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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Not sure about this part: “And from -15°C to 15°C, another 33% “
Steve, the percentages of the earth’s surface by temperature are listed at the top of the graph.
w.
Thankyou, my bad.
“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”
The initials are “B” and “S.”
The IPCC estimate of SATS (surface air temperature sensitivity to radiative forcing) is usually around 0.5 deg. C per W/m2, your IPCC estimate is 0.8, which is even sillier. But the IPCC has never seen a need to be consistent.
Sherwood Idso derived 0.173 deg. C/W/m2 using real data, but who needs data? We can use other IPCC sources to get 0.42 deg C/W/m2.
Newell and Dopplick got 0.03 deg. C/W/m2 using real data.
Manabe and Weatherald, in 1975, derived a value of 1 deg. C/W/m2, which is as silly as their model.
Möller, 1963 derived 0.5 deg. C/W/m2
SATS is likely in the range you site, around 0.1 to 0.15. The high IPCC values just shows they aren’t thinking. Good post Willis!
More here:
Climate Sensitivity to CO2, what do we know? Part 2. – Andy May Petrophysicist
The incoming solar radiation can do work. You can use a magnifying glass and start a fire using solar radiation. Downwelling IR coming from the atmosphere can do neither. Equating thevtwo seems wrong to me.
Now that would be something to actually test the back radiation hypothesis now wouldn’t it?
Lenses can focus IR just as they can other light. If atmospheric LWR is as great as they say, then surely it would be easy to build a lens to focus this light and prove it.
The lens forms an image of the sun, there is no way to focus sky radiation.
Very difficult to focus absorption lines. However, if they were actual emission lines then you could focus them.
I have had to come a long way down to see a comment based on physics as opposed to climate phiisics.
Why bother with the sun? You should be able to take a lens and focus the downward IR from the clear sky at night. Temperature increase at the focus should tell you the all you need to know about the back radiation hypothesis.
So a 1 m2 IR lens on a clear night, supposedly radiating at least 100 W/m2, focusing that light to 1 cm2 on the ground, would result in 10,000,000 W/m2 on the focus.
Forget pyrgeometers and verifying the models with models, why not just do this?
Read up on how CO2 lasers work. They focus IR using lenses to reach temperatures that melt steel like a hot knife through margarine. Note, I am not implying that our atmosphere does light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Geoff S
I don’t believe lenses are involved
I thought all lasers work in the same way.
A tube with a mirror at each end. One fully reflective the other partally, but still highly reflective. For CO2 laser the tube is filled with the gas, which is energised and as each molecule returns to a normal state iemits a photon of EM radiation. The photon passing activated molecules trigger the release of another photon totally in phase with the one doing the triggering. Eventually all the EM energy is synchronised and being reflected between the two mirrors with a proportion leaving the tube as a parallel beam of synchronised radiation. Shorter wavelengths are harder to producte which is why the first using this technique were in the Microwave wavelengths, MASERs
You need a lens to focus the beam.
Yes!
“What mysterious force…?”
There isn’t one. The CO2 cause global warming theory is false. And all of the practitioners know it.
Are you really suggesting they know there is no back-radiation?
I would like to see solid proof of that.
Happy Labor Day.
“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.”
Yes, some of us have been saying the mainstream hypothesis-paradigm is a perpetual motion machine of the second kind for years already.
The entire hypothesis seems silly to begin with, like the energy flux of the troposphere hinges on LWR absorption/emission rather than kinetic energy transfer primarily through emergent properties, e.g. convection. Kinetic energy is linearly proportional to temperature in a gas, heat and kinetic energy are almost synonymous when it comes to gases. When a molecule phase changes to a gas from a liquid or solid it inherently locks up that energy as latent heat, but the important emergent property is that the molecule is now in motion.
Gas within an atmosphere isn’t going to radiantly cool itself nearly fast enough to matter, it is conduction-convection driven. Even water vapor condenses around particulates in the atmosphere to nucleate clouds. And if the sun were the instantly shut off, the atmosphere would condense at the surface as it decompresses, not radiantly cool from the top and rain back to the surface.
