Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Apparently I must be a glutton for punishment, because here I am in the arena once again, discussing the results of my research and preparing for the insults and brickbats.
However, there’s no place I’d rather be—I’m a Teddy Roosevelt man. He famously said:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
But I digress …
The earth’s climate is an energy flow system that on average is approximately at steady-state. At steady-state, the amount of energy absorbed by each part of the system is equal to the amount of energy lost by that part of the system. If this were not true, the affected parts would be continually either warming or cooling.
And this is true of the earth’s surface. It basically loses as much energy as it gains, and as a result, the earth’s surface temperature over the 20th century was stable to within less than one percent.
Let me start this perambulation with the fact that not all of the energy flux absorbed by the surface is converted to surface temperature and lost to thermal radiation. Some of the energy flux is lost as “sensible” heat, heat we can feel, through conduction to the atmosphere and convection away from the surface. And some is lost from the surface as “latent heat”, meaning it is heat removed by evaporation at the surface. After those losses, the energy that remains heats the surface and is lost as longwave upwelling radiation from the surface.
Figure 1 shows the relative amounts of energy absorbed and lost by the surface.
Figure 1. Energy budget of the surface, showing energy gained (longwave and shortwave) and energy lost (as longwave radiation and as latent/sensible heat.) Since the planet is at a steady state, gains and losses are ~ equal.
Now, suppose that we want to raise the surface temperature of the earth by 1°C. How much additional energy flux will be necessary to maintain that new warmer steady-state?
Well, since at steady-state we need gains to equal losses, we need as much flux as the additional amount of energy flux that will be radiated at the new higher temperature. Using what is known as the “Stefan-Boltzmann Equation”, we can calculate that we need a minimum of an additional 5.5 watts per square meter (W/m2) of energy flux to raise a blackbody at the earth’s temperature by one degree Celsius. (It’s a minimum because the percentage of latent/sensible heat loss increases slightly with increasing temperature, but we can ignore that in this analysis.)
However, we also need to note that from Figure 1, only about 78% of the absorbed energy flux is converted to temperature and lost as radiation. So including latent/sensible heat losses we’ll need 5.5 / .78 ≈ 7 W/m2 of additional total energy flux absorbed by the surface to raise the surface temperature one degree.
Now, consider the mainstream IPCC position, that a doubling of CO2 will increase downwelling longwave at the “top-of-atmosphere” (TOA) by 3.7 W/m2. This means that if you instantaneously double the CO2, the amount of longwave escaping the planet at the top of the atmosphere will be reduced by 3.7 W/m2.
And this additional 3.7 W/m2 of downwelling radiation from the CO2 doubling is claimed by the IPCC to increase the surface temperature by 3°C.
Bottom line? According to the IPCC, it only takes ~ 1.2 W/m2 of additional TOA forcing to increase the surface temperature by 1°C.
So here is the serious question I alluded to in the title …
How does a top-of-atmosphere CO2 forcing of 1.2 W/m2 mysteriously turn into the 7 W/m2 of additional surface energy flux that we need to warm the earth by 1°C?
The IPCC folks wave their hands and vaguely allude to “cloud feedback” and “water vapor feedback” increasing the downwelling IR from the top-of-atmosphere to downwelling IR at the surface.
But this would require that the feedback amplify the original signal by a factor of almost six … and my understanding is that a feedback factor greater than one leads to runaway.
So my question remains:
What mysterious force is changing the 1.2 W/m2 of CO2 TOA forcing, the forcing that the IPCC says will raise the surface temperature by 1°C, into the 7 W/m2 of surface absorbed energy flux that is actually necessary to raise the global temperature by 1°C?
All serious answers welcome.
My best to all,
w.
Footnote: The idea that cloud feedback is positive is quite unlikely. First, Le Chatelier’s Principle says that if a dynamic equilibrium (a steady-state condition like the climate) is disturbed by changing the conditions, the position of equilibrium shifts to counteract the change to reestablish an equilibrium.
Next, the claim of a net positive cloud feedback is contradicted by the CERES data. Here’s net cloud radiative effect (CRE) versus temperature on a gridcell by gridcell basis.
Figure 2. Net cloud radiative effect (CRE). This is the change in downwelling radiation in W/m2 when clouds are present. It includes both the longwave and shortwave effects. Below the horizontal line the net effect is cooling.
The slope of the yellow line indicates the direction of the cloud feedback. If it cools more with increasing temperature (negative feeback), the slope goes down to the right. And if the feedback is positive, if it cools less with increasing temperature, the slope goes up to the right.
In the tropics, about 40% of the planet, the feedback is extremely negative, the slope goes almost vertical. And from -15°C to 15°C, another 33% of the planet, the feedback is also negative.
So it doesn’t seem the answer to my question is “cloud feedback”.
Of Note: As with my previous two posts, I am examining the ramifications and the mathematics of the greenhouse effect. If you think the greenhouse effect violates physical laws, read my two posts, People Living In Glass Planets, and The Steel Greenhouse. And if after reading them, you still think the GH effect doesn’t exist, or that downwelling radiation doesn’t exist, or that radiative energy fluxes don’t add, then please, go away. Don’t go away mad, in fact you are welcome to continue to read the comments … but this is NOT the thread to dispute downwelling radiation or the greenhouse effect. Those subjects tend to totally threadjack the thread to an inane endless discussion that settles nothing, and I’m not interested in that. Please take those and related subjects to some other thread.
I’m interested in a serious answer to my question about how it’s supposed to work, how 1.2 W/m2 at the TOA is converted into 7 W/m2 at the surface, and where that extra energy is allegedly coming from.
MATH: The change in radiation from a 1°C temperature change of some object is given by the differential of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation:
dWdTC = function(c,epsilon=1) 2.27 * 10-7 * epsilon * (c + 273.15)3
where c is the temperature in degrees and epsilon is emissivity. In a steady-state condition where average losses are equal to average gains, this is also the amount of additional energy needed to raise the object’s temperature by 1°C. As is customary in this kind of analysis, and because the emissivity of the earth is somewhere above 0.95, for simplicity I’m using epsilon = 1.
My Usual: Please quote the exact words you are discussing in a comment so we can all follow your train of thought.
