By Javier Vinós
This post has been translated into German by Christian Freuer here.
Most people don’t have a clear understanding of the greenhouse effect (GHE). It is not complicated to understand, but it is usually not well explained. It is often described as “heat-trapping,” but that is incorrect. Greenhouse gases (GHG) do not trap heat, even if more heat resides within the climate system due to their presence in the atmosphere. The truth is that after adjusting to a change in GHG levels, the planet still returns all the energy it receives from the Sun. Otherwise, it would continue warming indefinitely. So, there is no change in the energy returned. How do GHGs produce GHE?
GHGs cause the atmosphere to be more opaque to infrared radiation. As solar radiation heats mainly the ocean and land surface of the planet, GHGs absorb thermal emission from the surface at the lower troposphere and immediately pass that energy along to other molecules (typically N2 and O2) through collisions that occur much faster than the time it would take to re-emit the radiation. This warms the lower troposphere. The density and temperature decrease rapidly through the troposphere, so molecules are colder and more separated at the upper troposphere. Now GHGs have a chance to emit IR radiation so when they finally collide with another molecule, they are colder so GHGs have a cooling effect in the upper troposphere and stratosphere.
Because GHGs make the atmosphere more opaque to IR radiation, when they are present the emission to space from the planet normally does not take place from the surface (as happens in the Moon). Part of it still takes place from the surface through the atmospheric window, but most of it takes place from higher in the atmosphere. We can define a theoretical effective emission height as the average height at which the Earth’s outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) is being emitted. The temperature at which the Earth emits is the temperature at the effective emission height in the atmosphere. That temperature, when measured from space is 250 K (-23°C), not 255 which is the calculated temperature for a theoretical blackbody Earth. That temperature corresponds to a height of about 5 km, which we call the effective emission height.
The last piece we need to understand the GHE is the lapse rate, which in the troposphere is positive, meaning that temperature decreases with height. Without a positive lapse rate, the GHE does not work. Since GHGs cause the planet to emit from a higher altitude, due to making the atmosphere more opaque to IR radiation, that altitude is colder due to the lapse rate. The Earth still needs to return all the energy received from the Sun, but colder molecules emit less. So, the planet will go through a period when it will emit less than it should, warming the surface and the lower troposphere until the new height of emission achieves the temperature necessary to return all the energy, at which point the planet stops warming.
The GHE simply states that the temperature at the surface (Ts) is just the temperature of emission (Te) plus the lapse rate (Γ) times the height of emission (Ze).
Ts = Te + ΓZe
Held & Soden (2000) illustrated it in figure 1:
This is how the GHE actually works. An increase in CO2 means an increase in the height of emission. Since the temperature of emission must remain the same, the temperature from the surface to the new height of emission must increase. The increase is small but significant. As Held and Soden say:
Held and Soden
“The increase in opacity due to a doubling of CO2 causes Ze to rise by ≈150 meters. This results in a reduction in the effective temperature of the emission across the tropopause by ≈(6.5K/km) (150 m) ≈1 K.”
So, the temperature at the surface must increase by 1K. That’s the direct warming caused by the doubling of CO2, before the feedbacks (mainly water vapor) kick in, further raising the height of emission.
This also has an interesting prediction. If the warming is due to an increase in CO2 when the increase takes place and the altitude of emission increases, the planet should emit less OLR as the new altitude is colder and a reduced OLR is the warming mechanism. Once the warming takes place, the OLR will become the same as before the GHG increase. It says so in Held and Soden’s figure 1 caption: “Note that the effective emission temperature (Te) remains unchanged.” Same Te, same OLR. So, if CO2 is responsible for the surface temperature increase, we should first expect less OLR and then the same OLR. If at any time we detect more OLR that would indicate another cause for the warming. Anything that makes the surface warmer, except GHGs, will increase the temperature of emission, increasing OLR.
So, this is the test:
– Surface warming but less or same OLR: CO2 is guilty as charged
– Surface warming and more OLR: CO2 is innocent
And the test results can be evaluated for example with Derwitte and Clerbaux 2018:
Derwitte and Clerbaux 2018
“decadal changes of the Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) as measured by the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System from 2000 to 2018, the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment from 1985 to 1998, and the High-resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder from 1985 to 2018 are analyzed. The OLR has been rising since 1985, and correlates well with the rising global temperature.“
CO2 is innocent. Its fingerprint is not found at the crime scene. Something else is warming the planet and causing the increase in OLR.
Bibliography:
Dewitte, S. and Clerbaux, N., 2018. Decadal changes of earth’s outgoing longwave radiation. Remote Sensing, 10(10), p.1539.
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/10/10/1539/pdf
Held, I.M. and Soden, B.J., 2000. Water vapor feedback and global warming. Annual review of energy and the environment, 25(1), pp.441-475.
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.energy.25.1.441
Stephens, G.L., O’Brien, D., Webster, P.J., Pilewski, P., Kato, S. and Li, J.L., 2015. The albedo of Earth. Reviews of geophysics, 53(1), pp.141-163.
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I would consider that the effects of GHGs are on a log curve, so doubling from current levels has an effect that is difficult to distinguish from other causes. Ocean currents and circulation effects have such an effect on weather it is quite noisy.
The problem is that the way climate change has been defined and framed, we don’t have other causes. We cannot even explain the LIA, which occurred just a few centuries ago. This should indicate that climate science is not going the right way.
LIA little ice age you mean it was cooler before so its warmer now?
but it cant be warmer since earth has no average temperature and we can measure it or calculate the uncertainties
“LIA little ice age you mean it was cooler before so its warmer now?
but it cant be warmer since earth has no average temperature and we can measure it or calculate the uncertainties”
HUH?
Are you implying the Earth went straight from the “Big” Ice Age into the LIA because Man’s CO2 wasn’t there to make it warmer in-between?
Maybe, just maybe there’s more going on than even “The Settled Science” understands?
His logic twisting is a shot at those people that complain ‘there is no global average temperature … so quit trying to use it as an absolute metric.’
(controlled emotional outburst based on unimportant memory connection. Early onset…)
Did you mean we can’t measure it? It’s hard to follow your cryptic drive-by mind-dumps sometimes.
Calling all readers:
Does anyone have a Mr. Masher gibberish decoder ring for sale?
Holy cow. For an English major, your English comes as less understandable than mine. Is your keyboard working properly?
I don’t think it’s his keyboard that’s the problem 🙂
The IPCC was set up to “prove” manmade greenhouse gas emissions were harmful.
In 1995 the IPCC arbitrarily claimed all natural causes of climate change were “noise”
That arbitrary claim made their climate propaganda job easier.
They used the 1979 Charney Report wild guessed ECS from 1988 until a few years ago. Then arbitrarily raised the seemingly harmless lower limit from +1,5 degrees C. to +2.5 degrees C.
That was easy too.
The IPCC is a political propaganda organization that does circular reasoning:
(1) We (IPCC) assume all climate change has been manmade and dangerous
(2) Therefore we (IPCC) predict future climate change will be manmade and dangerous.
What is real climate science?
Not this claptrap from the IPCC.
Dead right. Read Donna Laframboise’s two books. The second deals mainly with the corrupt and sexually compromised Rajendra Pachauri and harm to science
We might explain the global warming from 1975 to 2015, which could have been caused by CO2, or by 100% natural causes or, more likely, by a combination of natural and manmade causes,
1975 to 2015 may only be 40 years out of the past 4.5 billion years, but science has to focus on something !
I personally think climate science should focus on the year 1975, when natural causes of climate change were dying, and nade CO2 boss. At least that’s wht the IPCC claims.
This post is serious, not satire.
Javier’s final chart is very interesting. Increasing CO2 should decrease not increase OLR until Planck feedback (higher surface temp) catches up. Easily shown with a few U Chicago Modtran runs.
Probably Willis has looked at this with one or more of his ERBE analyses….story tip…but I don’t recall one.
Dead right. The fundamental error is the belief that such a process can alter Earth’s energy balance. It is simplistic trivia that fails to recognise the role of ice on land, on water and in the atmosphere.
The triple point of ice at 273K is fundamentally responsible for the temperature control processes that maintain Earth’s energy balance and hence climate in a narrow range despite huge disturbances over daily, annual and throughout history.
Water, its distribution and its phases are the key to understanding Earth’s energy balance.
That being right doesn’t mean that a change in the greenhouse effect cannot alter Earth’s energy balance. It is obvious that it can and it should. You cannot make the atmosphere more opaque to IR and not alter the energy balance. We simply don’t know by how much.
It appears obvious if you have no idea how the energy balance is actually achieved. Thinking it obvious demonstrates a lack of understanding of how the energy balance is controlled. The idea that a trace gas can alter the energy balance is obvious nonsense.
The energy balance is function of transformation of water to ice at the triple point of 273K. Open ocean surface temperature is limited to 30C because the persistence of ice formation high in the troposphere prevents the water surface exceeding that temperature due to the high reflectivity of the atmospheric ice and its persistence once the surface temperature hits 30C. Trace amounts of CO2 cannot alter that temperature regulating process.
Below 15C ocean surface, convective instability shuts down and the atmosphere can reach water saturation with the saturated air forming persistent condensing cloud that lowers heat loss by lowering the radiating temperature. Trace amounts of CO2 cannot alter that process. Much of the oceans in the Southern Hemisphere exhibit this condition once the sun zenith shifts to the NH. Same in the NH but to a limited extent due to the lower proportion of ocean area relative to land.
At -1.7C, sea ice forms and dramatically lowers the heat loss from ocean surface due to its insulating properties. The air above a thin layer of sea ice can be 50C cooler than the water below the ice.
Once ice becomes persistent on land, it tends to hang around because it is hard to melt due it is high reflectivity and requires a lot of sunlight to melt. However loss of surface ice results in rapidly rising temperature in that particular location.
Water in all its forms control the energy balance. The idea that CO2 can have any influence is naive nonsense.
Your evidence proves my point. Looking for a CO2 signature in temperature is a fruitless exercise. The single contribution of climate models to understanding is proof of that reality. Surface temperatures are not warming everywhere at an accelerating rate. In fact most warming is occurring on the Greenland plateau in January. Even more than the models predicted.
You are inventing things as you go. The energy balance at the top of the atmosphere cannot depend mainly on water changes of state. Nobody says that but you. You defend a different science from everybody else. It is up to you to find evidence supporting your views. Good luck in building your own climate science, quite a task.
Have you ever seen monsoonal cloud? What is it and how does it form? What are clouds made of? What causes convective instability that can create updrafts in excess of 300kph? Why can’t open ocean temperature exceed 30C?
All explained in detail here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/23/ocean-atmosphere-response-to-solar-emr-at-top-of-the-atmosphere/
I have shown the process in great detail. I have not been blinded by the “common wisdom” that is plainly wrong. You have just demonstrated that CO2 does nothing. Your error is simply thinking that there is some magical process where it can alter Earth’s energy balance in the face of overwhelming power of water and its phase changes. 1kg/m^2 of ice in the atmospheric column can absorb 95% of the incident OLR. Globally the average is 23kg/m^2. Over tropical warm pools the water mass often exceeds 80kg/m^2. About 1% of that as ice will reflect most of the incident sunlight and absorb most of the outgoing OLR; releasing it to solidify more water.
I am in good company when I point out a reality as opposed to the common wisdom.
You have shown CO2 is not doing what it is supposed to do and yet you still believe that some magical GHE alters Earth’s energy balance. All you have done is demonstrated you were ignorant in thinking it can. It cannot. It is a fairy tale that has somehow become common wisdom.
You don’t know what I believe or what I don’t unless you read it in my book.
The rule is: You cannot change climate without altering the radiative incoming and outgoing energy fluxes.
That rule admits very few exceptions. Unless your proposed mechanism includes an explanation for how those fluxes are changed nobody will give it a second look, and there is a very good reason for it. Nothing happens in the Universe without the energy for it to happen.
You clearly did not look at my link. Monsoonal cloud turns the ground below dark when the sun is at its zenith . Only a small proportion of the incident solar power gets thermalised. A good proportion of what gets thermalised does not make it to the ground. On average only 200W/m^2 makes it to the ground and all of that goes into evaporation. There is NO OLR released from the surface of a warm pool and the temperature is steady; minor fluctuations caused by cooling rain and the occasional clear sky sunlight. .
On average, 30% of all incoming available EMR is not thermalised. The reason is ice in the atmosphere.
So 30% is gone due to ICE IN THE ATMOSPHERE before the energy does anything below that cloud. And here you are suggesting ice in the atmosphere is not involved in the radiative balance.
You have been sucked into dismissing the 30% that ice contributes to unthermalised EMR as a fixed quantity. That 30% is highly responsive to surface temperature. Unthermalsed EMR gets in excess of 50% over ocean warm pools and the remainder does nothing but drive the heat engines that circulate air throughout the globe. There is no surface warming beyond 30C in open ocean water. You can triple the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and warm pools will never be warmer than 30C. CO2 has no impact on the processs.
A desire to balme everything but CO2 for global warming leads to many unusual theories. This seems more common among “Climate Realists” than in the past 25 years.
I don’t understand why CO2 can’t be recognized as a weak greenhouse gas above 400ppm and recognized as impeding Earth’s ability to cool itself by a small amount. AGW does exist. But has been harmless, obviously. What percentage of the 1975 to 2015 warming did CO2 cause? No one knows. Lab experiments suggest some of thagt warming. So what? Warming is good news on our planet.
We do know the largest 8-year period of CO2 emissions, from 2015 to 2023. caused no net warming of our planet. So much for CO2 as the climate control knob. CO2 is just one of many climate change variables,
Even with rising CO2, and falling SO2 emissions, in the past eight years, both of which do cause global warming, the net effect of all climate change variables has been no change in the global average temperature (UAH data). If the Climate Howler Global Whiners could “revise” the 2015 to 2023 UAH numbers to show warming, they would have by now.
Why should anyone accept what they think is incorrect?
So people will take them seriously about related subjects.
CO2 cannot do what you claim so why should I just accept it.
I think what Rick is trying to say is that water vapor plays a very important role in convective heat transfer from the surface to the upper atmosphere. What makes water vapor especially important with convective heat transfer is that it can change phase in the process. The change in effective top of atmosphere should lead to an increase in altitude where convective heat transfer is still effective.
One other indication of the importance of water vapor is the temperature record of the last million years. During a glacial period, there appears to be a robust positive feedback driving the temperatures lower until a combination of dust and orbital changes end the glacial period. During the inter-glacials, there appears to be a very robust temperature limiting mechanism which I would think is related to the 26ºC SST required to sustain tropical cyclones.
You are correct in asserting that an increase in CO2 will have some effect.
I very much liked your going into detail about how CO2 affects radiative heat transfer – remembering how my eyes were opened by Roy Spencer’s mention of a delay between a CO2 molecule absorbing an IR photon and re-emitting that photon. This led to thinking the CO2 molecule makes for a lousy transmission antenna, with radiation being a quantum tunneling process related to gamma ray emission. After some further thought, the light dawned on me about stimulated emission and why CO2 lasers worked as well as they did.
I am the first to defend the importance of latent heat transport in Earth’s climate system. But to understand each other we have to speak the same language, and evaporation and latent heat transport are not considered a part of convection in climate analysis. Convection is considered the ascent of warm air due to thermal buoyancy, regardless of its humidity. That is a small part of vertical energy transport, although an important part of horizontal energy transport.
I postulate glaciation is self limiting. It is a true positive feedback in climate. Glaciation eventually gets to the point where calving and overhanging ice shelves break away and cool large areas of ocean surface. That causes a dramatic reduction in the water cycle and snowfall.
Once the water level begins to rise, the ice shelves come under increasing stress and formation of large ice bergs accelerates.
There is evidence in the Arctic Ocean and North Atlantic of glacier keels draging across ocean floor that is now 700m deep. That means there were some very large icebergs.
The big berg in Baffin Bay that grounded at Davis Strait caused Greenland to go cold again after it started to warm up.
Not to mention that the vast majority of the CO2 in the atmosphere – something like 95-97% is naturally occurring so removing the minuscule amount related to transportation Nd industry doesn’t change the composition of the atmosphere in any meaningful way – it defies all common sense to believe a minuscule amount,of CO2 somehow magically controls the earth’s temperature or its climate
About 33% of the 420ppm CO2 is from manmade CO2 emissions, not 3% to 5%
The 3% to 5% claim is claptrap and will cause people to ignore everything else you say about the climate,
That 3% to 5% claim seems to have come from two science frauds, Ed Berry and Murray Salby.
CO2 emissions added something in the range of +200ppm to _300ppm CO2 to the atmosphere since 1850. The actual CO2 level rose about +140ppm
Please explain how the CO2 level increased +140ppm if not from manmade CO2, and then explain exactly what else did cause the +140ppm rise.
You will not be able to answer these two questions, as no one else has in the past five years I have asked them, so stop claiming manmade CO2 only accounts for 3% to 5% of CO2.
You are confusing the seasonal carbon cycle with annual emissions of additional CO2.
Although manmade output of 37 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons (about 5%) moving through the carbon cycle each year, it adds up because the land and ocean cannot absorb all of the extra CO2. About 60% of this additional CO2 is absorbed. The rest remains in the atmosphere, and as a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years.
Human CO2 emissions upset the natural balance of the carbon cycle. Man-made CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by a third since the pre-industrial era,
C02 controls the energy balance. The idea that water can have any influence is naive nonsense.
Where is most warming coming from in the CO2 hypothesis?
Not CO2. It has a small effect by itself of about 1ºC per doubling.
Steven Mosher February 25, 2023 7:37 am
The facts beg to differ …
w.
I thought that you Mosher had a working brain .
I now see that you have swallowed the climate nonsense that CO2 is the climate control knob .
The three climate optimums that have occurred since the end of the major ice age 12 thousand years ago were NOT caused by rising levels of CO2 and the Little Ice Age was NOT caused by reducing levels of CO2 .
Water vapour in the atmosphere swamps any effect that increasing CO2 levels had on the climate millions of years ago .
The effect of CO2 is logarithmic and further increases will have no measurable effect on temperature .
The sun heats the sea water in the tropics which causes convection and the typhoons, hurricanes and cyclones track north or south to dispel the heat in the polar regions .
This has been happening for thousands of years and records show that the severity of these events is not increasing .
“You cannot make the atmosphere more opaque to IR and not alter the energy balance. We simply don’t know by how much.”
