Kevin Kilty
In a recent guest blogger essay a side debate broke out between Nick Stokes and I over whether or not it is possible for thermal convection from a surface, such as Albuquerque on August 3, 1993, which was my boundary layer example, to reach high above, and produce substantive cooling of the surface.
The debate started thusly from Nick:
“The atmosphere is a heat engine/refrigerator, and it works like this. When the lapse rate is less than the DALR (about 9.8 K/km), when air is forced to rise by turbulence, it expands and cools adiabatically as pressure reduces. The cooling rate is basically the DALR. With this greater than the lapse rate, the air becomes cooler and denser than the neighboring air, and so work is done pushing it higher. That comes from the KE of the wind. Work is done to transfer “cold” upwards – ie heat downwards, against the temperature gradient. It is a heat pump….”
Continued thusly:
“If the lapse rate is 7 K/km, and DALR is 10 K/km, then air that leaves the surface 3K warmer than surrounds [sic] will lose that excess at height 1000m. Then it works against gravity to go higher, so slows down.
If the lapse rate is 9 K/km, it can rise to 3 km. It can happen, but such thermals are not easy to find.”
And ended here with my final reply:
“ I would agree with you if all there was was a parcel with a tiny bit of K.E. in an environment lapse rate of 7-10 C/km; but that’s not all there is, and I am sayin’ no more until I have thought it all out…”
Last night I went looking for data that I hoped to find which would make my point. I found it in several forms in several different places.
First, rather than reiterate all the examples I gave in the original essay, I will reference the paper by Renno and Williams from which the RPV data came, and point specifically to Section 6, the discussion, which is jam-packed with such, and which ends with this…[1]
“The observation that the air participating in natural moist convection originates in the surface layer is not surprising. More than half of the solar radiation energy absorbed at the surface is transferred to the atmosphere as both sensible and latent. This energy is vertically transported by the convective motions, and then radiated to space.”
I would only add that the same is true for dry convection as well.
In addition, a typical spring/summer fair weather day here as one that begins largely clear, by 10 am or so fair weather cumuli appear, these may grow to a steady state density covering a great deal of the sky by 4 pm some days. After midday the cumulus may attain vertical development but by 8 pm the cumuli become pancake shaped and may vanish completely.
I would also ask readers to examine the video in a comment by David Dibbell found here. What this fascinating Band 16 timelapse of the western hemisphere shows is, repeatedly one day after another is this. The hottest portion of the day (brightest yellow) begins in the east and propagates across Argentina/Chile, then Mexico and finally across the U.S. Southwest. In between, in what is the Amazon basin, and in time order with all the other activity in the video, is the flaring up of thunderstorms with tops near the tropopause. Action follows the Sun. Surface heating organizes it all.
Now, regarding the RPV gathered data at Albuquerque on August 3, 1993, the story is told in a couple of atmospheric soundings, which I fetched from the archive at University of Wyoming. A sounding made at 6am local time and a second one made at 6 pm local time are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Soundings at 6 am and 6 pm. Albuquerque. August 3, 1993
Overnight, the ground surface and air with a kilometer of the surface cooled, became mechanically stable. At 6 am (Figure 2A) the potential temperature (theta) is lowest near the ground surface, but the Sun begins heating the surface to a superadiabatic layer. This is soon unstable and begins to convect – at first in a shallow layer near the surface then step by step to increasingly higher levels. Radiation from the warming surface also contributes heat to this layer.
The atmosphere is not static. It is dynamic and it is bootstrapping its way into a deeper and deeper layer of instability. By 6 pm (Figure 2B) the entire atmosphere from ground to 4,200m (2,600 above surface) has uniform potential temperature and any parcel heated to as little as 1K higher theta will always be adequately buoyant to reach a high elevation. Recall that surface measurements at 1:00 pm showed a pool of superadiabatic air at the surface 6K or more warmer than rising parcels. Overnight something like Figure 2A re-establishes itself through radiation cooling, perhaps some subsidence and adiabatic warming, and contact with the ground surface.
MONEX
In the summer of 1979 a field experiment (MONEX) designed to study the South Asian monsoon had discovered this same scenario taking place in the atmosphere above the Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula.[2] Peter Webster devotes Chapter 12 in his textbook to desert climates and makes use of the MONEX results.[3]
Conclusion
Just to head-off one objection early, I admit that mesoscale conditions may contribute to lesser or more development of this boundary layer convection. I have, in fact, observed surface turbulence and even a hydraulic jump in the atmosphere downstream from wave clouds over the Front Range. But not in the warm season. Perhaps boundary layer convection draws occasionally on some pre-existing potential or kinetic energy. Yet, where did this potential energy or kinetic energy come from? My view is it is a fraction of remaining available work from heat transfer by many other, earlier regional weather events, some of which makes its way into the general circulation.
References:
1-Renno and Williams, Quasi-lagrangian measurements in convective boundary layer plumes and their implications for the calculation of CAPE, 1995, Mon. Weather Rev., September, 2733.