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Honour to the Brave !!!
Great things happen when Willis dares to be inspired!
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% knowing who to hire.
Willis, you say this: “The earth’s climate is an energy flow system that on average is approximately at steady-state. At steady-state, the amount of energy absorbed by each part of the system is equal to the amount of energy lost by that part of the system. If this were not true, the affected parts would be continually either warming or cooling.”
My view is quite different, namely that since weather is chaotic the averages oscillate across a wide range of scales, so never approximate steady state. (This is called “strange statistics” in nonlinear dynamics.) As for the affected parts, at my house it is indeed continually either warming or cooling.
I think you are quibbling over background noise.
Most people would agree that driving along a flat level road is a steady state as far as altitude goes. They would even accept that as the general rule with short climbs over crossings. They would not accept it for a coast-coast freeway which crosses mountains and the central plains.
Your denial seems to me more on the order of complaining about potholes, the elevation difference when changing lanes, the suspension rattling over reflectors, and even the very slight road roughness which is hidden by rubber tires, the suspension, and seat cushions.
It is certainly a matter of scale, but climate data is chaotic on large scales everywhere we look. The UAH temperature record seems to consist entirely of an ongoing aperiodic oscillator plus two natural steps upward, which are likely also chaotic since they are driven by ocean circulation. There is no GHG warming to be observed.
Those are not bumps in the road (a strange metaphor), they are the road. More precisely, this is not minor noise it is the entire behavior of the system — the chaotic climate hypothesis.
With all the different causes of climate change there can sometimes be a temporary steady state that doesn’t last long.
Climate change is normal.
History shows warming and cooling trends within a fairly narrow range for the past 10000 years. There is no equilibrium. There seems to be a limit on the range of temperatures, perhaps caused by changes in cloudiness. Every trend has ended, and reversed, like a reversion to the mean. No reason to believe ethe current warming trend won’t end — there is already not much warming in the past 7 years.
”Climate change is normal.”
Weather change is normal. When it’s starts raining in the Mediterranean every summer, get back to me.
Those oscillations are less than 1% of the roughly 300K planet temperature.
Exactly! Who can say that such a small fluctuation over such a long timeframe is not approximately steady state? We know that it is not perfectly so and that it is intractably complex. But so what? It is not significant.
”Who can say that such a small fluctuation over such a long timeframe is not approximately steady state?”
No one.
Sampling at random times and random locations will result in a conclusion that the steady state average of humanity is possession of 1 testicle….
So a big problem with interpretation of averaged but quantized data…
1% of T is 4% of energy by SB….which should be significant enough to be findable in the data….yet the only thing that varies enough in the system to cause the T swings over a couple of weeks is not CO2, but clouds….remarkably claimed to have about zero feedback while actually having a -30W/m^2 CRE over 75% of the planet according to Willis’s CERES data….have a think on that…
Noise is apparently quite important in non linear systems that exhibit stochastic resonance, like Earth’s climate.
It’s more like after a month of thousands of people driving in the hills, the average change of altitude comes out to a foot.
How the heat is spread out in the atmosphere is chaotic but that change in mean T (a proxy measure of change in Q) is like a steady state. Why that is consistent with a positive feedback is a mystery.
I’m guessing because it’s still plausible, nobody has a better explanation and it wouldn’t get published anyway.
There certainly appear to be cycles such as ENSO, with every 5 to 8 years an El Nino rasing temperatures far and wide, and multi-decadal cycles in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, around 60 to 70 years each, and some indications of 100 year cycles, and definitely evidence of 1000 year cycles, no to mention much longer cycles involving very large ice sheets and the eventual melting of same, that bring the primary assumption
“The earth’s climate is an energy flow system that on average is approximately at steady-state.”
seriously into doubt. The 20th century may be where most of the human recorded data is from but that hardly makes means it is typical, if indeed temperatures did remain within 1% bounds. Temperature is not that good a measure of energy or the flow thereof. Just considering the zero temperature change of ice to water and water to vapor makes evident that the energy changes are far larger than 1%.
Chaotic weather is good for the climate, its what keeps the climate fairly stable and avoids it going to extremes.
lts when the weather becomes less chaotic is where their is a risk of the climate becoming more extreme. As more the persistent a weather patterning becomes, the more likely it will tip the climate towards the extreme.
The discussion is not about weather though, it’s about average temperatures not varying much over long periods.
Temperatures or heat?
What “average temperatures”?
Growing zones haven’t changed very much in the past 50 years, just a little bit at the boundaries and even that is probably more due to data changes than to climate change. If the growing zones haven’t changed much that tells me the climate hasn’t changed much either.
You overlook the operative phrase in Willis’ statement, Dave: “on average is approximately at”.
I don’t think Willis would regard this as a ‘view’. He is simply providing a qualitative description of the behaviour of the system. It is either a correct characterization or an incorrect one.
Weather may oscillate across a wide range of scales, climate not so much. We simply do not see huge oscillations in growing zones over time. Some minor boundary changes happen but many times these are due to updated data and not actual climate changes. There is a reason why some places plant spring wheat and some plant winter wheat. There hasn’t been a significant shift of that over the past 100 years.
Thank you! The best statement so far.
”Rice has been grown in Vietnam for thousands of years. It is one of the top five largest rice producing countries in the world. The Mekong River Delta (the ‘Rice Bowl’) in southern Vietnam is where most of Vietnam’s rice is grown.”
Ooooh, but climate change!!!
Xi Jinping: Hold my beer.
+100!
Earth’s present level of cloudiness produces about 5 degrees C of net cooling.
IPCC’s computer gamers parameterize cloud changes in a warming world as a positive rather than negative feedback.
This is not supported by observations.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/05/cloud-feedback-if-there-is-any-is-negative/
Computer gamers can’t scare people with a negative feedback,
so that is not allowed.
I’m not smart enough to answer the question, but I understand it, and I’m hoping to see (and understand) the answer(s)!
Your modesty is admirable but I suspect the answer is quite easy to grasp.
The difference is either in the atmosphere (which is very complex) or it’s in the assumptions (which are simple).
If the forcing isn’t amplified to newsworthy levels then all the researchers lose their funding and their status. Worse, they only started studying this subject because they had made the assumption that it was worth worrying about. So the assumptions are never challenged.
