Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Buoyed by equal parts of derision and praise for my last post, “Surface Radiation: Absorption And Emission“, I once again venture into the arena. I had an odd thought. The temperature has been generally rising over the period 2000-2021. I wondered if there was a way I could measure the efficiency of the greenhouse effect to see if the warming was due to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs). If the GHGs were the cause, then the greenhouse effect would need to be more efficient in terms of warming the surface.
A Prologue: The earth is much warmer than the moon, which receives the same amount of solar energy per unit area. It’s generally accepted, including by me, that the warmth is from the very poorly named “greenhouse effect”, which has nothing to do with greenhouses.
Now, if you don’t think the “greenhouse effect” exists, this is NOT the thread for you. There are lots of places to make that argument. This isn’t one of them. We know the earth is warmer than expected. Nobody has ever come up with an explanation for that except the greenhouse effect.
If you are unclear about how the greenhouse effect works, the physical basis of it has nothing to do with CO2 or with the atmosphere at all. I explain this in my posts “People Living In Glass Planets“, and “The Steel Greenhouse“.
To reiterate: PLEASE do not post your opinions here on why the greenhouse effect isn’t real, or why there’s no such thing as downwelling radiation, or that scientists don’t understand the instruments that measure IR. The web is a very big universe. Somewhere out there is the perfect place to make those arguments.
This is not that place.
To return to the question at hand, which is the efficiency of the greenhouse effect, here’s the temperature change during the period of the CERES satellite data.
Figure 1. Surface temperature changes, CERES data. It is a conversion of the CERES surface upwelling longwave data to units of degrees Celsius using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. It agrees well with e.g. the MSU lower tropical temperature, with a residual standard error of about a tenth of a degree C.
So the question, of course, is why did it warm over that period?
I thought, well, what the greenhouse effect does is to increase the surface temperature. The greenhouse effect starts with a certain amount of energy entering the climate system, and it ends with the surface being warmer and thus emitting more thermal radiation than would be expected if one were to look at say the moon, which gets the same energy from the sun as does the earth.
So … I figured that I could express the efficiency of the greenhouse effect by comparing the upwelling longwave radiation from the surface with the amount of solar energy entering the system. This measures the “end-to-end” efficiency of the entire system, including all feedbacks and interactions. I’ve chosen to express it as a “multiplier”—for every W/m2 of solar input, how many W/m2 of upwelling surface radiation do we get?
The amount of solar energy at the top of the atmosphere is about 340 watts per square meter (W/m2). However, about 100 W/m2 is reflected by the clouds and the surface. This means that the solar energy entering the system is on the order of 240 W/m2.
Upwelling longwave from the surface, on the other hand, is on the order of 400 W/m2. This means that the average greenhouse multiplier is approximately:
400 W/m2 / 240 W/m2 ≈ 1.66
In other words, for every watt per square meter of solar input, we get ~ 1.7 watts per square meter of upwelling surface radiation.
Now, we can run this calculation for each month, looking at the amount of thermal radiation emitted by the surface divided by the solar energy entering the system. Figure 2 shows that result. Remember that for increased greenhouse gases to be responsible for the warming, the greenhouse multiplier needs to increase.
Figure 2. Greenhouse multiplier. The multiplier is calculated as upwelling longwave surface radiation divided by incoming solar radiation (after albedo reflections). A multiplier of 2 would mean that the surface would be radiating two W/m2 of energy for each one W/m2 of solar energy actually entering the system. This shows that the greenhouse has increased the incoming solar radiation by about two-thirds, as measured at the surface.
Now, this is a most interesting finding. The efficiency of the planetary greenhouse has decreased slightly over the period—not significantly, but not increasing either.
In fact, the stability over the period is of interest in itself. Note that the standard deviation of the multiplier is 0.004 W/m2. Over the period, the end-to-end efficiency of the entire greenhouse system hardly varied at all. I’ve written before about the amazing stability of the system. This is another example.
So given the evidence above that the increase in upwelling surface radiation cannot be due to a change in greenhouse efficiency from increased CO2 or any other reason, what is the cause of the temperature increase? Here are the graphs of the two datasets that make up the greenhouse multiplier—the upwelling surface radiation, and the incoming solar radiation.
Figure 3. Upwelling surface thermal radiation (yellow, left panel), and incoming solar radiation after albedo reflections (red, right panel). Blue/black lines are LOWESS smooths of the data.
In Figure 3, we can see why the efficiency of the system hardly varied—the upwelling surface longwave was increasing pretty much in lockstep with the incoming solar energy actually entering the system.
Conclusions: We have observational evidence that the temperature increase from 2000-2021 was not due to an increase in greenhouse gases, or any increase in the efficiency of the greenhouse effect from any cause. The efficiency has been very stable over the period, with a standard deviation of 0.2% and no significant trend.
On the other hand, the change in incoming solar energy is both adequate to explain the increase in warming, and has the same shape as the change in surface radiation (blue LOWESS smooths in both panels in Figure 3). While there are undoubtedly other factors in play, the main cause of the warming is clearly the increase in the amount of solar energy after reflections from the clouds and the surface.
And once again, the clouds rule … go figure …
w.
Math Note: I tend to use “upwelling longwave surface radiation” and “temperature” interchangeably. Yes, I know that radiation varies as the fourth power of temperature, T4. However, the difference is trivial in the narrow range shown in e.g. Figure 3.
Figure 4 shows a comparison of the upwelling longwave shown in Figure 3 and the Stefan-Boltzmann derived temperature. Basically identical in form.
Figure 4. Temperature (yellow, left scale) and surface upwelling radiation (red, right scale)
Policy Note: I was 100% serious about asking people to refrain from commenting about things like how downwelling radiation doesn’t exist and the greenhouse effect isn’t real. Don’t make me tap the sign.