Sensible heat in ways is as complex as clouds. During the day it cools the surface but at night it warms the surface – or should I say ‘prevents it from cooling off as rapidly’. Evaporation during the day cools the surface but at night condensation on the ground warms it. Surface wind cools the surface during the day while increasing the warming rate of the atmosphere, and then at night wind returns heat to the surface. If there is no wind in the boundary layer at night, then the surface cools faster forming an inversion layer, but the atmosphere as a whole actually retains more heat by not mixing it to the surface where it can be radiated away. If clouds retain LWR and warm the surface at night, then the inversion layer can form above the clouds instead.
So that is the long answer to the question, the entire mainstream hypothesis is pseudoscience.
The TOA temperature is set by the net energy absorbed by the earth, about 241W/m2, and emissivity, 1.0. Nothing else! So adding more CO2 to the atmosphere can have no effect on TOA temperature.
Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere increases the thermal resistance to radiative heat transfer to the TOA, thereby increasing the temperature difference between the earth’s surface and the TOA.
Assuming 163W/m2 absorbed at the earth’s surface means 163W/m2 must be transported to the TOA. Of this about 99W/m2 are transferred by convection and abut 64W/m2 are radiatively transferred. Of the 99W/m2 transferred convectively, most, about 80W/m2, is latent energy transfer.
The convective heat transfer coefficient, H, can be calculated.
99W/m2 = H*32, where 32 is the preindustrial temperature difference, surface temperature 14C or 287K, and a TOA temperature of 255K.
H = 3.094W/m2-K
Assuming a surface emittance of 0.92, the surface emits 353.91W/m2 on average. And with a net transfer of 64W/m2 we can calculate the back radiation of 353.91W/m2 – 64W/m2 = 289.91W/m2.
Doubling CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere increases back radiation by 3.7W/m2 so the 2xCO2 back radiation is 293.61W/m2. Because of conservation of energy, this 3.7W/m2 is at the surface and TOA.
Iteratively solving for surface temperature, T, in the energy balance equation
Qsurface = Qconvection + Qradiation or
163 = 3.094(T – 255) + 0.92*sigma(T – 293.61)
T = 287.46
(sigma is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant.)
In other words, doubling CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere would be expected to raise surface temperature by 0.46.
In the Charney report, they assume this is amplified by increased H2O. Relative humidity is assumed constant. This is then further amplified by retreating icecaps at the poles, both of which are unlikely, especially with only a 0.46 unamplified greenhouse effect.
I’m pretty sure this is how this is supposed to be done. I got my PhD in Mechanical Engineering with an emphasis in the thermal science. I also practiced it for 40 years as a solar thermal R&D engineer, of all things.
If you look at the Charney report, if manages to violate both the first and second laws of thermodynamics. They essentially add the increased radiative forcing (they assume 4W/m2) to the net insolation. It is a 1st law violation by creating energy from nothing. And then they add the 4W/m2 at less than 287K to solar flux at around 5700K, a clear cut violation of the 2nd law.
I agree with you completely. Planck used “compensation” to show that when “back” radiation is absorbed (that is, from the cold body) it immediately compensates by including that radiation within what it is already radiating. What happens is the cooling gradient is reduced so that the hot body takes longer to cool. That is why equilibrium is somewhat asymptotic. As you approach equilibrium, there is less and less energy added to the cold body and less and less net energy leaves the hot body.
The other factor that never is taken into account is where “back” radiation is absorbed. If CO2 can absorb IR leaving the surface it can surely absorb what is coming back down also. This should reduce the cooling gradient of the atmosphere in a similar fashion to the surface gradient.
CO2 thermalization also creates a heat reservoir whereby heat is not immediately radiated. During the daytime, insolation causes a sine wave of temperature and at night you see an exponential decay. Someone on another post called the atmosphere a “thermal capacitor”, and that is exactly what it looks like. Using temperature averages to attempt to calculate what is going on is not going to accurately depict what is happening, especially when two different temperature curves are being averaged.
