By Andy May
“The atmospheric heat transport on Earth from the Equator to the poles is largely carried out by the mid-latitude storms. However, there is no satisfactory theory to describe this fundamental feature of the Earth’s climate.”
(Barry, Craig, & Thuburn, 2002)
This is the transcript of the talk I gave in Tom Nelson’s podcast interview here.
After Leon Barry and his colleagues write the above statement in their Nature article, they write that the middle latitudes are a zone of strong temperature gradients and these gradients generate storms that can be severe. Their paper proposes that the severity of the storms is proportional to the temperature gradient, such that the smaller the temperature gradient from the tropics to the poles, the fewer severe storms are needed to accomplish the task of transferring excess tropical energy (or heat) to the poles. Keep this concept in mind as I describe meridional (north-south) energy transport.
Much of this talk is based on Javier Vinós’ new book Climate of the Past, Present, and Future, A Scientific Debate, 2nd Edition, Chapter 10. Figure 1, from the book, shows the global average temperature over one average year.
Total solar irradiance (called TSI in Figure 1) constitutes over 99.9% of the energy input into the climate system. The energy received from the sun changes throughout the year by 6.9% due to the constantly changing Earth-Sun distance. The Earth is closest to the sun (perihelion) around the 4th of January and farthest (aphelion) around the 4th of July. Although half the Earth is illuminated by the sun at any given time, the changes in the orientation of Earth’s axis, the irregular distribution of land masses, changes in albedo (or reflectivity), and regional changes in surface and atmospheric temperature, cause important seasonal changes in the amount of reflected solar radiation (called “RSR” in Figure 1) and outgoing longwave radiation (or “OLR”). As a result, the temperature of the Earth is always changing, and the planet is never in thermal equilibrium.
Contrary to what we might expect, the Earth is warmest just after the June solstice, when it is farthest from the sun, and coldest just after the December solstice, when it is receiving 6.9% more energy from the sun. Earth’s average surface temperature is about 14.5°C, which is cold by geological standards, but during the year it warms and cools by 3.8°C, as shown in Figure 1. As expected, Earth emits more energy (called TOR, the red dotted line in Figure 1) when it is cooling and less when it is warming, regardless of what it is receiving at the time. The idea of an energy balance at the top of the atmosphere is clearly wrong. The Earth displays very little temperature variability from year to year, but there is no reason to think we properly understand the mechanisms involved in Earth’s temperature stability. And, certainly, the idea that two-degrees of global warming is dangerous is absurd.
In Figure 1 the global surface average temperature of the planet (the thick black line in Figure 1) changes so much mostly because the Northern Hemisphere (the thin solid black line) varies by 12°C in the average year. The planet has two peaks of energy loss to space (or TOR in Figure 1), these are when each pole is dark and cools. The highest is when the North Pole is dark. Between November and January, the planet emits more energy than at any other time. The Southern Hemisphere is the dashed black line. The 1961–1990 temperature data are from Phil Jones at the Hadley Climatic Research Center. The radiation data are from Barbara Carlson and colleagues.
Figure 1 shows that although the climate system is entirely powered by solar irradiance, what determines Earth’s temperature is what the climate system does with that energy. Yet, the climate system is extremely complex. As Leon Barry and colleagues say in the quote in the beginning of this talk, modern climatology lacks a proper theory of how energy moves within our planet’s climate system. It is possible to model what is not properly understood, but to believe such a model is foolish. Figure 2 shows Earth’s basic energy redistribution processes.
The average absolute (or Kelvin) temperature of the surface does not vary that much with latitude, it lies between 278 and 300 Kelvin between 60°N–60°S. The amount of radiation that Earth’s surface emits is a function of this absolute temperature, the amount that reaches outer space is mostly a function of greenhouse gas concentration and cloud cover, both of which are higher in the tropics, where the higher absolute surface temperatures are. Thus, outgoing longwave radiation does not vary that much with latitude. The result is that the net radiation flux at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) is positive (more incoming than outgoing) on the annual average between about 30°N-30°S and negative between about 30° North or South and the poles, as shown in Figure 2. Obviously, the precise point where the net incoming radiation equals the outgoing varies with the hemisphere, the month of the year, other orbital parameters, and cloudiness, but the average location is near 30° North or South. The cooling, as one moves poleward from the tropics, is mostly from reduced insolation—the amount of solar energy reaching the surface. The reduction in insolation poleward creates a net energy deficit and a latitudinal temperature gradient. Energy is transported from latitudes where there is a net gain of energy (the red area) to latitudes where there is net loss of energy to outer space (the blue area), by meridional transport.
Meridional transport moves a lot more energy towards the winter pole. The winter pole radiates much more energy to space than it receives, since the sun is below the horizon. Virtually all energy the winter pole emits is transported there via winter storms or is latent heat released as summer meltwater freezes.
Without meridional transport, the temperature of the blue regions—where the net flow of energy is toward outer space, that is negative, would decrease continuously until outgoing longwave radiation emissions are sufficiently low to match insolation. In the dark polar night, that temperature would approach absolute zero or –273°C. Meridional transport of air, water vapor, and water in the atmosphere and oceans keeps the temperature of the dark pole much warmer than that.
The Earth’s surface latitudinal temperature gradient is a direct consequence of the latitudinal insolation gradient. Thermal energy flows from warmer regions to colder regions. This is the physical basis of meridional transport, but the climate system is complex, so it is far from a passive process that depends only on the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles. Instead, it is a complex process, that depends upon both geography and climate processes. It is possible to drive more energy with a smaller temperature difference than with a larger temperature difference. As an example, meridional transport has increased in the first two decades of the 21st century, despite Arctic warming, which has reduced the latitudinal temperature gradient. It is not as simple as Leon Barry and colleagues write in their article, but much of what he wrote is correct.
We know that Earth’s latitudinal temperature gradient has varied a lot over the geological past. Wladimir Köppen, a Russian-German scientist, studied the sun-climate effect in the 19th century and established a climate classification system that is still used today. His climate zones are defined in terms of temperature, precipitation, and their seasonal distribution. Many groups of plants and animals are restricted to a narrow range of temperatures; and so are certain geological processes. Using this information, along with well-dated fossils and rock formations from around the world, Christopher Scotese has mapped past climate history, as part of his Paleomap Project. The information allowed him to map the global Köppen climate zones every five million years, since the beginning of the Phanerozoic 540 million years ago. Maps of the Köppen belts as they exist today and 52 million years ago are shown in Figure 3.
Each Köppen belt combination defines a latitudinal temperature gradient. This allows Scotese and his colleagues to create the temperature graphs shown in the right-hand illustration. The graphs can be used to estimate an approximate global average surface temperature for the period. Thus, Scotese and his colleagues have shown that the latitudinal temperature gradient is a fundamental climate variable, an idea that is consistent with the quote from Barry, et al. at the beginning of this talk. Using Scotese’s definitions, the present (21st century) latitudinal temperature gradient is considered a “severe icehouse,” as shown in Figure 3. In the right-hand graph, we compare the current severe icehouse temperature gradient in blue, with the Early Eocene hothouse gradient from 52 million years ago. Notice that today, Greenland and Antarctica are covered in ice, shown in blue on the lower map and the poles are ice free in the upper map. An icehouse climate is characterized by year-round ice sheets at the poles.
The climate during the Early Eocene hothouse was quite warm by today’s standards. The average global surface temperature reached 10°C warmer than today. The so-called “burst of mammalian first appearances” occurred at this time. One of the mammals that first appeared during the Early Eocene was the first primate, our distant ancestor. Primates quickly spread around the world. Besides new mammals, many new genera of turtles, lizards, and plants evolved and thrived during this time. Some deep-water foraminifera went extinct, but most organisms did well and dispersed widely.
The existence of very different past climates on Earth creates an insurmountable problem for modern “consensus” climatology. During the last glacial maximum, 20,000 years ago, the energy received from the sun was the same as now. Not only that, but the Milankovitch orbital parameters were also nearly the same. The distribution of solar energy over the Earth was nearly identical to now, yet the climate was very different. Energy input to the climate system must have been lower because the larger ice sheets reflected more solar energy and the greenhouse effect was lower. The lower greenhouse effect was due to less atmospheric CO2 and available water. Lower temperatures made CO2 more soluble in the oceans, removing it from the air. The very large continental ice sheets in the last glacial maximum removed a lot of water and water vapor and stored it in ice, removing it from the climate system.
A lower energy input and a larger latitudinal temperature gradient ought to have drained the tropics of heat via stronger meridional transport, but that was not the case. There is still controversy about tropical temperatures during the last glacial maximum, but it appears that they were only 1–2°C colder than present. This is consistent with evidence presented by Chris Scotese and colleagues that tropical temperatures have not changed much over the course of the past 540 million years despite huge changes in the average temperature of the planet (9–30°C). You will notice in Figure 3 that the very warm Early Eocene hothouse climate has a similar temperature at the equator to the present day, but the difference at the South Pole is 44°C and it is 23°C at the North Pole. Clearly, most of the warming occurs in the higher latitudes.
If the last glacial maximum creates a problem for how meridional transport operates during a glacial period, the equable climate of the Early Eocene results in a paradox that modern consensus climatology cannot solve. Currently the Earth is in a severe icehouse climate with a very steep latitudinal temperature gradient as the right-hand graph in Figure 3 makes very clear. Currently, temperature falls by 0.6–1°C/°latitude from the equator to the winter pole. Such a cold environment has been relatively rare during the past 540 million years, existing less than 10% of the time. The Early Eocene Earth had an average temperature estimated at 24 to 25°C, that Scotese describes as hothouse conditions. The Early Eocene latitudinal temperature gradient was very shallow, at 0.25–0.45°C/°latitude, with temperatures at the North Pole above freezing all year round, as attested to by the presence of frost-intolerant biota. These hothouse conditions have been even rarer. Over 60% of the Phanerozoic Eon the Earth had an average temperature of 19–20°C. The average global surface temperature of the entire Phanerozoic—the past 540 million years—is a very pleasant 18°C, about 3.5°C warmer than today.