My Usual Request: Misunderstandings abound in communication. When commenting, PLEASE quote the exact words you are discussing, so we can all understand exactly who and what you are responding to.
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That sun. That pesky sun. Now who could have possibly imagined. Certainly not all the brilliant minds at the UN and the best bureaucrats and scientists they could buy with taxpayer money.
They won’t listen, never will. Do the light bulb test. Put a small cloth towel over a light bulb and eureka. Less heat radiates out of the light bulb. You can pump excess CO2 into that room, still less heat radiates from the light bulb. After all climate fraudsters, it’s the sun stupid!
No money in that,tho’.
To be more precise; sun radiations modulated by clouds.
Yep, this is a great way to puncture the false arguments that alarmists use to support the hypothesis of CO2 caused warming, Willis. Thanks.
Excellent and clear article. Thank you.
Of course the pushback is going to be that what you have measured is a change in albedo of clouds (and Ice) which are feedbacks to temperature increases driven by CO2 radiative forcing.
None other than Dessler himself published a clear sky/all sky analysis that he claimed showed a positive cloud feedback, which NASA then touted officially and loudly. The problem was his r^2 was 0.02! Essentially random no correlation. So observationally there is NO cloud feedback despite what the IPCC and the fancy climate models say. That is one of three main reasons the models run hot. (The others are the parameterization attribution problem, and the now ARGO verified under modeling of ocean precipitation, which causes the modeled water vapor feedback to be too high, which is why the modeled tropical troposphere hot spot doesn’t exist in reality.)
Well put, Rud.
There is negative cloud feedback, since they cause net cooling of about 5 degrees C with present cloud cover.
If cloud feedback was positive, Earth would have an atmosphere something like Venus only composed of superheated steam instead of CO2, since the dawn of time….
The models run hot because that is what “management” wants predicted.
They run hot mainly from the exaggerated water vapor positive feedback not limited by increasing cloud cover.
But the reason does not matter — we get the predictions that the programmers are paid to predict — politics not science.
Apparently, that is not true of the Russian INM model that no one seems to care about.
There is insufficient knowledge of all causes of climate change to build a model that is accurate by design. But there is enough knowledge to be “in the ballpark” of observations (reality). if accuracy mattered. But accuracy does not matter. The models are used as science-like props to defend always wrong predictions of climate doom. They will never, as a group, be accurate. The average model represents the consensus on climate change. I’m surprised there are no sanctions to delete the Russian model from the average !
People with good scientific minds, like yourself, think models are intended to make accurate predictions. They are not. Not in modern climate “science” (politics). They are climate computer games intended to scare people. That’s why the CMIP6 models have a higher range than the CMIP 5 models. And CMIP7 models will likely have a higher range than CMIP6 models. This is very predictable if you think like a leftist –delete reason and accountability.
Talking about Dessler is almost as bad as talking about Al Gore.
Two pretend scientists.
Great article. Elegant proof that albedo and solar irradience plays a major role in temperature. It’s intuitively obvious that CO2 has a negligible effect at 400 ppm compared to solar input.
WE, another nice post. I was curious about what the ‘settled science’ says the result should have been with the CO2 control knob changed over your CERES time interval.
Turns out did not even have to work it out myself. There is a ‘calculator’ available at scied.UCAR.edu. That is pretty official—UCAR is a major hub of settled climate science. I used it and the ‘official’ ECS (UCAR default) value of 3.0 (the calculator lets you input more or less ECS). The calculator runs in increments of 10 ppm CO2.
The CO2 in 2000 was 372 (annual average taking out seasonality). 370>>14.4C.
The CO2 in 2021 was 416. 420>>14.9C.
UCAR says you should have seen about a 0.5C increase in surface temperature from the GHE alone. You saw none (Fig 2). So much for UCAR’s settled climate science.
Except UAH is up over +0.5 degrees C. from 2000 to 2020.
From 2002 through July 2022, the trend is pretty small, ~0.2⁰ using the 12 month running mean (you can’t look at individual months). Even starting in the post-1998 La Niña dip, it’s less than 0.5⁰. Also, how do you explain the excellent correlation to solar activity?
Of course you can look at individual years — 2020 is about +0.5 degrees C warmer than 2000. These are not linear data so a linear trend line is not necessary. Did increased solar energy cause +0.5 degrees C. in 20 years. I’m not even close to being convinced the global warming in the past 20 years was caused by solar energy. And few others are convinced, for good reasons.
Maybe the CERES measure of solar activity is wrong.
There is a lot of calculating involved:
Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) FluxByCldTyp Edition 4 Data Product in: Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology Volume 39 Issue 3 (2022) (ametsoc.org)
And correlation is not causation
Other CERES related publications in 2022:
Publications – CERES (nasa.gov)
Knowledge comes from study of a variety of sources, not just one WUWT article.
Did you read Dubal/Vahrenholt 2021? Their data matches very closely to what Willis is reporting here.
Well, I mentioned individual months, not years. Also, annual changes thanks to ENSO and other factors makes the year-to-year data noisy. Also, I’m not talking about a linear trend line, but the running mean. I could just as easily say that, thanks to the supposed increase in GHG concentrations and (non-existent) GHG efficiency, the temperature should never, ever go down. That would be silly, too.
Willis explained why the temperature increase occurred. It was due to increased solar energy absorption. This was also reported in Dubal/Vahrenholt 2021. I’ve commented on this many times. They also used the CERES data.
Their work and now this work by Willis actually demonstrates the enhanced greenhouse effect, that is, that future warming is caused by CO2 increases that 1) increase DWIR warming the surface and 2) raising the effective radiation altitude, is shown to be false.
The reason increased DWIR does not lead to warming has to do with what I call boundary layer feedback. The reason the effective radiation altitude does not change is due to radiation exchange equilibrium in the atmosphere.
There is no “the temperature”. This is all navel gazing.
I think “the temperature” is fairly well defined and useful. Maybe a different name could be used, but that would probably lead to even more confusion.