The gap is in the assumptions.
Nicely put!
Answer: career prospects and resultant income $$$$s.
(and that is my serious answer Willis)
You beat me to it.😶
I have an alternate theory too – unicorn farts. (not really serious but climate alarmists believe all sorts of crap)
“The earth’s surface” is not really what matters. And no, not only is the earth not at thermal equilibrium, it is certainly never at equilibrium, but constantly responds to all manner of processes, not just energy inputs but also the storage and flow of thermal energy due to ocean currents and geochemical variations.
After all if earth were at thermal equilibrium then climate could never change, which of course we know has always changed.
The energy balancers always ignore the energy storage process. The earth’s oceans, accounting for 70% of the planet’s surface, is a vast thermal energy sink with vastly greater ability to absorb or give up thermal energy with minimal temperature change as compared to the atmosphere. Or think of the oceans as a massive climate shock absorber.
Firstly, liquid water has four times the specific heat capacity of air as measured on a per unit mass basis. Additionally the mass of the oceans is several orders of magnitude greater than the mass of the atmosphere. Plus water is also subject to phase changes involving a large amount of thermal energy change with zero change in temperature.
Our liquid oceans are massive thermal energy storage batteries that dwarf the energy transferred to or from the atmosphere due to either weather or climate change.
The earth’s climate equilibrium depends on the scale at which you compare it. Measure any point in milliseconds, only volcanoes will show differences. Measure it in minutes, it’s close enough for most instruments. Measure it at different scales, you get different degrees of equilibrium.
To claim no equilibrium is pedantic.
The earth is basically at steady state. The temperature over the entire 20th century didn’t vary by even half a percent.
As to whether I “ignore the storage process”, the amount going into or out of storage annually is trivially small compared to the energy flows.
w.
+0.5 degrees C. since 1979 (UAH) is not a steady state
About 15.0 degrees C. to about 15.5 degrees C. — a 3.3% increase.
Head for the hills — a 3.3% increase will end all life on Earth!
Try using degrees Kelvin instead, and recompute. In thermodynamics, it’s all about absolute temperatures.
When dealing with gasses, one must use the Kelvin scale. 15 degrees C is 263K.
Richard, all thermodynamic calculations need to be done in Kelvin.
Surface temperature is ~289 K. A half a degree change in 43 years is about a 0.004%/year change … steady state for all practical purposes.
Regards,
w.
Imagine a truck carrying coal. Add one bucket of coal, to an existing load of one bucket of coal. 100% increase!! By contrast, one bucket of coal to an entire truckload – negligible increase. In the real world, neither example makes any difference at all in the ability of the truck to climb a hill with its existing load. I defy the ability of the driver to notice. In climate and in trucking, the extra amount expressed as an increment are wildly different, and are both totally imperceptible and irrelevant to the living beings involved.
Try using converting the temperature to Kelvin then repeat the calculation!
Richard, I’ll just assume sarcasm on your part. Good sarcasm is difficult to identify as such.
The Earth has a bit of thermal mass to it, it changes temperatures slowly.
“The Earth has a bit of thermal mass to it, it changes temperatures slowly.”
Perhaps our definition of slowly differs but there have been very rapid changes in temperature and climate in the past, so that would seem to contradict your statement.
Here is one period of rapid change and there have, of course, been others.
Younger Dryas | Definition, Causes, & Termination
https://bit.ly/3mdUPgx
Younger Dryas, also called Younger Dryas stadial, cool period between roughly 12,900 and 11,600 years ago that disrupted the prevailing warming trend occurring in the Northern Hemisphere at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (which lasted from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). The Younger Dryas was characterized by cooler average temperatures that returned parts of Europe and North America to ice age conditions. The onset of the Younger Dryas took less than 100 years, and the period persisted for roughly 1,300 years. After the period ended, an interval of rapid warming followed, and average temperatures increased to near present-day levels…
Willis states that “ the amount going into or out of storage annually is trivially small compared to the energy flows.”
However while this might be true the fact is that it all adds up. The 30ZJ that enters the ocean each year if summed over a long enough time period will cause a large temperature change.
Izaak Walton September 5, 2022 2:16 pm
Let me implore people to break out your calculator before uncapping your electronic pen.
Total ocean mass = 1.4E+21 kg
Ocean specific heat = 3850 J/kg/°C
Joules needed to raise ocean temperature by 5°C (a “large temperature change)= 27E+24 joules
Years to raise ocean temp by 1°C @ur momisugly 15-30 E+21 joules/year = 900 to 1800 years.
You’ll have to forgive me if I leave that out of my calculations. An addition of 15 ZJ/year will warm the ocean by about three thousandths of one stinkin’ degree (0.003°C) per year … lost in the noise.
w.
Willis you are using the wrong timescales when deciding on what is worth worrying about. When it comes to climate change and the oceans things happen slowly (for humans) with the thermohaline circulation for example taking over 1000 years to complete one circuit. So in that context a 5 degree temperate change in 900 years is rapid. Similarly on a geological timescale the earth has been around for roughly 4.5 billion years while periodic events such as ice-ages happen every 40 to 100 thousand years meaning that a 900 year change in ocean temperatures is actually quite rapid.
Izaak, if you wish to worry about what will happen in 900 years, be my guest. Me, not so much …
w.
Willis,
the issue is not about worrying but understanding. Due to the large heat capacity of the oceans the climate takes thousands of years to reach a new steady state if it is perturbed and so any analysis of it must include factors that are significant over that time period.
It is irrelevant. First of all, not 5 degrees in 900 years but 1 degree in 1350 years (900-1800). Secondly, you’re extrapolating a trend out many times the length of time that establishes the current trend.
If homeostasis is maintained by emergent processes, the extrapolation will be wildly inaccurate.
Your use of the word “homeostasis” is quite appropriate. It describes a self-regulating system. That doesn’t mean “never changing”, it just means that changes occur within boundaries. When you are active your body temperature goes up. Yet your homeostatic systems regulate your temperature to bring that back down once the activity is over. If the system didn’t do that you would die.
When Willis used the term “steady state”, to me it didn’t mean never changing. It’s just describing a homeostatic system.