The climate of the Early Eocene is defined as equable. It is characterized by a warm world with a low latitudinal temperature gradient, low seasonality, and fewer mid- and high-latitude storms than today. The failure of modern consensus climate theory to explain these periods has been termed the “equable climate problem.” To reproduce the Early Eocene warm continental interior temperatures and above freezing winter polar regions, models must raise CO2 levels to 4700 ppm, use an implausible climate sensitivity to CO2, and allow tropical temperatures to exceed 35°C. However, the best CO2 estimates for the Early Eocene climatic optimum place probable CO2 levels at 500–1,000 ppm, and the highest estimates are less than 2,000. Further, it is unlikely that tropical temperatures above 30°C are possible, due to the efficiency of heat removal through evaporation and deep convection (the convection of moist air to the upper troposphere) at that temperature. Also, mammals cannot survive above a wet-bulb temperature of 35°C, where they become unable to lose heat. Yet, fossils show us that mammals thrived in the Early Eocene. The highest wet-bulb temperature on Earth today is 30°C, and there is no reason to think it has been higher at any time in the past at places where mammal fossils are found.
The equable climate problem is intimately related to the “low gradient problem.” Conceptually, we believe that to have warm poles more heat must be transported there, especially in winter, to compensate for the insolation deficit. Heat meridional transport is a very important part of the planetary energy budget, and without it the poles would be much colder. But meridional transport depends on the latitudinal temperature gradient since much of the poleward transport in the present climate is through mid- to high-latitude storms resulting from atmospheric instability due to steep temperature gradients. The paradox arises because, while the warm poles of the Early Eocene seem to demand more energy transport, the reduced latitudinal temperature gradient implies reduced meridional transport. It is no wonder that climate models struggle with this conundrum.
The lower atmosphere is a thin film of gas, just 1/600 of the Earth diameter (or about 10 km). This thin atmosphere has the crucial role of always maintaining a land surface temperature compatible with complex life, something it has done for at least the past 540 million years. To do that it must compensate for surface temperature differences arising from differences in insolation. First, it must compensate for the difference between day and night. It does so mainly through the greenhouse effect and clouds, both reduce cooling at night by delaying radiation emissions to space, and clouds reflect incoming solar radiation during the day. Then, it must compensate for the latitudinal decrease in insolation and its seasonal changes due to the axial tilt of the planet. It does this through meridional heat transport.
The three factors responsible for Earth’s thermal stability then are the greenhouse effect, clouds, and meridional transport. Modern climatology ignores the last two and focuses exclusively on the first, by developing the CO2 “control knob” climate hypothesis. The effect of clouds and their variability on climate change is still largely unknown. According the IPCC AR6 report (on page 979) cloud feedback to surface warming could be positive or negative and it is the largest source of uncertainty in the effect of greenhouse gases on the climate.
As you can see in Figure 4, energy is only exchanged between the climate system and outer space through the top of the atmosphere. This means that meridional transport has a net zero value when integrated over the whole planet, since moving energy around does not alter the total energy within the system. This fact has caused many climate scientists to believe that changes in meridional transport cannot cause climate change, probably the most fundamental mistake of modern consensus climatology.
The atmosphere can move a great amount of energy, quickly and efficiently, over the entire surface of the Earth. Most meridional transport is carried out mainly by the atmosphere. Only in the deep tropics (10°S–10°N) is the atmosphere inadequate for the necessary energy transport. This is the region where most solar energy enters the climate system. In this region the ocean must carry out most of the heat transport in the deep tropics. Because the tropical Pacific Ocean is so large—it goes almost half-way around the planet—the El Niño/Southern Oscillation or ENSO manages to keep the tropical heat content under control. El Niño is the way the Earth periodically expels excess accumulated heat that normal meridional transport processes did not carry away. ENSO is a vital part of the global meridional transport system.
Poleward of 10-20° latitude, the ocean transfers most of its energy to the atmosphere, particularly in the western ocean basin boundary currents, like the Kuroshio Current in the Pacific and the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. Once the sea-ice edge is reached, the transport is essentially carried out exclusively by the atmosphere, since the energy flux through the sea ice is much less than from the liquid ocean surface. The primary mechanism of heat transfer is evaporation, so sea-surface temperature is not as important for ocean-atmosphere energy flow as wind speed and air moisture, since these are the principal factors governing evaporation. However, evaporation limits the maximum sea-surface temperature to about 30°C.
When west-east winds are dominant in the mid- to high-latitudes, meridional or south-north winds, and meridional transport of energy decreases, which causes global warming. When west-east (or zonal) winds decrease, meridional transport increases, more energy reaches the pole, and the planet cools.
Angular momentum is exchanged between the solid Earth–ocean and the atmosphere due to changes in wind direction and speed in the higher latitudes. The changes in angular momentum change the Earth’s rotation speed, which we measure as the length of day. The rotation speed increases, causing a shorter day, when average zonal (west to east) wind speeds increase. When zonal wind speed increases, the polar vortex becomes stronger, cold air is trapped in the Arctic, and the planet warms.
Zonal wind circulation is stronger in winter, when more angular momentum resides in the atmosphere due to a deeper latitudinal temperature gradient, so the Earth rotates faster in January and July, and slower in April and October, when zonal circulation is weaker. The basic 11-year solar cycle (the Schwabe Cycle) and the ENSO cycle are known to affect zonal versus meridional winds and thus the speed of Earth’s rotation.
But while the role of ENSO is widely known and reported, the role of the sun remains largely ignored. We have found that the sun affects climate through its effect on atmospheric circulation, not through differences in total solar irradiance.
Transport of energy by the atmosphere is linked to the transport of mass, momentum, moisture, and clouds. It mostly takes place in the troposphere. North and south of about 30° latitude energy is mostly transported through storms in preferred routes over ocean basins. The two most significant Northern Hemisphere storm tracks are shown in Figure 5 in red.
Figure 6 shows the correlation between solar activity (shown in red) and average atmospheric angular momentum. The two correlate well and positively from 1920 until today, but they anticorrelate (negative correlation coefficient) prior to 1920. Many solar/climate correlations reversed around 1920, causing much confusion among solar/climate scientists. Prior to 1920, a low sunspot number was thought to cause warmer weather, a negative correlation. After 1920 this relationship reversed, and sunspots correlated positively with warming.
After the 1920 reversal, the idea that there was a connection between the Sun and climate was discredited. The reason for the reversal is unknown and will likely remain so until it happens again. Douglas Hoyt and Kenneth Schatten explain that the reversals appear to happen every 80-120 years, such that 1600 to 1720 produced a negative correlation, 1720 to 1800 a positive correlation, 1800 to 1920 a negative correlation, and 1920 to the present a positive correlation. We might see another reversal within the next few decades, which might allow a mechanism to be discovered.
Knowing how heat is transported into the Arctic allows us to examine the phenomenon of Arctic amplification, that is the idea that when global temperatures rise, they rise faster in the Arctic and Antarctic. General circulation models have predicted this since the first models were written by Syukuro Manabe and Kirk Bryan in the 1960s. However, in the modern global warming period Antarctic amplification has not been observed. Through 1995 so little Arctic amplification was observed, despite intense global warming the previous 20 years, that Judith Curry said:
“The relative lack of observed warming and relatively small ice retreat may indicate that GCMs are overemphasizing the sensitivity of climate to high-latitude processes.”
Curry, et al., 1996
That was about to change that year when Arctic amplification suddenly accelerated, as shown in Figure 7. But the question is still valid. Why was Arctic amplification small before 1996, when intense global warming was taking place, and large after 1996 when the global warming rate decreased—the so-called “Pause?” Modern climatology does not have an answer for that.
In Figure 7, the black curve is the summer (June–August) mean temperature anomaly from the European Weather Center reanalysis database for the region north of 80°N. The red curve is the corresponding winter (December–February) mean temperature anomaly for the same region.
The Arctic in winter constitutes the biggest heat-sink—net loss of energy to space—on the planet. Arctic precipitable water is about 1.5 cm in summer, but in winter it drops to almost zero. As a result, cloud cover becomes lower in winter increasing the energy loss. With reduced cloud cover, almost no water vapor, and no albedo effect, the Arctic in winter has essentially no feedbacks to the greenhouse effect from CO2. Van Wijngaarden & Happer, note that
“the relatively warm greenhouse-gas molecules in the atmosphere above the cold surface cause the Earth to radiate more heat to space from the poles than it could without greenhouse gases.”
Van Wijngaarden & Happer, 2020
Arctic amplification is the consequence of increased meridional transport, not the greenhouse effect. The Arctic has a negative annual energy budget (that is a net flow of energy to outer space) and increasing the greenhouse effect does not make it less negative—that is warming. Arctic warming, particularly during the winter, can only come from an increase in the heat transported from lower latitudes. The increase in Arctic heat transport that is not exported back to lower latitudes is distributed between increased radiation to space and increased downward longwave radiation that warms the surface. The enhanced downward radiation does increase the surface temperature, but due to the low thermal conductivity of ice, and since the heat flux always goes from the warmer ocean to the atmosphere during winter, temperature inversions commonly result, often accompanied by humidity inversions. Thus, the radiative cooling continues from the top of the inversion layer or the top of the clouds, until the water vapor freezes and precipitates, restoring the original very cold condition.
Arctic winter heat transport is enhanced at times when high pressure conditions prevail over the pole leading to a weak or split vortex. Warm air then enters the central Arctic, displacing cold air that moves over the mid–latitude continents producing anomalously cold temperatures and snow. Since Arctic amplification started, the frequency of mid-latitude cold winters has increased, something that models cannot explain. Something similar took place between 1920–40.
Summary of the data
Earth’s global average surface temperature varies 3.8°C every year. The high temperature is in July and the low temperature in January. Thus, it is difficult to take the IPCC warnings about two degrees of warming over the next 100 years seriously.