No it’s not well-defined or useful.
I never claimed Willie E, is misinterpreting CERES data. I do not believe his conclusion — that’s all. Nor do many climate scientists around the world.
Willis has been a luke-warmer for a long time. His admission that the data shows no greenhouse warming is a step forward. He should be congratulated for following the data. If you have another explanation feel free to express it.
Keep in mind that the very same lack of greenhouse effect increase was documented in Miskolczi 2010 using NOAA data since the 1940s.
The Dubal/Vahrenholt 2021 paper, which essentially shows the same result from CERES data, has been denied for the past year. Climate scientists are in denial likely for the same reasons you express. That would mean they have the physics wrong which in their minds is “inconceivable”.
The UAH plot does not reflect attribution.
UAH reflects a decent measurement methodology and I strongly doubt that solar energy was the cause of all warming from 2000 to 2020.
Solar energy IS the cause of all warming if not from geothermal sources.
It’s just a matter of debate how and to what degree the energy delays it’s emission into space.
Rud – I think you spoke too soon. What Willis’ fig 2 shows is no increase in greenhouse efficiency. His fig. 1 gives surface temperature from CERES, which shows ~0.5°C increase over the period (by my patented “eyeball” method of curve fitting).
As we see more studies coming in, it does appear that the (as yet unexplained) decrease in cloud cover is the culprit behind recent warming.
Thanks to Willis for another neat piece of work, explained as always with exemplary clarity. I’ve been complimented over the years for the clarity and readability of my technical writing, but Willis’ clarity and readability are Olympic gold medal standard.
Nope. The issue is, IF the GHE is potentiating because of increased CO2, then his ‘efficacy’ should increase. It didn’t. I just supplied a separate ‘proof’.
Potentiating? Wtf does that mean, EXACTLY?
Willis,
As always, this is a very interesting explanation. As a interested non-expert, I always learn something reading your articles. If you could please indulge my technical ignorance, how is the CERES data for incoming solar radiation adjusted for albedo reflection in Figure No. 3 actually obtained? I assume that incoming solar is measured by satellite. Is it also possible to measure short-wave reflection by satellite measurement? Or, is this a calculated number?
Just wondering. Your observations always seem to make so much common sense that is hard to believe that no one else seems to be making the same observations.
Not Willis, but the answer is simple. Inbound solar is measured looking ‘up’ (away from Earth). Albedo reflected outbound solar is measured looking ‘down’ toward Earth. CERES simply uses two opposed sensors.
What I gather then is that energy received at the surface to produce 400 watts upwelling IR is a combination of 240 watts from solar radiation and 160 watts downwelling IR. Did I miss something?
Gary, here are the numbers:
Solar at TOA after reflection: 240 W/m2
Solar at surface after atmospheric absorption: 165 W/m2
Downwelling IR (which includes energy absorbed from the sun): 340 W/m2
Total is about half a kilowatt (500 watts) per square meter.
This produces ~ 400 W/m2 surface upwelling, along with about 100 lost from the surface in the form of latent & sensible energy.
w.
But you cannot add radiations. It is sophistry.
240W/m^2 equivalent to 255K or -18C
160W/m^2 equivalent to 230K or – 43C
400W/m^2 equivalent to 290K or +17C
There is no way the first 2 could produce the third.
Yep. The CO2 is already at the air temperature from energy absorbed on the way down. On the way up, its transparent..in/out without surface-air temperature change.
???
Leitmotif – It was a simple watt in vs watts out question. Willis answered satisfactorily.
No such thing as watts in v watts out question. Power is joules/sec i.e. energy/sec.
Willis mixing up energy with flux.
It’s a common ploy or mistake.
Power is not energy ; energy is power over a given time such as a kilowatt hour.
Radiation is something real. Rain is something real, they are not the same but both exist in some quantity. Quantities of the same thing add quite properly.
So two power jets of water at the same pressure will remove grime as effectively as one jet with twice that individual pressure?
Never worked for me.
But you cannot add radiations. It is sophistry
========
If you cant add radiation how do you calculate an average?
By using sophistry.
“But you cannot add radiations “
Of course you can, take one light source (240W/m^2) and another (160W/m^2) and shine them on a target, total incident on the target is 400W/m^2.
Of course you can add watts (or in this case, watts/ square meter, assuming the place they fall on are the same). What you can’t add is temperatures, which is (are) a derived quantity.
Richard Feynman had a delightful take-down of the New Math (back in the 1960s). One of the word problems asked students to add the temperatures of two stars (one of them allegedly green, but that was a different issue). You can’t do that, except to derive an average.
Interesting and insightful analysis, Willis. Thank you.
A small point. You say, “Note that the standard deviation of the multiplier is 0.004 W/m2.”
If I understand correctly, your multiplier is instead a dimensionless ratio.
Thanks, Dave. The units are actually W/m2 per W/m2, aka dimensionless. The answer you get when you use the multiplier is in W/m2. Further down in the post, I used percent. You’re right, I could have been clearer.
w.
Willis, IR through the IR window, usually claimed to average 40W plotted against incoming solar like your Fig 3 might show some interesting phase shift. This assuming it takes approximately the same amount of time for surface warming to produce enough cloud cover to cool the surface somewhat later and somewhere else….
This piece by Willis is even more fascinating than ever. A clear, brilliant and compelling analysis using data and not fashionable speculation.
Seconded.
Well done again Willis.
Thanks, Christopher, good to hear from you as always.
My very best to you and yours,
w.
Dear Christopher Monckton, for God’s sake, what else is needed to convince at least some politicians…? As you’ve said many times before, it’s game over. Can this great analysis of Mr. Eschenbach finally be the one that pulls out the plug?
