m not sure I’m explaining this clearly, but I am trying.
Hi Jim,
I am talking about thermal radiation emitted from a body – e.g. earth.
If you have a piece of something – the theory is that it emit radiation according to SB law.
Something in that body generate an electromagnetic field. The most plausible source is the lattice vibrations (phonons). In my opinion there should be a relation between the spectrum of the thermal emission and the phonon spectrum.
There must be a connection between the characteristics of the source and the characteristics of the emitted field.
I think this is strongly supported by the fact that thermal emission from real bodies does not have a Planck distribution.
There is absolutely nothing in Boltzmanns nor Plancks derivation relating to radiation source. Their work is only applicable to an electromagnetic field in thermal equilibrium in a cavity.
Originally the radiation was called “cavity radiation” (later black box = the cavity).
I am a bit frustrated that everybody is talking about the SB law as it is well proven.
When someone can show how to derive the emission spectra from material characteristic (lattice vibrations) I will be very happy.
Today – thermal radiation is a radiation without source. This is not good physics.
Just to be clear.
Boltzmanns and Plancks physics are great work. The generalization of “cavity radiation” to solids/gases/liquids without any explanation is not good physics.
The concept of emissivity hides the fact that nobody knows why the radiation spectra deviates. The emissivity is a correction factor with a value between 0 and 1. There is no physics in the “emissivity”. It is only a correction factor applied to get agreement between “cavity radiation” and measured radiation.
Planck did not use “cavity” radiation to derive his main conclusions. His Theory of Heat Radiation up until Part II Chapter II did not even mention cavities. He used pistons and cylinder as a volume in the next chapters to prove his theories using Boltzmann and Maxwell’s radiation pressure. Planck was the first scientists to postulate the existence of quanta whose fundamental basis was energy defined by frequency.
I don’t think you can criticize his experiments and conclusions without also showing exactly where his conclusions were faulty. I am not as familiar with Boltzmann’s work, but Planck used it as a confirmation of his own work, not as something built upon Boltzmann’s work.
I forgot to add that Planck’s work does recognize that bodies do not emit full spectrum EM waves. Monochromatic waves are even dwelt with in his derivations.
I am confident you have not read his seminal work at all or you would know that.
I do not criticize Plancks work. I see him as one of the great physics.
But, Yes, Plancks derivation is for a cavity. He assumes that there is electromagnetic radiation inside a cavity. He assumes that an electromagnetic wave carries an energy proportional to the frequence (great assumption), and then he calculates the thermal equilibrium inside the box. The result is the famous Plank distribution.
Boltzmann talked about cylinders and pistons. A cylinder is a cavity.
Planck talked about an empty box – that is a cavity.
Neither Planck nor Boltzmann talked about the source for thermal radiation. What is generating the thermal radiation ? A cavity or a cylinder does not generate thermal radiation. Charge displacement in a body (=phonons) generate radiation.
I am asking for a theory that connects atmo displacement to thermal radiation. That means that I ask for a connection between the emitted radiation and the source of the radiation,
I appreciate your comments, but I would very much appreciate an answer from you or your colleagues.
What generates thermal radiation. What is the source for thermal radiation. Does Planck answer this question ? Does Boltzmann answer this question.
One who tried to answer this question was Einstein at a late Solvay conference.
Do you agree that there is something missing if one can not explain the cause of something ? What generates thermal emission ? The source ?
The issue is not so much what causes it but what is measured in experiments and the functional relationships developed from the measurements.
Planck ignored the atomic level investigations into what actually caused the EM waves to be generated. I’m sure that Boltzmann and Stephan had no way to measure the atomic phenomena either. That doesn’t obviate the fact that they ran exacting experiments to measure what was happening at a more macro level.
Here is a part of his Theory.
As you can see, Planck considered what you are asking and worked around the atomic level considerations. I would add that as far as I know, there has never been any refutation of his work, regardless of the atomic or molecular origination. I think you will find, if you look, papers where that has been studied. Atoms and molecules DO radiate EM waves, we can see them! There is little proof that they can NOT also emit IR frequencies.