2-Eric A. Smith, 1986, The Structure of the Arabian Heat Low. Part II: Bulk Tropospheric Heat Budget and Implications, Mon. Weather Rev., v.114, p. 1084. Note: I can’t seem to find Part I of this publication, but Part II contains more than adequate data and commentary.
3-Peter Webster, Dynamics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Oceans, Wiley Blackwell, 2020.
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I’m a retired Navy pilot. I flew recips and turbo-props. My jet pilot friends say the same about jet engines. When the atmosphere is cold, the engines produce max power. When the atmosphere is warm, the engines don’t produce max power. Since this is true of all heat engines, then this is true of atmospheric heat engines. In a warming world, thunderstorms and hurricanes should have less power.
When air is cold it is somewhat more dense which allows slightly more air and fuel into the combustion chamber. In thermal power plants maximum power is attained at lowest temperature of condenser which occurs in the winter. Summer capacity factors are lower.
The weather? Well, that is the debate, isn’t it?
What debate? Heat engines do the thermodynamic thing–don’t they?
The reason for this is that cold air contains more oxygen than the same volume of hot air. This is why engines using forced air induction (compressors, turbos etc) have charge coolers! The slightly strange part is that jet engines should have these too to generate maximum efficiency, but perhaps the military don’t care about optimum fuel usage too much! Planes which operate at height don’t need it because the air is already very cold, and the power needed is quite small.
Actually jet engines have other concerns, and solving those concerns does indeed provide some cooling to inlet air. The problem is the ram air velocity when a jet is flying at say mach 0.82. This air can become supersonic when encountering the fan blades, causing the blades to aerodynamically stall, which reduces their ability to compress the air. The solution to this is to shape the inlet cowling such that the inlet air expands and thus slows down, which has the effect of further cooling it down.
But turbines are a different animal than recip engines. Coolers on turbocharged and supercharged piston engines are more to keep the intake manifold and cylinder temperatures from exceeding melt points of the metal. Not to increase O2 levels, that is governed by the boost pressure. Turbines have exotic materials in the “hot section” which can withstand considerably higher temperatures, so no intake air cooling per se is required in a turbine.
And as you noted, flying at cruising altitudes the air is considerably less dense, so the power generated is a fraction of that at sea level due to lower oxygen content. For example, a CFM56 turbofan used on both Boeing 737 and Airbus 320 families, produces 22-24,000 lbs of thrust at sea level, but at 40,000 feet it only produces about 5,200 lbs of thrust. Fortunately the air resistance [drag] at the lower density is also drastically reduced so you need less power to maintain 460 knots of airspeed.
Too bad the incredibly brilliant and practical engineering and physics of modern jet and piston engines isn’t applied to the whole climate scam… Oh wait, didn’t we have a bunch of rocket scientists, technicians and astronauts who took us to the moon, come out and say this climate scare is nonsense some years back?
“Not to increase O2 levels, that is governed by the boost pressure. “
A long time ago when I was working on repairing farm tractors, some farmers were putting inner-coolers on their diesel engines just to cool the incoming air. Efficiency is related to input and output temperatures. Lower the input temps and you get better efficiency. No boost (i.e. turbo or super charging) involved.
The debate, Jim, is whether a slightly warmer Earth will enhance the atmospheric heat engine/cooling to avoid “catastrophic” warming, or whether the engine won’t be able to keep up.
The warmists, who would like us to return to a stone age just to be safe, have the water vapor feedback to claim that radiative transfer will be hindered and the “liquid in the vapor” problem to hinder transport by convection. It’s a complicated issue, and not likely to be settled because it is solidly infused with politics, ideology, greed and half-a-dozen other motivations.
Au contraire. The phenomena are well understood. IR radiated from the surface of the earth and from the warm air adjacent to the surface, is restricted from leaving earth’s system by the increasing presence of CO2 and other GHGs in the atmosphere.
While we agree mostly on the fundamentals, the problem is much more complex than that. The big question is, “How much?”. The GCMs fail to tell us this with any reliability, especially if we have to spend the world’s GDP to fix the problem.
Of course there are many complexities in the details. But the long term temperature trend of earths avg temperature is well modeled because it depends entirely on the earths heat balance; internal variability of the climate system washes out of a 30 year trend.
The models are worthless! They are basically linear projections. They don’t even follow CO2 projections.
Look at these model projections! They turn into linear trends.
http://www.climate.gov/media/14532
It appears that The model projections fall inside their respective error bands. So what’s wrong?
What’s wrong is who needs a model if a simple linear equation will suffice to make predictions. Pick a curve, even you can develop a line of “y = mx + b” from any of these. Your prediction will be as good as high paid programmers using super computers.
Look closely at these and tell us when CO2 will become saturated or even begin to approach a logarithmic curve
But the models are not linear. They are far more complex
The outputs of the models *are* linear projections after just a few years. They just all have different slopes. Complexity is not the determining factor for what the output is.
“It appears that The model projections fall inside their respective error bands. So what’s wrong?”
What’s wrong is if they are inside the error bands then the actual value is part of the GREAT UNKNOWN. That’s the entire purpose of measurement uncertainty – to put boundaries on that which is part of the Great Unknown. If you look at the actual measurement uncertainty of the model outputs you really don’t know if the trend is up, down, or sideways. What it actually is belongs to the Great Unknown.