Except you can (theoretically). The atmosphere is almost completemy opaque at wavelengths strongly absorbed by CO2, until well above the tropopause, where the temperature gradient is positive. Any increase in CO2 should lead to increase in the temperature of the effective emitting surface and cooling to a lower equilibrium temperature at the surface.
I’m not saying that this is the case, it’s just not an obvious fact that our emissions caused any warming at all.
If that were the case, we would be seen an increase in temperature at the stratosphere with the increase in CO2. Just the opposite happens.
75% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and clouds, and most of it does not reach the tropopause. The idea that the Earth emits from above the tropopause most of its radiation is not possible.
“75% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and clouds”
The common estimate for water vapor is 60% to 65% of the greenhouse effect, and clouds add to that, but the percentage seems to be a guess. I assume clouds have a net cooling effect for our planet.
I do not believe much of the CHANGE in the greenhouse effect over time is due to water vapor and clouds.
The cooling effect of clouds does not come from their greenhouse effect but from their albedo effect. Clouds do increase the GHE and there are estimations for that.
Water is responsible for about 75% of the GHE. Most GHE changes should come from water and nearly everybody agrees on that.
I tried to say that clouds have a net cooling effect by blocking some sunlight, even though they also have a greenhouse effect in the other direction.
I do not think that statement is controversial.
The current consensus guess is that water vapor is responsible for 60% to 65% of the total greenhouse effect, not 75%.
I believe your statement that most of greenhouse changes should come from water vapor, which is a feedback, is a controversial statement, and is wrong.
Those numbers I cite come from a commonly cited source:
Schmidt, G.A., Ruedy, R.A., Miller, R.L. and Lacis, A.A., 2010. Attribution of the present‐day total greenhouse effect. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 115(D20).
You cannot be more consensus than Gavin Schmidt.
Water vapor 50% (all sky)
Clouds 25%.
Most of the warming and most of the GHE changes are supposed to come from water vapor + clouds. This might be wrong but it is not controversial in the least.
We know what CO2 does in a laboratory, with and without water vapor. Not that much above 400ppm. There is no reason to fear 800ppm CO2 and every reason to welcome 800ppm CO2 — such as better growth of C3 plants, which will support more human and animal life on our planet. And likely a more moderate climate in colder nations too,
There is no reason to claim CO2 works differently in the atmosphere than in a laboratory. The right answer: CO2 above 400ppm does not do very much even when you add a water vapor positive feedback.
We already know 10x as much CO2 in the past atmosphere never caused runaway warming because there is obviously a negative feedback that limits the water vapor positive feedback. Ny guess is more clouds as tropospheric water vapor increases.
We also know Antarctica is not melting from more CO2.
So the fear of CO2 as “pollution” is insane. But fear of CO2 is great propaganda for leftists to gain political power and control over the private sector, so it will continue because it is working for that devious purpose.
What a curious statement. Are you using the “argumentum ad ignorantia” fallacy? Everything works differently in the atmosphere than in a laboratory because you cannot reproduce the atmosphere in a laboratory. That’s why they are trying computers and failing.
CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas in a laboratory
It is a weak greenhouse gas in the atmosphere
Any claim that is not true is claptrap.
My statement was not “curious”
It was logical
Your claim implying that CO2 has a completely different effect in the atmosphere is data-free claptrap.
The screen shot is from Anthony’s CO2 jar experiment. It show that in his experiment additional CO2 produces a lower temperature.
Then the experiment is obviously wrong
So Feynman was wrong?
CO2 is indeed a weaker IR absorber than others but is more abundant than most, so it is still responsible for 29% of the greenhouse effect, which is a lot.
“We simply don’t know by how much.”
That’s the answer we want and the answer nobody has.
But it’s all academic anyway, because, as you say, “CO2 is innocent. Its fingerprint is not found at the crime scene. Something else is warming the planet and causing the increase in OLR.”
How sweet it is!
wrong wrong wrong
Earth’s energy balance.
There is no energy balance
Our planet is not in thermodynamic equilibrium
No, but matter tries to reach thermal radiative equilibrium, so the concept is valid.
If you place an object at a different temperature inside a vacuum recipient it will equilibrate its temperature with the environment through net thermal radiation exchange.
The fact that equilibrium is a moving target doesn’t mean the Earth isn’t always trying to get there.
Trying to get there is not the same as getting there
I’ve been trying to get to a one million dollar net worth since 1977 — so far I have $129.
The “heat trapping” explanation may be somewhat inept with regard to physics, but it is sufficient for the average citizen. The GHE acts to make the atmosphere warmer than it would otherwise be. For most people, that is all they need to know. It is the narrative that is important, not the physics (unless you’re a physicist).
It should be simplistically explained as “slowing the cooling rate,” rather than “heat trapping.”
It should also be explained that global warming is a lot more pleasant than global cooling, and we have centuries of anecdotes to prove that. People tend to vacation in warmer places too.
“trap” means ΔEout < ΔEin resulting in ΔE > 0.
“cooling” means dT/dt < 0.
“slowing the cooling rate” means d2T/dt > 0 when dT/dt < 0.
Since dT/dt > 0 we cannot say the planet is “cooling” (because it is actually “warming”) and thus we cannot say “the cooling rate is slowing down”…ya know…because you cannot slow something that isn’t happening in the first place.
“trap” is the appropriate terminology for what is happening since ΔE > 0.
The planet doesn’t still cool at night? The greenhouse effect slows the rate of radiative cooling.
David Middleton said: “The planet doesn’t still cool at night?”
I didn’t say that it didn’t.
David Middleton said: “The greenhouse effect slows the rate of radiative cooling.”
Yep. It certainly does that especially at night.
But that is a goal post move. In the context of the article and Tom.1’s comment the GHE does not slow the rate of cooling because the planet isn’t cooling. What it does is trap heat because ΔEout < ΔEin resulting in ΔE > 0.
And you give me all the implied facepalms you want. It does not change the fact that in this context dT/dt < 0 is false and that ΔEout < ΔEin resulting in ΔE > 0 is true.
Like it or not, the surface cools. CO2 will shunt some of the radiated heat into a reservoir. The surface cools!
The lower atmosphere also warms by conduction with the surface and by contact with CO2. Convection then cools the lower atmosphere. And guess what? The surface keeps on cooling.
Heat is never trapped. It is in constant movement. Its rate from here to there may change but it is never static.
Your mixed up math using Energy and Temperature is so incomplete one can’t make sense of it.
If you refuse to learn from Planck, then study this wiki page:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat
you will find entropy is an integral part of heat transfer!
You’re the one moving the goalposts.
The heat isn’t “trapped.” It’s return to space is delayed by greenhouse gases. It takes longer to radiate away, but it still radiates away. As I noted earlier:
I don’t think he understand the use of gradients. “Trapping” heat can only occur under very controlled conditions. Otherwise entropy is in control and under natural conditions it doesn’t go backwards. Think irreversible.
I don’t think English is he primary language.
English is my primary language. However, my grammar and spelling are subpar. If that creates an impediment to discussions then I am truly sorry. I am trying to do a better job at proof reading my posts.
DM said: “The heat isn’t “trapped.”
Yes, it is. ΔEout < ΔEin resulting in ΔE > 0. And I stand by that statement in exact position I originally placed it. I have no interest in moving it.
BTW…a strawman argument is one in which person A creates an argument, pins it on person B even though B never advocated for it, and then criticizes it. Your person A. You created the argument that locations don’t cool at night and pinned it on me. But I never advocated for that argument. You and you alone created that argument. That’s fine. Just don’t expect me to defend it.
The two arguments I created were 1) the ΔEout < ΔEin resulting in ΔE > 0 which means heat is trapped and 2) that dT/dt < 0 is false meaning that cooling isn’t taking place let alone a reduce in the rate of it. If you want to challenge an argument I’m making then by all means. Just make sure it is one of those 2 and not one the ones you made up.
http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring17/atmo336s2/lectures/sec3/energybudget2.html#:~:text=The%20reason%20this%20is%20possible,known%20as%20the%20greenhouse%20effect.
Which I think is poor wording because the ground isn’t actually cooling. It’s warming. What they actually mean and what should have been said instead is…In effect, it slows down the net rate at which the ground surface sheds energy by radiation. Reducing the energy shed rate (ΔEout < 0) does not necessarily imply that cooling is happening (dT/dt < 0) or that it has slowed down (d2T/dt > 0). That’s my beef and why I think “trapping heat” is a far better way of describing what happens.
And don’t hear what I didn’t say. I didn’t say the ground temperature does not cool with the diurnal cycle. I’m talking about the global average temperature over long periods of time. It is going up; not down.
If the temperature goes up doesn’t the amount of radiation go up as well? So isn’t more heat lost as the temperature goes up?
I’m not even sure that “slowing the cooling rate” is even an apt description. I would think that the main result of the temperature going up during the day would be increasing the beginning value of the decay function.
R(t) = R0 / e^(λt)
As R0 goes up so does R(t=0). So the hotter the daytime gets the more radiation the Earth dumps out initially. Then the question is what does CO2 do to λ? Not sure I have a good feel for what happens there. Certainly the amount of heat that gets dumped at night is the integral over time of R0/e^λt dt. So what does CO2 do to the integral?
Without greenhouse gases, Earth would rapidly reradiate infrared energy back into space and the average surface temperature would be significantly cooler.
http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring17/atmo336s2/lectures/sec3/energybudget2.html#:~:text=The%20reason%20this%20is%20possible,known%20as%20the%20greenhouse%20effect.
Greenhouse gases slow the radiative cooling process. They effectively convert infrared.
http://chemistry.elmhurst.edu/vchembook/globalwarmA5.html#:~:text=The%20infrared%20radiation%20strikes%20a,this%20absorption%20of%20IR%20radiation.
The only real question is how much warming is caused each doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Observation-based (instrumental) estimates indicate a low sensitivity. Model-based estimates indicate a high sensitivity.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/15/pat-michaels-worse-than-we-thought/
Bear in mind that those are the equilibrium climate sensitivities (ECS). The only sensitivity that matters to people is the transient climate response (TCR), which is about 1/2 to 2/3 of the ECS. The TCR occurs simultaneously with rising CO2. The difference between the ECS and TCR occurs over the next 500 years, or so, as Trenberth’s missing heat returns from the depths of the oceans.
Your explanation is terribly unsophisticated to the point of being wrong. Radiation is captured by CO2 and shunted to a heat reservoir (N2/O2) whose loss of heat has a slower rate of heat loss. Heat is still not trapped, it is merely moved around to points with different gradients.
And part of the explanation should always be “all other things held equal,” since that is the foundational assumption that leads to the hypothetical conclusion of an effect on temperature.
For which there is no empirical evidence in support, and a good deal of empirical evidence against.
Yep… And Earth, as a system, pretty well never allows “all other things held equal.”
My apologies to Javier in advance of declaring his normally very astute writings inadequate in this case…..But…
The “emissions height” concept is a poor way to explain GHE. It makes people believe that IR emissions are from some fixed height over the whole planet, when such is not the case at all. An IR camera on a satellite sees the ocean surface at its temperature, land at its temperature, and cloud tops at their temperature. It also sees shades of gray in certain IR bands where water vapour and CO2 have absorbed the surface emission of IR and re-emitted at their new temperature at higher altitude.
What the camera sees depends on what bandwidth pass filters are in front of the lens.
In the 8 to 14 micron band, the atmosphere is nearly transparent to IR. About 80% of IR photons in those frequencies get directly to outer space, other than that blocked by dust and O3. Also, if low and mid-cloud cover is 65%, then 65% more IR photons will be blocked from reaching outer space. This IR range represents Wein’s law temperature from +90 C to -65 C, which pretty well covers all Earthly surface temperatures. Of course I’m referring to the “atmospheric window”.
And the black body curves for those +90 to -65 temperatures shows about 40% of their total emissions are in that 8-14 micron IR band.
So Earth as viewed by an IR camera from outer space is mostly a mosaic of surface and cloud top temperatures. It is not an emission from a certain height as one might expect for a thick atmosphere like Venus.
The emission height concept is a mathematical construct no different than calculating the average depth of snow in North America…not really useful for explaiming anything about the climate.
The best treatment of this topic is Happer and van Wijngaardens 3 watt widening of the 15 micron CO2 valley in their Figure 10 of the following article.
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Infrared-Forcing-by-Greenhouse-Gases-2019-Revised-3-7-2022.pdf
Not really. Only 17% of IR emissions come from the surface. When the camera is looking at a point in the Earth it is adding all the IR emissions from the surface and the atmosphere.
Earth’s IR emissions to space are coming at all sorts of temperatures that when added give a spectrum very similar to what a blackbody at 255 K would give. This is the emission temperature of a planet. It matches the energy received from the Sun minus the albedo.
The effective emission height is a concept simplification that helps understand something a lot more complex. If all the radiation from the Earth was coming from that height it would have the same emission temperature. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yes, I agree, unfortunately that means your description is an oversimplification of what is going on….to the point of being an incorrect thing to teach laypersons.
You need a rethink on that, you are confused by the “back-radiation” watt numbers that can’t actually exist without “fore-radiation” from a warmer source.
It is a common error, even amongst physics Ph.D.s to invoke the [minus Tcold^4] term in Planck’s equation when the pertinent number is [Thot^4 minus Tcold ^4] which must be a positive number.
About 165 watts of 240 is absorbed by the surface and must be reradiated, from down here where “climate” is located. That’s 70%.
And check latest NASA radiation budget. Upwelling IR this 398 as a result of Tsurf, downwelling 340 as a result of Tsky, IR to outer space 40…..40/(398-340) equals 70%.
Circular reasoning you might be inclined to say, but it shows that watts/sw.m. due to extra surface temp will be 70% sent to outer space through the atmospheric window.
Sorry a comment here can’t adequately cover that which needs study of atmospheric thermo, and radiative heat transfer…..You obviously have the mind and dedication to pursue the topic.
Think of it this…say you sit naked in a 20 C room. Your skin temperature is say 33 C. Your skin is radiating 497 watts per square meter. The walls of the room are radiating back to you 418 watts per square meter. Your metabolism needs only generate 497-418=81 watts/sq.M. When you can reconcile this in your mind, plus colder or warmer walls, some heat escaping through a window, and so on….reconciling with Climate radiation budget diagrams and incoming sunshine, without cognitive dissonance….you’ll be good.
You are still confused, DMac. “Your skin temperature is say 33 C. Your skin is radiating 497 watts per square meter” No it isn’t. That would only be true if you were in outer space. In a room temperature room, the actual power you emit is less than 100 W/m^2. The wall is not “radiating back to you 418 watts per square meter”, because you are warmer than the wall. Power doesn’t develop in that direction, entropy won’t allow it.
I am not sure how you managed to write this statement in the same post where you wrote “It is a common error, even amongst physics Ph.D.s to invoke the [minus Tcold^4]” That’s exactly the error you just committed… you left out the target temperature, you assumed it was 0. Don’t do that.
DMackenzie is right. sblaw(33) = 498 W/m2. sblaw(20) = 419 W/m2. The flow of heat is thus sblaw(33) – sblaw(20) = 79 W/m2 from you to the wall. If you were only radiating at 100 W/m2 you’d frozen solid and dead.
He’s not right. The S-B law with a reference temperature of 0 is only applicable in outer space. If you were only radiating at 100 W/m^2 in outer space, then yes, that would correspond to a cold and dead temperature.
No one is using a reference temperature of 0 K. The temperatures are 306 K (33 C) for his body and 20 C (293 K) for the room.
If you were radiating at 100 W/m2 then his body temperature is -68 C (205 K) regardless of whether his is in the room or in space.
And we can use the 1LOT to show that his metabolism has to contribute 79 W/m2. Because F = E/(A*t) where t is time and A is area and because A and t are the same for the system and period being analyzed we can restate the 1LOT as ΔF = (Fin_room + Fin_metabolism) – Fout. At 306 K (33C) we know Fout is 498 W/m2. And because his body is in steady-state (no temperature change) we know that ΔF = 0 which means Fin_room + Fin_metabolism = Fout. Solving for Fin_metabolism we have Fin_metabolism = Fout – Fin_room. And we know Fin_room = 419 W/m2. So Fin_metabolism = 498 W/m2 – 419 W/m2 = 79 W/m2. The 1LOT does not allow it to be any other way.
“No one is using a reference temperature of 0K.” Yes, you are absolutely using a reference temperature of 0K. If your body is at 306 K, the only way it can produce 497 W/m^2 is if you plug 0 into the “Tcold” part of the general S-B equation. That gives you a specialized S-B equation, which is only applicable in outer space, but a lot of non-physicists don’t seem to have grasped that part.
Naturally, if you are in outer space and emitting that much power to your surroundings, which are close to 0K, you will rapidly freeze to death, but that’s beside the point.
The Stefan-Boltmann Law says I = σT^4. For his body it would be I = 5.67e-8 W/m2.K4 * (306 K)^4 = 498 W/m2. 0 K isn’t used at all.
The radiative heat transfer equation Q/t = σ(Th^4 – Tc^4) is derived from the SB equation above and the 1LOT equation ΔE = Ein – Eout. For his body and the room it would be Q/t = 5.67e-8 W/m2.K4 * ((306 K)^4 – (293 K)^4) = 79 W/m2. 0 K isn’t used at all here either.
Note that I in the SB equation is radiant exitance while Q/t in the heat transfer equation is the rate at which heat is transferred. They are different, albeit related, concepts that happen to have the same units.
“Radiant exitance” is an energy unit, not a power unit. It isn’t “an energy unit that happens to be measured in Watts”. Radiation is energy, not power. The first form of the S-B law that you showed is a specialized case where Tc = 0. Converting energy (Joules) to power (Watts) is done by (among other means) the general “S-B radiative heat transfer equation”, which you also showed above. It requires an entropy (temperature) gradient. So you can’t just ignore the Tc term. Setting that to 0 requires some sort of justification, such as “being in outer space”. You can’t just convert temperature (energy) into Watts (power) willy-nilly and hope that no one notices… Stefan and Boltzmann certainly knew the difference. It doesn’t sound like you do, though.
Here’s a quick quiz: how much power do you think is developed by an object at equilibrium with its surroundings? Say, at room temperature or so? And if your answer isn’t “zero”, just what exactly do you think the word “power” means?