Earth’s tropics receive much more solar energy than they can radiate to outer space. This sets up many elaborate natural processes to move energy toward the poles where the net flow of energy is to outer space. Changes in this energy flow can cause climate change.
Geologists have devised a methodology that makes use of Wladimir Köppen’s climate belts to reconstruct past global average temperatures. The reconstructions have a very low temporal resolution and only determine one global average surface temperature every five million years, but the process is reasonable. Our present climate is unusually cold in Earth’s history, colder than 90% of the past 540 million years. Temperatures in the tropics do not vary much, global warming or global cooling mainly takes place in the mid- to high-latitude regions.
Storminess increases in periods with a larger latitudinal temperature gradient because most excess tropical energy from the tropics is transported in storms. As global warming reduces the gradient, fewer storms are expected.
Solar activity affects Earth’s climate, but the correlation changes with time. It is sometimes positive, that is Earth warms with increasing solar activity and sometimes Earth cools with increasing solar activity. The switches appear to occur every 80-120 years. The climate/solar correlation changes suggest that the solar effect on climate is not directly due to changes in solar radiation like the IPCC proposes, but to solar induced changes to large atmospheric processes that are being neglected.
Arctic summer temperatures do not change much, probably because any increase in meridional transport simply melts more polar ice. Winter temperatures do change, additional energy transported to the Arctic will warm the surface. When additional ice melts in the summer, due to increased meridional transport, the refreezing of the ice in the winter causes the released latent heat to be sent to space.
Summary of Climate Model problems
The first serious climate model that attempted to show greenhouse gases, especially CO2, that could explain all, or nearly all, of modern global warming was developed in 1979, and published by the National Academy of Sciences. It is usually referred to as the “Charney Report.” In the 43 years since that report was published, the IPCC has published 47 additional reports that reach nearly the same conclusions about CO2 and climate. Yet after writing many tens of thousands of pages and spending billions of dollars, they have not convinced a majority of the people on Earth, or in the United States, that manmade climate change is our most important and serious societal problem. Other societal problems are always considered more important and urgent. In a 2018 Gallup poll climate change ranked 18th, of 19 issues in importance, in a similar 2014 poll, climate change ranked 14th on a list of priorities. A 2022 poll by the Pew Research Center also found climate change ranked 14th. Minds are not being changed.
These models cannot explain why the frequency of Northern Hemisphere cold mid-latitude winters has increased. They cannot simulate the Early Eocene warm conditions without using unrealistic CO2 levels and climate sensitivity to CO2.
They cannot explain why species diversity, especially mammalian diversity, increased in the Early Eocene, when global temperatures were ten degrees warmer. They cannot explain why there was no Arctic warming when global warming peaked between 1980 and 1997, yet it did increase after 1997 when warming slowed.
Further, this seriously dated hypothesis was constructed before the discovery of all the multidecadal ocean oscillations and their connections to solar activity. Considerable evidence has been uncovered since 1979 that climate change is not simply a function of changing greenhouse gas concentrations, but much more complex, with a lot of natural input.
It is especially worrisome that the Early Eocene warming and the current Arctic warming cannot be explained with the IPCC greenhouse gas climate change hypothesis. These problems alone are enough to invalidate the hypothesis. Beating a dead horse comes to mind.
Download the meridional transport bibliography here.
The full Tom Nelson interview can be viewed here.
Interesting work.
Mo mention of the desert latitudes…..why?
They are not part of this story, why do you think they should be? Javier discusses the desert latitudes in his book, where they are relevant. But, as far as I know they are not relevant here.
The poles are coldest when there is less meridional transport because the tighter polar vortex in the tropopause prevents polar air flowing out towards the middle latitudes. That is when the surface temperature gradient is greatest.
The opposite when there is more meridional transport.
It is not the surface thermal gradient that affects meridionality and the size of storms. It is the gradient of tropopause height between equator and poles that determines storminess.
When the more active sun steepens that gradient that is when meridionality is reduced and storms are smaller but move faster from west to east.
When the less active sun makes the gradient less steep polar air is better able to spread out from the poles so storms become slower and larger.
It is the sun acting differently on ozone above the poles and tropics that alters the gradient of tropopause height.
In itself the process does not change global temperature because the change in meridional transport neutralises any thermal effect.
Extra energy going out from the poles when meridional transport is faster is matched by less energy going out from the tropics and less energy going out from the poles is matched by more going out from the tropics when meridional transport is slower.
The global temperature change arises because the globe is cloudier when meridional transport is greater (less energy into the oceans) and less cloudy when meridional transport is reduced (more energy into the oceans).
Cloudiness records show that there were decreasing clouds and less meridionality during the recent warming spell with cloudiness recovering slightly during the recent pause accompanied by more meridionality.
In the LIA there would have been even more meridionality and more clouds than today.
The evidence seems to show that solar induced cloudiness variations are the climate driver for the 1000 year cycling shown in the records with meridionality being a consequence of solar variations acting on the tropopause.
A problem with the WGH is this:
If the sun were to settle permanently into a state where it caused global cooling by increasing meridionality and allowing more energy out to space from the poles would the outgoing permanently exceed incoming so as to freeze the atmosphere to the ground and if not why not?
This makes absolutely no sense Stephen. It’s nonsense as a sentence.
I agree. It makes no sense. During glacial inception, the planet cools until a point it doesn’t cool further. What does stop it from cooling further? Negative feedbacks to further cooling become more powerful than positive feedbacks. In the long term the average energy in matches the energy out at a lower level than during an interglacial, as the albedo is higher and the greenhouse effect weaker. The polar vortex and winter sea-ice are strong negative feedbacks to further cooling, as they reduce heat loss. We know that even in those conditions with a much stronger temperature gradient and meridional transport the tropics are not drained of energy, because they remain tropical.
If the sun were to settle into a permanent spotless state the planet would cool until it would reach a new energy balance. Even without an ozone layer to respond to UV changes the planet would not have a stratosphere but it would have a temperature because it receives energy from the sun.
Polar vortices are not unique to Earth’s atmosphere. There are polar vortices in the atmospheres of many planetary bodies including Mars, Venus, Saturn, and Saturn’s moon Titan. And there is meridional energy transport in all of them despite a total lack of ozone.
Glaciations are attributable to Milankovitch cycles which alter the amount of solar radiation able to enter the climate system. The variations you have been describing involve the solar induced variations which give us the observed 1000 year variations between periods such as the little ice age and the mediaeval warm period.
Entirely separate phenomena.
If the sun were to settle into a permanent spotless condition resulting in cooling then outgoing long wave would permanently exceed solar incoming under the WGH. What would stop the process to allow a new energy balance?
Feedbacks, in a word. The lower solar input conditions would change meridional transport until the outgoing long wave radiation matched the incoming, then the changes would stop. Eventually, cloudiness, ice cover, and the greenhouse effect would adjust such that the temperature stabilized. In 540 million years the Earth has always found a stable point under all solar conditions. You are missing the main point of WGK. Remember, the solar radiation input does not work directly on the climate, it works by changing meridional transport.
There are no lower solar input conditions in your WGH. You have suggested and I agree that the changes in meridionality are independent of solar input and instead due to effects on atmospheric chemistry.
“Entirely separate phenomena.”
What does this mean?
Ice ages are caused by Milankovitch cycles. The 1000 year variability you have been discussing is caused by solar variability as you say. You can’t conflate the two.
So you say, but in essence, every climate change involves a change in the energy budget of the planet and involves changes to the meridional transport of energy. The ultimate cause might be different, but the way the planet carries out the changes is common. There are a lot of papers showing the participation of meridional transport changes in Milankovitch-induced climate changes. See for example:
Masson-Delmotte, V., Jouzel, J., Landais, A., Stievenard, M., Johnsen, S.J., White, J.W.C., Werner, M., Sveinbjornsdottir, A. and Fuhrer, K., 2005. GRIP deuterium excess reveals rapid and orbital-scale changes in Greenland moisture origin. Science, 309(5731), pp.118-121.
The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis applies equally well to glaciations because it does not look for the cause but for the mechanism of how the climate changes. The mechanism is common for multiple causes.
If the WGH does not look for the cause then as I said the meridional transport changes are a consequence of other factors. The whole gist of your WGH has previously been to suggest that meridional variations cause a temperature change for the globe as a whole by altering the amount of longwave going out from polar regions.
If meridional factors are a consequence then they serve to prevent a temperature change for the globe as a whole.
As far as I can see you have just removed the significance of the WGH as a causative mechanism.
You need to say why it does not make sense.
If you speed up the transport system then you speed it up at both ends of the system. Energy will leave the tropics faster within the surface winds so as to arrive at the poles faster. Energy cannot be in two places at once so outgoing long wave from the tropics will be less than it otherwise would have been in order to make outgoing long wave at the poles more than it otherwise would have been.
Note that I have no problem with your basic premise that meridional transport is key. I have been banging on about that for approximately 15 years here and on many other blogs and have mentioned many of the points you raise in your work. The sole difference seems to be that you regard meridional transport as causative of the 1000 year temperature cycle whereas I say meridional transport variations are a response to solar induced cloudiness changes.
I should clarify that the sun causes meridional transport variations but it is the resulting cloudiness change that then causes the temperature change for the globe as a whole.
I will not comment on this, but I doubt it is that simple.
It is very simple because more clouds means higher albedo so that less incoming solar is able to be absorbed by the system. Reflected energy is lost forever. More reflection means cooling.
Cloudiness probably plays a role, and solar input probably is a factor in cloud area and type, but I don’t understand how cloudiness changes and how it affects long term climate. You wrote somewhere that it was cloudier during the Little Ice Age (LIA) than today, and that is true, but how does that work? I don’t know, in detail.
MT was enhanced during the LIA, so it was colder and much stormier than today, that would lead to more clouds, but beyond that it is hard figure out.
Longer lines of air mass mixing generates more clouds. Increased meridionality causes such longer lines.
Stephen,
You are making what I think of as the “pot on the stove” IPCC oversimplification fallacy. You cannot reduce the tropics and the polar regions to a simple circuit, with a copper wire running between them, and say if meridional transport (MT) speeds up, both ends have to act in concert, we are talking about thousands of miles and an infinite number of options.