Not a chance.It is somewhat like a US senator once said, during an interview, when writing to your representative was being energetically promoted. ‘We in Washington know why we are there and what we are doing. Yes, sometimes some of us have to pretend to care what the voters say in order to be sure of reelection, but we know what we are really about and that is what we are actually going to do.
Great praise from one lukewarmist to another, Brench.
And then a reciprocation from the other. Whoooppeee!
Tell me how the DLR or back radiation works, Brench, with empirical evidence (not Feldman et al, 2015) and without reference to Tyndall 1861
Tell me why you believe what warmists believe about the magical warming properties of CO2 but only less so.
And don’t use highfalutin scientific language to describe, say, molecular vibrational modes because I might know more than you think I do, like I know a CO2 molecule does not have a dipole moment.
(You are now in MODERATION) SUNMOD
And you have to love Figure 4 where he compares surface ULR with surface temperature. If he took any notice of what you have previously stated, he would realise this proves that it is an “inferred power flux” based entity on the temperature.
Only climate phiisics has “cool energy” that cannot warm anything.
Well actually, folks who know basic physics (including the laws of thermodynamics) know that a colder troposphere IR cannot ever warm a warmer surface IR. There is a heat exchange. But it ALWAYS goes net hot to net cold. Confusing intermediate states does not reflect well.
This indicates you do not understand electro-magnetic radiation. In this field, energy only flows in one direction at any point in time and space. There is no “net”
Mishchenko has a proof of that reality and makes reference here:
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/mmishchenko/publications/2013_AIP_Conf_Proc_1531_11.pdf
Note that the link is from NASA. GISS employed Mishchenko to achieve an understanding of the real physics of the atmosphere. In essence to get away from climate phiisics that pervade the club.
Anyone using equations to represent physical phenomena should have an appreciation of the assumptions implicit in those equations and where the assumptions fail. The S-B equation is an approximation and is useful in many applications but not in defining heat transport within the Earth’s atmosphere.
This indicates you do not understand electro-magnetic radiation. In this field, energy only flows in one direction at any point in time and space. There is no “net”
At last, someone who says how it is.
Kudos to RickWill.
The S-B equation is an approximation and is useful in many applications but not in defining heat transport within the Earth’s atmosphere.
Double Kudos.
One more and you get to keep the trophy, RickWill.
“This indicates you do not understand electro-magnetic radiation. In this field, energy only flows in one direction at any point in time and space. There is no “net””
It’s you who doesn’t understand e-m radiation.
Consider a satellite orbiting the earth passing between the Earth and the Moon. The satellite measures light coming from the Moon and light coming from the Earth, what do you think happens if the satellite isn’t there?
Lovely example.
w.
Sorry, your GHE ignorance knows no bounds.
Water has a dipole moment. That is why microwave ovens are so effective.
True, CO2 does not. Thatnis whynit is irrelevant to microwave ovens.
BUT, it does have an elastic linear (stretch/shrink) bond that stores and then re-emits its absorbed IR. My goodness, at least learn basic physics before posting here.
CO2 “bond” that stores” and then “re-emits”? Like it absorbs and then emits IR? If true, what’s with the comment about basic physics? How about simple understandable concepts?
I think 135,000 miles per second is the minimum speed of the IR wave…..
It is a mysterious universe.
Have a look at the physics behind a CO2 laser:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-dioxide_laser
In the case of the 15𝜇m radiation it’s a bond that bends and then re-emits the absorbed energy.
Sorry, your GHE ignorance knows no bounds.
Water has a dipole moment. That is why microwave ovens are so effective.
True, CO2 does not.
So I was correct that CO2 does not have a dipole moment?
So your “GHE ignorance knows no bounds” is not correct?
BUT, it does have an elastic linear (stretch/shrink) bond that stores and then re-emits its absorbed IR. My goodness, at least learn basic physics before posting here.
So when I said to Brench about “ molecular vibrational modes” you did not think that was how I perceived how a a CO2 molecule absorbs and re-emits a photon. This is a reduced discussion on a previous discussion with Brench.
You are still blowing smoke from that orifice, Rud.
Willis, you say “We know the earth is warmer than expected. Nobody has ever come up with an explanation for that except the greenhouse effect.”
I am pretty sure there are other hypotheses, making your unnecessary strong claim wrong. This has no effect on your argument.
Thanks, David. What are the alternate hypotheses?
If you are speaking of the “it’s from gravity” hypothesis of Nikolov/Zeller and Hans Jelbring, I proved that hypothesis incorrect in my post “A Matter Of Some Gravity“.
Quite proud of that post, actually. It’s a proof that they are wrong, not an argument that they are wrong. And proofs are rare in climate science.
Regards,
w.
The energy balance is controlled by two physical processes involving ice formation. Sea ice insulates ocean surface. Atmospheric ice, resulting from deep convection, sets an upper limit on open ocean surfaces that can not sustain a temperature higher than 30C by limiting surface sunlight.
The energy balance is controlled by temperature sensitive processes with powerful feedback.
The ability of the atmosphere to form an LFC is the only reason Earth is not a snowball. The concept of “greenhouse effect” controlling earth’s surface temperature is ridiculous. You have just proven that it has no effect on the temperature.
I can’t say how many points it covers but absorbed IR energy can and is (claimed) to be transferred through kinetic interactions. In fact, according to William Happer here,
http://www.sealevel.info/Happer_UNC_2014-09-08/Another_question.html
in the lower atmosphere, 99.9999999% of the time surface IR absorbed by CO2 and H2O is transferred to other atmospheric molecules through kinetic interactions before it can be re-emitted.
This would seem to me to be an explanation of how warming occurs that doesn’t seem to fit the general greenhouse meme. It does not require any back radiation to explain the surface being warmer than just from absorbed solar. Of course it does involve GH gases.
And of course we know energy is never transferred from the 98% of the atmospheric molecules to IR active molecules which would increase emissivity and cooling at the ToA. It’s a one-way energy transfer in climastrology.