The soil is also a heat reservoir that releases radiation after the sun sets. I’m guessing that trying to find an “average” radiation temperature is going to be difficult with so many different gradients. Throw in the latent heat release of H2O and you have a lot of gradients going on.
“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.”
I hope you are wearing a helmet.
You forgot to write anything controversial this time.
What are we supposed to refute?
One question that comes to mind is, what surfaces are we comparing? The surface at sea level, assuming a perfectly spherical earth is 4 x pi x r^2 where according to Wikipedia, r = 6371 km.
If the top of the atmosphere is 70 km above the earth, it will only make a 2.21 % difference.
To get to a factor of 6 would require the top of atmosphere to be 9235 km above the earth.
So how is the top of atmosphere defined?
Hi Willis – Maybe the answer to your conundrum is that although the feedbacks cited by the IPCC multiply the supposed temperature effect by a significant multiple, they are not “a feedback factor greater than one”. The driver change is the change in CO2. The feedbacks that supposedly increase the temperature only increase the CO2 concentration by a very small amount. There is therefore only a very small positive feedback. Another way of looking at it is that once the feedbacks have raised the temperature to a new equilibrium, that’s it. Until more CO2 is added.
Willis, thank you so very much for the Teddy Roosevelt quote. As one who is quite fond of quotes, I’m adding that to my collection.
That quote has been an inspiration for my climate work, given the amount of heat and abuse that I’ve taken for it.
w.
“Feedback greater than 1 leads to runaway.”
You are thinking of self referencing feedback, such as an electronic circuit or sound from a speaker near to a microphone where the output boosts the input signal.
Temperature does not increase CO2 by a factor greater than 1* the CO2 that forced the temperature, so we don’t get runaway feedback.
The phrase ‘feedback’ as used by IPCC or gcms to describe CO2 forced temperature increase leading to increased water vapour leading to greater warming would be called ‘amplification’ by an electronic engineer not feedback, it has to increase CO2 to merit the title feedback.
Blimey! Its simples, its that water vapour forcing thingy they stuck in their models. Shame its a load of cobblers.
‘However, there’s no place I’d rather be—I’m a Teddy Roosevelt man.’
Willis, unless you’ve kicked-off a couple of invasions recently, or started the US down ‘the road to serfdom’ better known as ‘progressivism’, you’re a far, far better man than TR.
“If this were not true, the affected parts would be continually either warming or cooling.”
…
It is not true because: The Laurentide Ice Sheet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentide_Ice_Sheet
Figure 1 is deceptive. Your “earth surface” point of view ignores the fact that both latent and sensible heat eventually escapes as long wave IR. Just because the heat energy moves from the surface into the atmosphere doesn’t mean it just disappears. The atmosphere itself radiates electromagnetic energy, such as that measured by UAH.
The key point is that the climate of the earth has survived many perturbations, think of the relatively stable Holocene or the 2.6M years of the ice ages and although the temperature has been both much cooler and maybe 3C warmer it has remained within the bands rising and falling.
As such, the emergency is over unless there can be shown some unique property of the CO2 we emit.
Ultimately it’s about the confirmational biases and threat to income that maintain the current equilibrium in thinking.
Yes, self-interest generated corruption.
So, I don’t know where the IPCC gets its figures from, as quoted in the article. But the Wijngaarden and Happer 2020 paper calculates a sensitivity of +1.4C for doubling of CO2 at fixed absolute humidity and +2.3C for fixed relative humidity. (I posted this in response to The Multiplier posting). I consider the W&H numbers to be trustworthy – and they are not very different from some other calculations, as referenced in that paper.
So the basic idea is that doubling of CO2 leads to a surface warming, that in turn leads to more H2O in the atmosphere, which provides a feedback that increases the surface temperature more. W&H calculate the extra warming as 0.9C. To what extent the real world behaves with “fixed relative humidity” is open to question and there are indications that the tropics do not behave in this way.
These figures only apply to “clear sky” conditions. What happens in the presence of clouds is not known – and clouds cover about 67% of the Earth’s surface on average.