“ Due to the large heat capacity of the oceans the climate takes thousands of years to reach a new steady state”
Yeah and the “Steady State” has been changing since long before man started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. So by your own admission the changes have to be from something else.
Izaak (and Loydo),
You guys really need some Deep Time context if you are going to talk about ocean heat content. The current average temperature for the entire volume of the world’s oceans is only ~+3.9 C, and has been in (geologically) rapid decline for the past 50 million years since the PETM (Eocene), when it was ~+10 C warmer. Of course during these brief (but meaningful) interglacial periods, the ocean gains a bit more heat, but the long term trend is still down. In fact, we are at the coldest temps in over 300 million years. The current Ice Age will continue, and there isn’t one damn thing humans can do to change that. You doomsayers better hope this current interglacial continues for a bit longer, and a bit more warming would be nothing but beneficial.
“Total ocean mass… Years to raise ocean temp by 1°C @ur momisugly 15-30 E+21 joules/year = 900 to 1800 years”
Thats a pea and shell argument and you know it.
The surface has risen by that much in a few decades.
The energy entering the ocean is almost entirely heating the mixed surface 0 – 50m volume. Not only is that where most of it is adsorbed but that is the volume that affects the atmosphere.
Further – the closer to the surface, the more heat is being stored until at the surface, as far as the atmosphere is concerned, well you can just about ignore the “total ocean mass” altogether. Claiming you need to average that temperature increase down the the ocean abyss is…misguided.
And Izaak is correct; long term the ocean makes for an excellent heat battery. That will become more obvious during the next El Nino.
Loydo September 5, 2022 3:10 pm
Loydo, I know nothing of the sort. If I knew it, I wouldn’t make the argument.
You must be thinking of yourself and your friends. I don’t engage in games like that, and I don’t accuse honest men of doing it.
Piss off.
w.
Using the entire volume of the ocean in a calculation to predict short term astmospheric temperature change is misleading.
So is saying 900 years.
The next couple of El ninos temp spikes, the phase change of a dark blue maritime Arctic, the ensuing weather chaos and suffering it delivers – in your lifetime – will cast your 900 years in a cringeworthy light. 9000 years later and the affects of such an unprecedented, rapid atmosheric disruption are still significant. 90000 years later it might no longer be noticeable – of course apart from the extinctions, Amazon back to a savannah, deserted cities etc,.
This what the scientific consensus indicates is probable and exactly what that energy change graph shows our Titanic is accellerating towards.
Look at the heat ratio; ocean:atmosphere and tell me the atmosphere is not going to follow that curve, that trajectory.
Keep dealing your doubt until the seaice is gone, then slink away and never mention your stasis theory again.
Loydo, go whine to Izaak Walton. He’s the one who was talking about thousands of years. I was just responding to him.
As to the “scientific consensus”, you just got your vote canceled for proving beyond a doubt that you don’t know how science works.
w.
So you’re doubling down on this: “An addition of 15 ZJ/year will warm the ocean by about three thousandths of one stinkin’ degree (0.003°C) per year … lost in the noise.”?
There are only two explanation for someone with a climate hypothesis to write this. Neither of them are flattering. The generous one is misaprehension.
Lol…the sea has risen at a slow and steady rate…you know that.
And since long before CO2 increases made by man
Willis, You’ve used the energy value for a 5 degree rise in you calculation for a 1 degree rise.
The energy to raise the mass of the ocean 1 degree is 5.4E+24 and therefore the time taken to raise 1 degree for 30E+21 joules per annum entering the system is 180 years.
Izaak,
On the issue of the Ocean sink, please read the annual paper relied on by the IPCC adherents, Friedlingstein et al 2021, with 70 co-authors.
From the Executive summary of the “Global Carbon Budget 2021”-
“The Ocean CO2 sink resumed a more rapid growth in the past decade after low or no growth during the 1991-2002 period.
However the growth of the Ocean CO2 sink in the past decade has an uncertainty of a factor of 3, with estimates based on data products and estimates based on models showing an ocean sink increase of 0.9 and 0.3 GtCyr-1 since 2010 respectively.
The discrepancy in the trend originates from all latitudes but is largest in the Southern Ocean.”
There are an awful lot of ZJ in the world’s oceans and 30 ZJ is not significant.
Willis can you explain in degrees C why the Earth’s temp hasn’t varied by even 0.5% over the 20th century? I’m just a layman and I would like to know how you calculate your claim? And please make it simple for this very ordinary bloke.
Dear Layman: What is 0.5% of 0 (zero) degrees C? What is 500% of 0 degrees C? When a temperature changes from minus 3 degrees to plus 3 degrees, how many percent is it?
Neville September 5, 2022 3:11 pm
Nope, ’cause you can’t do thermodynamic calculations in anything but Kelvin. Otherwise, you’d claim the temperature has doubled from 1°C to 2°C, when all it’s done is warmed slightly.
w.
Or, if your a really old US engineer, degrees Rankine. 😉
Exactly.
Cloud feed back over oceans is always negative because it affects solar shortwave penetration of same. Cloud feedback over land areas is neither here nor there! Transient, fleeting…
Shortwave versus longwave effects!
Hi Willis, according to IPCC forcing for CO2 doubling is 3.7 W/m2, using Stefan-Botlzman you can calculate the local ground temperature increase that offsets that forcing, as it is proportional to T^4, warm areas have a lower local sensitivity.
Nine Point Eight Meters per Second Squared.
Ninety Six Volts per Meter of Altitude.
The Earth’s atmosphere is not “in energy balance” it is under charge at saturation.
Well Prj, why don’t you invent a machine to collect those 96 v/m and sell them into the grid?
At present electricity prices in Europe, you could be rich overnight!
The average electrostatic voltage differential is approximately what Prjindigo cited, although, it can go much higher under a thunderstorm cloud. The reason the voltage differential can’t be put to any practical use is that air is typically an insulator and the available current is infinitesimally small. Even when the air breaks down and allows a high current flow, creating a plasma during a lightning discharge, the duration is so short that no real usable power is available for doing work, except at a small scale such as flash evaporating the sap under the bark in a tree, or putting a small pit in a metal surface.