“Complexity is not the determining factor for what the output is”.
i don’t understand this point. You originally said the models were simple linear equations. But they are not. They are very complex, because the climate system is complex.
and I really don’t understand your point about a “Great Unknown”. The criterion for useful models is that the actual measurement (solid line) should fall within the error bands of the models (colored areas). And They do.
An infinitely complex model can still generate a linear output!
Complexity of the model doesn’t exclude a linear output.
Think about what a linear output means. No more glacial periods. An earth that eventually turns into a Venus. Exactly what in that model will cause a linear projection for a period of 100 years to eventually turn over and go down?
“I really don’t understand your point about a “Great Unknown”.”
If I tell you that data-point-1 is 5 +/- 1 and data-point-2 is 6 +/- 1 then what is the slope of the line between the two points?
It could be 6 to 5 for a negative slope
It could be 6 to 6 for a sideways slope
It could be 5 to 5 for a sideways slope
It could be 5 to 6 for a positive slope
It could be anywhere in between!
Which one is it? Answer? YOU DON’T KNOW. It’s part of the Great Unknown.
The truly sad thing is that the error bars that are typically given are nothing more than the standard deviation of the sample means. The standard deviation of the sample means tells you NOTHING about the accuracy (i.e. the measurement uncertainty) of the mean – unless you are in climate science where you operate under the meme that all measurement uncertainty is random, Gaussian, and cancels.
“An infinitely complex model can still generate a linear output”. Of course, I agree with that.
re: your concern about a linear output. First, the model can certainly ‘bend over’ in the future years, but it doesn’t have to. In fact that is the concern about climate change. As long as man continues to burn fossil fuels, the line won’t bend down, and the earth would ultimately become unlivable.
second, I don’t know how you came to the conclusion that the error bars are not estimated properly. Wouldn’t you have to examine the scientific papers that explain how the models were designed and the error bars created?
Man, you have absorbed the cult belief of CAGW haven’t you?
That ignores the fact that there is only so much LWIR being radiated by the surface. At some point, all that radiation will be absorbed by existing H2O and CO2. That point is called saturation. When that is reached, additional CO2 will have little to no effect on warming.
I have researched this extensively. Here is part of the problem. NIST has published a document TN 1900 providing an example of determining the uncertainty in a random variable of monthly average of Tmax. They arrived at a value of ±1.8°C. Calculating an uncertainty in a monthly baseline random variable provides a value fairly large also.
Calculating a monthly anomaly consists of subtracting the means of two random variables. When this is done, the variances add, which increases the uncertainty. Using the variance from TN 1900 and a ±0°C for the monthly baseline, you still have ±1.8°C for the anomaly.
Do you see error bars that look anything like that?
Climate science simply throws away the actual uncertainty and calculates a new variance using the much smaller anomaly value! What do you think the variance of much smaller numbers is going to be?
This entire process also ignores significant figures. Having a Masters in Engineering you must be familiar with significant digit rules.
Why don’t you explain how you can measure and record values as integers, average them, subtract them and end up with numbers that are two (and sometimes three) orders of magnitude smaller than what was measured?
Heck, that means I could measure two things in volts, average readings, do some subtraction, and end up knowing what the difference is down to the millivolt level. Then I could find the variance of those millivolt values and claim I also know the measurement uncertainty to the ±microvolt level. All calculated from integer voltage readings. Does that sound like normal engineering mathematics to you?
I am not an expert in statistics, so I would want to discuss your concerns with the scientists that established the error bars before concluding that their analysis was faulty. For now, I am inclined to say that I trust the work of the scientists whose work was reviewed by other experts in peer review, until I see another paper that finds errors in their work.
Finally, for the earth becoming unlivable, you say that the linear projection that implies this consequence is a mistake. But you don’t say WHY a linear projection is incorrect. So please explain your reasoning
Freeman Dyson’s main criticism of the climate models was that they are not holistic. They assume a few variables are the thermostat of the Earth. They ignore every thing else. Do the models predict the greening of the earth over the past 40 years? What impact does the greening have? Things like evapotranspiration, CO2 sink values, and albedo change affect the biosphere also, not just GHG’s.
The climate models are tuned to “average” temperature data (which isn’t actually an average but a mid-range value). The averages can’t even tell you what is driving the average higher. Are min temps going up driving the averages up? Are max temps going up driving the averages up? Is it a combination of both? Would higher minimums be beneficial? Would higher maximums actually be dangerous (think continual record grain harvests over the past 20 years)?
Again, the models are not holistic. They can’t actually tell you what the impact on the biosphere will be. The CAGW advocates just assume that any change is bad. It’s called “adjustment disorder”, an inability to cope with change, typically triggered by fear of the future.
So you can’t do your own research concerning measurement uncertainty, which you should already be familiar with according to your degree. You aren’t the least bit sceptical, just a believer. Good for you.