Radiant exitance is a flux. The units are W/m2. Radiation is electromagnetic energy in transit. It can be expressed in joules, watts, or W/m2 depending on how you want to analyze it. The first equation I posted is a special case of the SB law only in that it is for a blackbody with emissivity ε = 1. There is no Tc in the SB law because the SB law only relates a blackbody’s temperature to its radiant exitance. The SB law says blackbodies emit radiation and thus energy all of the time and anywhere they happen to be. There is no requirement that there be an entropy gradient between the blackbody and its surroundings for the blackbody to emit radiation. A body at temperature T has the same radiant exitance regardless of whether it is in outer space, on Earth, or even a room that is also at temperature T.
Power is the amount of energy converted/transferred per unit time. The units are joules/second or watts (W). An object X and its surroundings Y has a radiant exitance Ix = σTx^4 and Iy = σTy^4 respectively. The heat transfer between the two is given by the 1LOT and is Q = tA*(Ix – Iy) = tA*[(σTx^4) – (σTy^4)] = tA*σ(Tx^4 – Ty^4). The power of the transfer is thus P = Q/t = Aσ(Tx^4 – Ty^4). And then by letting T = Tx = Ty since they are in equilibrium we see that P = Aσ(T^4 – T^4) = Aσ*0 = 0 W. Notice for a moment that the 1LOT and SBLAW combine to produce the familiar radiant heat transfer equation. Anyway, that’s your answer…P = 0 W. Repeating the math for DMacKenzie’s scenario we see that P = 79*A W.
You seem to be very confused. But at least partly on the right track.
“Radiation is electromagnetic energy in transit. It can be expressed in joules, watts, or W/m2” No, energy cannot be expressed in Watts. Who told you that? It can be expressed in Joules, degrees, height (for potential energy), etc. But not Watts. Perhaps you got confused by the “in transit” part and assumed that energy that is moving must be producing power. But that is not the case.
“The SB law says blackbodies emit radiation and thus energy” This is a mis-statement. Planck’s law says that blackbodies above absolute 0 emit radiation, which is energy, and describes the spectral distribution. Energy is not the same as power, though. The S-B law, meanwhile, allows you to take objects at two temperatures and derive the power being transferred between them. It does not say anything else.
This statement is false: “An object X has a radiant exitance Ix = σTx^4” That statement is equivalent to converting temperature directly into power. That isn’t how energy and power work. I can tell that you know that. So if you stop making this particular statement, everything else you wrote will be basically correct. In particular, a correct statement would be “An object X has a radiant exitance E, or T, in joules, or degrees, based on its temperature”.
You did correctly calculate that an object in equilibrium with its surroundings produces 0 W of power, and DMac’s scenario for a human being in a room is around 79 W. These numbers are correct. Values greater than 400 W are not. Not even as intermediary terms that are going to cancel out. Those are false and imaginary. For example, you wouldn’t be able to measure them if you tried, because they don’t exist. Your understanding of the world will be much improved if you drop the imaginary intermediate values. Just plug the two temperatures you are looking at directly into the general S-B equation and you will get your answer, with a lot less faffing around, and no imaginary values.
stevekj said: “No, energy cannot be expressed in Watts”
Sure it can. A watt is joules/second. It is the rate of energy conversion or transfer.
stevekj said: “Who told you that?”
Thermodynamics.
stevekj said: “Perhaps you got confused by the “in transit” part and assumed that energy that is moving must be producing power. But that is not the case.”
I don’t think so. If energy is being converted or transmitted then it is doing so with a rate. I’m not sure I’d describe that as “producing power” though. It’s really more of it just doing so with a power.
stevekj said: ““The SB law says blackbodies emit radiation and thus energy” This is a mis-statement.”
I don’t think so. Q = tAσT^4. It certainly looks like blackbodies emit radiation and thus energy according to the math.
stevekj said: “Energy is not the same as power, though.”
Yeah. I know. But they are related. P = Q*t. Just so we’re clear…when I say [it] can be expressed in joules, watts, or W/m2 I’m talking about [electromagnetic radiation in transit]. For example, radiant exitance is electromagnetic energy in transmit from a blackbody and is expressed as a flux in units of W/m2.
stevekj said: “The S-B law, meanwhile, allows you to take objects at two temperatures and derive the power being transferred between them.”
No. That’s not right. The SBLAW allows you to relate the temperature and radiant exitance of a single body. I and T in the equation are for the same one and only one body. It’s the derivation of the radiant heat transfer equation from the SBLAW and 1LOT that allows you to calculate the power of the heat being transferred between two bodies. The SBLAW itself does not do that.
stevekj said: “This statement is false: “An object X has a radiant exitance Ix = σTx^4””
It’s true. The SBLAW says Ix = σTx^4.
stevekj said: “That statement is equivalent to converting temperature directly into power.”
It’s actually equivalent to saying that radiant exitance for a blackbody is proportional to the 4th power of temperature.
stevekj said: “So if you stop making this particular statement, everything else you wrote will be basically correct.”
Sorry. I’m not going to stop saying that Ix = σTx^4. If I stopped saying that then I would be implicitly rejecting the SBLAW.
stevekj said: ““An object X has a radiant exitance E, or T, in joules, or degrees, based on its temperature”.
That’s not right. Radiant exitance is the flux exiting a surface per unit area and has units of W/m2. It obviously can’t be energy (E) or temperature (T).
stevekj said: “You did correctly calculate that an object in equilibrium with its surroundings produces 0 W of power, and DMac’s scenario for a human being in a room is around 79 W.”
Thanks.
stevekj said: “Values greater than 400 W are not.”
It’s a good thing neither I nor DMacKenzie said the transfer was greater than 400 W.
stevekj said: “Not even as intermediary terms that are going to cancel out. Those are false and imaginary. For example, you wouldn’t be able to measure them if you tried, because they don’t exist. Your understanding of the world will be much improved if you drop the imaginary intermediate values.”
I have no idea what you’re trying to say here. What intermediate value?
stevekj said: “Just plug the two temperatures you are looking at directly into the general S-B equation and you will get your answer”
The SBLAW (assuming ε = 1 anyway) only accepts one free parameter. It’s T. It does not have two T terms.
stevekj said: “with a lot less faffing around, and no imaginary values.”
Say what? Imaginary values? What are you talking about?
There is a lot missing in this back and forth. Equilibrium is one. It means that at some point in time, an infinitely small point, these equations hold. You can not even assume they hold as an averageumpnless you make very specific assumptions about objects, which is what Planck did in his research. The exponentials involved make this a requirement.
Unless a body is a true source with a constant rate of flux and temperature, gradients are necessary to describe the heat loss/gain. The gradients must be integrated with respect to time in order to evaluate the bodies condition. The bodies involved are entirely different in measurable quantities. H2O has a higher specific heat than CO2. Land has a higher mass than air. These all cause different gradient equations.
Insolation is an example. Insolation follows a sine wave as the sun traverses the sky. Additionally, there is a cosine function based on latitude. Trying to use an average value for insolation doesn’t tell you that Miami gets much more sunshine in winter than Ottawa, Canada. That wouldn’t be a big deal if everything was linear but it isn’t. Lots of exponentials involved. Lots different gradients. Ask yourself if this variation can cause a difference in temperature growth, i.e., anomalies.
Don’t expect that simple equations tell you the whole story.
You sure are confused, bdgwx… let’s just take one of your incorrect statements:
“radiant exitance is electromagnetic energy in transmit from a blackbody and is expressed as a flux in units of W/m2.”
The basic error here is your usual one, namely “energy” is not the same as “W/m^2”. In one sentence you appear to know this, and in the next sentence you forget it again. Try to pay attention.
In a bit more detail, you cannot develop Watts from a single body. That’s not how Watts work. If you had a hypothetical universe consisting of a single object at room temperature floating in a vacuum, with no surrounding matter or energy of any kind, you would have no Watts, because there is nowhere for the energy to go.
Who taught you your theoretical physics? I’d like to have a chat with him, because he didn’t do a very good job. Did you pass your exams? Or are you just finding equations here and there on the Internet and trying to jam them together to get the result you want?
Remember, power is not just “energy in motion”, it is “energy in the process of doing work, i.e. rearranging matter so as to increase entropy” (at a particular rate). If entropy is not increasing, no power is being developed. A single uniform body sitting isolated by itself will not experience any change in entropy, and no power can be developed. No “Watts” anywhere. Just Joules, waiting patiently.
What you call the “S-B Law” is a specialization of the actual S-B law, which is a heat transfer calculation involving two bodies at different temperatures. The specialized one has set the second temperature to 0 K, which is not physically realistic. Even in outer space it is only an approximation, and Tc should really be around 3 K.
I know you can find lots of pages on the Internet claiming that the “S-B law” defines the amount of power produced by a blackbody at temperature T. But that only happens in outer space… You can tell that none of the pages that make this claim have studied their theoretical physics very carefully either. Most of them go on to write “energy” and “power” interchangeably, which tells you that they are not written by actual physicists. Black bodies emit energy, while power requires work, which requires two objects – a high-entropy one and a low-entropy one… it’s a tough concept, I know, but if you study hard I know you will get it.
If all of the preceding confused you, let me try another approach. In our example of an object in a room at equilibrium, you wrote:”Ix = σTx^4″, and you interpret I as a power measurement, apparently totally independently of any surroundings. So this gives you upwards of 400 W/m^2 emitted by the object at room temperature. (That’s the “fake power” that I talked about.) But next, you wrote “P = 0 W”. Now, bizarrely, you have concluded that one object is emitting both 0 W and also upwards of 400 W/m^2, at the same time. How much sense does that make in your head? Because it makes none at all in mine…
“””””No, energy cannot be expressed in Watts.”””””
It can and is. AM radio is not as popular as it used to be, but the stations were rated as to their output power expressed as Watts.
EM waves do carry energy, expressed as Joules. However Watts or Joules/second is used to designate how much energy is moved over a unit of time. It allows one to determine the amplitude of the electric and magnetic fields in a given EM wave. A 1000 Watt EM wave carries more power than a 100 Watt EM wave.
Remember power is work (Joules) divided by time (seconds). With an EM wave, it is the ability to do work divided by time. Higher amplitudes (more Joules) of the E and M fields can do more work. Thus more power is available.
You have some strange ideas, Jim… I said:
“Energy cannot be expressed in Watts.”
Then you said:
“It can and is.”
Then you said:
“EM waves do carry energy, expressed as Joules.”
You should probably make up your mind, because you made two contradictory statements. The second one is my point, and is the correct one.
Note that I never said “energy cannot develop power”. That is different, and of course it can, and that requires an entropy gradient. Every form of energy can develop power, given an entropy gradient, including EM radiation.
“””””Your metabolism needs only generate 497-418=81 watts/sq.M.”””””
You have a slight misconception. SB @33° = 497 and SB@20° =418.You have two bodies. At only an instant in time you radiate 497 to the wall while at the same time the wall radiates 418 to you.The net radiation is 79 towards the wall. Your metabolism must continue supplying the energy to remain at 33° for this scenario to remain constant. That is, you must manufacture 497 W/m^2.
Far to many people fail to realize that most of these laws and equations are good for just an infinitely small period of time. You have an internal fire, so you can be a constant source. Without this, as you radiate, you cool (or warm) if you are the hot body (if you are the cold body). The rates of warming and cooling are determined by gradients which are made up of several other factors. Most of the equations are for black body’s which simplifies the overall use of radiation without gradients.
I also forgot Andy May’s write-up, his fig. 8 dispels the “emissions height of CO2” concept and his Fig 10 explains the GHE by widening of the 15 micron CO2 band. It’s at:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/happer_major_statement.pdf
which is very readable for the average climate rationalist.
DMacKnzie,
You are confused. The link you provide is to Professor Happer’s Major Statement. I did not write that, he did, I only preserved it. He agrees with what Javier is saying, this is from his statement:
There is no inconsistency between what Happer wrote and what Vinós wrote.
Andy,
I thought it was your evaluation of Happer’s papers, sorry. It is one of the best write-ups on GHE around.
Anyway, you left off Happer’s lead in statement on the same page 15 comments that you use…..
“Although the surface radiation is completely blocked in the bands of the greenhouse gases, as one would expect…”. (Italics mine)
The inconsistency is that Javier’s explanation implies that the “emissions altitude” effect IS across the whole IR spectrum when it is not, and that emissions altitude explains the GHE when it does not….It is simply a mathematical construct, like the average depth of snow in North America…not very useful…
I am not trying to denigrate anyone’s work here, only give readers with the desire to investigate more fully the GHE, and a sound basis for doing so.
Of which Professor Happer’s Major Statement is a very good synopsis.
It doesn’t imply that. There’s the atmospheric window that is not affected, and a change in CO2 affects only the frequencies absorbed by CO2. Since the height of emission at those frequencies is increased, the average comes higher. All averages are mathematical constructs. That doesn’t mean they are not useful.
Javier, I would make two points.
First, the simplest way to think about the GHE has nothing to do with the oft misunderstood ‘backradiation’ (which is but one indicator of the physics actually involved). It is most simply an absence of sufficient radiative IR cooling.
Second, there obviously must be some CO2 GHE effect. Tyndall experimentally proved CO2 was a GHG in 1859. But its ‘fingerprint’ signal gets largely lost in the noise of all else also going on—natural variation, aerosols, land use change, contrail cirrus. And the sole alarmist claimed CO2 model ‘fingerprint’—the tropical troposphere hotspot—does not in fact exist. The only CMIP6 model without a tropical troposphere hotspot is INM CM5. And CM5 has an ECS of 1.8, meaning no alarm. (CM5 accomplished this mainly by incorporating observational ARGO ocean rainfall in its parameterization, thereby significantly reducing its water vapor feedback.)
I think the majority of skeptics have a sound understanding of how the green house effect actually works and that “green house” is not a very good analogy. A better analogy may be the often used blanket effect. A blanket does not warm a persons body at all as it contains no source of energy. It simply slows the rate of cooling allowing the energy produced by the body to maintain a normal temperature. If a person dies in bed under a heavy blanket they will still eventually reach “room temperature”. How long it takes is dependent on how well the blanket insulates. As far as the climate goes, the effect of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use is like adding a very thin sheet to a very heavy thick wool (or H2O) blanket.
I do like Javier’s test in that it follows the scientific method of making a prediction based on the hypothesis and then evaluating empirical evidence to see if the prediction is falsified or not. Way too little of this in Climatology.
The temperature, and other properties, of the outer surface of the topmost blanket will determine the loss of energy. So the insulating physics of a wool blanket is very different to that of a thin foil space blanket.
Neither is a good analogy. There is a temperature gradient in a wool blanket, so increasing the height of the TOA is like putting on another layer, but the reasons for the temperature gradients are very different. GHG are not responsible for the gradient, but for the assumption of an adiabatic movement of packets of air being incorrect (Good enough for fast flow of air over mountains).
We just had a 35 hour blackout here in Michigan along with perhaps a one million other people. It was 55 degrees in the house. I slept under three blankets fully dressed with a wool cap on. The wife couldn’t sleep at all. The cat stayed on top of a floor heat vent waiting in vain for the furnace to turn on. Three cheers for blankets!
It sounds like you need an alternate source of energy.
Generac and propane would keep you cozy.
So do cats 🙂
Our next door neighbor ran a 100 foot extension cord from his gasoline generator over to our house so we could turn on a small heater in the bedroom. Nice guy, After an hour of getting some heat, five DTE Energy linemen showed up in my yard and the electricity was on 30 minutes later. We were lucky this time — some people are still without power until Sunday. A transformer exploded in the back yard — the wife almost hit the ceiling — I thought a nearby home blew up — I was not expecting such fast service from DTE.
Or a “Three dog night.”
I should have said ‘large’ dogs.
There are a great many “skeptics” and many readers of this blog whose understanding of science is warped by their political views, which is exactly the same problem with people in the alarmist camp. You have people claiming there is no such thing as the average temperature of the atmosphere (or anything), or people claiming that hydrogen as a fuel is “suicidally dangerous”.
“You have people claiming there is no such thing as the average temperature of the atmosphere (or anything), or people claiming that hydrogen as a fuel is “suicidally dangerous”.”
There are people making such claims. WUWT allows such claims to be made. But WUWT usually requests that such claims be backed up by supporting facts. And then we get to sort out which claims are valid and which claims are not.
A wild claim on WUWT will be challenged. Count on it.
People make all kinds of bogus claims on this blog all the time and they are rarely disputed, except by me when I happen to know the claims are unsupported by facts or evidence. So, as it happens, you are wrong.
Further to my point, there was a very recent post here by a Mr. Eric Worall in which he referred to hydrogen as a “suicidally dangerous” substance. He never cited anything to back this up except an OSHA data sheet that carried a warning that could apply to just about any gaseous combustible. There is a weath of industrial experience to demonstrate that this is factually incorrect. Yet, not only did he author an article here, but no one took issue what his nonsense excpet me.
Here’s what Eric said:
Also, as Eric pointed out, hydrogen
None of those “apply to just about any gaseous combustible” as you incorrectly claim. Not one.
Me, I wouldn’t park a hydrogen car in an attached garage. Too suicidal for my taste.
You may think hydrogen is a brilliant plan.
Me, not so much.
w.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/01/drilling-for-hydrogen/
Willis- Sorry to see you weighing in on the side on nonsense, but there you are. He also used the words “suicidally dangerous.” The fact is the world has a vast amount of experience using hydrogen in many different applications. It is used widely, and safely. Every space shuttle was launched with hydrogen, and it caused no accidents. Many, many NASA space vehicles have used hydrogen fuel cells safely. The US has hundreds of miles of hydrogen pipelines already in service. Virtually every refinery and chemical plant in the world uses hydrogen, Toyota, one of, if not the biggest auto manufacture in the world believes that fuel cell powered cars with hydrogen as fuel are going be future of automotive power and already has a commercial product in the form of the Marai. Siemans, this small technology company in Europe, is getting ready to ramp up their industrial scale hydrogen electrolyzers. You don’t have to take my word for any of this because these things are easily verified.
Tom, you’re right that highly trained people have “a vast amount of experience using hydrogen in many different applications”.
But your average car owner has exactly zero experience in handling hydrogen. And automobiles are often used continuously for decades by people with no knowledge of machinery, with little in the way of maintenance … you don’t find NASA or refineries or chemical plants doing that.
Yes, you are right that there are 1,600 miles of hydrogen pipelines in the US, once again maintained by professionals … but again, that’s very, very different from having tanks of pressurized hydrogen at every one of the 150,000 gas stations in the US, and pressurized hydrogen in every car in every garage.