Step two: “Then a miracle happens!”
Eh. What I infer from the discussions is a notion more to do with tipping points than feedback.
The fear of the “arctic death spiral” supposes that if the edges of the icecaps recede j u s t e n o u g h then planet’s albedo shifts so that the previously stable system becomes unstable. Similarly if cold region permafrost releases methane, or the methane clathrates on the ocean floor sublimate, or if the average central location of the tropical storm systems shifts a little bit … It’s fear not analysis. And it’s a fear of rapid drastic change. As the average of weather is called “climate” the average of all these fears-of-change was called global warming until an accidental moment of honesty revealed the real event feared was simply “Change”. The models work over a very limited range of periods and conditions with everything-else in the model held constant. More CO2 causes warmer winter nights, within those limits. If those limits are exceeded, the models break down. And it’s feared the climate itself will break down as well.
MY fear is that the weather and climate exhibit chaotic behaviors. It’s seen in both physical and mathematical models that increasing the forcing inputs in the models increases the outputs — until they don’t. Pump in a faster stream of water and a spinning waterwheel spins faster — until it stops, and reverses direction. Increase the population of predators (wolves?) in a stable prey population (elk in Yellowstone) and the prey number decreases — until both populations explode.
Dam a river and install flood control levees and the river will, at some drastic moment, push through a whole different path to the sea. The system can be pushed, but when it pushes “back” it doesn’t necessarily push STRAIGHT back.
But I don’t see any headlines worried that adding “greenhouse” gasses to the system might result in a return to “icehouse” climates — even though the planet spent more of its existence in the icy state than the green.
Addressing my fears would take policies that make our systems resilient to changes in either direction. Warmer or colder; rising sea levels or falling; more rain or less; more clouds or fewer; more wind or less. So at the very least we should prioritize energy systems that are NOT located near the shorelines, are NOT dependent on sunny weather, or windy nights. We should promote nuclear electricity, and heat with fossil fuels tapped from reserves close to our population centers (as the Marcellus Shale gas formations are close to the cities of New York and Pennsylvania) Desalination works, if the energy prices are low enough. (And with nuclear power, those prices can be low.) And we could do a WHOLE LOT better on reducing our flow of wastewater — much more easily than we can manage the “waste gasses” from our furnaces.
And even so we should expect tipping points. Ice ages, even.
“But I don’t see any headlines worried that adding “greenhouse” gasses to the system might result in a return to “icehouse” climates — even though the planet spent more of its existence in the icy state than the green.”
As far as we can tell, for most of Earth’s history it’s been warmer than at present. I don’t know if perhaps you meant only since the beginning of the Quaternary (or whatever they call it now, Neogene or something). It’s kind of counterintuitive, given that the relatively recent Pleistocene has been one of the coldest periods ever, despite our sun slowly getting brighter as it moves through the main sequence phase. Maybe someone else with more knowledge about this could confirm or push back about my guess: as Earth’s rotational period has slowly declined, even as the sun has brightened, it gives more time for the night side of the planet to radiate heat away, while the negative effects on the sunlight side have more time to “work”, primarily reflection from clouds and ice, plus convective heat transport in storms.
Just a guess…
Excuse me, our rotational period has lengthened, not declined.
I might also add that, as the sun burns, it expells a tremendous amount of mass. Earth’s orbit is slowly growing, meaning that we are getting more distant from the sun. Even though the sun keeps getting technically brighter, we’re moving away and our rotation is slowing.
I am not as fluent in this subject as I would like to be, but I am trying to expand my understanding. I think there is a typo or mistake in the paragraph that states: “Now, consider the mainstream IPCC position, that a doubling of CO2 will increase downwelling longwave at the “top-of-atmosphere” (TOA) by 3.7°C. This means that if you instantaneously double the CO2, the amount of longwave escaping the planet at the top of the atmosphere will be reduced by 3.7 W/m2.” Is it possible that the units following the first appearance of “3.7” should be W/m2 and NOT degrees Celsius?
Thanks, fixed. I hate typos.
w.
Climate is one tough nut to crack. Maybe this can help you crack it!
Here we are again, Willis.
By using the term “create” you bring in the unnecessary amount of energy needed to transition from the old steady state to the new one (specific heat) which is separate from the additional amount of energy needed to “maintain” the steady state temperature against the emitted power represented by the S-B equation. We have to prevent confusion of these two ideas. Your point is related to the latter.
I might add that I think the quetion you are asking is the same point that Howard Hayden tries to make in his Heartland presentation. He maintains that of the three items here (stefan-boltzmann, climate sensitivity of 3, and calculations of increased LWIR) one cannot make a consistent picture. Have you perchance read his work?
Kevin kilty September 5, 2022 11:03 am
I have changed the wording to unconfuse you.
w.
Very droll, Willis.
‘I might add that I think the question you are asking is the same point that Howard Hayden tries to make in his Heartland presentation.’
I also like Hayden’s approach – a surface boundary where the S-B equation can be used to estimate upwelling LW radiation (ULWR), a top of atmosphere (TOA) boundary where incoming absorbed SW from the sun has to equal outgoing LW radiation (OLWR), and the difference between ULWR and OLWR, which is the so-called greenhouse effect (GHE). And since both ULWR [f(T_surface)] and OLWR [f(solar intensity, albedo)] are easily quantified, it’s very easy to check the IPCC’s assumptions for GHE / LW ‘forcings’ against their ‘projections’ of increased surface temperature. Short answer is that they don’t tie out, but you can follow the details in a series of very short essays here:
http://sepp.org/science_papers.cfm
Beat me to it.
http://sepp.org/science_papers.cfm
Highlights the problem with values used by IPCC.
Hope Willis has seen these.
Willis
The answer is simple. Note that I am not saying that the gh effect does not exist. In fact I can feel it. Standing in the cabin 10 minutes after stopping showering, it is still warmer in the cabin then outside.
The problem with the CO2 is that it is innocent. It cools as much as what it warms.
Anyway, I am pretty sure that 100% earth can produce far more heat then a change of 0.01% in the atmosphere….
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/08/02/global-warming-how-and-where/
Mark D. Zelinka et al. (2019) provide a discussion of this as it pertains to climate models’ sensitivity to CO2 doubling.