If everything were a fixed molecule in space and time that had no kinetic energy and the only mode of energy transfer were radiative then you’d be correct. The atmosphere transfers energy back to the surface in other ways than radiative emission of IR, in fact, it is by far the least significant and is why you keep finding no signal from the ever increasing CO2.
No one including the IPCC wants to talk about natural causes of climate change, so climate change gets blamed on AGW. What’s left? It’s called starting with a conclusion junk science.
It is too strong of a claim. It gets the big picture wrong. The surface is not warmer because of energy trapped high in the atmosphere and radiated downward. It is warmed from energy absorbed low in the atmosphere, radiated upward and shared based on atmospheric density. You need radiating gases to effect the warming with either explanation, the correct one has more or less a fixed warming effect. It is why Willis couldn’t find any increase and neither did Miskolczi in his 2010 paper looking at 70 years of NOAA data.
Unstated (unless I missed it) was that the decreasing “Incoming” radiation was likely from a decreasing trend in low level clouds. Where else could the albedo vary as rapidly? Real Question…I dont know of any other “delta-albedo” sources to chose from (maybe albedo effects from changes in vegetation?). It was obviously NOT from any solar output change (solar radiation is not that variable).
I believe I’ve seen several references citing Satellite Data Records showing a several Decades long slow decline in Low Cloud Cover…enough to account for 100% of the Average Surface Temperature Increase on record.
This article and the actual Cloud Albedo reductions appear to “fit” quite well.
Reducing Cloudiness would also seem to counter the KEY 3X’s Hydrological Amplification (“Key” to produce Catastrophic Climate Change from a paltry DIRECT CO2 Effect) of the very small DIRECT 0.3° C to 0.7° C CO2 “Doubling” Temperature Effect.
Lower Cloudiness would require a Lower Global Humidity level…not the *INCREASE* in Humidity required to CREATE a 300% Climate Crisis Multiplier Effect.
Willis: For the time period in question, how much incoming energy has been accumulated in the total atmosphere expressed in terms of w/m2 and based on the amount of observed warming?
No clue. Hang on.
OK. Atmosphere weighs 5.3E+18 kg. Specific heat of dry air is ~1000J/kg/°C.
That gives us 5.3E+21 joules to warm the atmosphere by 1°C. Pick your period and your warming and multiply it out.
Is 5.3E+21 joules a little or a lot? Well, 1 W/m2 over the surface of the earth is 5.1E+14 watts. A watt is a joule/second, so that’s 1.6E+22 joules per year.
w.
“A watt is a joule second …”
A Watt is a Joule/sec: Joule per second.
Thanks, Dan, fixed. I did the math right and got the units wrong.
w.
My thinking was (is) that the energy imbalance at the earth’s surface over the long haul to generate the amount of warming is trivially small. I could be wrong, so check me on this (anybody). The atmosphere has warmed by 5.3E21 joules in roughly the past 50 years (very approximate, but in the ballpark). This amounts to 5.3E21/(50*365*86400) joules/sec = 3.36E12 J/S = 3.36E12 watts. The surface area of the earth is 5.1E14M2, so the long term watts/sq meter = 3.36E12/5.1E14 = .0066 watts/sq meter. Can that be right?
Willis Eschenbach, so nice, thank you.
Different “greenhouse multiplier” at the 0°, 30°, 60°, 90° latitudes?
Kind regards
Anders Rasmusson
A minor niggle: “earth is much warmer than the moon, which receives the same amount of solar energy.” should you not add per metre squared?
Yep.
w.
I meant to add this to my niggle comment: I greatly admire your posts on this issue, those you have done on emergent phenomena in particular. Thanks
Will this make any difference?
https://www.ft.com/content/7be48eed-33fd-43d8-b9a8-a52b5dbaaf0c
Not if we can’t read it without subscribing so you can get a pittance of a commission, baksheesh!
Not to Willis’ contribution to educating us atmospheric know-nothings.
Otherwise – did you have a point?
Yes
Gravity generates heat.
The satellite is unable to discern between IR sourced up-welling IR, other spectrum sourced up-welling IR, solar and cosmic particulate dynamic inductive sourced up-welling IR, non-solar sourced energy converted to up-welling IR and most pointedly human generated or human and life creation sourced up-welling IR.
There is a not insignificant amount of heat generated by simply the compression of air through moving machinery or stationary structures inhibiting wind and water motions.
If the IPCC thinks modeling the clouds is too hard of work, monitoring the effects of human activity is probably not even on their minds. That’s why they’re trying to schill a 55% fudge-factor linear progression instead of doing any science at all. What they are doing is presenting unreliable polling information, ALL anecdotal in form, as scientific input… and it’s bullshit all around.
Gravity generated heat at the moment that the atmosphere was formed. One day later that heat ws gone to space. No new heat can be generated from a static pressure.
If you inflate a tire, after a few hours it is back to ambient temperature and still under pressure. No new heat is generated at all.
BTW, Willis explicitly asked not to start a discussion on alternate “explanations” like gravity, which were thoroughly debunked years ago:
‘I proved that hypothesis incorrect in my post “A Matter Of Some Gravity“’
Why reply? Gravity is not static, it’s continual work done, else air lost to space. No tyre holding bike tyre air in. Just like greenhouse stops convection.
Macha:
In physics, “work” has a very specific definition. The work (energy) done on an object is the mechanical force on that object multiplied by the distance the object is moved by the force. (Technically, it’s force integrated over distance, but we’ll keep it simple here.)
Taking the derivative, the rate of work (power) at any time is the force multiplied by the velocity of the object it causes.
Taking the atmosphere as a whole, the distance of movement caused by gravitational force is zero, and the velocity is zero. Any down movements must be balanced by up movements somewhere else.
So the “continual work” done by gravity on the atmosphere is zero. This is basic high school physics.