Next, even with professionals at the helm we get things like this:
“Explosion at hydrogen fuel plant damages 60 nearby homes in Catawba County”
Finally, hydrogen is not an energy source. There are no hydrogen mines. It’s generally made from natural gas … so hey, why not just power your car on natural gas and avoid the waste and danger?
Hydrogen gas was first produced commercially two centuries ago. And it was first used to power a vehicle in 1826. There are a number of very valid reasons why in all that time our economy hasn’t adopted it as a widespread fuel source.
Best regards,
w.
Actually for a long time hydrogen gas was supplied as a fuel source, known as town gas. In the UK it was supplied to houses until the late 1960s, the natural gas that replaced it turned out to be more of an explosion risk.
Town gas is a mixture of roughly equal parts of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. It is not more explosive than natural gas, with a flammability range of 4.5 ～ 44.3%, versus 5 ～ 15% for natural gas. The use of town gas was discontinued because the carbon monoxide made it very poisonous.
w.
It had become less popular because of the smell, but in the 60s they discovered Natural gas reservoirs under the North Sea and decided to make the switch. The explosion risk of Hydrogen is less than you might think because it diffuses very rapidly and becomes too lean to ignite. The problem when they introduced natural gas was that the flames on burners can ‘blow off’ and thereby produce an inflammable mixture in the house. Because hydrogen has a much higher flame speed that doesn’t happen. If hydrogen powered vehicles are introduced I think it’s most likely that the H2 will be stored in low pressure metal hydrides. About 20 years ago I was at a DoE meeting which was discussing the possibility of Hydrogen powered vehicles. The fuel manufacturers said that they were able to supply and distribute it if there was a sufficient demand and the auto companies said that they could design and make the cars if there was a adequate fuel supply network! Neither wanted to be the ones to make the first move.
I have some experience with ignition energies. H2 in air will ignite if you drop a bolt on the concrete floor, and flash back to the leak source, which becomes a barely visible blowtorch…..All industrial facilities that use hydrogen take extreme precautions to avoid leaks, heat detectors, etc, much beyond that of the average attached garage.
Thanks, D. Yes, hydrogen can be handled safely.
But as you point out, that’s handled by trained professionals with proper procedures and leak and heat detectors, etc. … not by shade tree mechanics or your average humanoid.
w.
‘Second, there obviously must be some CO2 GHE effect.’
Some folks would say it already happened, meaning additional CO2 should have very little effect, and per Javier’s D&C graphic, is being swamped by something else? Just asking…
It’s a diminishing returns function. Each doubling of the CO2 concentration yields a linear increase in temperature (ignoring feedback effects).
Example:
If going from 290 to 580 ppmv yields 1K of warming, 580 to 1160 ppmv would yield an additional 1K, 1160 to 2320 ppmv would yield an additional 1K, ad nauseum.
So the 1.5K (or C) doomsday CO2 concentration would be out around 870 ppmv.
Of course the actual sensitivity is unknown (possibly unknowable) and the net feedback effects are even more unknowable, but appear to be fairly neutral over geologic time, where CO2 effects seem to fall within the noise level.
Yes (to you and Rud). My statement was that we’re already pretty far along the curve given that there’s little evidence from the paleo that CO2 is the ‘control knob’.
The evidence from paleo is pretty shaky, but it does not support the CO2 control knob conjecture.
There’s no evidence natural CO2 was ever a control nob — it seemed to be mainly a feedback to changes in ocean temperatures in the ice core era. per Henry’s Law. The CO2 rise from 2015 to 2023 did not control anything, nor did the CO2 rise from 1940 to 1975.
“Of course the actual sensitivity is unknown (possibly unknowable) and the net feedback effects are even more unknowable, but appear to be fairly neutral over geologic time, where CO2 effects seem to fall within the noise level.”
Excellent!
That bears repeating.
The GHE effect is logarithmic, Is enabled by more CO2 raising the ERL at a lapse rate ever inefficient ERL. First shown by Guy Callendar in 1927.
I agree, Rud. The back radiation idea is stoopid. For radiative-caused temperature changes the only thing that matters is the net flux.
The problem with INM CM5 is that even if it gives the correct answer it will be for the wrong reasons. Models have too many holes to be able to represent climate in any credible way even by approximation.
Models are programmed to scare people and support the 1979 Charney Report wild guessed ECS, revised a few years ago to the new IPCC wild guessed EPS. The Russian INM model may be the one exception. And they DO scare people.
They are actually climate confuser games — propaganda — not meaningful models of climate of this planet.
The only CMIP6 model without a tropical troposphere hotspot is INM CM5. And CM5 has an ECS of 1.8, meaning no alarm
The INM ECS of +1.8 degrees C. is now below the +2.5 degree C. lower (arbitrary) limit of the IPCC’s wild guessed ECS. And no one likes Russia. So maybe the INM model will get sanctioned and thrown out of the CMIP7 models? Stranger thing have happened.
Due Diligence: My ancestors are from Russia,
I like Russia and Russians.
I don’t like Putin.
I think the Russian people have been screwed by their leadership for far to long. Yet it the Russian people who pick their leaders and their choice have been bad almost always. It also true Russia is a very dicey place to live, the climate stinks and little access to the oceans that are not frozen most of the time. In the end the Russian people are always dealt, a poor hand.
My family left as soon as the Communists showed up.
I’m always amazed by the number of people in the US who would like to play Commissars and Kulaks, though I suppose most of them have the former role in mind for themselves.
Nope, CO2 warms the atmosphere by absorbing energy from the surface and transferring it to other molecules just as JV stated. End of story. There is no “absence of sufficient radiative IR cooling“. That is fake science that I also believed at one time until I finally understood the process. It took me years. Sadly, JV doesn’t seem to understand the process either.
The atmosphere does not cool somewhere high in the atmosphere. It cools from all altitudes all the time. It is driven by the changes in density and not the concentration of CO2. You are not applying Kirchhoff’s Law to the process.
At equilibrium, all layers of the atmosphere exist in radiation exchange equilibrium with all other layers. No energy is exchanged. When you increase CO2, all layers of the atmosphere increase their CO2 content proportionally. Hence, radiation exchange equilibrium still holds.
What this structure implies is that higher layers can never absorb all the energy directed towards them by lower layers. There’s fewer CO2 molecules at each higher layer. Hence, some percentage of the energy radiated upwards by the lower layers has nothing to stop them from passing through and leaving the atmosphere. As a result, all altitudes radiate energy to space fairly equally.
If you disagree with this statement, then you still haven’t understood the process.
The warming in the stratosphere affects this a little, but again in a structured manner. In addition, this is an equilibrium statement. The atmosphere is almost never in equilibrium so there will always be variations due to day/night, seasons, weather, etc. However, the variations will average out and the absorption/emission of energy from CO2 molecules is always attempting to return every layer to its equilibrium state.
Most people look at the absorption of energy only and base their views on opacity without understanding how reemission affects the process. The equality of absorption and emission as required by Kirchhoff’s Law changes everything.
I stopped above because a base understanding is required to then understand the rest of the story. There cannot be any increase in the ERL. The only thing that occurs as CO2 levels increase is absorption of more energy in the wings of the near 15 mm frequency bands. How much warming this can produce is very complex.
Almost everyone that looks at it gets a different answer. However, from 60+ years of historic NOAA radiosonde data it appears the answer is … it doesn’t matter… the energy level is exactly what is needed to balance the cooling effect of CO2 increases.
Yes, increases in CO2 also have a cooling effect. As CO2 increases, the emissivity of the boundary layer increases. This means more low energy photons will be directed towards the surface. This does not cause any warming due to the surface and boundary layer being in thermodynamic equilibrium. However, it will lead to increases in evaporation. About 80% of the photons will strike an H2O molecule.
As many know, evaporation is a cooling effect. It takes energy from the surface and turns it into a very light weight water vapor molecule. This reduces the air density and increases convection. The water vapor is transferred by convective currents high into the atmosphere. Whenever convective currents are increased the air will be taken higher into atmosphere. Higher is colder meaning more water vapor is condensed out of the air. The end result is less water vapor is left over.
Since the water vapor greenhouse effect is saturated at low levels of the atmosphere, the only area that makes a difference is at high altitudes which is exactly where the decreases in water vapor will occur. This reduces the water vapor greenhouse effect.
The end result is that the additional energy from the wings of the CO2 absorption bands compensates for the cooling effect from CO2 increases. The overall greenhouse effect stays constant.
“What this structure implies is that higher layers can never absorb all the energy directed towards them by lower layers. There’s fewer CO2 molecules at each higher layer. Hence, some percentage of the energy radiated upwards by the lower layers has nothing to stop them from passing through and leaving the atmosphere. As a result, all altitudes radiate energy to space fairly equally.”
I would also add that all of this is a time function. The time function is sinusoidal during the day and exponential decay at night. Trying to find an “average” amount coming in and an “average” amount going out just doesn’t work very well.
More insolation from the sun (e.g. no clouds) means the exponential decay at night starts from a higher temperature than when there are clouds (or whatever) in the atmosphere. So the amount of heat radiated away is an integral of the exponential decay and sometimes it’s greater and sometimes it’s less.
The higher the temperature when the sun is no longer driving the situation the more radiation there is (T^4) headed skyward. The lower the temperature the less radiation there is. It’s really difficult to find an “average” which can be used for this process.
If you are determining the “temperature” at some point in the atmosphere based on the amount of radiation being measured it isn’t going to be some fixed amount, it isn’t even going to be some “average” amount. Parameterizing all this in a climate model just isn’t going to work very well.
The failure here is using “averages” and “departures” or anomalies.
Is “the planet” warming when the largest increasing trend is occurring on the Greenland plateau in January?
This is NASA’s headline image for the warming from 2017 to 2021:
?itok=aBc7u715
Is the Arctic really on fire as the image suggests? An increase from minus 30C to minus 20C is warming but what does it really mean?
The something else is orbital precession. It has been shifting peak solar northward for hundreds of years and the oceans are starting to respond. Arctic Ocean surface warming rapidly as the sea ice trends downward to expose more water and Southern Ocean slowly cooling as the sea ice trends upward. These are slow, long term changes in the surface condition that have a large impact on surface temperature. Particularly winter advection from warm ocean water to cool land masses.
Northern hemisphere will continue to warm until the snowfall overtakes the snow melt again.
A comment on anomalies. They are necessary to compare global observational stuff when altitude and ocean proximity varies greatly.
But IPCC model anomalies hide the fact that model actuals (before anomalization) vary by about +/- 3C. In other words, models are awful actual predictors. Something factually illustrated in essay ‘Models all they way down’ (with footnotes) in ebook Blowing Smoke.
No – they are there to hide reality. They just amplify the noise and hide the useful information.
If you want to look at trends to get understanding then look at a location and observe the changes over periods looking at all the data. Trends are best to look at maximum and minimum months over a period of time.
The attached is part of the Greenland plateau. Produce an anomaly for this and it shows a strong warming trend. It does not inform you that the warming is predominantly occurring in January.
Comparing temperature of different things and different locations does not provide meaning. I can happily endure air temperature above 50C. But get into water at 50C and I would not last long. Same temperature but very different heat content and heat transfer capability.
The NASA image I linked above is to keep their global warming story alive. It is highly selective and based on anomalies. But it does not even show “global” warming. Some places are colder. Some places are unchanged. Even reducing this selective image to a single “global” trend removes insight.
Models are a way to learn about things you cannot do proper experimentation. The problem comes when people start thinking models are a good representation of reality.
As George Box said, “All models are wrong, but some are useful”.
Let me add that using averages from the very start hides so much information it is not funny. Energy is added to any point on the earth in a “pulse” consisting of something resembling a sine wave from 0 -> pi. And, that occurs day after day after day. At some point in the afternoon, as the sun sinks to the horizon, the sun’s insolation (incoming energy) falls below what the stored heat radiates and a decay function takes over. Think of a capacitor discharging.
If these are in balance over a long period of time. Then stored energy will occur, i.e., stored heat, and the earth will warm. When considering the combined mass of say the top six inches of soil, the ocean, and the atmosphere, how much heat needs to be “trapped” each day to raise the temperature of the entire earth 3 degrees over 36,500 days?
My last point is that H2O absorbs a goodly amount of the sun’s insolation at near IR frequencies. According to several sources, if a molecule absorbs at a given frequency, it also radiates at that frequency. Why do none of the Planck curve estimates of how the earth radiates show these frequencies being radiated by H2O? Is water a “special” molecule?
“The NASA image I linked above is to keep their global warming story alive.”
Yes. Temperatures are cooling globally, so NASA highlights warming in the arctic. Tricky little devils!
There hasn’t been any warming 2017-2021. That’s inside the new pause. What that image shows is heat being transported to the Arctic for its exit from Earth. As it happens during winter it is magnified by measuring it as anomaly. Nothing to do with orbital precession.
Again a lack of insight. Sure it is due to winter advection but that requires warmer oceans in lower latitudes.
The NH oceans are getting warming because the May and June solar intensity is increasing.
The warming trend in the Arctic has been occurring for at least 70 years.
The NASA image is selective to show that warming is still going on. But a 70 year trend shows the same thing.
Greenland plateau has increased almost 10C in January in those 70 years.
This is the change in May ToA solar power flux at 40N from the Maunder Minimum to the end of this century:
-0.400 442.409040
-0.300 442.800035
-0.200 443.197592
-0.100 443.601278
0.000 444.010670
0.100 444.426501
Up 2W/m^2 over 500 years. Now what is CO2 supposed to do over 300 years and cause Earth to burn up.
May sunlight drives peak ocean surface temperature achieved in July.
The increasing summer solar power flux in the NH has only just started to have a noticeable impact. It will rise 20W/m^2 from current levels to its peak. There is a lot more ocean warming to come.
The oceans are a laggard to climate change. They warm less when the planet is warming, and cool less when the planet is cooling. They are not a driver of climate change. They provide inertia to change making the planet a lot more climatically stable.
You need to take this up with Jim Hansen and the IPCC. The oceans are the poster child for global warming.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content
Note the red upticks start around 1980 and it is going to hell since then.
“Most of the excess atmospheric heat is passed back to the ocean. “
Rick I suspect you realize this is what is wrong with this picture.
I do but anyone who believes in the magic of the GHE altering Earth’s energy balance have demonstrated their willingness to believe in anything without the knowledge to understand it.
Yep… And this is why plate tectonics are the primary geologic control on climate change. Plate tectonics, particularly its effects on oceanic circulation patterns, drive icehouse/hothouse cycles and probably atmospheric CO2 concentrations over geologic time.
David, I agree. No less than famous Princeton geologist Ken Deffeyes surmised a decade ago that it was the tectonic closing of the Panama isthmus, thus altering ocean circulation, that set off the present ice ages about 2 million years ago. (The tidal rise/fall at Panama City on the Pacific side is an unbelievable 20-30 feet—I have been there and seen it.)
“The oceans are a laggard to climate change….They are not a driver of climate change.”
Wrong. Your framing is IPCC framing, ie, the atmosphere is the climate.
The proper framing is (1) ocean changes are climate changes, because the ocean changes first, then atmospheric changes lag the ocean by 2 months; or (2) ocean and hence climate changes lag solar changes.
The following proof is all anyone needs to know the GHG contribution to climate change is so small as to be a negligible cause. With Stefan-Boltzmann, the sole possible GHG climate effect is via changing albedo.
After seeing this there can be no doubt that solar forcing of the ocean is 100% of the cause of climate changes since the 1880’s, as the S-B equation confirms the measured ocean change exactly, using the standard value for albedo of A=0.3 and the changes in TSI over time modeled using sunspot number.
This puts an end to several inapplicable, false but popular climate theories including ECS, TCR, effective emission height, and radiative transfer.
Agree. So many want ignore recent data, which clearly shows the pause — and very slight cooling — at least for now.
Mr. Vinós has a pet theory, and every other consideration to hell?
Can we at least agree that there are so many periodicities in this chaotic curve we call Climate, that we have not even found them all yet?
Telling each other how wrong we are is especially ignorant, seeing as we constantly find out how wrong we all were.
The image is strong supportive evidence for the precession effect, an hypothesis that will only be dis/proven once we see the Antarctic warming faster than the arctic, once the precessional angle rolls that way. Until that experiment is complete, how can you blithely say it is not due to precession?
Of course, I have as yet no reason to drop my hypothesis regarding orbital plane anomaly…
I do not claim to have discovered anything about climate, as I am not a climate scientist and I do not carry out climate research. I just apply the scientific method and point to what the evidence supports and what it doesn’t, and look for alternative explanations to the evidence.
Precession has an effect on climate, obviously. And for some things, like the position of the ITCZ and the mid-Holocene transition it is the dominant cause. For the glacial cycle Milutin Milankovitch said no, and the evidence says no. The glacial cycle is driven by obliquity and the evidence is pretty strong. It is laid out in the second chapter of my book, and it is not my contribution. Great glacial cycle researchers like Peter Huybers see the same as I see in the evidence, and they preceded me, so no claims on my part, only my agreement.
I prefer my first name, but if you are going to use my last name preceded by treatment, that would be Dr., thanks.
Agree glacial cycles driven more by obliquity not precession. Carl Wunsch has shown this to be statistically true.
Once again the good doctor reads what he wants to understand? We were discussing hemispheric asymmetry, but I guess changing the subject is doctorate-level dialogue protocol…
Hemispheric symmetry is a problem for the precession hypothesis, as the world goes into glaciation and comes out as a whole according to benthic cores. One hemisphere might take the lead, but one hemisphere is always doing the opposite it should be doing if precession ruled the glacial cycle.
Ah, but good sir, I never said anything about glaciation. I have not actually spent any thought on the subject, and I have yet to hear a coherent, simple (not simplistic) and convincing theory on the subject.
None
But I bet obliquity COUPLED WITH precession sure explains most every instance of localised disastrous climatic orneriness.
Convection adjusts in order to neutralise the potential thermal effect from radiative molecules in the atmosphere.
Convection itself is the cause of the greenhouse effect and not radiative molecules.
An atmosphere that has no radiative materials at all will still have a lapse rate so that convection is inevitable and overall surface warming will occur.
The surface temperature of surfaces beneath atmospheres is raised by atmospheric mass motion and not by back radiation.
The greenhouse is by definition a radiative effect. You cannot redefine it and keep the same name.