Determining the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is a fundamental goal of climate science. A typical approach for doing so is to consider the planetary energy balance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), represented as ECS = –F/λ ( where F increased radiation from 2x CO2)
Conceptually, this equation states that the TOA energy imbalance can be expressed as the sum of the radiative forcing and the radiative response of the system to a global surface temperature anomaly. The assumption that the radiative damping can be expressed as a product of a time‐invariant and global mean surface temperature anomaly is useful but imperfect (Armour et al., 2013; Ceppi & Gregory, 2019). Under this assumption, one can estimate the effective climate sensitivity (ECS), the ultimate global surface temperature change that would restore TOA energy balance
.
ECS therefore depends on the magnitude of the CO2 radiative forcing and on how strongly the climate system radiatively damps planetary warming. A climate system that more effectively radiates thermal energy to space or more strongly reflects sunlight back to space as it warms (larger magnitude λ will require less warming to restore planetary energy balance in response to a positive radiative forcing, and vice versa.
Because GCMs attempt to represent all relevant processes governing Earth’s response to CO2, they provide the most direct means of estimating ECS. ECS values diagnosed from CO2 quadrupling experiments performed in fully coupled GCMs as part of the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project ranged from 2.1 to 4.7 K. It is already known that several models taking part in CMIP6 have values of ECS exceeding the upper limit of this range. These include CanESM5.0.3 , CESM2, CNRM‐CM6‐1, E3SMv1, and both HadGEM3‐GC3.1 and UKESM1.
Zelinka et al. (2019) is here: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL085782
My synopsis is https://rclutz.com/2020/01/26/climate-models-good-bad-and-ugly/
I always have trouble trying to wrap my head around coming to a number in a chaotic system. “How much additional energy flux will be necessary to create that new warmer steady-state?”
What are we measuring (temperature) is chaotic in many dimensions, the most elusive seems to be the state of pesky water… why must it duck and hide “T” by changing form? Just go into stasis for just a minute and stop the chaos I say!
Good brain exercise and precise physics teaching, Willis!
Don’t forget that the oceans can channel heat into the depths until it can be brought back up by IPCC
researchersgovernmental hacks.And the pesky heat moves around yet more! Chaos I say!
The oceans are a fluid in motion, transferring heat. Not channeling, currents.
I guess you missed the part where the alarmists claimed that heat was sent into the ocean and that’s why there is a pause.
I guess sarcasm doesn’t travel well on the internet.
Willis,
Again you are confusing energy and energy flux. You write for example that
“This means that if you instantaneously double the CO2, the amount of longwave escaping the planet at the top of the atmosphere will be reduced by 3.7 W/m2.”
Now while that is true it is only a temporary effect. Once the atmosphere reaches a new steady state then the energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere will be zero despite the doubled CO2 and the surface temperature will be warmer because of the increased stored energy in the atmosphere.
Knowing the energy flux both at the surface and the top of the atmosphere does not tell you anything about how much energy is stored within the system. During ice ages the energy flux from the sun was the same as it was today but the temperature was a lot colder. Remove the CO2 from the atmosphere and the temperature would plummet despite the incoming radiation remaining constant.
It is stored energy not energy flux that determines the temperature.
“During ice ages the energy flux from the sun was the same as it was today but the temperature was a lot colder” is too simplistic. Earth’s irradiance could have been the same, dependent on solar activity. But LW absorption is hindered by clouds and we’ve got no idea how much coulds there were, which type and distribution.
You appear to be ignoring the greenhouse gas that is the greatest in our atmosphere by far and which completely dwarfs CO2, water vapor. Are you saying water vapor has zero effect on Earth’s climate and temperatures?
KcTaz,
While water vapour has a much larger effect than CO2 it is a condensing greenhouse gas so if you remove the CO2 then there will be less heat in the atmosphere resulting in less water vapour which in turn further reduces the temperature etc etc. The net result is that the earth would quickly freeze.
Lol…if you remove the CO2
Makes you wonder why they don’t include the heat capacity of the black body when starting with what the Earth’s temperature would be if no GHE.
Is this the pea under the thimble? Swap from, to and fro, the temperature of emitting surface to temperature from increased Q?
It seems to me that there are many ambiguities in this whole exercise, and not due to Willis, but due to all involved. For example, what in the world do we mean by “surface temperature”? Very very near the surface the exchange is much more dominated by radiation transfer than it is only a short distance above. So, are we speaking of skin temperature or ssomewhere a bit higher like 2m? Ceres uses some algorithm involving other data sets, I think, in order to retrieve skin temperature.
Now consider this factor of LWIR at what has been termed TOA, but is actually top of troposphere. How well does SB apply? This goes back to a question that David Wojick asked on the previous essay. At some height in the atmosphere there is so little mass that there isn’t much power available. What David should mean to ask is how thick a unit of atmosphere is needed to approximate a black-body adequately in such tenuous materials. Thin gaseous materials containing CO2 and H2O have an effective emissivity far below 1.0
This brings up the point I made in the comments to the last essay about SB not being an appropriate transfer equation. SB would work just fine if we were speaking about two material layers exchanging energy between them as a result of differing temperature as long as no participating medium existed in between. The presence of an IR active atmosphere needs a full equation of transfer to handle the situation.
I can’t say that I plan to work through to determine if there is an inconsistency in the IPCC position or not, but what I do know is that one could not arrive at a consistent explanation of heat transfer and temperature in a furnace without involving the active medium (H2O and CO2) from combustion. SB alone wouldn’t do the job. The same is probably true of the troposhere.
You are thinking along the same lines that I am. What is the surface? Is it the soil and bodies of water or is it the air 2m above.
Having grown up in farming there are a lot of things that aren’t covered. Land (surface) does hold heat and doesn’t fall back to some low, low temperature at night. Look up the frost line depth at where water and sewer lines must be buried. Around here, 3 feet is sufficient to never freeze. In spring time, we look for soil temperatures to rise to determine when to plant. The soil stores the sun’s energy and warms, i.e. stores heat.
In round numbers the specific heats of soil is ~1400, air is ~1000, and water ~5000. As you can see soil can hold a goodly amount of heat and it does conduct downward. Consequently, much of the sun’s energy is stored in the soil for a good portion of a year.