The least you could do is show your references that you believe in, so one can be sure you have done some research. Otherwise you are simply arguing with the fallacy of Argument by Authority. More specifically, from; https://www.scribbr.co.uk/fallacy/the-appeal-to-authority-fallacy/
Your argument simply falls flat.
Regarding the measurement uncertainty, I’m not citing ‘anonymous experts’ — in fact I’m not citing any experts. I’m saying I trust peer reviewed sources more than non peer reviewed sources– an entirely different matter.
Regarding the saturation fallacy, I’m not ‘appealing to an anonymous authority” . I’m citing a named expert: Professor Pierrehumbert of the University of Oxford’s Physics Department.
Peer reviewed sources in climate science DO NOT USE MEASURMENT UNCERTAINTY. There is nothing there. They use the standard deviation of the sample means instead – which is *NOT* measurement uncertainty.
And you’ve been given an expert, William Happer, who disagrees. So who is right?
Then you are committing the argumentative fallacy of ipse dixit – a dogmatic and unproven statement, Oxford Languages. In other words, “You are wrong because I said so!”. ROTFLMAO
And, I have cited Drs. Happer and Van Wijngaarden as experts per their paper at; https://co2coalition.org/publications/van-wijngaarden-and-happer-radiative-transfer-paper-for-five-greenhouse-gases-explained/
“Observed climate change is already affecting food security through increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and greater frequency of some extreme events (high confidence).” (bolding mine, tpg)
Are you going to say that the IPCC reports are not published science?
Good grief dude, you don’t need to be a statistics expert! You must have had training in measurement uncertainty to achieve a Masters degree. Take Tmax values from any month you wish and put them into any web based statistical calculator.
Here is one. It even gives you the expanded intervals.
https://www.calculator.net/standard-deviation-calculator.html
The response to increasing CO2 is logarithmic. If you don’t believe me, do your own research. Which I should point illustrates your lack of knowledge about the subject. Yet here you are spouting off your belief in what others have told you.
“First, the model can certainly ‘bend over’”
The operative word here is “can”. The problem is that it doesn’t.
“As long as man continues to burn fossil fuels, the line won’t bend down”
Says who? William Happer doesn’t believe that. Such an assumption requires believing that CO2 will never saturate and that there will never again be a glacial period. But that is belied by history where CO2 has been higher and glacial periods still happened.
“second, I don’t know how you came to the conclusion that the error bars are not estimated properly. Wouldn’t you have to examine the scientific papers that explain how the models were designed and the error bars created?”
I’ve been down this road before. The very term “error bars” is very misleading. It implies that you have a “true value +/- error” situation. So who knows what the true value is? It’s why the international community left the use of “true value +/- error” behind 50 years ago for the concept of “stated value +/- uncertainty”. Error is not uncertainty and uncertainty is not error. Uncertainty is a recognition that the “Great Unknown” actually exists and should be quantified. It is impossible to actually determine the “true value”.
The error bars may very well be estimated properly. But they are meaningless when it comes to uncertainty and accuracy.
The error bars only tell you about the sampling error associated with trying to find the population average using samples. The data in the population may be as inaccurate as all git out but the error bars can be very small. The sampling error is basically the population standard deviation divided by the size of the sample. One big problem is that you don’t actually know the population standard deviation so you assume the standard deviation of the sample is the same as the population sample and divide it by the size of the sample. Who says the SD of the sample is equal to the SD of the population? If the population is skewed or multi-modal (think combining southern hemisphere temps with northern hemisphere temps – a bi-modal distribution by definition) there is no guarantee that the SD of the sample will be the same as the SD of population.
The temperature measurements in every single data set should be given as “stated value +/- measurement uncertainty”. Each individual measurement uncertainty in the data set *adds*. Climate science avoids that by assuming that all the measurement uncertainty is random, Gaussian, and cancels, in essence assuming that all stated values are 100% accurate, that they are “true values”. Climate science then compounds the problem by using temperatures whose resolution is in the units digit to try and calculate averages in the hundredths digit violating all physical science rules on significant digits and resolution.
If the models are tuned to reproduce such historical “true values” then they are no more accurate than the data being used for the tuning.
“Such an assumption requires believing that CO2 will never saturate and that there will never again be a glacial period.”
The notion that CO2 will saturate is a fallacy, as explained here: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
I would further add that the atmosphere of Venus, which is 95% CO2, disproves the notion of ‘saturation’.
With respect to the error bar, I cannot follow your reasoning. For now, i will trust the work of the scientists and experts who evaluated their work in peer review. I’d suggest that if you have the courage of your conviction that they are wrong, you should publish your critique in a scientific journal for all to read.
“By contrast, CO2 is well mixed all through the atmosphere, so as you look higher it becomes relatively more significant.”
This is just one of the problems with your reference. If this were true then global warming *would* be global rather than regional. The truth is that it is *not* well mixed.
Nor does the reference make any attempt at a holistic analysis.
from the reference: “As we have seen, in the higher layers where radiation starts to slip through easily, adding some greenhouse gas must warm the Earth regardless of how the absorption works.”