Convection is a small player in the way the energy delivered by the Sun finds its way to space.
A small caveat. The Lindzen adaptive iris is Convection driven (Tstorms) but most definitely affects radiative cooling via its cirrus impact. (More cirrus warms since ice crystal cirrus is transparent to incoming short wave solar but opaque to outgoing IR; less cirrus cools).
Then call it an Atmospheric Thermal Effect instead.
The meridional advection of energy from the tropics (surplus) to the poles (deficit) is absolutely due to convection and fundamental to all of the weather processes in the atmosphere. Advection is part of the process of convection.
Yes, convection is very important for meridional transport, as it is latent heat transport. Both have about the same magnitude, as far as I know. And let’s not forget potential energy transport, as air parcels rise in the tropics and sink at higher latitudes. Energy is key to climate change.
I agree, and the focus on thermal radiant opacity as the overarching mechanism that impedes energy flux thru the atmosphere is just nonsense. Adiabatic convection transmits energy and is a non-radiative process.
Javier,
The greenhouse gas concept is a narrative based on models that are sourced in conjecture.
As with all narratives when the story fails to match the data the story adjusts, so we have the switch from “back-radiation heating” to “reduced surface cooling by insulation.” The insulation back-stop story fails to acknowledge that the primary reason for the greenhouse gas conjecture is to raise the planetary surface temperature in the first place. The Greenhouse Gas Effect (GCE) concept is based on a model that creates a low average planetary surface temperature. It is not based on primary data, it is instead based on derived data (the warm planetary surface) and so in essence the GHE concept relies on a form of inverse modelling.
Stephen Wilde and I are currently studying the atmosphere of Mars and applying our DAET modelling concept to MY29 annual atmospheric profile data.
Here is a brief synopsis of what we have found thus far:
1. The areal weighted global annual average air temperature at the 636 Pascal average surface pressure of Mars is 211.8 Kelvin.
2. The black body (ε =1) Vacuum Planet Equation thermal emission temperature for Mars is 209.8 Kelvin. Therefore, the Atmospheric Thermal Effect (ATE) for Mars is +2 Kelvin.
3. The grey body (ε =0.87) Vacuum Planet Equation surface thermal emission temperature for Mars is 202.5 Kelvin. Therefore, the Greenhouse Gas Effect (GHE) for Mars is +9.3 Kelvin. (We are already deep in the weeds of moveable definitions based on parameter variations).
4. In a comparison with the similar gas content atmosphere of Venus, we find that the thermal emission pressure level for Venus is 1,868 Pascal. This pressure is higher than the surface pressure of Mars and is in the radiatively transparent stratosphere of Venus at an elevation of 71.06 Km.
5. Therefore the low pressure Carbon Dioxide gas atmosphere of Mars is thermally radiatively transparent with no Greenhouse Gas Effect possible. The surface Atmospheric Widow for low pressure Mars is completely open at night.
6. The only possible mechanisms that can explain the +2 Kelvin ATE on Mars are dust haze absorption of insolation during the day and adiabatic convection that accounts for the surface diurnal temperature change.
The model driven greenhouse gas conjecture is not based on data and therefore is not Science. It must be discarded for the moveable feast of nonsense that it so obviously is.
The large difference between the radiating temperature and surface temperature clearly demonstrates the absurdity of that statement.
Heat transport from the surface or even the lower atmosphere to where it is released in the troposphere primarily involves mass transport. Just 1kg of ice in the entire atmospheric column will absorb 95% of incident OLR. That heat input is going to cause convection. Have you ever looked at how clouds move?
Just the 522.7E15kg of water that cycles through the atmosphere every year could hardly be claimed as “small”. And that component is only part of the convective processes.
That statement I made is supported by an ample bibliography. For example, NASA gives for convection a value of 5% of the absorbed solar shortwave energy, or about 18 Wm-2
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/EnergyBalance
What sort of bibliography supports your statement that “Convection itself is the cause of the greenhouse effect”?
Well, you say it is not CO2 but something else
That something else is convection.
If it isn’t CO2 then it isn’t any other radiative molecules either.
Proposing that convection is the cause accounts for your observation.
It takes time for KE to become PE during uplift and PE to become KE again in descent. Delay in the loss of solar energy to space causes warming.
The absence of a bibliography is due to the fact that it never needed to be spelled out until the radiative theory came to the fore.
You just have to consider an atmosphere that is wholly non radiative. You still have a lapse rate, convection and surface warming.
The atmosphere can never become isothermal due to the lapse rate and uneven surface temperature distribution inevitably causing convection.
Convection requires energy to drive it and that energy is locked in as PE which cannot be radiated as heat because it is not thermal energy. The process of locking that energy into convective overturning denies it to space so the temperature must rise.
Very simple really.
Also accounts for the observation that the temperature within the Venusian atmosphere at the same pressure as the pressure at the surface of Earth is much the same as that on the surface of Earth subject only to an adjustment for distance from the sun.
The radiative theory cannot account for that.
Alternative explanations for climate change are like different religions, mutually exclusive. Proposing one means one is attacked by all the others.
Convention does not solve the problem of the change in energy fluxes taking place at the top of the atmosphere needed to drive climate change, it just moves the pieces within the climate system.
When an atmosphere is forming OLR drops for as long as PE is being added to the convective overturning system. Therefore convection does solve the issue of a change in energy fluxes taking place at the top of the atmosphere.
If something were to cause an increased rate of loss of atmospheric mass to space then there would be an increase in OLR above incoming from the sun until the process stops or the atmosphere is gone.
In reality there are periods of excess OLR and periods of a deficit in OLR since convection takes a little while to neutralise destabilising influences such as a change in GHGs.
I’m not attacking your post. Just supplementing it with a mechanism that explains your observations.
Overall, convection varies in order to always match the upward pressure gradient force with the downward force of gravity.
GHGs do not change global temperature but on Earth they do have a tiny effect on the global pattern of convective overturning.
Indiscernible compared to natural variability from sun and oceans.
The same for every other planet or moon with an atmosphere.
Wow such poor understanding. You are confusing the power to drive convection with the transport of energy. It is a reasonably efficient heat engine. All that movement taking just 18W/m^2. But that has nothing to do with the heat transport that that engine achieves.
The water cycle alone corresponds to about 80W/m^2. All the atmospheric water involves mass transport of heat. All advection is mass transport of heat.
Since you are so ready to accept NASA climate phiisics, I will use their image:
They have 86.4W/m^2 as latent heat, 18.4W/m^2 as conduction 358.2W/m^2 of their surface OLR flux being reabsorbed before exiting so that component is involved in convection.
Evaporation and latent heat transport to the place where condensation takes place is a different process from convection, that’s why each one has its arrow.
Evaporation causes convection because water vapour is lighter than air and therefore involves latent heat transport (KE to PE). They have separate arrows because dry convection also creates latent heat transport (KE to PE ).
What is missing is the descent phase whereby PE gets converted back to KE.
The lapse rate for descending dry air is steeper than that for rising moist air and that compensates for moist air being lighter than dry air. It is a marvellous self balancing system.
I have long pointed out that accounting for the descent phase is a material omission.
What goes up must come down so KE from PE under descending air always matches PE from KE within rising air.
That conversion process delays energy loss to space and the surface temperature rises as a consequence.
For a non-rotating planet there would be KE to PE on the lit side and PE to KE on the dark side but for a rotating planet the Coriolis force jumbles it up across both lit and unlit sides in what we see as the Polar, Ferrel and Hadley cells which create our permanent climate zones.
In the face of that underlying balancing mechanism we would never be able to observe our contribution in the face of natural internal system variability.
I am adding to your work, not detracting from it.
This makes it clear you have no idea at all. The definition of conc=vection is:
Convection does not distinguish between latent heat and sensible heat. It is all mass transport of heat. It excludes radiation transfer. But the heat input from any radiation is redistributed by convection.
We suggest here that it is not a case of either / or, rather it is both opacity and convection that are involved.
The atmosphere increases its temperature mainly through four processes. In order of importance, they are evaporation, solar IR absorption, surface IR absorption, and convection.
So the vast majority of atmosphere heat gain is due to water vapor and clouds, followed by CO2, and a final contribution by convection.
“So the vast majority of atmosphere heat gain is due to water vapor and clouds, followed by CO2, and a final contribution by convection.”
Wrong again. Ocean heat itself drives the atmosphere temperature via convection; water vapor, clouds, & CO2 also due to ocean heat.
Evaporation causes convection because water vapour is lighter than air.
Solar IR absorption causes convection because denser lower gases absorb more than less dense higher gases.
Surface IR absorption causes most convection of all because the surface is lower and denser than any part of the atmosphere.
So, convection is the unacknowledged link underpinning all of them.
No convection, no greenhouse effect with an isothermal static atmosphere radiating to space at the temperature of the top.
In reality that cannot happen because the topmost molecules would have KE plus PE as total energy content way in excess of the downward force of gravity so the atmoshere would be incrementally lost to space.
You have to have increasing PE with height matching a decline in KE with height to keep the downward force of gravity balanced with the upward pressure gradient force.
That is all long established basic thermodynamics but it has been completely ignored.
Such poor understanding. Convection moves latent heat and sensible heat.
By what process does water go from the surface to condense in the upper atmosphere if it is not convection?
You need to get a clue.
How did the water get from the surface to mid troposphere to form rain?
Do you even know what convection means?
It is difficult to convey meaning on points with someone who has so little understanding of the meaning of words.
There are three types of heat transport. Latent, sensible, and potential. Some people group sensible and potential into dry-static heat transport. They are completely separable in meridional transport. For example, in the Hadley cell, latent heat transport is equatorward (this creates deserts at 30º latitude) and dry-static heat transport is poleward. The correct way of analyzing heat transport is by separating these components to see their respective contribution. By mixing them you get a poorer understanding of climatic processes.
Looking for a silver-bullet that exonerates CO2 is a thesis in Willis Eschenbach’s post “A serious question” from last September. Howard Hayden’s attempt is summarized from time to time of the weekly energy and environment roundup from SEEP.
I am not sure what Javier says here works except in the case of a significant step change in CO2. A step change large enough to not be indoubt in any way.
If the change in CO2 is more like a slow ramp, which is closer to reality than an obvious step change, which is what is discussed here, then what occurs is the following:
1) At the beginning of the ramp there is an infinitesimal drop in OLR at TOA, but OLR soon begins to rise through the entire atmospheric column as its temperature adjusts to re-establish energy balance at TOA.
2)The next increment of CO2 repeats this process over and over as CO2 rises to 2x concentration. The effect is like a delayed ramp in OLR that is a bit behind the ramp in CO2 — the process is trying to achieve an energy balance but is always out of balance.
3) I doubt one could measure the OLR to the requisite accuracy to establish its ramp-like quality, and then there would be further problems with attribution of the OLR signal.
I am not saying that the actual rise in temperature, adjustments in OLR, and measurments of CO2 concentration are immaterial to the problem, but that it is exceptionally difficult to make an iron-clad argument beyond any doubt in a situation with as much noise, contribution from other factors, and auxillary assumptions.
Why would OLR increase if the warming is caused by an increase in greenhouse gases? An OLR increase is contrary to warming by GHGs, and indeed it is contrary to warming, as it requires an even bigger increase in absorbed solar radiation to cause warming. And an increase in GHGs does not, cannot act through an increase in shortwave absorbed radiation.
When the evidence is contrary to the theory, it is the theory that is wrong.
Because increasing CO2 causes initially a drop in OLR, but then OLR has to rise to re-establish equilibrium through a rising atmospheric temperature. You said so yourself.
You can show this using MODTRAN.
Let me try to explain this another way. Here is what you have said.
To go from less OLR to the same Ol’ OLR then OLR has to rise at the TOA. You will observe a rising OLR during the attempt to re-establish energy balance. Now, since you don’t know exactly what the “same OLR” is numerically, how can you possibly say that this rising OLR is inconsistent with CO2 being the cause? It might be part of the return to equilibrium…especially if equilibrium is established through a number of other processes over a long time.
CO2 goes up and down in its annual cycle, so let’s consider interannual when it only goes up. We are following here IPCC reasoning as an exercise about how things work in their view.
From one year to the next CO2 increases by about 3 ppm. This causes a minute increase in atmospheric opacity to IR. This should cause some small warming that is not noticeable but adds up over the years. That small warming comes from a reduction in OLR not an increase in ASR. As soon as the warming takes place (same year) OLR goes back to where it was because increasing the opacity of the atmosphere does not increase OLR.
Now considering many years, all the internal variability is gone, CO2 has increased, the warming has accumulated, and OLR has remained the same.
In that IPCC scenario, OLR cannot increase. If it increases that increase is from warming not produced by CO2.
Imagine an Earth without an atmosphere but with the same albedo. OLR would still have the same energy, only it would come from a half surface at scorching hot temperatures and the other half at very cold temperatures as in the Moon.
You cannot change the OLR of a planet except in the short term without changing its ASR and/or its RSR (albedo). If OLR is increasing is because ASR is increasing and/or RSR is decreasing. None of those changes can be attributed to CO2. An RSR decrease could be attributed to water vapor. Perhaps we need to increase our water vapor emissions 😉
MODTRAN is only part of the picture. It doesn’t show what else is happening (water vapor and convection) which just happens to adjust keep OLR constant.
Admittedly MODTRAN has its limitations, but it is instructive to use MODTRAN with any atmosphere model available and double CO2. One will see a reduction in OLR looking down at TOA in the neighborhood of
and an increase looking up near the surface. The surface increase causes surface temperature to rise.
Start looking at water vapor, convection, reduction of snow and ice, changes in albedo, etc. and the return to equilibrium might take who knows how long. Javier presents a graph with a rise in OLR of a couple of watts per square meter over a couple of decades — I don’t think this observation invalidates theory.
Yes, you will see part of the full picture. You see what looks like warming because you don’t follow the energy flow all the way. In fact, if you keep the humidity constant, you will be eliminating the actual feedback that compensates for the warming. IOW, you will only fool yourself.
‘Howard Hayden’s attempt is summarized from time to time of the weekly energy and environment roundup from SEEP.’
Here’s Hayden’s differentiation between the responses to surface heating by other sources vs. heating due to increased greenhouse effect:
http://www.sepp.org/science_papers/Climate%20Physics%2010.pdf
“The Planck Response, however, does have some validity. Imagine that somebody sprinkles the right kind of Pixie Dust all over the earth so that the surface warms up. It will radiate more IR and set up an imbalance so that the heat emitted to space (ca. 60% of the surface radiation) will exceed the absorbed solar heat Iout > Iin ). The imbalance will continue (and diminish) until the earth cools down to the condition before the Pixiedust was applied. This is indeed a negative feedback mechanism that tends to hold the surface temperature constant, but it most assuredly does not determine what that temperature is. In particular, it is of no use in calculating the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS, the temperature rise due to CO2 doubling when Iout = Iin ).
If the greenhouse effect increases, such as by increasing atmospheric CO2 or H2O, then the IR emission to outerspace is decreased. That imbalance ( Iout < Iin ) warms the surface until the equality between incoming solar heat and outgoing heat radiation is re-established. (Climate modelers take note: During this time, the warming planet radiates less IR to space than when it was cooler.) In this realistic case, the increase in the greenhouse effect occurs before the temperature increase, unlike the Pixie-Dust scenario. It is important to remember that the sole source of heat to the earth is sunlight. Importantly, when the Planetary Heat Balance is restored — that is, when Iout =Iin = (Isun/4)*(1 α) — the additional greenhouse effect (“radiative forcing”) must equal the additional surface radiation unless there is a change in either Isun or albedo α.
Exactly what I said above. There is a time period in which OLR at TOA is rising as energy equilibrium is being re-established. Thus, a disturbance in this case caused entirely by step CO2 leads to an observation of rising OLR (at TOA). Observation of a rising OLR does not exonerate CO2 in the process.
I refuse to discuss Pixie dust of the right kind or any other.
‘I refuse to discuss Pixie dust of the right kind or any other.’
Fair enough.
‘Observation of a rising OLR does not exonerate CO2 in the process.’
By itself, I don’t think so. Both Vinos and Hayden indicate there has to be surface warming. And then there’s an implicit condition of whether or not the rise in OLR to ‘equilibrium’ was first preceded by a decrease in OLR. If there was an initial decrease in OLR, then I assume it would be GHE, otherwise it would be a non-GHE, e.g. a change in albedo. At least that’s my interpretation.
What you say here is precisely my concern. In order for an observation to invalidate theory, one has to have a better grasp on what the observation implies. It’s too bad we can’t just organize a big step increase in CO2 and then observe its effect. This puny 1% per year doesn’t produce anything convincing.
Except CO2 continues to rise and equilibrium should not have been achieved and per Nick and his ilk won’t be reached for 50 years after CO2 levels have stopped increasing. So you are talking pixie dust now.
I suspect the doomsters are working on the problem-
The First Law of Thermodynamics Has Been Rewritten (msn.com)
You just have to contextualise these matters.
They’re also working on the Second Law:
https://twitter.com/clivehbest/status/1628879898440830976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5Escreen-name%3Aclivehbest%7Ctwcon%5Es1
From the article:
This is not the first law because they have left out the work that may have gone in or out. As the balloon expands it does work. I have doubts about their doubts…
I took a thermodynamics course in the 1970s on my way to a BS degree. But everything has changed since then — all the laws seem to have changed, due to climate change, I suppose?
This comment is serious, not satire.
Well I had been teaching thermodynamics right up my retirement recently, and it has not changed since the 1970s I assure you. However, the climate kooks seem to think it doesn’t mean much, and the topic sure produces some heated discussion here.
It sure does. If only there were a way to harness all this heated discussion… hmm…
Javier,
The thing that causes me endless bemusement is the total focus on polyatomic molecular gases in the atmospheric study of thermal radiant flux. As all competent physicists know the key linkage between energy of mass motion and electromagnetic energy is shear wave flexure. A solid has to be able to flex in order for the coupling that permits energy of motion to become radiant energy to occur. Thermal radiant opacity requires a gas molecule to have three or more atoms because it is impossible to flex diatomic molecules (oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen etc.).