Now look at soil moisture. As you move north, there is a lot of water in frozen earth. It takes a lot of energy to raise the temperature of the soil, say at the U.S./Canada border. That is partly why air temps stay colder longer as you travel north. I’m not sure that this lets one assume the S-B equation is entirely accurate since the earth stores heat and releases it slowly.
Lastly, you mention gradients. Those are entirely ignored in this process of climate. I like to look at the surface as a hot body and the atmosphere as an insulator. Adding more CO2 in essence is like adding a higher R value insulation to your house. The cooling gradient of the insulation reduced and it lets the boundary of the insulation heat to a temperature closer to the hot body’s temperature since the conductivity is lowered. But, like insulation in your house, you soon run into the point where additional R value increases have little effect.
Agreed. There are many ways to describe bits and pieces of the radiation story, but as R.Scanlan once said to me in the context of flutter in long span bridges, “No matter how carefully you try to explain it, you always fall just a bit short.”
The problem here isn’t too dissimilar to a laser. Within the cavity containing a gain medium there is incredible flux, but not so much leaking out the coupling end where the beam emerges. One would never explain how the contraption works without reference to the gain medium.
A minority of a minority scheme where efficiency is further lost in translation, compensated through the brown models and Green energy.
The IPCC obscures the actual results with a variety of subterfuge.
The big one is that:
2 X CO2 = 3.7 w/m^2 = +1.1 degrees
HOWEVER, that 1.1 degrees is NOT cacluated at the earth surface, it is calculated at the effective black body temperature of earth which does not exist at earth surface. It exists somewhere high in the atmosphere (20,000 feet comes to mind but don’t quote me on that). I believe it coincides with the mean radiating layer (don’t quote me on that either).
The point is, that the IPCC admitted in one of the AR reports that this translates to a much LOWER number at earth surface. I forget which AR report, sorry, my head isn’t into this stuff like it was when I was commenting regularly.
As to the amplification, what they did is assume that the amount of water vapour would increase commensurate with the holding capacity of the atmosphere as its temperature increased. As water vapour is a GHG in its own right, they calculated that the increased GHE from this extra water vapour would be 7.4 w/m^2 and that this would simple ADD to the 3.7 w/m^2 of CO2 for a total of 11.1 w/m^2 or 3.3 deg C of warming.
HOWEVER , again, this 3.3 deg C is calcuted against the EFFECTIVE black body temperature of earth which coincides with the EFFECTIVE radiating layer of earth which is way high (20,000 ft?) in the atmosphere and so is a MUCH higher value than what we would experience at earth surface.
I should add that there are two points to be made about the above:
The numbers for those who care:
Using SB Law:
Effective Black Body Temperature of Earh = 255 deg K
255 deg = 239.74 w/m2
256 deg = 243.52 w/m2
so + 1 degrees K at effecitve black body temperature of earth = 3.78 w/m2
Surface Temperature of Earth = 288 deg K
288 deg = 390.08 w/m2
288.693 deg = 393.85 w/m2
So + 0.693 deg at SURFACE temperature of earth = 3.77 w/m2
See the subterfuge? It takes 3.78 w/m2 to raise the “temp” of earth by 1 degree, but at earth SURFACE that same w/m2 results in less than 0.7 degrees. So when the IPCC yaps about sensitivity, be it with or without feedbacks, they are NOT talking about the surface temperature increase. They naturally quote the higher number to ensure more alarm rather than quote the number we actually would experience at surface.
David,
The point is that the effective black body temperature does not change with changing greenhouse gas temperatures. The 255K black body temperature is set by equating the incoming solar flux with outgoing long wavelength radiation. The surface temperature is set by the stored energy in the system.
David, radiation entering and leaving at TOA must be equal over time or we cool or warm uncontrollably. It seem that the effective radiating temperature at TOA must always equal about 255 K to balance the net incoming solar SW. I assume, therefore, ECS is calculated for the surface.
The ERL varies by latitude, lowest at the poles, highest at the equator. Range is from about 8-10km altitude. Altitude is determined from IR ‘temperature’ and the known lapse rate. WE had a post on this back in 2016 looking at temp. Also, ERL means the absolute saturation argument is wrong. As CO2 increases, the ERL rises and has more ‘surface’ but since ‘colder’ is less efficient per unit surface. Results in Callendar’s 1935 logarithmic curve.
Agreed, it comes back to me when someone else spells it out again. Thanks Rud,
As CO2 increases, doesn’t atmospheric emissivity increase too?
That’s the claim but it is wrong. The ERL of any well mixed gas is primarily determined by the changing density of the atmosphere. That water vapor changes the average level is completely irrelevant. You have to look at the specifics for each gas individually and add the effects together. CO2 increases will not change the ERL.
Do you know where the ERL is for CO2? I believe it is 19.2 km.
Simplicity in it’s most beautiful form. “Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.” is applicable exactly here. GCMs go the other route; it’s a dead end.
I think this work of Willis is marvelous, again!
Two comments.
First, there isn’t one. The IPCC ECS of 3 (or more in CMIP5 and CMIP6 is high by about a factor of about two. But they cannot admit it because that would cancel the alarm, stop the research funding flows, and stop the move to ruinables.
Second, on your excellent clouds figure, the almost certain reason clouds warm when the surface is well below freezing is that those clouds are comprised of ice, not water. Ice is opaque to IR, so it is all reflected back down and cannot escape to space. The essence of Lindzen’s adaptive infrared iris cirrus mechanism in the tropics must hold true for all clouds everywhere the surface is well below freezing.
You aren’t a glutton for punishment, you have an enquiring mind and are in the enviable position where you can ask questions and answer them honestly without losing your livelyhood.
Just a pity there aren’t more of you in that situation.
True ‘dat, my swabby friend.
w.
There’s an ambiguity in that statement; for “feedback factor” you probably meant loop gain, whereas you probably meant that the factor of 6 is the closed-loop gain.