Then there are changes to the troposphere and stratosphere and changes in the connection between the two, not to mention the polar vortex changes. Both the AMO and PDO can and do act as storage batteries. Changes in OLR from the tropics and from the poles are not necessarily connected in the way you are assuming.
They have to be connected in the way I say in order to keep the system stable so that on average for the globe as a whole the upward pressure gradient force within the atmosphere always equals the downward force of gravity.
There lots of ever varying storage batteries within the system but they always have to average out overall in order to retain an atmosphere.
I’d better leave it there otherwise my comments will derail your thread.
It is good to see a paper that recognises the sun’s view of Earth changes.
With regard Figure 7:
This is why you should never use anomalies. They are misleading at best.
Do you know what the winter temperature is over the Arctic land mass?
For those who do not, it bottoms at MIINUS 32C averaged over all Arctic land.
Meridinal transport is only one component of advection. In winter, land masses are much warmer than they would be without substantial heat transport from neighbouring oceans.
The land masses in the temperature zone of the Northern Hemisphere average -5C in winter while the temperate northern oceans bottom at 12C. A temperature difference of 17C is a powerful driver of moisture loaded air from oceans to land. All that moisture releases heat over the land and actually warms the land despite some of the water falling as snow.
The astronomical 4C increase in anomalous temperature in the Arctic means the land temperature has reached a staggering MINUS 28C. We should be alarmed.
It takes less than a fairy fart to shift the temperature of dry air at MINUS 32C to MINUS 28C.
This is an excellent point to argue to those worried that the Greenland ice sheet might melt due to Arctic warming. I have seen graphs of actual average temperatures (not anomalies) above 80 degrees North latitude as functions of Julian date (season) for recent years.
For autumn (Julian date > 300) and winter (Julian date < 80), there are sharp variations year-to-year, based on various rates of meridional heat transfer, but the actual temperatures are always < 250 K (-23 C), so that Arctic warming in winter would not melt any ice.
In late spring and summer (Julian date between 170 and 270, corresponding to late May through late September), the temperatures rarely exceed 278 K (+5 C), and the temperature profile is nearly flat, and doesn’t vary year-to-year by more than about 1 C. The reason for this relative stability in summer is that when temperatures exceed 273 K (0 C), Arctic sea ice starts to melt, which enables evaporation from open water, which forms clouds, which reflect most of the sunlight reaching polar regions over the Arctic Ocean and prevent further warming.
While there may be some summer melting of ice on Greenland (which is less cloudy than the Arctic in summer), the nearby open water in Baffin Bay and along Greenland’s east coast does promote more evaporation in summer and early autumn than during the winter. In early autumn, Greenland loses solar heating and cools rapidly, but nearby seas take several weeks to freeze over, and the sharp temperature gradient causes storms to form and dump heavy snow on Greenland.
In late autumn and winter, Baffin Bay freezes over, and evaporation there is cut off, but the sea along Greenland’s east coast is warmed by the Gulf Stream, and remains mostly ice-free through January. The temperature gradient becomes very sharp, leading to very heavy snowstorms along Greenland’s east coast, similar to the nor’easters that occasionally lead to heavy snowfall along the coast of the northeastern US.
These snowstorms can replenish the ice on Greenland that is melted during the summer. However, global warming alarmists rarely sail along Greenland’s east coast in blizzards during the dark winter, and they would be ice-bound in Baffin Bay, so all that they see is melting on long, sunny summer days.
These “nor’easters” along Greenland’s coast also transport heat to the Arctic in winter, since the latent heat released by formation of snow warms the atmosphere, to a slightly less-cold freezing temperature.
The current AGW alarm is solely based on provably wrong climate models. This post is merely one proof. There are several others:
It only takes one proof to kill climate models. When there are at least 6, you are truly beating a dead horse. The reason modelers don’t acknowledge their horse is dead is simple. Money. Too many careers vested in climate modeling.
“The current AGW alarm is solely based on provably wrong climate models.”
There is no AGW alarm (aka CAGW) caused by models. The alarm is caused by government bureaucrat “scientists” who program the models and then spin (misinterpret) the results.
The IPCC prefers to report the average guess of ECS based on the unreasonable RCP 8.5 CO2 emissions growth rate. ECS allegedly takes a few centuries and is based on an unproven HUGE water vapor positive feedback and unrealistic CO2 emissions growth. The IPCC does whatever it takes to scare people, who think the IPCC guesses are for the next 50 to 100 years, not several centuries, and assume the IPCC assumptions are reasonable (they are not).
IPCC Predictions for Global Average Temperatures After CO2 Doubling:
In several centuries (ECS in AR6): +2.5 to +4.0 degree C.
In 50 to 100 years (TCS in AR6): +1.4 to +2.2 degree C.
The non-publicized TCS, that refers to 70 years (perhaps 50 to 100 years is a better description) is more reasonable than ECS. If you compute TCS with the more reasonable RCP 4.5 CO2 growth guess, the resulting numbers would be acceptable even to skeptics, because they are not much different than observations since 1975! Those “tricks” were used by a Climate Howler named Zeke H. to claim climate models were accurate. And all Climate Howlers repeat his claim like trained parrots.
Further reading on Zeke H’s claims and tricks:
Explaining the Discrepancies Between Hausfather et al. (2019) and Lewis&Curry (2018) | Climate Etc. (judithcurry.com)
The hotspot as predicted by climate seancetists has been missing for decades. Shearwood claims to have found it, but that was just wind shear and wishful thinking
This alone should be enough to disprove CAGW
Just the other day Lord Moncton convinced me that there is no such thing as positive feedback. They’re all negative.
He’s probably right. How else could Earth’s surface temperature remain so stable for 540 million years.
Stable surface temperature for 540 million years?
What are you talking about?
The average temperature is estimated to have ranged from 50 degrees F. to about 95 degrees F.
How is that stable?
SOURCE:
A 500-million-year survey of Earth’s climate reveals dire warning for humanity | Science | AAAS
Within the temperature range established by our neighbors Mars and Venus it is remarkably stable to me. Obviously, we would not be here if it weren’t such.
Moncton of Baloney has no idea what he is talking about.
Ther is a positive feedback to troposphere warming:
A warmer troposphere holds more water vapor, which causes more warming.
There is no evidence that positive feedback is large — the IPCC claims it is huge. There is strong evidence that positive feedback is limited by one or more other climate change variables. Otherwise there would have been runaway global warming in the past when CO2 levels were up to 10x higher than today.
My best guess is that the water vapor positive feedback is limited by increased cloudiness, which is a side effect of more water vapor in the troposphere. Or something else limits the positive feedback.
I prefer the theory that a cloudiness negative feedback limits the water vapor positive feedback. Others may have different theories,
Maybe, but you clearly have much less. For a start, preferring theories is not something a scientist should engage in. As Feynman said, a scientist has a duty to try to prove his hypothesis wrong and his conviction should grow only as a measure of the effort put into it and consequent failure to disprove it.
Let’s put it this way – ON BALANCE, the feedbacks (plural) are negative.
If they weren’t, the Earth’s temperature would be in a roller coaster of “runaway” ups and downs. We would not see the stability we do over long periods in the climate record.
I don’t want to say there are no positive feedbacks. But I will say that if they are not limited with a stronger negative feedback then the system can only work by luck. Think of your auto cruise control. It does use positive feedback but it is limited at some point!
If I was president, and maybe the next president will do as I recommend, I would remove funding from all computer models and super computers. I would establish a new agency responsible for creating ONE MODEL and it would need to predict temperatures both forward and backward, that were accurate for the last and new 12 month period. They could use whatever modelers and scientists they want, but the group needs to arrive at some level of agreement as to how the climate works in order to make accurate PREDICTIONS.
This crap of averaging wrong models to get a consensus is ridiculous. I could never have run what I was responsible for in business with a multitude of different groups all making inaccurate budget and usage forecasts. Someone needs to step in and say whoa!
The complex atmosphere has inputs that are usually ignored. NASA GSFC actually knows all about how Jupiter transports energy from the poles to the equator through Impulsive heating (gravity waves) that are themselves driven by energetic particles and the solar wind. The same thing happens on Earth and should be considered when studying transport mechanisms.
It’s described well by the following diagram:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4641
“It is especially worrisome that the Early Eocene warming and the current Arctic warming cannot be explained with the IPCC greenhouse gas climate change hypothesis.”
There was no manmade CO2 that could have caused early Eocene warming 50 million years ago, so that warming must have been caused by other variables. Obviously.
Arctic warming, especially in winter, significantly exceeding tropics warming, is exactly what one would expect from a rise of greenhouse gases, and that it exactly what happened.
Your concluding statement is FALSE.
But not when the effect is so miniscule and takes a 6month holiday ever year…
FIG 7.
How do you explain Antarctica cooling?
Antarctica is roughly the same temperature as in the 1970s.
I explain that with the sentence: Climate science is not settled.
Richard,
Thus, you admit that the IPCC’s greenhouse gas hypothesis cannot explain “Early Eocene warming and the current Arctic warming.”
And that my concluding statement is true.
I said there were no manmade CO2 emissions 50 million years ago that could have affected the climate 50 million years ago. You understood what I wrote.
I also said current Arctic (and Siberia and northern Canada) warming is a pattern expected from rising greenhouse gases. You reversed what I previously wrote.
No one in the IPCC restricts the greenhouse effect to the effect of manmade CO2, and neither do I. My point stands. Their hypothesis of climate change cannot explain Early Eocene Warming, among other problems with their hypothesis. Your comment is a red herring and a logical fallacy.
It isn’t actually. In the polar regions winter, the atmosphere is warmer than the ground and under those conditions, an increase in warmer CO2 molecules increases IR emissions resulting in more cooling than if those molecules weren’t there.
See figure 8 in:
Van Wijngaarden, W.A. and Happer, W., 2020. Dependence of Earth’s thermal radiation on five most abundant greenhouse gases. arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.03098.