Again. I am not at all criticizing Planck´s work. It is great physics.
And yes, I do agree that the crystal structure of solids were not know at that time.
What I do criticize is the way people use Plank´s and Boltzmann´s result.
Today people say that a body radiate according to Planck´s result. Planck´s derivation is for an empty box.
I think the statement “The issue is not so much what causes it..” is a bit strange. Do you mean that it is not important what generate the thermal electromagnetic radiation. The radiation source is not important ?
Of course the radiation source is key physics. The thermal radiation has to originate from something, and that something should be possible to describe.
Todays models/theories are perfect electromagnetic fields in equilibrium in cavities ( also called black bodies). There does not exist any theory today that explains how real bodies generate the thermal radiation.
Have you read any of Planck’s Theory of Heat Radiation?
A goodly portion of his book has nothing to do with black bodies and cavities. He readily admits that monochromatic radiation occurs and his observations are not affected.
I do agree that the Stephan-Boltzmann equation as used without an ε factor to adjust it for non-black body flux is a misuse.
As an electrical engineer I learned to deal with “black boxes” and their inputs and outputs. It is the reason that a step function is input (~infinite # of frequencies) and the output is then analyzed. One doesn’t need to know what is going on in the black box in order to analyze the effects being emitted. This is exactly what Planck has done.
An analogy is a race car driver. Do you think he/she cares what drives the car? Will it matter much if the motive force is made with a reciprocating engine, a Wankel, a turbine, or an electric motor. As long it moves when the accelerator pedal is pushed and stops when the brake pedal is pushed, why would the driver care?
Yes, I have read Planck´s theory of heat radiation.
I spent a couple of years doing research in theoretical physics. My area was quantum thermodynamics, so I am very familiar with both Planck´s theories as well as Boltzmann´s work.
The reason that I stress the importance of the source is that Maxwells equations are linear. This means that the emitted field can not differ from the generating sources. E.g. if the sources does not contain a certain frequency – the emitted field can not have that frequency either. The emitted field reflects the sources.
My own view is that I say something rather obvious. The emitted field is a function of the characteristics of the source.The source is most probably the lattice vibrations. That source will not give rise to a Planck distribution.
My understanding is that is what is observed. Real bodies do not radiate a Planck spectrum.
Both Boltzmann and Planck work with an electromagnetic field in equilibrium with itself. The electromagnetic field is not interacting with matter. It is not generated by matter. This is an idealized model (which I have very high respect of – the model is ingenious).
Bottom line – real bodies do not radiate with a Planck distribution.
The so called emissivity is only a correction factor, to get agreement between the equation and the observation. The reason that this correction factor is needed is that fact the the frequency spectrum of the source (phonons) is not a Planck distribution.
Does it matter ?
Yes it does. Since the SB-law is the fundamental equation used in all (earth) radiation balance models, I think it is very important to clarify the validity for this “application”.
The “green-house” effect may very well be 3 C instead of the claimed 30 C.
As I said before, Planck recognized that monochromatic emission do occur. As to lattice vibrations, that would only be true for solid substances that have appropriate structures. It does not apply to gases under atmospheric pressures.
Also, remember much of Planck’s work is with radiation regardless of how it originates. His research into entropy is seminal in so far as heat transfer is considered.
I’ll say it again, much of his work is based on the effects of radiation and the transfer of heat regardless of how it originates. The fact that he didn’t have the knowledge, equipment, or mathematics to treat the subject down to the atomic level doesn’t really matter. Energy is transferred via EM waves. If the absolute values of the energy is not accurate, I sure haven’t seen any papers that correct his findings. If you have some, you might provide them as references.
Planck´s work is about the spectral distribution of an electromagnetic field inside a box (also called black body). In Planck´s derivation there is no interaction between the field and the material.If you make a hole in the box you will observe Planck radiation.
I do not understand why you insist that I say Planck has made some kind of mistake. I am not saying that at all. I think Planck´s theory is great and perfect. Nothing wrong with Plank – on the contrary.
What is wrong is people stating that a real body radiates according to Planck distribution. That is not correct, and it is not Planck´s fault that people make that kind of statements.