I note that in Willis’ plot of the CERES net CRE, the areas with surface temperature >0C dominate but are divided roughly into 2 sections: a) the lower temperatures 0C-25C and b) the higher temperatures above 25C. The lower section shows a very shallow response to temperature, while the higher section shows a sharply negative response. What this does not show is what is actually happening to the surface temperatures in those grid cells.
We know that overall surface warming has been less in the tropics than elsewhere. It may be the case that not much change is taking place in the gridcells above 25C, so that the negative response is muted. Meanwhile the other gridcells might be warming more significantly, but the response in those gridcells is near zero overall. However, this would require a lot of detailed analysis to say anything meaningful.
Dr. Mike, you are correct on the “clear sky” conditions, which of course is where water vapor will about triple the greenhouse effect of CO2 alone….and if you experiment with UChicago Modtran under many cloud conditions, constant RH, and 70km upwelling IR somewhere on the 230 to 270 range….or spend the time averaging a few scenarios to 240 W/m^2…..gives you about 0.7 degrees warming per doubling of CO2. Much different, much more realistic…and allows much more correctly for cloud albedo….
I partly agree, but not fully. That’s because as latent heat loss rises cloud cover increases and albedo increases. So the “energy gained” bar gets smaller, thereby multiplying the effect of the water cycle.
The actual size of the latent heat component also may be at issue. It is almost never discussed that the IR spectrum for liquid water is a far larger sink for IR radiation than water vapor or CO2. Since the absorbed photons are constantly being re-emitted* by CO2, water vapor and other GHGs, the photon will eventually find liquid water to be absorbed into. That then raises evaporation by being converted to latent heat. So I suspect the actual component of latent heat is larger proportionally than currently estimated.
(* The emission spectrum is similar to the absorption spectrum – and the absorption and re-emission is fast as the various vibration modes etc flip between different energy levels under influence of Brownian interactions with other air molecules.)
You are trying to have a logical debate with deluded fanatics … a waste of time …
“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 mostly serious answer is that the resolved quasi-static iterator elements boost the code-derived looping energy flux amplifier outputs by implementing the delirium parameterization routines for clouds and water vapor. The massively parallel convection suppressor function is called by the conformance co-processor at each time-step to constrain the surface response to the expected values. The fact that the physical atmosphere’s response is inferior by a factor of 6 or so is unfortunate but surely only temporary as those non-digital molecules learn more slowly how to do this.
(Only partly /sarc.)
In other words, way too much emphasis on the incomplete and misleading static concept and much too little on the motion.
#Nasa_Knew
ouch, I thought I knew what you were talking about for a moment! Nice comedy!
Dear Willis,
I thought I could answer why the IPCC considers a non-feedback sensitivity of 1.1°C in the other thread.
The 3.7W/m^2 are evaluated at the “top of the atmosphere” which really means tropopause.
Since the convective heat transport (both latent and sensible) happen below the tropopause it is not necessary to devide by 0.78 in this location.
Now this 3.7W/m^2 is evaluated at 255K at the tropopause. After your answer to my comment below the other article I have to rethink this, but this is actually done by the common climate “activist scientists”. See
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.earth.061008.134734
Here it is treated as additional downwelling which at the top of the atmosphere also means additional upwelling because emitted-radiation is omnidirectional (I know you said it is reduced upwelling which makes more sense).
When taking this at face value, then one has to assume 6W/m^2 at 288K near the ground for the same concentration of CO2.
The solution could be this:
As you said, the upwelling from TOA is REDUCED by 3.7W/m^2.
This means that the part of surface radiation that reaches space directly (without being absorbed by climate gases) has to increase by 3.7W/m^2. This is necessary in order to reach a steady state between earth and space.
I don’t know the ratio between long wave radiation going directly into space to total long wave radiation emitted from the ground. Lets assume the ratio is 60%. Then the total radiation change on the ground is 3.7W/m^2 divided by 0.6 equals 6.1W/m^2. This number is in the right ballpark for 1.1°C warming at the ground surface. Note this is change in radiative emission, latent heat and sensible heat come on top of this.
Moritz, the increase in CO2 forcing is not measured at the tropopause. Can’t be, we have no measuring instruments at the tropopause.