What warms? Minimum temps? Is that bad? Observations show that minimum temps are more affected than maximum temps. The old predictions of higher average temps being caused by higher maximums (thus turning the earth into a cinder) has been pretty much disproved.
Your reference is just one more “any change is bad” brick in the CAGW meme.
“If this were true then global warming *would* be global rather than regional. The truth is that it is *not* well mixed.”
That’s a superficial argument, easily countered: Regional climatic warming differences are readily explained by the same variety of factors that create regional climate differences today — eg, topography, coriolis forces, inclination of the earth to the sun and regular orbital changes, etc.
The bottomline is that his analysis is far more comprehensive, and reasonable, than anything i have seen from you. But that’s not surprising- -he’s a well educated climate scientist. Whereas you are an engineer, like me.
If you believe in the radiation budget method of determining climate warming then topography, coriois force, etc makes no difference. It is water vapor and the GHG’s which determine the warming. If those are well-mixed globally then there should be no regional differences.
You still haven’t refuted a single thing I’ve posted and neither has Nick. His education doesn’t matter and neither does mine. What matters is the treatment of the data. And assuming that all measurement uncertainty is random, Gaussian, and cancels so you can differentiate temperature differences in the hundredths digit is as unscientific as it gets.
lol! Absurd. You get it wrong most of the time, in spite of what you say. That’s why we rely on real scientists, not a random guy who thinks he’s Galileo, but can’t do science.
So now you’ve been reduced to ad hominem attacks because you actually have nothing of import to offer other than argumentative fallacies.
Keep on digging your hole deeper.
How about Mars whose atmosphere is primarily CO2 also?
Beware of quoting a site whose main author has a giant reason to pursue alarmism – grant money.
As to your article, I see no actual science using math or observations. I will refer to Dr. Harper and Dr. Van Wijngaarden research as summarized by Andy May in;
https://clintel.org/the-greenhouse-effect-summary-of-the-happer-and-van-wijngaarden-paper/
Mars atmosphere has a high % of CO2, but is very thin, so the quantity of CO2 is quite small also. But you knew that. Why did you make such a flimsy argument?
I cited a world renowned expert. Vs you. That’s no contest.
Happers material is junk science, and not peer reviewed because he wouldn’t want to hear the laughter.
Because I’ve been thru this before. Your conclusion is that CO2 raises surface temperature. How much does Mars concentration raise its temperature. Does the radiation from Mars show a dip at CO2’s frequency? If it does, then there must be warming. How much? Does it match earth?
How many French do I have to tell you that because mats atmosphere is so thin, the total amount of CO2 is diminimis so the amount of warming is also.
I asked you:
If you don’t know how to calculate that, how do you calculate it on Venus or Earth?
We see ΔT’s here on Earth calculated to milli-kelvin values. Surely you can find a peer reviewed paper that has done it for Mars.
Funny you are the judge of an award winning physicist when you have already admitted to accepting what experts say. In order to judge, you must also have the knowledge to judge.
From Wikipedia.
Dr. William Happer
Dr. William Van Wijngaarden
Let’s see about Dr. Gavin Schmidt.
So Dr. Schmidt is “a world renowned expert”, while Dr. Happer and Dr Van Wijngaarden are schmucks, right?
Tell us which one is more experienced in physics and atomic interactions. Look down, your bias is showing!
Happers work on Climate Change is not peer reviewed, and his saturation argument is contradicted by all scientific research since 1896. No scientists that I know believe his cr**p. Even I can tell when I’m being gaslit by a fraud.
The site you gave me doesn’t publish peer reviewed papers either.
And, there we go…
The atmosphere at the surface of Venus is NINETY-THREE TIMES DENSER THAN AT THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH.
At the ONE BAR level, the temperature is ~73C (163F). The majority of the difference is because Venus receives ~TWICE the solar irradiance that Earth does (2600W/square meter). (Somewhere between 2C and 3C is not accounted for – but the atmosphere is a quite different composition, which makes it impossible to say this is due to CO2 – which is far less concentrated at that level.)
Summary – ignorant troll alert!
-Writing Observer-
Great response! Facts are hard to refute. Don’t expect a response.
Yours is the stupidest post on WUWT I’ve ever seen. Do you spend your entire life reading junk science blogs?
here, from NASA ( or you can check any other scientific source). “A runaway greenhouse effect turned all surface water into vapor, which then leaked slowly into space. “
https://science.nasa.gov/venus/
Where is your peer reviewed paper that has the science that confirms this. Two can play this game. You want peer reviewed from me, then you should respond likewise. Don’t be a HYPOCRITE!
If you read anything more advanced than 6th grade science, you’d know that this is the conclusion of peer reviewed science! But of course YOU don’t. .
Warren Beeton -> 🤡 Troll.
A two-fer! Appeal to authority AND cherry picking that SAME authority!
Number for surface atmospheric density – from NASA. Number for temperature at ONE bar pressure – from NASA. Atmospheric composition at ONE bar pressure – from NASA. Numbers for solar irradiance – from NASA.
Now, NASA doesn’t provide an elementary physics book – but I think those are reasonably available elsewhere, for those who can actually THINK.