But all this focus on polyatomic molecular gases completely ignores the role of solid particles (dust haze and ice fog) as efficient absorbers and emitters of thermal radiant energy throughout the body of the atmosphere. The freezing point of supercooled water and the consequent formation of cirrus ice particle clouds is a process that is governed by the environmental lapse rate. The environmental lapse rate is not fixed and so enhanced surface temperatures tend to create convection that automatically removes energy from the surface and transmits this energy to the tropopause via an adjusted environmental lapse rate. At the tropopause radiant energy loss to space is facilitated both by the presence of ice particles with their efficient flexural coupling and by the thermal radiant transparency of the overlying stratosphere.
The simple stepwise sliding model in Figure 1 with a constant adiabatic lapse rate is just a conjecture.
The emissivity coefficient of ice ranges from 0.96 to 0.99.1 This means that ice is highly effective in emitting energy as thermal radiation, which includes both visible radiation (light) and infrared radiation.2
Sources
1
engineeringtoolbox.com
2
en.wikipedia.org
Of course. The entire CO2 hypothesis is just a conjecture based on very little evidence. The way a problem is framed limits the possible solutions to the problem that can be found.
Nevertheless, the way the problem has been solved, the warming caused by increasing the greenhouse effect should not result in an increase in OLR. Changes to the lapse rate just modify the amount of warming produced, but should not increase OLR either. From space, the warming at the surface should not be “seen.” That’s what an increase in opacity does.
Javier,
I like the way you set up the issue. The main problem I see is that the Derwitte and Clerbaux 2018 chart only shows a few W/m^2 increase over ~30 years. Of course, had it been a decrease, we’d never hear the end of it from the Alarmist camp.
A few Wm-2 is a lot. The radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2 is 2-4 Wm-2, so the entire radiative forcing from CO2 (including feedbacks) since preindustrial is maybe 1.5-2.5 Wm-2, and all the warming since is supposed to come from just that.
Yes, if we were rabid Alarmists, we could talk in terms of ‘Hiroshimas’.
No lets go full rabid alarmist and talk in terms of Castle Bravos (the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the US at Bikini and 1000 times more powerful than Hiroshima)
That should really make people worried. 🙂
Javier Vinós, thank you for the clearly stated points you have made.
“Part of it [IR radiation – dd] still takes place from the surface through the atmospheric window, but most of it takes place from higher in the atmosphere.”
It is good to have direct observations, even if not the entire planet, to assess what happens at the edge of the atmospheric window in the IR spectrum. We have such a platform: The NOAA geostationary satellite GOES East. Band 16 is centered at a wavelength of 13.3 microns. NOAA calls this the CO2 band. The full disk view provides 2 km resolution. The brightness temperature color scale used for the visualizations is such that the radiance at 30C (yellow) is 10 times the radiance at -90C (white.)
So what? The static theory of the greenhouse effect is not wrong, but the atmosphere is not static. The near-real-time animations show us that the planet is a huge array of highly variable emitter elements. The formation and dissipation of clouds has a lot to do with this, and the motion is what drives it all. The overall result is the composite of a huge range of highly variable emitter outputs. This link activates a 2-hour series of images to get the point. You can select longer time periods.
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk_band.php?sat=G16&band=16&length=12
“CO2 is innocent. Its fingerprint is not found at the crime scene.”
I agree, and I can “see” from space that the atmosphere is performing far more powerfully as the compressible working fluid of its own heat engine operation, than as a static radiative absorbing and emitting layer. This is not a recent discovery. As I see it, the “fingerprint” of the incremental static warming effect of rising CO2 concentrations should never have been expected to be detected for reliable attribution by any means we have available to us. In other words, the claim that warming of land and oceans is being caused by non-condensing GHGs has been unsound from the beginning and remains so.
And yet the author is trying to defend that such a process does exist. Even when he concludes it does nothing to the energy balance.
The existence of a GHE having some involvement in Eartth’s energy balance is a belief system that is well entrenched. It is the common wisdom. Even sound evidence that it does nothing has not altered the view that such a process exists. If there is a defined process that is supposed to do something but the evidence shows it does nothing, does the process exist?
“If there is a defined process that is supposed to do something but the evidence shows it does nothing, does the process exist?”
I separate this into two different questions:
1.) Does the atmosphere absorb and emit IR energy, and are the instrument-confirmed absorption and emission properties of water vapor, CO2, other GHGs, and clouds responsible for this finding?
Sure. I see no reason to dispute this concept and I am not bothered by this author’s treatment of it. But it is incomplete, if one wishes to know what to expect to “see” from space and what to expect to happen at the surface.
2.) So as the surface looks toward space, will the incrementally stronger static radiative coupling from increased concentration of CO2 and other non-condensing GHGs cause heat energy to be accumulated on land and in the oceans?
I don’t see how such a cause-and-effect claim can be supported by observations. On the contrary, both the gridded hourly CERES outgoing LW/SW data and the near-real-time GOES data show the circulating atmosphere (including clouds) to be performing as a highly active controller of emission and reflection. And if so, one cannot reliably isolate the incremental static greenhouse effect as a cause of land or ocean warming. I conclude that the incremental energy involved is readily transferred to the working fluid of the heat engine for circulation to whatever altitudes and at whatever mass flow rates result from the physical response to absorbed and stored energy.
Not according to science. But clearly what they’re doing is not science, or the hypothesis would have been heavily modified or discarded long ago.
Let me clarify my response to the “CO2 is innocent” statement. In the U.S., the court does not declare a defendant “innocent.” Rather, a verdict of “not guilty” is returned when reasonable doubt remains after considering the evidence. In this case, the way the atmosphere operates provides reasons to doubt that CO2 is to blame for the reported warming. The verdict is Not Guilty.
That is probably ‘tongue-in-cheek’ of course there is no crime scene, whether the increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is partly or mostly responsible for the global warming since 1950 as per IPCC or not there is no sound evidence that any harm has resulted quite the opposite.
“And the test results can be evaluated for example with Derwitte and Clerbaux 2018:”
But can that paper be relied on? It appears in a MDPI pay-to-play journal. Not much peer review:
“Received: 17 September 2018; Accepted: 21 September 2018; Published: 25 September 2018”
Here is a more recent paper in Nature, which gets plenty of re viewing.
” In particular, the increase of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 led to significant negative trends in the SOLR of −0.05 to −0.3% per year in the spectral region corresponding to the ν2 and the ν3 CO2 and in the ν4 CH4 band. Most of the trends associated with the natural variability of the OLR can be related to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation activity and its teleconnections in the studied period.”
FWIW, Dewitte et al in a more recent paper, same journal gives this plot allowing for RSR – reflected solar radiation
There is less energy outgoing than incoming, as predicted by the GHE.
Reflected? I think the criteria is LW out vs SW absorbed….
Well, this is Dewitte, who is the sole person cited by Javier as having exonerated CO2. And that is how he adds it up.
The thermalised solar is calibrated from ocean heat content. So the difference on your chart is not based on accurate radiative measurement but of temperature measurements in the oceans.
Oceans are retaining more heat because the water cycle is slowing down. Less evaporation means the thermocline shoals and the oceans retain more heat. It has nothing to do with the GHE. That is a fairy tale that has fitted the political agenda and it gets reinforced by the rivers of funding to government funded enterprises. .
There has to be less outgoing than incoming for warming to take place. You cannot have warming if outgoing is more than incoming. That has nothing to do with GHE.
True. But that also happens when ΔEout < ΔEin. Note that the GHE hypothesis is that ΔEout > 0 simultaneous with ΔEout < Ein. The Dewitte & Clerbaux 2018 publication is consistent with the GHE hypothesis. If you are wanting to challenge the GHE hypothesis I don’t recommend doing so by citing the Dewitte & Clerbaux 2018 publication.
Where does the ΔEin come from in the GHE?
Dewitte & Clerbaux 2018 say the OLR observations indicate “longwave cloud thinning” as described in [Cess et al. 1990]. In fact, they claim models are underestimating this feedback. The snow/ice albedo feedback would increase OLR as well though the declines as of yet would not be enough to explain the observed OLR trend.
Cloud thinning is not mentioned in Cess et al. 1990. What they say is:
Not very encouraging that we know what happens to clouds.
You keep talking about feedbacks, yet feedbacks are not part of the GHE theory. We could be discussing feedbacks for hours and never reach an agreement because even models don’t agree about feedbacks.
Dewitte & Clerbaux call it “longwave cloud thinning”. Cess et al. just call it “cloud feedback”.
I keep talking about feedbacks because that’s what scientists have been talking about since the 1800’s.
Nick,
Your plot starts in 2001, after global warming stopped. It isn’t that different from Javiers, for the period you plotted. Looks cherry-picked to me.
Global warming didn’t stop in 2001. [Schuckmann et al. 2020] [Cheng et al. 2023]
bdgwx,
Clearly a matter of opinion. Running a 5-year moving average on UAH global LT data as a poor man’s method of removing ENSO effects, shows that it certainly stopped from around 1997 to 2013 (see attached). The 2015-2016 super El Nino has raised temperatures from 2015 until 2020, but El Nino warming is temporary, since it moves heat from the ocean compartment to the atmosphere compartment where it can be more easily ejected to space. Thus, longer term, a super El Nino has a cooling effect. We will see what happens in the next few years. My prediction would flat or cooling temperatures.
I don’t know how well TLT temperatures can assess global warming in this context since it only represents 1% of the system. Assuming it can for the sake of this post and using the Monckton method we find that UAH TLT shows 0.31 C of warming (+0.14 C/decade) since 2001.
TLT represents much more than the lower 2 meters of the atmosphere, but a linear fit is completely inappropriate for this series and quite meaningless.
Everybody knows TLT represents the LT layer of the atmosphere. That’s why the product is called is called TLT and not 2mT.
Perhaps you can you tell Monckton what he is doing is inappropriate and meaningless then.
Andy
“Your plot starts in 2001″
It isn’t my plot. It is a plot from Javier’s hero, Dewitte, writing just a few months later. He isn’t my hero, but I include it to show that the way he does the arithmetic, there is still a net outflow of heat. It was the claimed (by Javier) absence of outflow of heat that “exonerated CO2”.
I have no heroes, but if I had them you wouldn’t be one. Let’s start by interpreting graphs correctly. The graph you posted says “total outgoing.” That includes OLR and RSR (albedo) and does not say anything about their relative contribution.
What does that graph have to do with my post? I’m a bit lost here. For the warming to happen Ei > Eo. Everybody agrees on that and it is what the graph says.
“Everybody agrees on that and it is what the graph says.”
They don’t. Here is a post from Isaac Held titled
“How can outgoing longwave flux increase as CO2 increases?“Interestingly it was prompted by the fact that GCMs predict just that. Here is a key part
The shortwave feedback can exceed the direct effect on OLR. And that is just what Dewitte’s total result is saying.
Total hog wash!!
ifs, ifs, and even more ifs!
“How can outgoing longwave flux increase as CO2 increases” ???
Feedbacks on feedbacks!! audacious harebrained conjecture!!!!
It’s getting ridiculous!!
But it is observed. Dewitte says so.
A total counter argument to heat trapping vernacular. Other hypotheses must be considered.
No, Dewitte’s graph says that heat is indeed trapped. Total heat out is less than heat in.
not by a diminished proportion of OLR vs surface flux!! no such effect is observed…
“Decadal changes of the reflected solar radiation and the earth energy imbalance”….
It is a cognitive dissonance to dismiss alternative conjecture for such effects.
One need not limit oneself to radiative feedbacks upon feedbacks…
a diminished OLR which subsequently results in OLR exceeding the initial magnitude based on internal IR active radiative trace gas perturbation….
far fetched even for laymen!! Let’s face it.
It doesn’t. Give it up Nick.
That’s what Dewitte’s graph shows. EEI = ASR – OLR. ASR > OLR so EEI > 0. The astute reader will notice it is the 1st law of thermodynamics ΔE = Ein – Eout. Just because you think ASR is BS doesn’t mean that the 1LOT isn’t any less true or that scientists have been predicting the albedo feedback for at least 120 years. And the very citation in this article (Dewitte & Clerbaux 2019) even says in no uncertain terms that the increase in OLR is caused by the albedo feedback. They call it the “longwave cloud thinning effect”.
No, he doesn’t say so. As Javier posted:
And I noted, you cherry-picked your period to coincide with the Pause.
Nick,
I’m just pointing out that the plot you showed looks a lot like the one that Javier showed, it just covers a smaller period. I suspect it is the same data, you just tried to make it say something it doesn’t say.
“as predicted by the GHE” but there are other hypotheses equally explaining the difference.
Solar absorption in the oceans also predicts less OLR escaping than SW absorption! CO2 longwave only penetrates few microns depth into a layer named the Cool Skin Surface because it is immediately releasing heat via radiation, evaporation and contact with the air. In contrast solar radiation is absorbed at depths that delay its release requiring time to migrate to the Cool Skin Surface where only then the ocean releases absorbed solar heat. The depth and time delay allows solar heat to be transported to regions outside of the tropics, where all observations show more heat is released than absorbed.
No change in solar SW or CO2 LW is needed to have ocean heat accumulate, and then be exported. Stratification by increased salinity is all that is required to accumulate heat as seen in salt gradient solar ponds. But dynamic increases in temperature due to salinity are never considered when climate models compare CO2 radiative effects to natural radiative effects using just solar and volcanic.
A good depiction of what happens in the ocean. Ocean-atmosphere heat exchange depends entirely on the atmosphere, which is responsible for evaporation and for setting the net thermal radiation flux.
““as predicted by the GHE” but there are other hypotheses equally explaining the difference.”
Maybe, but Javier claims that the OLR observations are inconsistent with the GHE, and so “exonerate CO2”. They are not.
Your graph of incoming solar is not supported by CERES. I assume they missed the cloud changes.
Well done Javier!
Great article. I’d like to see what the latent heat of evaporation does in the process. Surely those CO2 molecules banging into water molecules stores enormous amounts of energy in phase transition and that’s sent skyward. Once that vapor is in the sky, it can release enormous amounts into space with next to no temperature change just through condensation. And that’s not even to speak of cloud feedbacks which decrease incoming solar radiation.
Absolutely. About 50% of the absorbed solar energy goes into the ocean. Most of it comes out as latent heat through evaporation and is delivered to the troposphere through condensation and transported to other places by winds. This is a water planet and latent heat is key to its climate.
Excellent discussion of the net “cause & effect” of greenhouse gas warming & cooling. Your terrific illustration of the greenhouse gas “height of emission” will cause some heads to spin — but then again sudden exposure to reality can be shocking to some.
Javier, I fear your test is two simplistic—it doesn’t allow for both things happening. You say:
Here’s the CERES data. The surface is warming. And the amount absorbed in the atmosphere by CO2 and other greenhouse gases is indeed increasing. This indicates that CO2 is indeed playing a part.
However, here is the TOA Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR):
Hmmm … and the situation is further complicated by the changes in the amount of sunlight absorbed by the surface:
To quote Shakespeare,
My best to you and yours,
w.
Willis,
Is there CERES data available for LW radiation emitted by the surface? That would serve as a proxy for surface temperature that could then be compared to your TOA OLR graph in order to test Javier’s criteria.
Indeed there is. The atmospheric absorption is calculated as the surface ULR minus the TOA OLR. The difference between what is emitted by the surface and what makes it out to space is the amount shown in the graph, the radiation absorbed in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases.
w.
Got it – thank you!
And Dust.
Atmospheric absorbed radiation = LW down Surface – Upward Emission from Atmosphere.
This is typically depicted in the range 130 – 140 W m-2.
The radiative flux to space depends on both gases and condensate.
LW up – OLR is the Ramanathan greenhouse definition, which cannot be accounted for as the radiative gas absorption, as some is lost via the window. It requires condensate.
As a rule of thumb for radiation enthusiasts:
Ramanathan style Greenhouse Effect G = LW up surface / 3
G = Surface LW up – OLR – Transmitted Flux = LW down surface – Upward Emission from Atmosphere
g = G/LW up surface =1/3 = greenhouse factor.
Surface LW up = 3 OLR / 2
From a radiation perspective it cannot be refuted that these relations appear to be fixed. They are fixed scalars of net solar.
This is an excellent comment with easy to read charts
Thank you Willie “Einstein” Eschenbach. I’m “stealing” your charts for my climate science blog — the ultimate complement. Blog editor motto: “If it’s good, I’ll steal it”.
Honest Climate Science and Energy
I did not say otherwise. That is what I think. The question is if all recent warming and more has been caused by anthropogenic GHG emissions and compensated in part by aerosol emissions, as shown by IPCC in its figures.
OLR emissions say no. There must be another cause playing an important part.
Exactly! If OLR is going up, it isn’t all CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Something else is at work as well, which blows up the AR6 hypothesis. Too bad we can’t be quantitative and know how much each contributes.
“There must be another cause playing an important part”.
Exactly and that is why I keep going back to the fact that the open season at the coalport in Spitsbergen went from 3 months of the year before 1920 to over 7 months of the year in the late 1930s showing considerable warming in the Arctic. Hubert Lamb reckoned the average total area of sea ice in the Arctic declined by between 10 and 20% over the period.
This was well before CO2 really began to take off after 1950. What caused it ? We don’t know but it does show that there are other causes of warming
For the gaseous component of atmosphere surface net radiation = OLR / 2.
i.e. clear sky surface net radiation = net SW + net LW = flux of sensible heat + latent heat = OLR / 2
The only variable of interest for global climate change from a radiative perspective is the condensate, or more specifically atmospheric liquid and solid.
The gaseous component has fixed relations.
LW surface Up – Transmitted Flux = 1.5 Net Solar.
Willis, How do you explain the increased surface absorption of solar energy when there is a decline in solar irradiance for the past 2 decades?
Jim, always good to hear from you.
The trend in TSI since 1972 has been – 0.077 W/m2 per decade, for a total of -0.3 W/m2.
Surface SW absorption is the net of downwelling SW minus reflected SW at the surface. Here’s downwelling SW:
And here’s reflected SW:
So the answer to your question is twofold – clouds, and snow/ice reflections. Less clouds and less snow/ice lead to a 0.8 W/m2 decadal increase in surface absorption. This is on the order of ten times the decrease in TSI.
w.
Thanks. I agree. Do you have a breakdown between cloud vs snow reflections
I’d have to dig for that one. Clouds are easy, the CERES data has shortwave CRE.
But on the surface, one big problem is that in the polar regions, the angle of incidence is so low that it’s hard to tell water, snow, ice, and bare tundra apart.
A second major problem is the ephemeral nature of snow. It can snow, albedo goes way up for 2 days, then the snow melts … but the CERES and most other datasets are monthly.