I think your example with gases proves my point. The emission from an emitting gas, e.g. CO2, is not a Planck distribution. It will only contain resonance frequencies of the CO2 molecule. Consequently it will not really follow a Stefan Boltzmann T4 law.
A non emitting gas like eg N2 will not radiate at all. Rather obvious that emission proportional to T4 is not valid.
It is not enough to talk about the temperature of an object (solid, liquid, gas). One has to consider what frequency distribution those sources can generate.
My understanding from reading original papers is that Planck was fully aware of this. All his contemporary researchers wera aware of this.
I do not know why we have ended up in this overbelief in the generality of Planck distributions and SB law.
The earth isn’t a black body, far from it. If elements and molecules absorb/emit at unique frequencies then you must consider it a grey body. Each unique radiator has its own emissivity/absorptivity and the fact that measurements showing a spectrum with different molecules should be a dead giveaway that drawing a nice Planck curve isn’t proper.
Yet the thermodynamic property of heat and can be treated as properly but the atmosphere makes it terribly complicated. Convection, conduction, latent heat, and storage upsets the whole apple cart from the standpoint of consistency. That is something Planck never worked with and he did it on purpose.
I have some problems with the terminology in this area.
The equations does not fit the equations for a black body. Then it is a grey body … The concept of “grey bodies” is a nice way to say that the theory does not fit.
What is the physics in saying “grey boy”. It does not explain anything. It is just a word.
If I ask what is 2+2 and I get the answer 3. Can the respondent argue that he/she was right because it was a grey answer?
Inventing a new word to cover up for a deviation from the theoretical value does not add any knowledge nor substance.
“This does not fit the theory .. It must be a grey body”. Does it exist dark grey and light grey bodies? Maybe slightly blue bodies also..?
Real bodies do not radiate Planck distributions. Simple !
Sorry,
“The equations does not fit the equations for a black body” should have been:
“The observations does not fit the equations for a black body”
This is The Steel Greenhouse by Willis Eschenbach.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
If you agree with it, you have serious conceptual problems and cannot consider yourself a climate change sceptic.
The sphere is around -20C and by surrounding it by a shell its temperature increases to 29C.
Why stop at one shell, let’s keep adding shells and solve the energy crisis.
Sophistry at its worst. Neil Ferguson level on Covid.
Haha! I’ve already got a downvote count.
Good old wuwt.
Those are your (second-person singular) opinions.
I respectfully disagree.
PS : I’m closer to a “lukewarmer” than a “sceptic”, but my internal “System of the World” includes elements of both.
– – – – –
Perform the following experiment on 4 consecutive nights with (approximately) identical room (/ air / “surrounding space”) temperatures.
NB : This can be done at any time of year, but the “most striking” results will probably be obtained mid-winter, when the “surrounding space” temperature counts as “cold”.
– On night 1, go to bed with just a duvet cover over you
– On night 2, go to bed with a duvet cover and a TOG-6 duvet (in a single layer)
– On night 3, go to bed with a duvet cover and a TOG-12 duvet (in a single layer)
– On night 4, go to bed with a duvet cover “packed” with both a TOG-6 duvet and a TOG-12 duvet (in two, evenly spread, layers)
Question : Will you wake up with identical skin temperatures on mornings 2 to 5 ?
My hunch was about a third of the warming is due to CO2, based on physics, and the difference between land and SST warming.
That is an iteresting result.
I made a study on a measurement analysis error:
https://osf.io.huxge/
Here I showed that the true warming in the last 140 years was probably only 0.41°C.
I fitted this corrected temperature data curve to the base two logarithm of CO2 concentration with the following result:
1.04°C per doubling.
However calculating the coeficient of determination between the global land surface temperatures and base 2 logarithm of CO2 results in only 36%
So the resulting sensitivity is only 0.37°C per doubling of CO2. This fits very well to your results.
Willis,
As always your posts generate a lot of interesting comments from very intelligent contributors , many with differing perspectives and reasoning. I enjoy reading them all as many seem to make reasoned debate. But leitmotif’s bullshit has been a distraction. He should state his position and then listen/read.