Exactly how does the greenhouse effect warm in the Arctic winter when the sun is never above the horizon? There is no source of heat except meridional transport of energy and the surface is cooler than the air. The greenhouse effect only works to warm the air when the surface is warmer than the air, if the surface is colder than the air, the greenhouse effect works in reverse, it warms the surface and it radiates the rest to space, both processes cool the air. Your comment makes no sense.
Andy, So you are saying CO2 is a coolant in winter in the Arctic?
Under many conditions in the Arctic and Antarctic, adding CO2 cools the surface more, the reverse greenhouse effect. Under these conditions, emissions take place above the inversion layer, where air temperature, and sometimes humidity, rise with altitude. That is, the surface is much colder than the overlying air. Then the greenhouse effect works in reverse and more CO2 cools the air faster.
“There is no source of heat except meridional transport of energy”
You just contradicted yourself
You said there is no source of heat, then named a source of heat !
Richard you make no sense, what I wrote is crystal clear.
How did ocean currents warm land below the Arctic in Northern Canada and Siberia, which have the same rapid warming pattern as the Arctic?
Richard,
Canada and Siberia do not always have the same pattern as the Arctic. Much depends upon the strength of the polar vortex, which in turn, depends upon the relative strength of the zonal and meridional winds. See figure 4.8 here:
The Sun-Climate Effect: The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis (IV). The unexplained/ignored climate shift of 1997 – Andy May Petrophysicist
Note especially the Aleutian/Icelandic seesaw correlation in 4.8a. It changes.
Also, ocean currents only warm land masses where there is no sea-ice, and the warming that happens depends upon the relative strength of the zonal versus meridional winds.
“The greenhouse effect only works to warm the air when the surface is warmer than the air, if the surface is colder than the air, the greenhouse effect works in reverse, it warms the surface and it radiates the rest to space, both processes cool the air. Your comment makes no sense.”
The greenhouse effect does not warm — it impedes cooling. There must be some amount of heat in the Arctic, even in the winter, otherwise the surface temperature would be absolute zero: −273.15°C or −459.67°F
A well-mixed atmosphere conveys heat from the surface to the top of the atmosphere, where it can be radiated to space. Since temperature inversions create stable, stratified conditions, the efficiency of that heat transport decreases. That means that what little heat is emitted by the cold Arctic surface can accumulate in the lower atmosphere, raising temperatures there. This matches observations of milder Arctic winters.
Only when the atmosphere is colder than the surface, which is the situation everywhere except in the Arctic in winter and Antarctica year round. When that happens greenhouse gases radiate away the heat of the atmosphere favoring cooling (half is lost). Since water vapor is almost non-existent in those places the greenhouse effect is dominated by CO2 and works in reverse. The more CO2 the more cooling.
My last paragraph was conventional IPCC climate science. You just dismissed it with a flick of the wrist.
Ocean currents cause Arctic warming?
You can not explain warming in the Arctic, northern Canada and Siberia with ocean currents that would only cause warming in winter months, and apparently go on vacation the rest of the year.
Solar energy causes winter Arctic warming?
You can’t explain that warming with increased solar energy.
CO2 causes Arctic winter warming?
You claim more CO2 causes cooling of the Arctic in the winter and Antarctica all year long. That makes no sense, because THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED.
The Arctic is WARMING in the winter, not cooling from CO2, per your claim.
Antarctica has had a stable temperature since the 1970s except for some local warming near underseas volcanoes, not cooling from CO2, per your claim.
So what’s left, Mr, Smarty Pants?
What is left is the Physics of Climate which apparently is too complex for you.
https://archive.org/details/peixoto-j.-p.-oort-a.-h.-physics-of-climate-1992
Read chapter 13, and particularly the part on the energetics of the polar regions so you understand where the energy is coming from in the polar regions.
Also, you are too simplistic in your assumptions and demands for answers. That the GHE works in reverse in Antarctica is part of the body of knowledge and numerous papers (that you haven’t read) deal with that question. If Antarctica doesn’t cool despite that there is another factor, which in this case is an increase in the energy transported due to a warming planet. Cooling from reverse GHE, warming from transport, do you get it?
You need to study more and talk less.
Your credibility has dropped to a new low.
You resorted to childish character attacks in response to my serious questions.
You claim CO2 causes global cooling in Antarctica, and in the Arctic, but only at night in the Arctic.
I pointed out that there was no global cooling in Antarctica since the 1970s, and there was significant WARMING during Arctic winters, NOT cooling
I asked you to explain why the Arctic had winter warming and explained that it was not caused by more sunlight.
And I said if you claimed ocean currents are the cause, why don’t those ocean currents seem to affect the Arctic during other times of the year.
I also mentioned that Northern Canada and Siberia has similar winter warming — would ocean currents cause those land masses to warm?
You have ignored my questions because you obviously can’t answer them directly and concisely. People reading your responses will see repeated character attacks and insults, but no direct answers. That is a very leftist style of “debate”.
I have read literature on greenhouse gas cooling during temperature inversions. But observations in Antarctica and the Arctic (winters only) do not support that theory. Therefore, OTHER climate change factors must be offsetting that one, suggesting that greenhouse gas cooling is a minor factor for Antarctica and the Arctic.
And greenhouse gas cooling is certainly a very minor factor for the global average temperature. You may continue your insults now, I’m done speaking.
Whether the GHE cools or warms the planet depends on the temperature gradient in the atmosphere at the TOA. Increasing the CO2 concentration raises the altitude at which the outgoing radiation can leave the planet. If the temperature is decreasing with altitude then the radiation from the planet is reduced at the lower temperature resulting in a warming of the surface. But by the same process if the temperature is increasing with altitude then the radiation at the TOA will increase as a result of adding CO2 thus cooling the surface.
Therefore if CO2 is added and if the change in radiation altitude occurs in the region of increasing temperature with altitude as in a polar region then it will cool the surface.
“Therefore if CO2 is added and if the change in radiation altitude occurs in the region of increasing temperature with altitude as in a polar region then it will cool the surface.”
Please provide data proving that CO2 greenhouse cooling has cooled any area of this planet. There are none. UAH numbers do not show any cooling of the “South Pole” since 1979. and they show significant warming of the “North Pole” since 1979. not cooling.
How important can greenhouse gas cooling be if it is invisible in the best temperature data available? (UAH, in my opinion).
I understand these are “simple” questions, but I have yet to receive a simple answer.
I was repeating the physics of the GHE. I don’t know the magnitude of the phenomena or whether the UAH satellites can detect it at the North Pole. Do the UAH satellite even detect radiation from Oxygen in the low troposphere over the North Pole?
Remember that although the sun is not visible at the surface, it is still visible at altitude, resulting in the well known arctic temperature inversion which traps cold air at the surface. The arctic warming comes from heat brought in by meridional circulation, and depends partly on ice cover.
The antarctic, which has a land mass under, does not receive heat from oceanic circulation, and is therefore much colder than the arctic.
So you are saying the meridional warming only affects the Arctic during the winter, and takes a vacation in the summer?
Are you saying that AMOC is also the cause of similar winter warming in Northern Canada and Siberia? That’s hard to believe.
Richard,
meridional transport warms the Arctic in winter. That is why it doesn’t get much colder. High meridional transport has less effect on summer temperatures because the imported heat goes into melting ice and snow. When the meltwater freezes in the winter, releasing latent heat, much of the heat is sent to space increasing OLR.
That is not correct. The troposphere is very thin, the Arctic tropopause is at 8 km height. The Arctic is huge, the distance from the Arctic Circle to the pole is over 2,600 km (1,600 miles). Inside the polar night area at 72ºN you have to go well above the stratosphere to see the sun.
There was warming in the Arctic during winters since the 1970s.
Mostly affecting TMIN rather than TMAX
Please provide YOUR explanation of why that happened,
if not related to greenhouse gases in any way.
And remember, there was also winter warming in Northern Canada and Siberia. Also mainly TMIN. If you guess an explanation for why the Arctic was warming in winter, it also has to apply to the winter warming in Siberia and Northern Canada.
Good luck, if you willing to respond.
Well, there is warming in Antarctica during interglacials and it is not coming from greenhouse gases. If the planet warms it affects the entire planet, but not uniformly. We have the >80ºN winter temperature from the Danish Meteorological Institute shown in figure 7 which shows no winter warming between 1976 and 1997. That is what needs explaining, not the warming of Northern Canada during a period of warming.
Explaining warming during a period of warming is easy, don’t you think? Even with the same transport intensity if the air is warmer more energy gets transported.
Now your turn to explain figure 7 in terms of greenhouse gases. Why do they have no effect in winter until 1997, and why do they have no effect on summer temperature?
You deliberately failed to answer my question.
That does not increase your credibility
Concerning Chart 7, that is easy to explain
You data mined a 60 year record in an effort to come to a different conclusion. That is dishonest science.
The chart clearly shows an uptrend from the early 1960s to 2020. You decided to data mine a 21-year period within the 60 years of data. The specific years you chose were from an intermediate high point to an intermediate low point.
The same dishonest data mining strategy would identify several no warming periods within the UAH global average temperature records since 1979. Based on your interpretation, a data mined segment of the UAH record with a flat temperature trend line would be used as proof there was no global warming since 1979.
I’m against data mining a long record to hide the long term trend. That’s not honest science.
Your ignorance shows. 1976 and 1997 are the dates of well-recognized (particularly the first) climate shifts. They have not been chosen. Nature has indicated to us that the climate shifted on those dates. There’s plenty of bibliography on that, but I won’t waste a second more trying to educate you. Educate yourself, you are in dire need, judging for how sure you sound about wrong things.
I correctly pointed out that you data mined a 21 year segment of a 60 year Arctic climate record.
You responded with repeated character attacks. No one with sense trusts a person who responds to questions with character attacks.
Your lame excuse is a “climate shift”
Earth’s climate shifts all the time.