Lol yes, high school physics of work equal to zero if something is moved from point A to B and then back to A, magic.
When X does work on Y to move it from point A to point B, then Y does the same amount of work on X to move it back to point A the resulting transfer between X and Y is zero.
Yes, basic high school physics (for those who were paying attention…)
I love the bike tire analogy where the pumping of the tire (the sun) stops and is supposed to disprove Kinetic Theory of Gases.
How exactly does his argument conflict with the Kinetic Theory of Gases?
Cliff Mass often cites the heating effect on air blowing down from the peaks of the Rocky Mountains westwards toward the Pacific North Western coastal regions.
which causes air elsewhere to raise, lowering it temperature. However, neither mass of air gains or loses energy.
The claim is that the amount of energy used by all human activity in one year is provided by the sun every couple hours.
True.
Human energy use = 585E+18 joules per year
Solar at surface = 165 W/m2 * surface area in meters = 84E+15 watts = 84E+15 joules/sec
Time to equal = 585E+18 / 84e15 = 7054 seconds ≈ 2 hours
w.
Okay, we have very small movement in solar inputs up and down as measured in both years and individual solar cycles. Now if the oceans are capacitor storage systems, are groups of weak solar cycles and groups of higher solar cycles of say 50-70 years each still considered insignificant? See Leif charts for examples
Great article – thank you. The clouds….yes indeed, by blocking/reflecting 100 W/m2 are they not indeed the dominant factor in all these analyses? I’m anxious to know why cosmic galactic rays and the theory by Svensmark gets so little traction/attention. What is the problem with that theory?
It doesn’t fit the desired narrative to which everyone should stick, or else.
Supposedly, best estimates calculations say the effect is real by insignificant in magnitude.
” the main cause of the warming is clearly the increase in the amount of solar energy after reflections from the clouds and the surface.”
Jumping to a conclusion.
Solar irradiance change was insufficient to explain warming from 2000 to 2020, which is over +0.5 degrees C. in the UAH global average temperature record
UAH Global Temperature Update for August, 2022: +0.28 deg. C « Roy Spencer, PhD (drroyspencer.com)
Solar irradiance – Wikipedia
Richard, you didn’t understand the point Willis was making: with a constant amount of greenhouse gases, the warming should be +0.5 K from 2000 to 2020 only caused by the solar input, as that is the fortifying factor by GHGs.
But the GHGs increased a lot in that period, According to the climate models, there should be some 0.5 K increase from GHGs alone, that is with a constant input from the sun.
With both increasing, there should be 1 K total increase in temperature. But there is only 0.5 K warming certainly caused by the solar input (as the fortifying factor didn’t change at all), thus where is the warming caused by GHGs?
There are many climate change variables.
No one knows the exact effect of each one.
You have mentioned only two of them. The sum of all the variables is obviously less warming than thought to come from those two variables alone. What does that prove? Nothing !
The following variables are likely to influence Earth’s climate:
1) Earth’s orbital and
orientation variations
2) Changes in ocean circulation
Including ENSO and others
3) Solar activity and irradiance,
including clouds, volcanic and manmade aerosols, plus possible effects of cosmic rays and extraterrestrial dust
4) Greenhouse gas emissions
5) Land use changes
(cities growing, logging, crop irrigation, etc.)
6) Unknown causes of variations of a
complex, non-linear system
7) Unpredictable natural and
manmade catastrophes
8) Climate measurement errors
(unintentional or deliberate)
9) Interactions and feedbacks,
involving two or more variables.
“There are many climate change variables. No one knows the exact effect of each one”. Frick, thanks Tipster!
As I mentioned above, the Dubal/Vahrenholt 2021 paper can shed more light on the situation. They found the cloud changes correlated well with natural ocean changes. The big change in the PDO during 2014 seems a likely candidate.
Let’s jump to the bottom line
I believe Willie E. is the best writer on this website
So I am biased in his favor.
If Willie E. is correct with this article, then he has, in one article, refuted 20 years of consensus climate science. This article would be worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Do I believe that actually happened?
Sorry, I do not believe that happened and my instincts are good on the subject. For Willie E. to be right, virtually every other climate scientist has to be wrong. That seems very unlikley.
If the article was on the future climate, that could be true.
Climate scientists have so many always wrong predictions of doom. Easy to refute that.
But the article is about the past climate — the past 20 years –and I very much doubt that Willie E. has discovered what thousands of scientists around the world overlooked. I’m not buying the conclusion, no matter how much I enjoy reading Willie E. articles here — and I do read every one.
Thank you for deleting most liefmotif attack posts. I normally oppose censorship. But when I recommend any article here to friends, they read all the comments, and then can get a false impression of WUWT readers from any drive by character attacks. Not that I loved this article, but I’ve tried to be civil.
Richard, others have pointed out something I didn’t know—my findings here agree with a previous study by Dubal/Vahrenholt 2021. It showed that the warming 2000-2021 was caused by changes in albedo leading to more solar energy entering the system.
Has my analysis “refuted 20 years of consensus climate science“? Nah. It has, however, shown that the last 20 years of warming were NOT caused by CO2.
What I did that Dubal/Vahrenholt did not do was to show that the efficiency of the total system, including all cloud and water feedbacks, energy advection, and all other physical processes, has not increased in the last 21 years.
Now, I’d say that is an important finding. It does not mean that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. It does mean, however, that whatever gains in efficiency that occurred due to increases in CO2 have been counteracted by other climate phenomena.
w.
“ It does not mean that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. It does mean, however, that whatever gains in efficiency that occurred due to increases in CO2 have been counteracted by other climate phenomena.”
Well it’s important to take note of this; when most people refute the back radiation hypothesis, they are not saying that certain gases are not IR active, or that they are not incident with outgoing IR, and in turn emit the same frequencies of light. They are saying that this phenomenon is not close to the primary warming mechanism of the atmosphere. (with obvious exceptions to “most people”)
For instance, one can argue against eugenics while still believing in the underlying biological science that the sophistry is built upon.