In a simple (equilibrium, scalar, additive, etc.) feedback system the response y equals the product of the open-loop gain g and sum of the stimulus x and the product of the feedback coefficient f and the response y:
y = (x + fy)g,
or
y = gx/(1 – fg),
where in some circles fg is called the “loop gain” (as opposed to the open-loop gain g or the closed-loop gain h = g/(1 – fg) ). It’s the loop gain fg that can’t exceed unity if the system isn’t to blow up.
But system can be stable if the closed-loop gain exceeds unity. If g = 1.5 and f = 0.5, for example the loop gain is 0.75, yielding a stable system, while the closed-loop gain h = 6.
(I’m just addressing the narrow issue of nomenclature, not the ultimate question.)
Joe, good. I have been scrolling through this whole thread to see if someone would point this out before I did. I would have used g=1 and f=5/6 to achieve h=6. So Willis please note that this is not unstable. But it is still a suspiciously high and implausible value of the feedback coefficient f.
Rich.
I have never heard a convincing argument that the “Climate Sensitivity Factor” is anything other than 1.
Ignorance of specific causation, and lack of an explanation or complete model, is not proof of a fudge factor, and does itself not comprise a credible argument.
And you never will hear good arguments for more than 1.5 degrees C. ECR if including the water vapor positive feedback. 1.5 or less ECS would not scare people — 3.0 or more ECS will, so that’s what you will hear. Again and again.
ECS from CO2 is nonsense to begin with. Heat drives atmospheric CO2, not the other way around. If we were to stop burning fossil fuels, the CO2 would absorb back into the ocean and climate would keep doing what it is doing.
Let me give you such an argument. Deliberately nonspecific as the question is 1, or more, or less. Suppose the theoretical no feedbacks CO2 ECS is 1.16 (derived purely mathematically from Monckton’s ‘irreducibly simple’ equation and his input values to it). Willis just showed the cloud feed back is zero or slightly negative. BUT at 1.16 or a bit less for negative clouds, the WVF must still be significantly positive, as warmer air holds more water vapor. So the system ECS must be something appreciably greater than 1.
Numerically, All the observational EBM studies suggest a central ECS estimate something like 1.6-1.7. Guy Callendar’s 1935 logarithmic curve yields 1.68. INM CM5 (in CMIP6, the only model NOT producing a tropical troposphere hot spot artifact) says 1.8. All appreciably greater than 1.
Thanks, Rud, you are correct. However, we need to get a full seven times the energy specified as the CO2 contribution (1°C = 1.2 W/m2) in order to warm the earth by 1°C …
So if we assume the lowest of those estimates, 1.6 °C per doubling, that’s still only 3.7 W/m2 per 1.6°C = 2.3 W’m2 per degree, and we need 7 W/m2 to heat the earth by one degree C.
w.
Willis,
that is not how the greenhouse effect works. The effective emission temperature at the top of the atmosphere does not change if CO2 levels were to double. It would still be roughly 255K. What changes is the stored energy which then changes the surface temperature.
Imagine that you have a bathtub which has a tap at one end through which water flows at a rate of 100ml/s. At the other end is a hole that lets water out at the same rate. Now in that situation you cannot say what the water level in the bath is, all you can say is that it is not changing.
If you then temporarily restrict the flow out of the bathtub then the water level will rise to as high a level as you want. Then if the outflow attains it previous value the water level will stabilise at the new level.
Similarly the claim that you need 7W/m^2 to heat the earth by one degree is misleading to the point of being wrong. You need X J of energy to raise the surface temperature by one degree (where X is a large number) and you can get that energy over whatever time period you like which means that an arbitrarily small flux could do it if you wait long enough.
Izaak, You have introduced the bath tub analogy. I trust you do not really believe that holds any value, or offers any insight into the workings of Earth’s climate. If you do it implies Earth could reach any ridiculously high surface temperature and the temperature at the “top of atmosphere” (TOA) would hardly change. The physics I learned in grad school says that is impossible.
And it equally implies the earth could cool by 100 degrees K and the TOA would still hardly change.
You nicely illustrated the clearly and absolutely illogical nature of climate alarmism.
If the outflow was restricted then the effective head of the water would rise. Once the outlet is cleared to the previous diameter then the rate of outflow would be greater than normal until the head is back to the previous level which was at equilibrium.
I think izaak conveniently left out the point you make with regards to the increase in head pressure increasing out flow.. But then maybe he never even grasped it. So it seems with the alarmists.
The first problem is that we are arguing with a ‘pronouncement’ by the IPCC that this is a probable fact, or perhaps even a proven fact, when in fact it can’t be proven as how would one know that some other mechanism isn’t responsible for some other reason why the surface temps are cooling or warming? Like Zombie Ice, whatever that substance is.
Therefore we are dealing with a religion that makes pronouncements that can’t be proven. End of story, unless one wants to bang head against wall, and that gets boring. Not only can it not be calculated, the entire premise may be completely faulty.
While the basic premise of the so called GH effect is scientifically accurate, (as is downwelling radiation) the feedbacks aren’t and could be argued either way. Which is what the fuss is all about. However, it does seem rather fanciful that you could get 3 degree C of surface warming from such a smidgen of TOA warming from a doubling of CO2 (3.7 W/m2) that would equate to 7 W/m2 of surface warming. And we aren’t even half way to doubling CO2 since a pre-industrialization date of circa 1850 when the LIA ended. Explain natural variation first, and then maybe I could get my head wrapped around an article of faith.
I would say Occam’s Razor should apply first, and that this topic has so many moving parts, that it may never be able to be calculated, especially if at the end of the day, weather is random and chaotic. Although it is subject to long term solar insolation that can be calculated accurately, solar output notwithstanding within a ~% or less. So we will probably be able to accurately predict long term climate over thousands of years, but probably never be able to predict seasonal weather within a decade or two, let alone a century. Just because of random stuff going on, like volcanoes, sunspots, ocean currents we don’t fully understand, and perhaps even things we don’t even fully understand yet like galactic unknowns such as comic rays. Or a diminishing magnetic field, that may or may not have any effect on weather/climate. There is just too much we still don’t understand and how it all may or may not affect everything and is yet to be fully understood.
Occam’s Razor: a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities.
we will probably be able to accurately predict long term climate over thousands of years,
“The climate will get warmer, unless it gets colder”
R, Greene 1997 prediction
Nobel Prize pending