Based on UAH data:
Warming from 1910 to 1940
Cooling from 1940 to 1975
Warming from 1975 to 2016
No trend since 2016
In fact, if you look at shorter periods, there were several short, flat temperature trends during the 1975 to 2016 warming trend.
There was a long term global warming trend since the late 1600s. None of the “climate shifts” in the past 325 years signaled the end to the long term global warming trend.
Your attitude seems to be: Agree with me or I will attack you with insults. That’s not very “scientific”.
You are the only one here that engaged in name-calling, by calling me Mr, Smarty Pants.
There is no point in further conversation. You disagree with my hypothesis and arguments. Noted. Your opinion and arguments are not valuable to me.
Richard, your ad hominem attacks are inappropriate and unwarranted. We’ve clearly answered all your questions, at length, and often twice. Neither Javier nor I deserve such language after all the effort and time we have put into politely answering your comments and questions. Like Javier said, read more, write less.
Warming in the winter, in the Arctic, must happen due to meridional transport regardless of when it happens, because there is no sun. With no sun, the surface is colder than the transported air, thus there is no enhanced surface warming due to additional (manmade) greenhouse gases as explained above. You already lost that argument, don’t bring it up again.
Some of the transported heat is radiated toward the surface by greenhouse gases warming it, but the net effect of adding more CO2 is to cool the region faster, not warm it, since half the additional CO2 emissions go to space. For additional CO2 to provide additional warming requires that the surface be warmer than the air. This should not be hard to understand. What is being cooled is the air transported into the region, even warming the surface cools the air in this case.
A great read, with some gold nuggets.
Angular momentum is exchanged between the solid Earth–ocean and the atmosphere due to changes in wind direction and speed in the higher latitudes. The changes in angular momentum change the Earth’s rotation speed, which we measure as the length of day. The length of day increases, causing a shorter day, when average zonal (west to east) wind speeds increase. When zonal wind speed increases, the polar vortex becomes stronger, cold air is trapped in the Arctic, and the planet warms.
Hi Andy, impressive article.
I am confused though by the paragraph above. Why is the third sentence not self-contradictory? Surely length of day increases cause longer days?
I am out of my depth here, but I can accept that when “average zonal (west to east) wind speeds increase” a “shorter day” results. I suggest this may be part of the El-Nino effect where a large volume of the Pacific flows West to East (with the average zonal wind) thus reducing that ocean’s radius of gyration and so increasing the planets speed of rotation to preserve its angular momentum.
Good catch, Paul. That typo escaped both of us, I guess from reading the same things we write over and over. Instead of “the length of day increases” it should say “the rotation speed increases.” I’m sure Andy can fix that. Apologies for the mistake, and it is good to see people reading it more carefully than we do.
Thanks Paul, I fixed it, good catch.
More evidence that it is the non radiative flux transport mechanisms that dominate the flux regime.
Where OLR appears to be bound to upward flux from the surface with a ratio about 2/3.
Where net upward flux is dominated by sensible and latent transmittance in convection.
Where meridional transport is but one part of total convection K. Where the only degree of freedom in the system is net solar F vs net upward flux via total convection K.
Heat delivered via K to be radiated, from wherever that might best occur, to space.
An optimization problem, bound by the physical constraints of the system. Quantifiable by the principles of thermodynamics.
The truth is to be found in K, and its relation to F. What is the spatial variability of these properties??
Where
The heat delivery from surface to atmosphere is only by convection, not by radiation. Turbulent mixing near the surface, only by thermal origin.There can only be net IR flux directly to space.Surface upward flux delivery into the boundary layer is only by thermal process i.e. sensible and latent flux.Total convection K determines flux density delivery (conversion/transmittance) to TOAK defined by advection of heat, total convection of heat and mass (energy), and transmittance of heat in phase changes of water in the mass transfer.Forcing on the lower troposphere can only be by solar absorbed, or a perturbation of total convection K. Complicated!Local profiles are free to adjust the ratio of F/K.The ratio in 7 is not at all constant. During the polar night or winter F=0, but K is relatively large; there is a large horizontal non-radiative heat flux from the tropics to higher latitudes. This may dominate the climate, as illustrated in the article. This is the thermodynamic optimization process.
Critically:
In the turbulent mixing layer, the boundary layer, the influence of eddy-covariance (evapotranspiration) + sensible flux, completely overwhelms radiative transfer. Radiation can only flow unhindered via the IR windows to space.
Everywhere is in local thermodynamic equilibrium in the mixed layer. It doesn’t matter from which angle you measure a parcel of air. Its thermal properties will be identical.
There can be no net LW flux from the surface to the boundary layer. Turbulent eddies, at all scales, will simply not allow a departure from LW radiative equilibrium. The mixed layer process is completely overwhelming of LW imbalance. A minor eddy disturbance snuffs it out. All gases participate in boundary layer turbulent process.
There can be no net flow of radiation from the surface to the mixed layer. It simply does not occur. Turbulent eddies work on scales from cm to massive cells spanning the depth of troposphere.
The most important bits for comprehension of boundary layer process are working well below the scales of GCMs. Additionally, the most important bits for comprehension do not operate within the scope of radiation physics.
From the scale of micro eddies, to massive meridional transports and total convection K to TOA, it is the non-radiative flux perturbations, and their relation to solar forcing variations, which dominate climates.
formatting went all to heck, i’ll try again:
More evidence that it is the non radiative flux transport mechanisms that dominate the flux regime. Where OLR appears to be bound to upward flux from the surface (temperature) with a ratio about 2/3.
Where net upward flux is dominated by sensible and latent transmittance in convection.
Where meridional transport is but one part of total convection K. Where the only degree of freedom in the system is net solar F vs net upward flux via total convection K.
Heat delivered via K to be radiated, from wherever that might best occur, to space.
An optimization problem, bound by the physical constraints of the system. Quantifiable by the principles of thermodynamics.
The truth is to be found in K, and its relation to F. What is the spatial variability of these properties??
Where
The ratio in 7 is not at all constant. During the polar night or winter F=0, but K is relatively large; there is a large horizontal non-radiative heat flux from the tropics to higher latitudes. This may dominate the climate, as illustrated in the article. This is the thermodynamic optimization process.
Critically:
In the turbulent mixing layer, the boundary layer, the influence of eddy-covariance (evapotranspiration) + sensible flux, completely overwhelms radiative transfer. Radiation can only flow unhindered via the IR windows to space.
Everywhere is in local thermodynamic equilibrium in the mixed layer. It doesn’t matter from which angle you measure a parcel of air. Its thermal properties will be identical.
There can be no net LW flux from the surface to the boundary layer. Turbulent eddies, at all scales, will simply not allow a departure from LW radiative equilibrium. The mixed layer process is completely overwhelming of LW imbalance. A minor eddy disturbance snuffs it out. All gases participate in boundary layer turbulent process.
There can be no net flow of radiation from the surface to the mixed layer. It simply does not occur. Turbulent eddies work on scales from cm to massive cells spanning the depth of troposphere.
The most important bits for comprehension of boundary layer process are working well below the scales of GCMs. Additionally, the most important bits for comprehension do not operate within the scope of radiation physics.
From the scale of micro eddies, to massive meridional transports and total convection K to TOA, it is the non-radiative flux perturbations, and their relation to solar forcing variations, which dominate climates.
Challenge, me. Tell me why you think there is a radiative discontinuity between the surface and the air just above. Tell me how this is possible in the mixed layer.
Tell me how a radiation only lapse rate approaching infinity with no atmosphere;
vs a dry convective lapse rate of 9.8K/km, and an environmental lapse rate of 6.5K/km in moist convection, is not dominated by turbulent flux of heat to the atmosphere.
Tell me why the vertical and horizontal distribution of this turbulent flux of latent and sensible heat is not a critical factor for climates. Possibly THE critical factor.
I stopped reading at: “The heat delivery from surface to atmosphere is only by convection, not by radiation.”
I won’t continue until you convince me how you suppress radiation.
That is a real shame. For the turbulent diffusion of heat, mass, and momentum near the surface will not allow for a radiative discontinuity. There is simply not a suitable opacity for radiation pressure to exist against the surrounding turbulent material. In the mixed layer LW up – LW down = 0 + that portion which passes unhindered to space.
The bulk of atmospheric dynamics is dominated by solar absorbed and convective instability. The only question that pertains to IR balance is that proportion which passes directly to space – this has little to do with non-condensing greenhouse gas – and is a totally different question than that commonly posed. This is dependent only the dynamic distribution of heat in the atmosphere, where OLR results from diffuse full spectrum flux from all heights, from an atmosphere dominated by dynamic non radiative transport.
There is no net LW flux within the atmosphere; the only net IR flux is that which passes directly to space. The boundary condition assumptions developed from the astrophysics Eddington models for stars with no surface and an infinite atmosphere have no place in describing terrestrial climates. This conceptualization has polluted our conceptualizations.
For the chief defenders of standard theory – notice the completely unphysical nature of the concepts:
Note the net 350-324 = 26 W m-2 utterly unphysical discontinuity of LW flux, suggesting a net delivery of radiative flux into atmosphere. No such discontinuity has ever been observed at any fluxnet tower station. It simply does not exist. It is completely theoretical imaginary hallucination, and forms the entire basis of this boondoggle.
In reality, no net LW up reaches the atmosphere from the ground. It is either transmitted via the window, or completely compensated by LW down. Mixed layer turbulent diffusion simply will not allow this imaginary discontinuity.
The point is, these are not two energy flows of similar magnitudes in opposite directions, but rather it is no flow at all. A ponzi scheme if you will.
What happens if I give you one Dollar, then you give it back to me, and we repeat this 1000 times..? Will we both become rich???
Hello E. Schaffer,
yes, exactly. This 26 W m-2 discontinuity does not exist in physical reality.
There is no persistent higher surface temperature than the atmosphere just above in the mixed layer. Such a condition is unphysical.
There is no net transport (flow) of LW radiation between the surface and atmosphere. It is completely balanced in the turbulent diffusion.
In the KT diagrams surface radiation (390) is either too high, or Atmospheric Window (40) is too small.