So you are now appealing to authority! And misinterpreting the data!
Venus atmospheric temperature has nothing to do with CO2 GHE.
It is hot because
Venus is closer to the Sun getting ~ 2x the irradiance of EarthAtmosphere density is 93x higher than that of Earth
Venus is farther from the Sun than the planet Mercury, yet it’s hotter. The link I posted explains why. As does any other scientific source — Venus’s atmosphere is 95% CO2 and has had a runaway greenhouse effect as a result.
Since we are into planets now, another question.
Our moon is at the same distance from the sun as Earth.
Its albedo is lower ( ~.11) so the calculated no atmosphere temperature is ~270K, vs the 255K for Earth.
Actual avg. temp. on the moon is ~197K, as measured by the Diviner project. Increasing the rotation rate to that of the Earth would increase that to ~210 – 215K, but no where near the ~270K mentioned above.
What are the implications for Earth, and especially for the greenhouse effect that is supposed to increase the surface temp. with ~33K?
The atmospheric greenhouse effect does indeed account for the 33K difference in calculated avg vs measured avg temperature of the earth, according to NASA and all other relevant scientific sources. Rotational speed of the planet has no bearing on this.
So a rock planet at our distance from the sun and no atmosphere has a avg. surface temp. of ~200K. Adding an atmosphere would increase this to ~233K. Earth is at ~288K.
How do we account for the difference?
Rotational speed has an enormous influence, even on the moon.
It depends on the heat storage capacity of the surface how high that influence is. For a theoretical ideal BB you would be correct.
But in that case the avg. surface temp. would be around 150K.
Earth’s temperature without an atmosphere -18C. (Calculated as if Earth had no atmosphere)
Earth’s measured temperature ~15C
Difference = 33C
All due to Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse effect. Rotational speed is irrelevant.
Yep, the science is settled.
Only GHG’s matter.
Well Mr Gorman, you’ve kept your record intact — ie, consistently wrong:
. Clouds do matter. High altitude clouds provide negative feedback to the climate system by reflecting sunlight to space; low altitude clouds provide positive feedback by absorbing IR before it leaves earth’s system
. Oceans matter as they transfer heat energy from one part of the world to another (But do not affect Earth’s long term avg temperature trend)
. Orbital changes affect the climate
. Changes in the sun’s irradiance affects the climate
. Plate tectonics matter to earths climate over millions of years.
We can always be assured of getting the science right if we just go with the opposite of whatever Gorman says.
I would remind you that you posted the following about the Earth’s temperature.
That leaves little room for all the things I listed to result in natural changes of temperature. Funny thing, blogs always remember what you post.
Would you like to rephrase your assertion about GHG’s being the only thing changing temperature?
You have trouble piecing this together, I see.
Today, the affect of increasing GHGs caused by the 40 tonnes of annual CO2 emissions by man’s burning of fossil fuels, overwhelms the relatively weak affect of earth’s orbital changes, and which causes climatic change over 10s of thousands of years.
Changes in the sun’s irradiance are relatively small compared to GHGs.
Ditto for Plate tectonics which act over millions of years, and
Clouds are a feedback, not a driver, of current global warming
Read slowly and carefully, Mr Gorman, so you can understand.
Yes, and for the moon the same formula results in ~270K (-3C).
Actual, measured avg. surface temperature is 197K (-76C)
Obviously the formula/calculation is wrong.
So instead of the 33K (33C) the GHE adds, we need to explain why Earth is ~90K (90C) warmer than our moon.
The atmosphere is only a tiny part of the answer.
Yet, 60% of heat transfered from the surface involves means other than radiation…
What is your point?
That you didn’t have one.
The maximum power is also a function of the Carnot efficiency. For a typical coal-fired steam plant, the steam temperature coming from the boiler may be 540°C and the steam going to the condenser may cool to 60°C. If the day is cold and the cooling tower is operating at 50°C, the thermodynamic efficiency of the process is improved about 1%. A very cold day would give an improvement of 2-3%. Nuclear power plants using the cold water off of California to condense the steam operate at better efficiency than nuclear plants using cooling towers. The liquid thorium salt reactor could have higher efficiency since it can operate at a higher temperature.
I should clarify what a potential temperature means. It is derived from temperature (T) itself and corresponding pressure (P) through this formula.
The constant 0.286 is the ratio of dry air ideal gas constant (R=0.287) to specific heat of dry air at constant pressure (Cp=1.005); pressure in millibars. It converts air temperature to what it would be at 1000mb. In other words it makes vertical lines adiabats in the plot. For dry air, potential temperature is the equivalent of entropy. Lines on a rising slope to the right in such a plot are stable against convection, those rising to the left are unstable, and a vertical line represents neutral stability.
Good followup article. Thank you for this clarification about what “potential temperature” is.
And thanks also for the honorable mention of that Band 16 video. 🙂
That video says a lot, I think. What surprises me most is that people simply ignore the radiosonde data.
Very superb post.