Average TOA SW reflections are ~ 100 W/m2, and surface reflections are ~23 W/m2.
Here are the surface albedo values for February. I’m sure you can see the problem.
One possibility would be to do a gridcell by gridcell analysis, and look for jumps. But I suspect that would run into the same problem, low sun angle = many reflections = high albedo. Hang on … OK, here’s one gridcell.
Yeah, as I thought. No clear demarcation between tundra and snow.
w.
Thanks. I agree it is difficult. I was just hoping that you might have some insight that could help resolve the problem.
Do you have data that shows just changes in cloud albedo driven by La Nina-like conditions?
I assume that a cooler eastern Pacific driven by upwelling of cool water reduces cloud cover in the eastern Pacific and thus enables greater solar heating of waters that get transported to increase the western Indo Pacific Warm Pool
One thing about having written ~ 1,000 posts for WUWT is that I often can find something from the past … here’s something, not exact, but near to what you want.
w.
Radiative equilibrium dominates the lower atmosphere under the cloud base, or in the turbulent mixing layer, and prevents heat transfer other than by convection.
The surface of interest for radiation enthusiasts is the dynamical top of mixing layer.
The atmosphere below 5 km is opaque to IR radiation. Not translucent. Opaque. Again. Opaque. Not translucent.
Thus IR radiation has no role in surface temps below 5 km. You cannot have radiation latey wise through an opaque item. Thus, It is convection, advection and conduction that do the heavy lifting to cool the surface back radiation is physically impossible in an opaque atmosphere.
And just 1kg/m^2 of ice above any level is essentially opaque to OLR. Ice controls the thermal balance whether it is in the atmosphere, on land or on water. Its triple point at 273K is the reason Earth has such a stable climate despite all the disturbances it gets exposed to over days. months, years, decades centuries, millennia and throughout the 4bn or so years of its evolution.
I have a feeling you are referring to observable physics rather than climate phiisics. Anything is possible when you rewrite the laws of physics as the climate community have done and embody that phiisics in their models.
Ferd, a couple of points of clarification.
First, in the “atmospheric window,” something on the order of 40 W/m2 goes straight from the surface to space. So your claim that the atmosphere is “opaque” is simply not true, no matter how many times you repeat it.
Second, upwelling IR is absorbed by greenhouse gases and clouds. However, that’s not the end of the story. It’s not like light being absorbed by paint, which is never re-radiated as light.
To the contrary, once IR is absorbed, it becomes part of the energy in the atmosphere, which is constantly radiating IR both upwards and downwards.
Thus, something on the order of half of the absorbed radiation is returned to the surface, and thus it has a huge role in the surface temps.
Finally, the idea that back radiation is “physically impossible” flies in the face of repeated measurements of downwelling IR “back radiation” made for years and years by scientists and automated instruments all around the planet, 24/7/365. You are free to claim that such measurements are imaginary or incorrect or the result of scientists not understanding what the instruments do, or because the manufacturers of the instruments have no clue what they are building.
It also flies in the face of the fact that you can purchase a standoff IR thermometer and see the difference between clear-sky and cloudy downwelling IR for yourself. You can claim that that’s “physically impossible” as well.
And we are free to point and laugh at such incredible claims.
I discuss these questions in detail in my post “The Radiation Fight“.
Best regards,
w.
Willis,
Can the spectrum of the 40 W/m^2 radiated from the surface directly to space be used to infer an average surface temperature? Something I’ve wondered about…
Good question. Certainly seems possible, but I have no idea if it has been done.
w.
Frank yes, it can be done and has, see here: The Greenhouse Effect, A Summary of Wijngaarden and Happer – Andy May Petrophysicist
Especially figure 1, which is also attached. Notice the temperature labeled “0 km.” Figure 3 shows surface temperatures from the spectra in Sahara, Mediterranean, and Antarctica.
OLR spectra includes surface transmitted flux (~288K) and that emitted from atmosphere.
To understand the OLR spectra one must superimpose the bulk atmospheric emission curve which can be approximated by a 273K blackbody function. The dynamic liquid and solid condensed matter emit full spectrum IR.
Thanks, Andy! Fyi, I’ve recently had some back and forth with several folks who defend NASA’s data ‘adjustments’ as a necessary step in calculating the Earth’s GAST in order to then determine the impact of our emissions. It seems to me that if we have records of OLR in the so-called ‘atmospheric window’, changes in GAST could also be observed independently of the surface temperature record. Perhaps a good research project.
I am certain my house is painted white. At least that it what I observe as my eyes interact with the same EMR field that white paint is altering.
The word “radiation” is short hand for ELECTRO-magnetic radiation. It is the transport of energy in the electric field coupled with the magnetic field. Electric field is a vector quantity and energy always flows from high potential to low potential. Energy can never be transferred against the potential. Temperature is just another way of measuring electric potential. The energy of an electron is often given in electron volts (eV) and that is relatable to temperature and wavelength. Energy cannot travel against the potential. Energy quanta emitted from an excited molecule will always move down potential – from hot to cold. NEVER the reverse.
The electric field in a vacuum equilibrates at the speed of light. Exactly the same speed that mass equilibrates in a gravity field. Instantly remove Earth from existence and the sun will see changes in the gravity and electric fields in 8 minutes. For example, the sun “senses” the existence of Earth through both the gravity field and electric field that we all exist in.
Whatever is being measured as back-radiation, it is not energy. It is simply using the S-B approximation for radiative transfer to infer an energy transfer. It is unphysical nonsense. It only exists in climate phiisics.
I know you will not understand this but Michael Mischenko provides the proof here:
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/mmishchenko/publications/2010_OE_18_19770.pdf
If you go to the conclusions you can read:
That makes it quite clear. Michael is no longer with us but his contribution to the physics of radiative energy transfer in the atmosphere is formidable.
That was tough reading. I hate matrix math so that made it worse.
Willis has no idea what the difference between “energy” and “power” is. He also has no idea what “radiation” is. Trying to explain these concepts to him is about as effective as trying to explain them to a brick wall. He is a fisherman, remember, not a physicist. All he can do is say “but the climate scientists say so! It must be true! They wouldn’t all be lying, would they? No of course not, that’s just common sense! Bovine excrement! Pass! Pass! Pass!”
stevekj March 2, 2023 4:52 pm
This is why I ask people to quote the exact words that they are discussing … and even when I ask, some jerkwagon like stevekj will still come along, make up some nonsense, and claim I said it.
Here’s my Google scholar record for those interested:
199 citations to my work, a peer-reviewed “Brief Communications Arising” in Nature magazine, a short piece in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences … not bad for a “fisherman”. Nature’s peer reviewers sure didn’t whine about my history like you are … because as scientists, the peer reviewers were judging my ideas, not my persona.
And you? Oh, wait, you don’t even have the stones to sign your own name, so we can’t tell what you’ve published.
Finally, yes, I’m totally self-educated. However, my education and lack of credentials (I have none) are meaningless.
Here’s why …
w.
I would sign my correct name if I could, but WordPress seems to ignore my attempts to do so since the change to registered-users-only. It’s “Steve Keppel-Jones”.
Anyway it’s fascinating that you have so many published articles and still have no idea how physics works. That’s not a compliment to you, it’s a condemnation of the lack of rigorous review of published articles. But we knew that already…
I have no problem with self-educated people, of course, more power to them. But your self-education has missed the fundamentals of theoretical physics. ALL of them. Whenever anyone (such as me) asks you to defend anything related to physics, your only retort is “but the experts said so”, followed by a lot of name-calling, like “pond scum” and “bovine excrement”, and then, when pressed further, “Pass!” “Pass!” “Pass!”. That’s not “self-education”, that’s “a fisherman pretending to be a scientist, and doing a terrible job of it”.
Not only do you not know the physics, you don’t know that you don’t know. You pretend to know, like you’re some sort of expert. Real scientists are humble in their ignorance. You are arrogant and obstinate in yours.
You have also, in your so-called self-education, missed everything related to logic and philosophy. So you cannot recognize a logical fallacy when you see one, and you insist on repeating the same ones over and over. Your favourite one is the Argument from Authority, but you use lots of others regularly too, such as Argument from Incredulity and Ad Hominem Fallacy. And of course the brand-new fallacy that I had to invent and name after you, the “Willis Eschenbach Fallacy”, or the Argument from Common Sense.
In your favour, I haven’t seen anything wrong with your self-educated use of statistics. Yet. But you have no idea what the concepts behind the statistics mean, so they aren’t really helping anyone. Props for your astounding volume of ignorant output, though…
Steve, thanks for identifying yourself. However, I note that once again you’ve provided paragraph after paragraph of name-calling and ad-hominem personal attacks against me … but you haven’t had the balls or perhaps the scientific knowledge to quote the exact words of one scientific claim that I’ve made and show us, not claim but demonstrate to us, that it is wrong.
I also can’t find a single peer-reviewed article about climate or any other subject under your name in Google scholar … but you’re more than willing to accuse me and every scientist who peer-reviewed my articles of not doing proper scientific work. Cute.
Here’s a post on how to conduct a scientific debate. And here’s the graphic from that post.
Protip—you’re at the bottom of the pyramid, the one titled “Name-Calling”, with occasional forays up one step to “Ad Hominem”.
You desperately need to move way, way up the pyramid to be of interest to readers. Until you do so, you’re just bitching, whining, calling me ugly names, and standing on tiptoes in a failed attempt to bite my ankles … and more than anything, it’s boooring …
w.
No, Willis, I am not just calling you names. I have pointed out every time you have made a false physics statement that I’ve seen, and so have a lot of other people. Your response to every one of these rebuttals is “but the government scientists said so”, and when we point out that the government scientists are wrong, your second line of defense is invariably “Pass”. Is that what you call “thinking”, or “defending the words you wrote”? Because the rest of us call that “one logical fallacy after another”. No, you are not at the top of the pyramid, despite your delusion to the contrary.
You have no idea what any of the following physics words means: “power”, “work”, “energy”, “radiation”, “temperature”, “heat”, or “entropy”. Go ahead and prove me wrong: just provide a one-sentence definition of each, in your own words, without looking anything up on Wikipedia. I’ll wait.
Once again, as if to truly hammer home my point, all you’ve done is call me names without quoting one scientific claim I’ve made and refuting it. Just as I said in my previous posts, that’s your métier. Booooring.
Regarding proving myself to you, I have no need to do any such thing. That’s your fantasy. I have my life. I have my journal publications and my online publications. The peer reviewers didn’t have your strange ideas and demands. No surprise, they’re scientists. And unlike you, I guess, most of the folks who read what I write here on WUWT have no problem understanding exactly what I’m saying, and they are willing to both discuss my ideas rationally and quote and point out any errors they think I’m making.
If you’re going to “wait” as you claim for me to accede to your bizarre demands, I hope you’ve got lots of survival food and a bottle to piss in—it’s gonna be a very long and unproductive stakeout.
w.
No, Willis, I am not going to trawl through your myriad of publications to find even more of the same physics nonsense you post here. I assume it’s the same nonsense, but tell me if I’m wrong.
And no, publishing papers does not make you smart, wise, or correct. Those two phenomena may be correlated, mostly by accident as far as I can tell; but it is equally likely that you are just a widely published ignoramus, like Michael Mann, or David Viner.
In case you have forgotten, the Central Point of the argument at hand is as follows:
“There are no positive downwelling longwave infrared power measurements, at ambient temperature, at the surface of the Earth, at night.”
I (and quite a few others) tell you this every time you state the (false) opposite. Both statements are on Level 1 of your pyramid, and my rebuttal is an objectively verifiable fact. It does not depend on my opinion, or yours – just the first principles of physics.
Your responses so far have consisted of the following extremely lame attempts to duck the issue, since you can’t argue the physics directly, because you obviously don’t understand any of it in the slightest, and (the unforgivable sin for a wannabe-scientist) you have no interest in learning (“Booooooring!” “Pig wrestling!” “Pass! Pass! Pass!”):
1) “Government scientists told me so.” (Argument from Authority, i.e. a Logical Fallacy, a form of debate so weak that it didn’t even make it onto your pyramid, so let’s add that level and call it Level 8)
2) “I can’t believe all those scientists would lie to me, that’s just common sense.” (Argument from Incredulity, also Level 8)
3) “I have published a lot of papers, so I must be right.” (Argument from Authority again, and this time the authority is yourself – still on Level 8, but an even weaker fallacy than before, if that were possible)
4) “You have published no papers, so you must be wrong.” (Reverse Argument from Authority, still a Logical Fallacy, Level 8, or possibly, more charitably, simply an Ad Hominem, level 6)
5) “You are pond scum.” (Name Calling, pyramid level 7)
6) “I refuse to engage in pig wrestling.” (Implying that your opponent is a pig, i.e. Ad Hominem, level 6 again)
7) “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think.” (Once again implying that your opponent is an animal, in this case a horse, i.e. another Ad Hominem, level 6 again)
8) “Pass.” (You don’t have a level in the pyramid for this one either, so we’ll have to add Level 9, or the “Willis Eschenbach” level, also known as “Refusal to engage brain on the subject at all“. I’m tempted to call this the Curley Howard level – “I’m tryin’ ta think, but nuthin’ happens!”)
I suppose we could be generous and consider all those logical fallacies to be simple Contradiction, i.e. Level 4, but that may be giving them more credit than they are due. We should probably distinguish between regular Contradiction (simply disagreeing, with no substantive backing evidence) and Logical Fallacies, which are a more egregious case of a failure to think properly, despite giving the appearance of trying.
Is it any wonder that the rest of your interlocutors who know more about physics than you do, faced with this level of absurdly arrogant ignorance and hypocrisy, simply give up and call you an idiot? I won’t stoop to that level; it is beneath me. I’ll stick with “Fisherman pretending to be a climate scientist” instead.
stevekj March 5, 2023 12:45 pm
Of course not. That would require that you actually do some work.
I cannot find that quotation anywhere in this thread, so I must assume that you just made it up.
No, you don’t. If you did, I’d find it as a quotation somewhere in this thread. But you just made it up.
Re-read the description of the pyramid. To be at Level 1, you need to actually quote my scientific claim, and then provide the scientific evidence that it’s false.
You’ve done neither. Instead, you just invented a quote.
On the other hand, I’ve provided links to places where they routinely measure “positive downwelling longwave infrared power measurements, at ambient temperature, at the surface of the Earth, at night.”
These include the TAO buoys, the SURFRAD station network, and the ARM network.
And I’m sorry, but claiming that all of the measurements that those large groups of scientists are constantly taking are incorrect because of “the first principles of physics” is a sick joke.
w.
“you just invented a quote”
Sure, Willis, you go with that, if it makes you feel better.
To placate you, here is an actual quote of the statement you followed up with, that I apparently “invented”, and which I have tirelessly been refuting (with direct quotes) about once a month, every time you make it here on WUWT:
“places where they routinely measure “positive downwelling longwave infrared power measurements, at ambient temperature, at the surface of the Earth, at night.””
I also rebutted the same statement downthread, when you said, quoting another poster’s comment:
“‘But longwave radiation warms the surface as well’. That’s correct, it does, at a rate of about 320 W/m2”. And I said “no it doesn’t”.
(If it’s too complicated for you to follow all these interwoven threads, I apologize – there sure are a lot of comments here.)
Anyway, let’s work with the quote you helpfully repeated above, so that you can’t claim I “invented” it this time (anything to avoid discussing the actual physics, right?) Here is my rebuttal:
No, they did not measure positive DWLWIR at the surface at ambient temperature at night. They measured negative DWLWIR, in the range of 0 to -100 W/m^2 depending on humidity. This corresponds to the CERES average value for “net power” of -53 W/m^2 (they made up the “net” part, because there is no such thing as “net power”, there is only “actual physics power” and then “fake climate science power, which disappears when you look at it closely”), so those all hang together and make sense. These measurements also respect the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is a good clue that they’re correct, or at least in the right ballpark.
So the direct measurement is negative, and then they adjust the measurement (by a lot) to produce an adjusted positive reported value. That’s not the same thing as a measurement!
This claim is Level 1 on the debate pyramid. A statement of fact, verifiable by reference to first principles, or direct experiment. You know, science.
I predict that your response to this, as always, will not be to look up the way they make adjustments and try to defend them on the facts, because that would involve actual work, not to mention learning physics. Nor will you perform the experiment yourself, also too much work. Instead, as before, you will rely on an Argument from Authority logical fallacy. That is level 8 in my amended version of your debate pyramid, in case you forgot. You may, equally likely, also choose to “Pass” (Level 9), because it’s easier than thinking. But I could be wrong in my prediction. Surprise me…
The Radiation Fight was a great article, worth re-reading. It set off the First World War of Climate Science at this website, with over 839 comments.
“And we are free to point and laugh at such incredible claims.”
That point and laugh behavior is outlawed by Al Gore’s Internet Rule 1b, which warns of the potential dangers of pointing and laughing. Al recommends merely refuting the comment … and I suggest adding a character attack on the commenter’s ancestors, comparing them to farm animals, as the finishing touch.
This comment is serious, not satire.
What needs to be quantified is the time lag between LW emitted from the surface then absorbed in the atmosphere and then radiated back to the surface?
The loss of LW through the transparent atmospheric window is not a static phenomenon.
For example, the surface absorbs 160 W/m2 and let’s assume it then immediately radiates it all back towards space. 40 W/m2 (25%) escapes thru the window, while GHGs absorb specific wavelengths and re-emit half back to the surface. Thus those wavelengths of LW adds 60 W/m2 (half of the remaining 120 W/m2) back to the surface, which acts like a black body. But now the surface radiates the entire spectrum back towards space and again another 25% escapes undeterred through the window. If this happens at the speed of light it wouldn’t take long to cool the surface and minimize any GHE.
Camping in Death Valley I went from getting badly sunburned to having my water bottle freeze in less that 12 hours.
And yet all sorts of things, just about absolutely everything, can be seen in IR on and above the surface.
Andy, the spectral response of IR thermometers is carefully chosen to avoid absorption by the atmosphere or other intervening things. See here for a good discussion. From the article:
My best to you,
w.
The surface cools primarily by evaporation. This is a water planet.
Javier, the main control on evaporation is wind speed, so convection modulates evaporation.
Javier Vinós February 25, 2023 2:18 am
Not true. The surface cools primarily by radiation, with a radiative loss of ~390 W/m2. Evaporation is on the order of 75 W/m2, and sensible heat loss is about 20 W/m2. See below.