Either way, the discontinuity is unphysical, and the diagram is unbalanced. Reduce surface emissivity, and/or increase window flux to eliminate this unphysical 26 W m-2 discontinuity.
Adjusting to a reasonable surface emissivity of 0.95, closes the discontinuity about 20 W m-2. It is then reasonable the window is about 46 W m-2.
Alternatively, global surface temperature is closer to 287K, not 288. This also fixes the discontinuity with an emissivity 0.95, without need to adjusting IR window.
In the end, the surface LW radiative flux is only via the window to space. The consequences may not be immediately obvious:
Assuming a window of about 40 W m-2, and surface emissivity 0.95, completely closing the IR window can only influence temperature about 5K maximum.
Complete IR opacity can only increase temperature about 5K. Forget about feedbacks and all that stuff.
The absolute maximum conceivable increase of IR obstruction in the moist convective atmosphere can only result in a 5K surface temperature increase. Totally slamming IR flux closed from the surface can only impact 5K.
A CO2 doubling effect is likely not observable in this physically reasonable model. CO2 acts only on the extreme shoulders of the windows, perhaps 10x less impact than totally obscuring the window. 0.5K effect?
It is therefore net vertical convection aloft that forms the bulk of balance with solar absorbed. Any change to this term K will impact climate. Meridional flow, zonal flow, and vertical flow are all interwoven in these processes. Ultimately, it is net vertical flow which delivers heat to the radiating height.
In other words, it is hindered convective heat transfer up through the atmosphere that warms climates, not the hindered radiation transfer. Hindered radiation transfer by GHG effects are very small indeed.
What is the total quantum of Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere per square meter of surface of earth?
Can that quantum handle the back radiation of 340 w/sq. meter ?
When Greenhouse gases absorb Radiation from the surface, most of the energy will be thermalized by adjacent molecules in Air (Oxygen & Nitrogen mainly).
“Contrary to what we might expect, the Earth is warmest just after the June solstice, when it is farthest from the sun, and coldest just after the December solstice, when it is receiving 6.9% more energy from the sun.”
Maybe it’s because 68% of the earths land mass is in the northern hemisphere. The comment is about “surface temperature”.
Of course, that is the reason. But it shows that for the climate it is more important what the climate system does with the energy that it receives from the sun, than the amount of energy.
It is like two workers receiving different salaries. The one receiving the bigger salary is not necessarily the one having more money. It depends on what they do with the money.
The planet warms because the worker is saving more money by not going so often to that gambling house at the North Pole.
Barry,
If we were to consider most other objects in the same orbit of the moon.
Lets take a meter round metal sphere or a rock.
Then it is obvious that the surface temperature of said object would be warmer by 6.9% more energy in December solstice [temperature would be warmer but by a lot less than a 6.9% change due to the SB law] and coldest in June.
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Javier, yourself and others equate that to the land mass being larger.
Try as he may the fact is,
“It is like two workers receiving different salaries. The one receiving the bigger salary is the one having more money.”
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The unanswered question is still why when the earth is receiving more energy the measured surface temperature is lower?
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Looking at it logically If the earth was all water we would not be having this problem and the earth surface temperature would be warmer in December and colder in June.
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Temperature is a measure of the energy being emitted to space by any object.
Instead of space you could put in, or to a thermometer.
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A thermometer can only measure what uninterrupted energy it receives, in space or on the ground.
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Therefore are the thermometers on land reading a true level of energy from the sun, surface and atmosphere dynamic which is adding to and overcoming the sun , ocean surface and atmosphere dynamic when combined?
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The land surface is 68% in the northern hemisphere 32% in the south.
Conversely the ocean areas are 5/9ths of the North and 7/9ths in the South.
Somehow it seems more important to me to consider the energy distribution effects on larger amount of the surface rather than the smaller [just saying].
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Why would a surface change in the amount of water to land cause such a vast disparity in the temperatures at the opposite times of the year.
Without a mechanism one would have to say that our definition of what a surface is, particularly of the earth with 2/3 water, is where the problem lies.
Remember.
If the earth was all water we would not be having this problem and the earth surface temperature would be warmer in December and colder in June.
Initial thoughts are that the oceans have the highest GHG concentrations over them hence the layers of IR back radiation are much closer to each other over the oceans.
This means that the atmosphere over the oceans is capable of having more IR passing through it per second than the atmosphere over land.
This means that IR from the side with more water is spread more horizontally as it goes out and thus heats up more of the rest of the worlds atmosphere while not going up in temperature as much itself [SB].
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Problem solved.
I hope Javier likes it.
It is the opposite of that world spinning faster spreads the energy coming in resulting
in a slightly higher surface temperature than the stationary world.
In this case the larger volume of water in the south leads to a lower average surface temperature than the smaller volume in the north.
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Only initial thoughts mind you.
The problem is complex.
Yes, but you make it even more complex by ignoring basic known facts. Albedo is not constant in one hemisphere over the seasons. Albedo in the SH is bigger during SH summer because there are more clouds. Cloudiness is higher over oceans than over land because moisture is higher. Land does not store heat, it warms more over the summer and cools more over the winter. This is a big factor in the NH having a bigger swing in temperature over the year.
Thank you Javier for pointing out those facts.
More to think over.
“Cloudiness is higher over oceans than over land because moisture is higher.”
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Oceans have the highest GHG concentrations over them hence the layers of IR back radiation are much closer to each other over the oceans.
Andy and Javier,
Your research on a holistic view of climate change is commendable.
Have you seen any of Moon and Wettlaufer’s research on wavy jet streams? Moon notes that incoming solar radiation is a governing influence. He presents mathematical equations for zonal and horizontal meridian behavior. He is currently investing land-ocean interaction influences.
Thank you, Renee, I wasn’t aware of their research. I just checked their latest paper.
Good thing I’ve studied atmosphere dynamics. They assume that global warming enhances polar amplification, which is an incorrect assumption. Polar amplification is also a negative feedback to global warming. Nevertheless, they might be correct that in any case, Arctic warming might result in wavier jet streams. However, my hypothesis supports the same with inverse causality, wavier jet streams (as a result of a weaker vortex) result in Arctic warming. Who’s right? The answer when we go back to a strong vortex phase and the Arctic cools. We’ll see heads exploding.
We see the justification for everything that happens not predicted by models in terms of greenhouse gases or global warming. They did the same with the wind changes we showed in the seventh part of our Winter Gatekeeper posts. When they changed again some scientists realized it was neither greenhouse gases increase, nor global warming, but the multidecadal oscillation.
Outstanding Andy, this needs wide distribution. Maybe separated into chapters for easier reading. Average readers are more likely to finish reading shorter segments.
Thanks Bob. Javier is also for shorter chapters. We are still at work designing our book, so such suggestions are very helpful.
You guys are doing a good job.
Please forgive me, I’m trying my best here but it’s very difficult. Can anyone provide any graphs or any sort of evidence that the artic isn’t about to go ice free and cause some blue ocean event tipping point with massive positive feedback loops?
I wouldn’t worry too much as some of us are repeating Introductory Tree Rings-
Tree rings capture proof of enormous radiation storms (msn.com)
Arctic sea ice decline shows the current September extent above what models based on worst-case (RCP8.5) and normal-case (RCP4.5) projections. In a few years, it should be above the mild-case-based model projections (RCP2.5). So no, the Arctic isn’t about to go ice-free. Even if the climate continues warming there will be quite a lot of sea ice by 2100.
That’s what I predicted in 2016, and the prediction is correct 6 years later. The IPCC cannot say that much.
Many thanks for this. A good overview in my layman’s opinion.
Can you send it to the BBC and the Guardian (actually that is the same place really) so they can also learn some basic details about weather and possibly climate variation.
The IPCC’s fixation with promoting CO2 as the only important climate influence is becoming so untenable, even they will have to find a new villain to focus on.
Look out all the meat eaters and farmers, we are in line for vilification even more than we are at present I fear.
“Arctic amplification is the consequence of increased meridional transport,…” [my bold]
“Knowing how heat is transported into the Arctic allows us to examine the phenomenon of Arctic amplification, that is the idea that when global temperatures rise, they rise faster in the Arctic and Antarctic.” [my bold]
Javier Vinos carries on like no one but him knows anything about poleward heat transport.
Despite what he claimed, Javier didn’t know how the majority of heat entered the Arctic.
Javier originally attributed the Arctic warming exclusively to atmospheric transport, then I came along and showed the obvious failure of that idea with this set of images* that demonstrate the ocean warming is the underlying statistically important factor driving Arctic warming. (*Ask if there is anything you don’t understand in that image set.)
If Javier actually thinks the cause of the climate changing is the warming of the small polar region, modulated by the polar vortex, then it should be trivial for Javier to provide evidence for significant downstream climate impacts from the 2013/14 polar vortex, for example.
Would Javier claim that the 2013/14 polar vortex caused the 2015/16 El Nino? Does Javier think the 2012 Arctic sea ice low caused the 2013/14 polar vortex? Where is the downstream impact?
Please name a measurable long-term climate effect (30y) that was caused by a seasonal polar vortex outbreak (1y). And provide the evidence too, no hand-waving allowed on this one.
___________________
“The climate/solar correlation changes suggest that the solar effect on climate is not directly due to changes in solar radiation like the IPCC proposes, but to solar induced changes to large atmospheric processes that are being neglected.” [my bold]
The climate does change directly from solar irradiance changes, it just happens more slowly than the IPCC and just about every solar or climate scientist thought. The climate as defined by the 30y global HadSST3 is a function of 120 years of ocean solar absorption, not by large atmospheric processes. Again, Javier got it wrong.
Bullshit. I only say what the data and bibliography show, which can be seen in this figure made from data from Yang et al.2015:
How much energy is transporting the ocean poleward of 60ºN? A tiny part. This is known by EVERYBODY in the field. Your attempt to build an alternate science is pathetic. You don’t even read the papers, and it shows.