Hi Kevin,
That’s all fine, but misses the heat pump aspect. I agree that the lapse rate may vary during the day, approaching DALR (dry adiabatic lapse rate ≅10 K/km) late in the day, when thermals become very active. That is expected, because the lapse rate is the temperature gradient, getting colder going up, and if the bottom gets warmer the lapse rate will increase and approach DALR and warm air will travel a long way.
But coming back to the heat pump. Normally heat flows down a T gradient (here upward), by conduction, convection and radiation, and this acts to diminish the gradient. But the lapse rate is always there. How can that be?
The answer is that turbulence in the air (on all scales) acts as a pump to pump it back down again, from cold to warm, by the mechanism I described. The lapse rate is usually less than the DALR, so rising air cools by expansion at the DALR rate and so becomes denser than ambient. In rising, it takes KE from the turbulence which in turn is driven by the wind. And it transfers cooler air up, ie heat down. Descending air acts in the same way to pump heat down. The effectiveness is proportional to the difference between lapse rate and DALR.
The key thing is that the lapse rate needs work to maintain it, and this comes from turbulence, and hence from the wind (and wherever the energy of the wind came from).
If the lapse rate exceeded DALR, then the pump would be negative, ie an engine. Heat would flow from warm to cold, creating KE. This would effectively cool, bringing the lapse rate back to DALR.
The extent to which the lapse rate is normally less than DALR reflects the amount of pumping needed to counter the natural flow down the T gradient (ie upwards).
I originally set this out here and with more maths and an entropy discussion here.
Nick, you are making an assumption which is at best very dubious. Where does the wind (your energy source) come from? It is large scale, very small temperature differences, so your argument is essentially circular. It may be possible that heat appears to move downwards at a point, but overall the entropy must increase, so on a larger scale the heat all moves upwards. Nice try though! I was looking at a weather map yesterday, and had a thought. Why did the air pressure at the surface change all the time, giving weather? Obviously these changes must be driven by temperature, but due to chaotic effects (probably caused by different effects at different scales) no kind of stability can be achieved. The driver must be the rotation of the Earth, and the different energy source levels between day and night. I am amused that all the climate discussion on mechanisms concentrate on full daylight, but of course in reality this only occurs for a fraction of each day.
The wind energy comes from large scale temperature differencess, but they are not small. The main one is the Hadley cell, between tropics and mid latitude. I’m describing a classic heat pump which moves heat from cold to warm, and so reduces entropy. That takes work, and the entropy created in generating that driving energy must exceed the reduction in energy from the pump.
I wrote about an entropy budget for Earth here. An interesting constraint is that it all has to be exported. But the big creation point is where sunlight is thermalised. There is plenty of room for thatcreation tom be delayed while some kinetic energy is created.
There are bigger heat engines. But the one I describe is important because it maintains the lapse rate.
“There are bigger heat engines.”
Confused para there. The maintenance of the lapse rate is generally by a heat pump (though if the lapse rate >DALR, turbulence becomes a heat engine which will bring it back down).
I don’t doubt that turbulence from wind can maintain a lapse rate, but work comes from thermals as well, and here at Albuquerque on this particular August day, thermals build a dry adiabatic lapse rate from the ground up. The radiosonde shows it, and Renno and Williams data from the RPV showed it. There is no turbulence at all on days like this.
Is there wind above? Perhaps, but the air column is so stable that you can have a low-level jet at night, a couple of hundred meters above the ground, and dead calm at the surface.
“but work comes from thermals as well,”
Thermals, like other modes of heat transfer, run counter to the lapse rate. They convey heat from warm to cold, until they run out of puff.
All sorts of heat transfer takes heat down a temperature gradient, and tend to flatten it, including natural convection. That is why work is needed to run a counter pump.
In entropy terms, a T gradient generates entropy, at a per volume rate of k((∂ T/dx)/T)², where k is conductivity. For steady state, something has to remove that entropy (to somewhere else). That requires a heat pump.
This is a bizarre statement. Are you telling me that heat conduction down a copper rod, for which k would be well specified, and T(x) could be calculated from simple boundary conditions like constant T, would require a heat pump to operate?
Events that generate entropy run spontaneously.
Work ultimately comes from the small difference between heat in and heat out.
As long as there is input/output heat nothing will run out of puff.
“ would require a heat pump to operate?”
The rod will certainly conduct without a heat pump, at a prescribed rate. But you need a prescribed flux to maintain it. If the source can’t provide that, the gradient can’t be sustained. Unless you have a heat pump.
That is the situation here. There is some natural upward heat flux, but not nearly enough to sustain the lapse rate gradient. So the heat pump makes up the difference.
How do we know? As I said to Frank, the observed lapse rate is almost always just a bit below DALR (more if there is condensation). That is despite wide range of upward fluxes, from pole to equator, plus seasonal, diurnal variation etc. That is a result of the control mechanism. If the lapse rate gets to close to DALR (as in the situations you have been talking about), then the heat pump weakens. Down goes the lapse rate again.
The upward heat flux that is source driven (insolation, mainly) takes some of the pressure off the heat pump, but doesn’t chanage the result much, which is a rate stably in the convective stability range (mostly).