Please don’t say “But longwave radiation warms the surface as well”. That’s correct, it does, at a rate of about 320 W/m2 … but we’re not talking about what warms the planet.
w.
To change the temperature what matters is the net flux. This was cleverly disguised in that figure to make all others appear irrelevant.
The truth is this:
Latent heat loss is about double the net thermal flux loss for the ocean surface. If you calculate the net flux for the entire surface the image is similar.
from:
Schmitt, R.W., 2018. The ocean’s role in climate. Oceanography, 31(2), pp.32-40.
You are changing the goalposts. You said “The surface cools primarily by evaporation.” You said nothing, zero, about how it warms.
But now, you want to include how the surface WARMS. If that was what you meant, then you need to include that in your statement.
w.
I didn’t change anything. The graphic I posted shows very clearly that the surface cools primarily by evaporation, as I said. The biggest arrow going up is labeled latent heat loss, not longwave loss. It does not cool primarily by radiation. 100 Wm-2 by latent heat, 53 Wm-2 by longwave loss, in case you missed it.
The only thing that warms the surface is the Sun, the rest is exchanged with a net negative result.
In the diagram we see once again the imagined discontinuity in LW flux.
339 Absorbed – 321 LW down = 18 W m-2 discontinuity.
Correcting such diagrams:
The total column transmittance can be derived from absorptivity.
Atmospheric absorbance = LW down surface / LW up surface
Absorbance here = 321 / 392
Absorbance = 0.82
By fixed relation, transmittance = 0.15
https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/CA/en/support/calculators-and-apps/absorbance-transmittance-conversion
Transmitted flux (total column window) = 0.15 * 392
Transmitted flux = 59
The diagram illustrates the imagined 40 W m-2 total column window.
Here the discontinuity is accounted for by 59 – 40 = (19)
OLR = Transmitted Flux + Atmospheric Emission
Corrected atmospheric emission = 237 – 59 = 178.
The discontinuity of atmospheric emission reflects the discontinuity of surface flux.
178 = 147 + 50 – (19)
There can be no discontinuity of atmospheric absorbed radiation and back radiation.
The boundary layer is constrained by radiative exchange equilibrium due to turbulent mixing. No LW discontinuity.
The error stems from double accounting of about 20 W m-2 in such budgets. This represents a double accounting of sensible heat and radiation.
The imaginary discontinuity is illustrated in the zone indicated with red arrow below.
The convective adjustment is equivalent to Net Solar (F) / 2 = OLR / 2 = Surface Net Flux = LH + SH
Sensible heat is retained in the turbulent mixing layer, while latent flux represents net flux aloft.
Net cooling of the surface is by LW transmittance + Latent Flux.
“Surface Net Flux = LH + SH” should read Surface Net Radiation equivalent = LH + SH.
A lazy mistake by me!!
“‘But longwave radiation warms the surface as well’. That’s correct, it does, at a rate of about 320 W/m2”
No it doesn’t.
“If at any time we detect more OLR that would indicate another cause for the warming.”
At least a dozen studies have documented a reduction in clouds during the modern warm period. The average increase in solar radiation reaching the surface found from these is about 5W/m-2.
CO2 has been exonerated from being the dominant forcing by these measurements.
Clouds are complicated so we don’t really know how they have changed. What we do know is that albedo has changed very little.
“Clouds are complicated so we don’t really know how they have changed.”
We do know how they have changed during the satellite era from measurements.
https://file.scirp.org/Html/22-4700327_50837.htm
https://journals.eco-vector.com/0205-9614/article/view/11444
http://www.bbso.njit.edu/~pgoode/txt/txt/Goode_Palle_2007_JASTP.pdf
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/13/8505/2013/
Javier, it’s not clear what you are calling “very little”.
Per CERES, in the 22 years since March 2000, the amount of solar radiation reflected by the earth has dropped by -1.6 W/m2.
During the same period, theoretical CO2 forcing has increased by 0.7 W/m2, less than half the change in albedo.
Best regards,
w.
I call very little what Stephens et al. 2015 call very little:
Stephens, G.L., O’Brien, D., Webster, P.J., Pilewski, P., Kato, S. and Li, J.L., 2015. The albedo of Earth. Reviews of geophysics, 53(1), pp.141-163.
Dewitte et al. say:
Dewitte, S., Clerbaux, N. and Cornelis, J., 2019. Decadal changes of the reflected solar radiation and the earth energy imbalance. Remote Sensing, 11(6), p.663.
I wouldn’t put much faith in the evidence that the albedo is decreasing significantly.
Thanks, Javier, interesting.
w.
Willis,
Albedo is decreasing, but not as fast as the CERES data suggests. In the attached plot blue is the CERES Albedo and black is the Earthshine albedo. I think the CERES data has some problems.
What caused the reduction in clouds?
“What caused the reduction in clouds?”
Nobody knows with certainty.
Then how can you eliminate CO2?
CO2 is supposed to increase water vapor which would increase clouds.
How do you know it isn’t CO2 that catalyzed changes in water and clouds?
Physicists who have done the line by line calculations of CO2’s radiative flux show that it doesn’t have a strong enough forcing to produce the effects you are suggesting.
I think you have me confused with someone else. I’ve not discussed CO2 effects in this subthread. I’m just asking how you know CO2 cannot cause a reduction in clouds if you don’t know what the cause is.
The theory
The theory is that CO2 will put a positive radiative force on the planet, warming the planet, reducing albedo, and increasing OLR. That’s what is being observed so…
Anything that warms the planet should increase OLR and affect albedo.
What distinguishes the no-feedbacks GHE is that the warming comes from a reduction in OLR. A reduction in OLR has never been observed.
The increase in OLR should come from H2O effects, not from CO2 effects.
We missed our opportunity to observe the no-feedback OLR reduction. It would have need to have been at least prior to 1900 and probably well before that even.
Interesting.
Now try to convince the businessman making billions from worthless carbon credits, the politicians that he has bought, and the mass of scientists who depend on this money for grants and income.
That is where the problem is. Not in the technical understanding of radiative energy interchange….
Shoot. I did a lot more calculations. But came to the same conclusion. You forgot to dwell on the incoming SW which is also affected by the CO2.
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2022/12/15/an-evaluation-of-the-greenhouse-effect-by-carbon-dioxide/
Thanks for the link Henry. Good post. The link in your post to the spreadsheet is busted though.
Thanks Andy. let me check on that.
The link works, but for some reason you end up in the middle of the Xcel document which has many entries. To see the end result of all my calculations you have to scroll up to the first three rows, tune to columns K,L and M. It shows that the cooling effect by the CO2 due to the sun (by deflecting SW) is just as big as warming effect by the CO2 due to earth (by deflecting LW)
FYI (all), I just watched the first presentation at the Heartland Institute
Patrick Moore, mede-oprichter van Greenpeace, over het klimaatnarratief versus feiten – Climategate Klimaat
Amazing. Amazing. This story is so simple to understand. Too bad so many people can’t understand it. That the lie has become so enormous that it has led all of humanity – or at least a very large part of it – astray. We have to consider that this idea of gas purity is probably just as diabolical as the idea of racial purity back in the late thirties. (of the previous century)
You wonder who is behind it, and who wants the confusion to continue. You wonder if people like SM and FE perhaps get paid by someone to try and suppress the truth.
I wonder.
Still doesn’t work for me, must be a permissions problem. Don’t worry about it, have a good time at the conference.
Thanks. Let me work on that.
wrong wrong wrong
you cant critique the AGW argument until you demonstrate that you understand it
Funny! I have never been convinced that Mosher ever understood natural climate change never mind AGW. Instead of demonstrating his implied superior “understanding” he just engages in juvenile personal attacks such as his simple minded “wrong, wrong wrong” to deflect science he disagrees with.
energy balance is why it warms
https://youtu.be/slPMD5i5Phg
I perfectly understand what Pierre & Humbert say in that short video and I agree with it. Do I need to get some sort of certification to demonstrate I understand AGW? Is it required to agree with the conclusions of AGW, which are not based on how the GHE works, to be able to speak?
I know Earth’s energy imbalance is why it warms, what I don’t know is if you read my article before posting such “profound” arguments.
Steven,
Pierrehumbert’s video is quite good. I agree with all of it, and it is perfectly consistent with Javier’s post as far as I can tell. I suspect that Pierrehumbert and I might disagree on the magnitude of the greenhouse gas effect on climate, but on basic principles, we agree.
Of course Mosher, as all skeptics understand, and Humbert states, the only way the earth can lose the radiative heat energy it absorbed and prevent runaway heat accumulation is by radiating that heat back to space. Duh!
But you and Humbert somehow ignore how oceans accumulate heat so that it cannot be radiated back to space unless it migrates to the Cool Skin Surface Layer. Instead of discussing ocean dynamics that store heat, you insist on a narrative that only CO2 can slow the release of heat back to space. How stooopid.
‘energy balance is why it warms’
Not necessarily. The Global Mean Temperature doesn’t just depend on the amount of heat-energy in the system; it also depends on the way in which that heat is distributed in the system – i.e. the system’s entropy, in other words.
The more evenly the system’s heat is distributed, the higher is its entropy and the higher is its overall mean temperature for a given amount of heat-energy. And conversely, the more unevenly the system’s heat-energy is distributed, the lower is its entropy and the lower is its overall mean temperature for the same amount of heat-energy. So, if the total entropy of the Earth’s heat-energy system increases but its total heat-energy remains the same (perhaps because the TOA energy-balance remains the same), that must automatically raise the Global Mean Temperature.
In plainer language, the planet doesn’t necessarily need to absorb more energy in order to undergo global warming. It will also undergo global warming if the existing total heat-energy content is redistributed more evenly over the globe.
Perhaps I should add that this is not ‘new science’ which I’ve just invented. It’s standard thermodynamics applied to the global climate system.
Two fundamental errors in this story:
While the timing of collisions of an excited CO2 molecule is smaller than the time needed to emit the IR radiation, that effect is bidirectional: high energy N2 and O2 molecules can excite a CO2 molecule and that may emit its energy as a photon before the next collision…
Second problem: the temperature of the CO2 molecule when emitting its IR photon is of not the slightest influence on the wavelength or energy content of that photon, thus:
“the planet should emit less OLR as the new altitude is colder and a reduced OLR is the warming mechanism.” is completely wrong for the effect of any GHG.
There are no ‘high energy’ N2 or O2 molecules, as they are permeable to all radiation.
As far as your second point is concerned, I addressed this in a reaction earlier, which has not come up yet.
Henry, in a mix of gases, there are always individual molecules with higher and lower vibration energy, “temperature” is only showing the average energy of all molecules…
In the case of collisions: an excited CO2 molecule can give its extra energy to a N2 or O2 molecule and further collisions can distribute that to the whole mass, but the opposite is also possible for collisions of “hot” N2 and O2 molecules with CO2 or water molecules…
FE,
In my post (see comments earlier up this thread) I make the case that together, we (by burning fossil fuels) and nature (warmer oceans due to more heat from sun/earth), have added only 0.01% extra CO2 to the atmosphere since 50 years ago. That works out to 1 extra CO2 molecule which is surrounded by 10000 other molecules, on average. Now you may argue that there are a billion or so collisions between molecules, but that is not the issue with the GHE. You have to have mass (density) as well to catch the heat from the effect. In the case of water, usually the molecules stick together and there is always some mass. The CO2 however divides itself by diffusion and the molecules do not stick together. So the moment the CO2 molecule receives light of the absorbing wavelength, it will start re-emitting it, IMHO 62,5% in the direction of the source, the rest goes around. The O2 and N2 has no absorptions, so it lets all emitted radiation from the CO2 through.
On a previous thread on sunspots in the atmosphere I shared an important fact about the absorption of water (the cause of sunburn, the cause of CO2 in the air and cause of clouds) in my discussion with Bob Weber.
PS
the 62.5% comes from the assumption that the molecule is a perfect sphere.
“There are no ‘high energy’ N2 or O2 molecules, as they are permeable to all radiation.”
if this were true then the attached from a thermodynamics book is wrong.
Eishh. A book is what you got going. Have you measured, anywhere, anything?
Read my post quoted earlier and leave a comment to tell me where I am wrong
For N2 and O2 molecules to excite a CO2 molecule they have to have higher energy. Due to energy sharing through collision, all neighboring molecules in the atmosphere have the same temperature. The energy within the lower troposphere is constantly being exchanged through collisions and IR exchange, but due to IR opacity, most heat has to rise before it can be emitted to space.
The temperature of the molecule affects the chances of emission. That’s why warmer bodies emit more radiation than colder ones. Emitting from a colder layer reduces emissions.
Javier,
I do disagree:
Measured temperature is only the result of the average vibration energy of all molecules at a certain point in the atmosphere. Individual N2 and O2 molecules can have (much) higher and (much) lower vibration levels (individual “temperature”)…
That warmer bodies emit more radiation than colder bodies is the case for solid and liquid materials. where adjacent molecules can form dipoles and therefore can radiate in many wavelengths according to the Planck curve.
That is not the case for gases, where molecules most of the time are apart of each other and only GHGs can receive and emit IR waves in very specific wavelengths.
It is possible that the temperature vibration of an individual CO2 molecule affects its relaxation period (but have not seen anything in that direction), but the emitted photon does have exactly the same energy at the same wavelength, no matter if that CO2 molecule is at ground level at 293 K or high in the stratosphere at 233 K…
Ferdinand,
Wijngaarden and Happer disagree with you.
[2103.16465] Relative Potency of Greenhouse Molecules (arxiv.org)
Thanks Andy, I think that has to do with saturation of the main emission/absorption bands, while the emissions/absorptions still increase at the side bands (thus at a slightly different wavelength). I will check it with William Happer what that really means when the pressure / temperature of the atmosphere decreases with height…
According to this graph of CO2 emissivity at low pressure and low temperature CO2 has zero emissions.
I agree with the point being made by Ferdinand that energy transfer between CO2, N2 and O2 is a two way street.
Temperature is a measure of kinetic energy. When the sun heats the earth’s surface, N2 and O2 absorb that heat via collisions with the surface and increase their kinetic energy. That causes air volume and thus buoyancy to increase, causing observed convection. If N2 and O2 do not pass their acquired energy to a GHG with less kinetic energy, then they can never lose that energy. They can cool adiabatically, but if those molecules start to sink they warm adiabatically and rise. Thats why air parcels are observed to “bob” up in down in the atmosphere. If N2 and O2 do not pass their kinetic energy to a GHG that can then radiate that heat away there would like be runaway heating
They only bob up and down locally.
The overall pattern is within the Polar, Ferrel and Hadley cells in the Troposphere and the Brewer Dobson circulation in the Stratosphere.
There is a constant well defined convective overturning circulation that adjusts as necessary to neutralise all imbalances so as to keep the upward prssure gradient force balanced with the downward force of gravity.
I think you missed my point that energy transfer between CO2, N2 and O2 is a two way street.
But predominantly in one direction, CO2 to N2 and O2. An IR excited CO2 molecule will collide over a million times with surrounding molecules during the average emission lifetime. A small fraction of N2/O2 molecules have sufficient energy to excite the CO2 energy level (Maxwell Boltzmann), however to excite that particular vibration they’d have to strike the CO2 molecule from a particular direction (very rare event).
One of the best simplest explanations yet. Conduction finally gets mentioned.
I believe that is not correct. Everything is capable of emitting IR radiation and everything does. A sphere of pure nitrogen at 300 K in space would emit IR and cool down. It would not keep its temperature forever. GHGs are just good absorbers and emitters of IR radiation. Apparently, N2 and O2 could have a bigger GHG effect than methane because they are so abundant.
Höpfner, M., Milz, M., Buehler, S., Orphal, J. and Stiller, G., 2012. The natural greenhouse effect of atmospheric oxygen (O2) and nitrogen (N2). Geophysical research letters, 39(10).
Javier Vinós February 25, 2023 5:05 pm
While this is widely believed, it is not true of the monatomic gases (helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon).
In addition, most diatomic gases are generally non-emitting, although under some conditions (collision-induced absorption) they can do so. From your link:
GHGs absorb ~ 160 W/m2 of the upwelling surface radiation. Of that, the total effect of O2 + N2 is under 1/3 of a W/m2, about 0.2% of the total. In other words, pretty much lost in the noise.
Regards,
w.
A co2 molecule emitting a photon “cools”, another more exited molecule hitting it would “warm” it. Doesn’t seem complicated.
But the colliding molecule would have to hit it with exactly the right energy from exactly the right direction to make the CO2 bonds vibrate in exactly the right frequency, not that easy.
Sure but given the amazingly short time between collisions in the lower troposphere and the amazingly high number of collisions, the temperature is a good statistic estimation, and much higher or much lower vibration molecules are very rare.
We know that is true because as a parcel of air moves in the atmosphere its potential temperature is a conserved physical characteristic. So yes, I think I can say “all neighboring molecules in the atmosphere have the same temperature” and there is only a small error in what I say which does not affect the conclusion.
Pierrehumbert explains the same as I say in the short video (6 min) Steven Mosher shared above. A lower temperature means less emission.
https://youtu.be/slPMD5i5Phg
Javier Vinós February 25, 2023 10:47 am
Not really. At say 300K the average velocity is ~400 m/sec. But velocities of half (200 m/sec) and twice (800 m/sec) the average are about half as likely as 400 m/sec … see the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.
My best to you,
w.
Here’s a plot of the M-B distribution Willis is referring to.
maxwelldistr1.gif
If the height of emission Ze rises from let’s say 10.000 km to 10.150 Km, then the surface of the sphere emitting (proportional to r^3) increases by (10.15/10.00)^3 = (1.015)^3 = 1.0456, an almost 5 percent increase in emission surface. Was this taken into account in the calculations? The absorption increase by doubling of CO2 from 400 to 800 ppm would only be maybe ca. 2%, so that could compensate it.
Eric, I fear your math is wrong because you’ve left out the radius of the earth, which is ~ 6,400 km.
So your two spheres are actually 6,410 km and 6410.15 km in diameter. As you correctly point out, surface area goes up by the cube of the radius.
This gives (6410.15/6410)^3 = 1.00007, a 0.007% increase in area.
As a result, that’s generally ignored in calculations because it’s well down in the noise.
Best regards, and don’t worry, I’ve made many math mistakes worse than that one …
w.