As first expounded by Ramanathan, it is measured as the amount of longwave absorbed by the entire atmosphere, that is to say, upwelling surface longwave minus TOA longwave.
So it is NOT an attribute of the tropopause, and it is NOT connected to any specific atmospheric temperature.
My best to you,
w.
No measuring instruments at the tropopause? Wow, there is some science to be done. NOT SETTLED AT ALL!
“upwelling surface longwave minus TOA longwave.”
This confirms what I assumed in the last part of my comment ( after “The solution could be this:”).
The “suface longwave” is more than “surface longwave minus TOA longwave”. Therefore the change in “surface longwave” is proportionally larger than 3.7W/m². This explains the 1.1°C warming part per doubling of CO2.
The cause of the further amplification effect, (or as I assume: dampening effect) is still unclear. Of course people claim positive water feedback, albedo feedback and cloud feedback, but each of these don’t show up in empirical measurements. At least not as positive feedbacks.
“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.”
A net 1.2°C warming for doubling CO2 levels, the rest is an assumed positive feedback by water vapour.
–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?–
NASA say more than 90% of all global warming warms our cold 3.5 C ocean.
Or the at surface is “lost” to ocean, though it’s not a loss.
I say, the *only way* to warm Earth average temperature is to warm our cold ocean.
Or it’s said, the ocean was 4 C or warmer when we had thousands of years of warmest
interglacial temperature. Or period of peak interglacial you see, after it climbs out of
a glaciation period.
Or we are long past peak Holocene, and our peak Holocene wasn’t as warm [apparently] as other interglacial periods where sea levels rise 4 to 9 meter higher than our current sea level.
Instead our peak only had sea level 1 to 2 meter higher than present sea levels.
Or we had a weird interglacial and one could go so far as to say, it’s not really an interglacial
period. A warming period certainly but was like other interglacial periods.
But we also had very cold glaciation period to climb out of.
And maybe had volcanic or impact event having something to do with it.
But it seems there agreement about it being odd.
Willis: I asked this question somewhere around 2 decades ago when I first learned that climate models included a water feedback factor based on the theory that increased water vapor in the atmosphere due to warming from CO2 would amplify the warning as a positive feedback. My question was: Why doesn’t warming of any kind result in runaway warming? If the theory was correct, the warming due water vapor positive feedback should continue until the temperature reaches the boiling point. And it wouldn’t matter whether the initial temperature increase was due to CO2, solar activity, asteroid impacts or any other cause.
I posed the question to a few acquaintances whom I considered good scientists and engineers that were concerned about global warming, but never got a cogent answer. (Most latter professed skepticism.) Mostly it was “the models show it doesn’t happen.” I’ve been seriously skeptical ever since. Your post is an excellent and clear revelation of one of the most glaring flaws of AGW dogma.
Runaway is NOT an unavoidable result of feedback. It depends entirely on the amount of feedback.
w.
See: convergent infinite product.
” Runaway is NOT an unavoidable result of feedback. It depends entirely on the amount of feedback. ”
” No, because something around 100 W/m2 is lost as latent or sensible heat, leaving only 400 W/m2 to maintain the surface warmth. ”
— Over land we have an average of 38W/m² evaporation / over water 100W/m². During a drought, with the time evaporation tends to zero. A feedback amount of theoretical 38-100W/m²,
… but if that is not enough for you to explain thermal runaway, you can consult the clouds.
Without evaporation –> no clouds keeping an average of ~19W/m²(CRE) away from the surface. –
Huge amounts of solar energy are used on the earth’s surface but also within the troposphere for the non-temperature-increasing process of evaporation. Even if this energy is released again through condensation in the atmosphere – it is an energy transport in the right direction to space. The production of clouds during condensation also increases the cooling efficiency by water.
The more intensive this water cycle takes place, the cooler the temperature structure of air and soil will be. In order to prevent rising temperatures over land areas, there is no alternative to an adequate supply of water, because without available water only increasing, sensible heat and LW radiation are available as surface cooling.