A really well done article that addresses a lot of subjects that I have long been curious about. Unfortunately the WUWT (and web in general) pretty much requires immediate response rather than meditating on issues for a week or three. And, No, I don’t think that is a good thing. So here’s my immediate comments.
1. Figure three seems to lack a color key for the Earth maps. Or maybe its there and I’m somehow overlooking it. The general meaning is pretty clear. But a key would probably help.
2. There are really two “present climates” Oct 2023 and the climate of 20,000 years ago which seems to have been dramatically different. I find it really hard to imagine a climate that allows winter snow and ice to survive at sea level at 40N (New York City) with the sun nearly directly overhead in late June. Yet geologic evidence says such a climate existed. FWIW, I live near 45N pretty much directly N of NYC and our Winter snow (2023 climate) generally starts to melt around the first week in March and is (mostly) gone at low elevations by early to mid April. It might help to distinguish between the two current climates.
3. I’m a bit skeptical of cyclic analysis (Figure 6) in general. Sometimes there are useful correlations. But often the perceived correlation turns out to be specious. Example: stock market “Technical Analysis” which has repeatedly been shown to be as great a waste of time as trying to extract useful information from current climate models. The fact that is (apparently) doesn’t work seems not to discourage its use one bit. Maybe there is something useful in what you’re looking at. My quick guess is not.
4. I think you probably underestimate the roll of ocean currents in transporting thermal energy. It’s true that in the rather small areas of permanent sea ice they pretty much can’t transfer heat to the atmosphere. But they can and do move a lot of heat around due to the high thermal capacity of water. And a lot of that ocean borne thermal energy does go somewhere between the East Coasts of Asia/North America and the West Coasts of North America/Eurasia.
5. One possible serious concern. If mid latitude storms are less frequent/severe, does that mean less rainfall in the interior of continents? That might not be so good for living creatures which seem to me to be far more diverse in moist climates.
Overall, very, very very well done. Thanks
Hi Don, Thanks.
An interesting contribution. I have noticed the variation between zonal and meridional flow and the different weather it brings in winter. I suppose there are winters and perhaps decades more dominated by one or the other. The Madden-Julian offers some of this flavor, doesn’t it?
I had a bit of trouble with this passage…
It sounds like speeding-up and slowing down at the same time. However, length of day has just about no impact on anything you are speaking of in this essay as outside the long-term secular trend related to tidal friction, these variations are measured in fractions of milliseconds.
There is a typo in that paragraph. Substitute “The length of day increases” for “The speed of rotation increases.”
Yes, the changes are of a few milliseconds at best and have no discernible effect. It is however a clear indication that if solar activity affects the speed of rotation is because it is affecting atmospheric circulation big time.
Thanks, I’ve fixed the error. It was all me.
Excellent post. The greenhouse gas bandwagon started rolling in the days when climate science was embryonic. The IPCC remit concerned mainly CO2, so everything else got ignored. Over the decades climate knowledge has outgrown the IPCC brand of science and today, as others have concluded, there is mounting evidence that that the so called science of climate change is unfit to be the basis of government policy. There is mounting evidence that there is no climate crisis.
So where do we go from here? Governments around the world have signed up to the UN/IPCC brand of science and belief in the WCRP model projections. Academics and the scientific establishment have sold their souls to the cause. Each year at COP, the UN peddles an alarmist scenario to support its wealth redistribution project and wealthy countries are asked to pay reparation in the name of climate justice. Civil servants press ahead with net zero initiatives that will destroy economies.
We have the evidence now to make a challenge. But what is new? We knew about the missing hotspot years ago. We knew about the overheated models years ago. Sherwood’s paper has had its ECS significantly downgraded. That is very welcome but it joins a whole bunch of similar findings.
The IPCC ignores them all. The academics, the establishment, governments and civil servants ignore them all. The BBC, based on its track record, would ignore it all, but if pressed, would make and broadcast programmes that claim the opposite.
The people who have painstakingly assembled our modern understanding of climate matters have performed a great service. We owe them our thanks. But who has the plan and the means to challenge the established science?
Nobody will recognize a mistake. If the past is prologue, the matter will be solved only when politicians lose interest because they have other things to pursue. Left to its own devices science will eventually sort things out, even if it takes decades. By then all the scammers will be safely dead and people won’t remember.
Maybe not everyone here knows that I have worked on the sun-climate issue since 2014, joined the AGU in 2018, and have since produced a sun-climate model that I have intended on bringing forth at WUWT for several years, particularly this year, after I presented my new solar threshold work at the 2022 Sun-Climate Symposium and inaugural AGU Frontiers in Hydrology meetings.
Before I could make time this year to bring forth my works, Javier came along with his WGH.
It’s unfortunate that Javier has gone to great lengths to suppress and deny the TSI influence.
This is the heart of the problem with Javier’s hypothesis. Javier is still ignoring the full role of the sun wrt ENSO. He knows of La Nina at solar minimum, that’s the easy one, but he doesn’t know the full impact of the sun during a solar cycle, which is why he’s wrong about irradiance.
Solar forcing occurs via TSI absorption of the ocean; ocean and atmospheric circulation result.
Solar cycles have a distinct TSI warming/cooling pattern on the tropical ocean heat content, driving ENSO and global warming (HadSST3). From my 2018 AGU poster:
I also found that solar cycles changed the ENSO region by an average of 1C during each of at least the last nine solar cycles in a distinct pattern from min to max and max to min. The odds of these step changes occurring without solar forcing are 1.9(10^11):1, ie impossible odds.
Reinforcing this point, increased ocean warming via absorbed solar radiation is evident during high solar max TSI, as shown here with a SORCE TSI overlay and Rathore etal Figure 1:
Lastly, Nino34 leads the Arctic sea ice extent by six months via poleward heat transport.
Simply put, irradiance drives the tropics, global warming, sea ice reduction and Arctic warming.
Heat transport is the mechanism moving the heat but it is secondary to the driving force of TSI.
This makes TSI the most fundamental climate variable after orbital insolation changes.
Your hypothesis is stillborn from lack of energy.
That is why one needs cloudiness variations but nor does the WGH deal with that.
No, most of it is due to ocean circulation. Water simply has much more heat capacity.
That is the point. Water transports the heat towards high latitudes, there it all depends on sea ice if it can reach the surface, or not. So sea ice is the big polar amplificator.
And this also solves said “paradox”, which is none. As the heat is mainly transported by water, not by air, the latitudinal temperature gradient will not be the driver of convection. Rather it is still all up to sea ice. If there is no sea ice in warm periods, next higher water levels btw., the meridional heat transport works at its optimum. If there is plenty of ice, it all comes to a halt.
https://greenhousedefect.com/basic-greenhouse-defects/the-mysterious-polar-amplification
How do you think this is consistent with oceanic or atmospheric circulation? What about the Gulf Stream?
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2022/10/26/1500Z/wind/isobaric/700hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-15.23,57.71,562/loc=-28.232,50.219
Look at the pattern of the polar vortex in the lower stratosphere, which is changing very slowly. You can see the cooling in North America and the North Atlantic.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2022/10/26/1500Z/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-7.55,82.98,281
You have this wrong. Read a few papers about energy transport. It is 2/3 atmospheric 1/3 oceanic, and since ocean transport dominates at low latitudes, at mid-to-high latitudes atmospheric transport is responsible for the bulk of energy transport.
What a silly notion. I don’t believe that for a moment.
Well then think about why Trondheim (63N) has an average -1°C in January, while Yakutsk (62N) has -37°C (!!!). I can tell you it is not because Yakutsk was “wind locked” and exempt from atmospheric convection. Rather the difference is, that Yakutsk is land locked, far off from the ocean, at least to the west.
Of course oceanic heat transport is totally dominating! One needs to be silly to not understand this..
One needs to be ignorant to not know how many PetaWatts of energy are transported by the ocean and the atmosphere at each latitude when the answer can be found in hundreds of scientific articles and dozens of textbooks at a keystroke on the internet.
Just look at the temperature distribution to see the meridional circulation. “Hot” in the Arctic and Antarctica, cool in the tropics.
Still no warming in the southern hemisphere and the tropics. It’s getting colder in North America.
Meanwhile, solar activity is low and the solar wind is rippling strongly.
In the distribution of heat, surface ocean currents are important (as is clearly evident in the Humboldt Current), as well as atmospheric circulation. However, periodically the atmospheric circulation acts in accordance with the surface currents, as is clearly seen during periods of strong La Niña, or can inhibit the influence of surface currents, such as the Gulf Stream.
This work by Javier and Andy is excellent and magisterial climate science. However I disagree with one aspect as already discussed with Javier. The claim that the atmosphere moves more heat than the ocean. The reverse is true. Atmosphere gives weather, climate is of the ocean.
Let’s look at some numbers.
An average square meter of earth surface has:
10k kg of air
2.5 million kg of water.
That’s 250x more water than air by mass per m^2 earth surface.
Water has specific heat capacity – normalised for mass – of 4.19, compared to 1.01 for air. 4x higher, per mass.
So per m^2 of earth surface there is 250 x 4 = 1000 x more heat in water than in air.
If air moves more heat than water then the air must be moving more than 1000x faster than water.
But the average wind speed at 80m height is only 7 meters per second;
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/global_winds.html
Average ocean current speed is 6 km / hr = 1.7 m/s.
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/ocean-currents-various-types-causes-effects/amp/
So atmosphere does not move 1000x faster than ocean, but only about 4x faster.
So in fact the ocean is moving about 250 times more heat than the atmosphere.
Even if the speed of the ocean was overestimate by 100 times (very improbable) – going down to the ocean floor – then the ocean is still moving 2.5x more heat than the atmosphere.
It’s not even close.
Even at the mid oceanic floor, 4000 m down, water current speed approximates to a brisk human walking pace.
Sour milk for CO2: it really was oceanic isolation of Antarctica that cooled the Cenozoic, not CO2 nonsense:
https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2022/09/05/sour-milk-for-co2-it-really-was-oceanography-of-antarctic-isolation-that-cooled-the-cenozoic-not-co2/