The original greenhouse effect does exist. However, it is saturated which has been known for many decades. The saturation occurs very low in the atmosphere. For CO2 the saturation occurs well below 200 ppm and now less than 10 meters..
The problem comes with the enhanced greenhouse effect. This is based on increases in DWR and a supposed increase in the effective emission altitude.
We now have several different ways of looking at the data (Miskolczi 2010, Dubal/Vahrenholt 2021 and now Willis 2022) that all come the same conclusion. There’s been no increase in the greenhouse effect.
I think Willis should publish his result. It is very important and brilliant in its simplicity. It also confirms the previous work of DubalVahrenholt and Miskolczi.
The linear trend 2000-2020 is +0.3C.
The year to year (2000 to 2020) change is about +0.5 degrees
You have applied a linear trend to non-linear data
The linear trend 2000-2020 is +0.3C.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:2000/to:2020/trend
And… after reflections of lesser or greater degrees whether clouds or the surface? You were a little dodgy there Richard.
This article is either worthy of a Nobel Prize or it is not.
I’m guessing “not”. If I had the answers to why the global average temperature rose from 2000 to 2020, maybe I’d get the Nobel Prize. My “answer” is no one knows exactly why GAST rose from 2000 to 2020, and Willie E. is no exception.
Very nice Willis.
Good post. Thanks.
Now, if you don’t think the “greenhouse effect” exists, this is NOT the thread for you.
So, whether the greenhouse effect exists is just an opinion? It’s whether one thinks it exists or doesn’t think it exists is the question? It’s nothing to do with empirical evidence, then?
There are lots of places to make that argument. This isn’t one of them.
Oh, scary. Stay away if you are sceptical of the existence of the greenhouse effect? Doesn’t that contradict the raison d’etre of WUWT?
We know the earth is warmer than expected.
“warmer than expected”? What does that even mean?
Nobody has ever come up with an explanation for that except the greenhouse effect.
What? An explanation of “warmer than expected”?
Nobody has ever come up with an explanation for the existence of the universe except for the existence of a supreme being. 6 out of every 7 people on this planet practise a religion and believe in god.
If you are unclear about how the greenhouse effect works, the physical basis of it has nothing to do with CO2 or with the atmosphere at all. I explain this in my posts “People Living In Glass Planets“, and “The Steel Greenhouse“.
Except “The Steel Greenhouse” was thoroughly and laughingly debunked by astrophysicist Joseph Postma many years ago and accused the author of having no scientific training.
To reiterate: PLEASE do not post your opinions here on why the greenhouse effect isn’t real, or why there’s no such thing as downwelling radiation, or that scientists don’t understand the instruments that measure IR. The web is a very big universe. Somewhere out there is the perfect place to make those arguments.
This is not that place.
So do not debate on the greenhouse effect, do not debate on whether downwelling radiation can raise the temperature of the planet surface and do not argue about what pyrgeometers actually measure?
Doesn’t leave much to debate, does it Willis?
Pass. I made a polite request to take such claims elsewhere. Don’t make me tap the sign.
w.
Pass.
They were perfectly good questions, Willis.
If you don’t have the answers just say so.
No need to take this moral high ground of a a messiah who has been questioned on his faith.
Tap the sign? I only, and have always, asked for evidence on your assertions about the surface warming effects of DLR or back radiation.
Come on, Willis, loosen your corsets and indulge me and, I’m sure, only a minority of WUWT posters. I and they can’t really do you any damage as you have the whole lukewarmist community behind you.
Just one reply and then I hope this nonsense will be stopped by the moderators:
DLR was not only measured with pyrgeometers
https://scienceofdoom.com/2010/07/17/the-amazing-case-of-back-radiation/
which are questioned by some, but also line by line as full spectrum:
https://escholarship.org/content/qt3428v1r6/qt3428v1r6.pdf Fig. 1.
In both cases, that amounts to around 300 W/m2.
Measured, really measured.
As a black body absorbs all wavelengths and a gray body like the earth still absorbs almost all of the DLR, the conservation of energy requires that the incoming energy at the earth’s surface is the sum of incoming sunlight and incoming DLR, which is (much) higher than of the incoming sunlight alone.
That makes that the surface must warm up to restore the balance…
I saw values in milliwatts and great mention of models, but I drifted off sometime after.
The A side of Fig. 1 is the real DLR as measured by spectral analyses, the B side is the difference with what the radiation model expected. Not that bad…
Estimated atmospheric LWR is sensitive to near surface temperature. So the “measured” total LWR of the atmosphere is a factor of the temperature that the instrument is in. Too funny. LWR is not measured directly at the surface, it can’t be, it is inferred with circular reasoning that roughly converts near surface temperature to a mathematical abstraction based on back radiation hypothesis.
You missed the point.
Discuss it on another post. Maybe start one.
Hey lazy guy, the internet has a lot of information YOU can look up YOURSELF to answer your questions about downward longwave radiation. But you didn’t write here to get an answer. You wrote to pester with your favorite argument because you either can’t be bothered to read what the rest of the climate science community has already written about DLR and warming or you simply won’t accept it. If you aren’t convinced by the robust body of science and evidence to support it, Willis certainly won’t be able to persuade you either. But that’s not why you asked, is it? People who ask questions to needle and provoke an argument rather than to learn are…annoying. Once we realize what the game is that the provoker is playing, the best response is to walk away, because arguing is a waste of time. And I just wasted several minutes.
Haha!
Now I get a bunch of replies from a guy who quotes arch warmist, Science of Doom and a reference to the totally debunked Feldman et al (2015) paper and a couple from Willis groupies who basically tell me to back off.
Nice try, guys but I’m here till Mr Watts bans me for questioning the science which will probably be quite soon.