A humanity that has drained land areas for thousands of years and thus today continues to have a steadily reducing influence on the evaporation rate on 1/3 of the land area – is surprised today that it has one foot in the desert and is confronted with record temperatures, droughts and crop failures.
HUMANITY AND ESPECIALLY THE IPCC IS AS STUPID AS MY BREAD IN THE KITCHEN CUPBOARD.
The stupidity of the IPCC can now even be proven relatively “watertight”.
In their graphs on cooling & warming causes of climate factors, the cooling factor “land-use reflectance / irrigation” < (~ 0.125°C) appears for the first time in the history of the IPCC in 2020/8.
Thus, the albedo is assessed over urban areas such as cities (~1.5 million km²) and global agriculture (~48 million km²).
Global irrigation/y is ~2600 km³, with only ~1000 km³ going to evaporation and 1600 km³ are lost due to surface or underground runoff.
If the IPCC now for the first time ascribes a cooling effect to the “additional evaporation” via irrigation, that is correct…but –
WHERE IS THE WARMING EFFECT that people continue to exert through “additional drainage” ???
INNER LOGIC IN THE GRAPH — NOT AVAILABLE !!!
Using the reduced rH (see above) I calculated a lack of evaporation over land accumulated by land use change of ~ 6800 km³ within the last 50-75 years alone. This can explain a warming effect of +3.5W/m² on the land surface during this period – but also the global spreading desertification.
These 3.5W/m² are attributed to CO2 emissions by the IPCC,
AND SO THAT THE STUPIDITY WILL NOT DECREASE…
…continuously rising (record) temperatures have been measured over land for decades and blindly ascribe their increase to global warming caused by climate gases –
but the only thing missing is water & latent flux or intelligent water management.
BTW -With 6800 km³/y of water, plants can absorb about 25-50 Gt CO2 through photosynthesis
(1m³ evapotranspiration = 3.7 – 7.4Kg CO2 absorption).
MORE than mankind produces annually.
There would have been no climate change since 1750 due to the burning of fossil fuels if mankind had not ironed down millions of km² of moors, (rain) forests, wetlands and vegetation so mercilessly stupidly.
https://climateprotectionhardware.wordpress.com/
“My question was: Why doesn’t warming of any kind result in runaway warming? If the theory was correct, the warming due water vapor positive feedback should continue until the temperature reaches the boiling point. And it wouldn’t matter whether the initial temperature increase was due to CO2, solar activity, asteroid impacts or any other cause.”
Roughly, ocean warms, land cools.
And as Willis says, the tropical ocean [where more 1/2 sunlight reaches Earth surface] has
a control mechanism. So Tropical ocean engine warms the entire world, and if gets too warm, it dumps heat into space.
Another what I think more important mechanism is liquid polar ocean warms land, and frozen
polar ocean, is more like land [or doesn’t warm land] but a frozen ocean doesn’t cool the ocean, Lots of polar sea ice, warms our cold ocean with average temperature of 3.5 C.
If you imagine the average temperature of ocean controls global temperature, extensive polar sea ice and huge glacial ice sheets, warms the ocean, rather than being a source of global
cooling,
Or in terms of cooling land it’s the sea ice, And ice sheet is not cooling land.
Or ice sheet is a huge amount to water on land, it’s not lowering water vapor, it’s making the world drier and colder. And should absorb more sunlight than a dry ground surface,
Or summer skiing is girls skiing in bikinis,
“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”
The energy comes from the Sun. Its like the outside of a blanket has a net flow away but its insulating effect is to radiate some of the heat back to the inside. The heat source for the body remains the same but it loses less heat and warms up until the outside layer warms enough to radiate an equal amount of heat away. You can calculate how much it warms up as how much extra the source of heat is due to the outside layer reflecting back a certain amount of heat. Because the inside is warmer, it is radiating heat backwards at a higher rate, with the net being 0 at equilibrium because is body wrapped up in it is as hot.
The reduction in heat loss is viewed as heat gained. It seems as strange approach when a blanket has a simple relationship with change in T with change in Q.
Yes, I appreciate that I’ve told you nothing new. It’s about how to frame the argument. It’s just the temperature gradient.