(You are now in Moderation because you are chronically off topic threadjacking and being very impolite) SUNMOD
I’ll politely ask now for the final time. Please stop trying to sidetrack the discussion to your personal bete noir, your white whale. Your misunderstandings of thermodynamics are NOT the subject of this post.
If you have comments on greenhouse efficiency, or better yet, calculations involving greenhouse efficiency, I’m more than happy to discuss them. That’s what this post is about.
My best advice would be, write up your ideas of why the earth is so much warmer than the moon, including the math and any references.
Or write up your explanation of how thousands of scientists using pyrgeometers are measuring something that doesn’t exist. Send it to WUWT, see if they will print it. Or start your own blog and hold forth there.
But in any case, THIS ISN’T THE PLACE.
If you persist, don’t be surprised if you get snipped. It is NOT an attempt to silence you. It is to keep you from your endless attempts to sidetrack the conversation. Not gonna happen.
My best to you,
w.
Why do you not just answer the questions I posed at the start of this thread, Willis?
[Personal attack snipped – w.]
leitmotif September 2, 2022 4:34 pm
leitmotif, I explained in the head post why I won’t answer your endless puerile questions—because THAT IS NOT THE SUBJECT OF THIS POST.
Start your own damn post if you want to discuss those things. Or discuss them on someone else’s thread.
Because here, you’re just screaming “Look at me, listen to me, answer my questions, discuss what I want to discuss …” along with endless personal insults.
Sorry, but you’ve burned your bridges with me.
w.
He has been put in MODERATION.
Thanks, Sunset. I asked him politely several times.
Onwards!
w.
There is an old saying that people are often their own worst enemies. Why do you insist on continuing to poke the wasp nest when it is obvious that the wasps don’t like it? You are not only lacking in manners, but also common sense. If you are banned, you lose your opportunity to comment in the future.
I’ll tap the minus. You can make your argument all you want even though it was noted that this isn’t the place for that argument. Fyi, it makes you look a.) truculent, 2.) arrogant, like your opinion is SO important that it must be expressed at all costs and in every forum regardless of its relevance, and e.) not very bright since you don’t appear to grasp the actual points being made by the author so you resort to your favorite argument instead. But if you want to be a zealot, by all means…
(SNIPPED)
(No more thread jacking attempts stick with the current topic) SUNMOD
The article provided data about the greenhouse effect.
What problem do you have with the data presented?
Saying “the GHG effect does not exist” isn’t “just” an unsubstantiated opinion (/ conjecture), it is one directly contradicted by several sets of empirical data (including the CERES satellite data, a subset of which is used in the ATL article).
After reflection I concluded (possibly incorrectly, as is always the case …) that most of my posts on CiF that were “Removed by a moderator” ended up that way due to my infringing the Guardian‘s “please stay on-topic” clause of their Community Guidelines.
I didn’t always agree with their “strictness” when assessing what was (not) “on topic”, but I accepted those decisions without rancour.
It’s what is called in some circles the “your house, your rules” level of politeness.
– – – – –
Here at WUWT a few of the “Policy” elements are :
This specific post included the specific “warning” that :
This is the WUWT “house”, so their “rules” about what is, and is not, “on topic” apply.
Gratuitous insults are unwelcome in any “house”.
Why are these such difficult “life lessons” for you to learn ?
Mr. BLR: It doesn’t help that Mr. motif quotes Mr. E, only to distort the quote in the very next line. Over and over. The only effect is that Mr. motif comes across as a whiny b., and is probably lucky the mod spared him further embarrassment. If he does have comment in other posts, this will be hard to forget.
From my exchange with “Mr. motif” under Willis(s previous article (direct link).
I would hope (probably in vain, but still …) that “Mr. motif” would consider more carefully just why their “outspokenness” attracts the attention of moderators on sites as widely spaced on the “climate debate spectrum” as WUWT and the Graun.
He can still post here but it requires moderator approval to make them appear on the board to stop his trolling and immature attacks on people.
He is given a chance to improve his behavior in time can be removed from moderation.
Willis,
I am not a scientist, but this brings up a question in my mind.
Do your conclusions here reflect and support the study done a while back by Dr. Happer that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are largely saturated with IR and therefore incapable of making any further meaningful contribution to atmospheric temperatures?
On a related topic, does this imply an Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity much lower than most models reflect?
ECS is not indistinguishable from zero.
Distinguishable. ECS is theoretical and current attempts at quantifying it are next to meaningless.
The models reflect whatever ECR is needed for a scary global warming prediction. It does not have to match observations because accurate predictions are not a goal.
[Snipped: contained a personal attack only, not one scrap of science. w.]
Do you have a reference to that study by Will?
I should have posted it in my comment above. Apologies for not doing so.
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/study-suggests-no-more-co2-warming
“Happer and van Wijngaarden’s central conclusion is this:
“For the most abundant greenhouse gases, H2O and CO2, the saturation effects are extreme, with per-molecule forcing powers suppressed by four orders of magnitude at standard concentrations…””
My point here was that the conclusions drawn by the Happer/Wijngaarden paper and what Willis is saying here seem to complement each other. Namely, that CO2’s ability to affect the climate at 420 ppm and up is low/minimal.
Thanks, Will’s paper states that a doubling of CO2 would result in ~3W/m^2 increase in forcing, and if other IR active gases are considered it could be about 5W/m^2. This is consistent with the conventional value so doesn’t support the Heartland Institute’s interpretation of the paper, fortunately the original preprint was linked.
“CERES TOA products are measured products, taking into account the solar radiation incident at the TOA. CERES surface products are a combination of CERES measured fluxes and atmospheric profiles (GEOS-5.4.1), NCEP SMOBA Ozone, MATCH aerosols and cloud cover properties derived from MODIS Collection 5 until March 2017”
I’m not convinced that it doesn’t say more about the methodology than physical reality.