“The rod will certainly conduct without a heat pump, at a prescribed rate. But you need a prescribed flux to maintain it. If the source can’t provide that, the gradient can’t be sustained. Unless you have a heat pump.”
If you don’t have a source then a heat pump won’t help. What you seem to be describing is a perpetual motion machine where once the heat has been input from a source then a frictionless, 100% efficient heat pump can maintain the gradient between the input location and the location farthest away from the input source.
Such a heat pump doesn’t exist. And the source, i.e. the sun, isn’t expected to disappear any time soon.
“How do we know? As I said to Frank, the observed lapse rate is almost always just a bit below DALR (more if there is condensation). “
So, in other words, the DALR is a blackboard assumption that doesn’t really exist in the real world.
“That is despite wide range of upward fluxes, from pole to equator, plus seasonal, diurnal variation etc.”
So what? The fluxes and variations are results, not causes. You seem to have a problem with causal relationships.
Insolation is, let me emphasize that, IS, this so-called heat pump when paired with radiation. The changing temperature vs height relationship through the daylight hours and its reversal at night shows that. This has become a very unproductive argument.
Say it again!
Kevin
“IS”
No, tis comes back to the “you need a compressor”
Insolation provides the ultimate energy, but a heat pump converts mechanical work into heat movement from cold to hot. You need mechanical energy, which here comes from the KE of the wind.
Insolation drives large scale circulation (eg Hadley cell) – a heat engine converting heat movement from hot to cold into KE of wind. That KE then drives a heat pump which maintains the lapse rate.
Without insolation there would be no heat pump. The world would be a frozen ball, an extended glacial period lasting forever, a world-wide Anarctica There would be no KE from the wind because there would be no wind.
Why you insist on digging yourself deeper and deeper into the hole you have dug is beyond me.
Comment says:”The key thing is that the lapse rate needs work to maintain it,…”
I think this is a red card. The DALR is a natural consequence of gravity and the specific heat of dry air.
“I think this is a red card. The DALR is a natural consequence of gravity and the specific heat of dry air.”
BRAVO!
I made my reply post before I read this. You nailed it. Lapse rate is a result of causative factors, it is not causal factor on its own. The buoyant force on a parcel of air, which determines how fast and how high it rises, is a result of the down and up forces on the parcel of air. THAT is what determines the lapse rate, the lapse rate doesn’t determine the down and up forces. Small differences in local pressures, both horizontally and vertically, can cause turbulence in the atmosphere through different up/down forces. Think tornadoes, lots of examples of this over the past two weeks!
Yes, I recall from my undergrad days that is was g/Cp. How does that require work to maintain?
Cp is the heat capacity at constant pressure. Does the pressure in the atmosphere change as you move vertically and horizontally? What causes the pressure to change as you travel vertically and horizontally?
“The DALR is a natural consequence of gravity and the specific heat of dry air.”
That just says what its value is. It is indeed the rate at which rising air will cool. But why does the atmosphere have a temperature gradient that nearly conforms to DALR? And why only nearly? What makes it do that? That is what I am explaining. It is a neat control mechanism.
Comment says:” But why does the atmosphere have a temperature gradient that nearly conforms to DALR?”
PV =nRT.
PV = nRT is the *ideal* gas law. “Ideal* is the operative word. At low temps and with multi-atom molecules you get a deviation from the “ideal” gas law. As you go up in altitude the deviation gets larger because of colder temps along with the multi-atom molecules. Is it significant? I’ve never investigated that.
Our atmosphere follows the ideal gas law very closely over a wide range of temperature. Chemical engineers use Z = Pv/RT to show how far a real gas deviates from an ideal gas. A value close to 1 indicates that the real gas acts like an ideal gas. Z for nitrogen (80% of the atmosphere) at 300 K and 1 bar is 1.0000, at 270 K and .5 bar is 0.9998, and at 240 K and 0.1 bar is 0.9999. In other words, the atmosphere is very much an ideal gas.
When you are talking about the masses the size of the atmosphere it doesn’t need to be a big difference to have a significant impact. The anthropogenic increase in total CO2 is very small also – yet it supposedly has a significant impact on the global average temperature if the CAGW advocates are to be belived.
You seem to be assuming the DALR is a constant. That’s only true for dry air in an atmosphere in equilibrium – which simply doesn’t describe the real world. It might be a good assumption for the stratosphere where there is little water vapor (if any at all) but it isn’t a good assumption for all the atmosphere below the stratosphere because you seldom have “dry” air.
Nick, this whole post is a mess of smoke. Lapse rate isn’t a “causal” factor, it is an output from a whole host of causal other factors. First off, the operative word in ALR is “adiabatic”, be if for dry air or saturated air. Adiabatic assumes no energy exchange with the surroundings. That is an approximation to begin with and whether it is truly applicable to the atmosphere or not is a big question. The volume of a parcel of air changes as it rises because of pressure differences, which has gravity and distance as the determinative factors. As that parcel of air changes volume it exchanges heat with its surroundings and cools, just like it happens at the expansion valve in an air conditioning system. That is hardly an “adiabatic” process.
Air, be it dry or saturated, rises because of the buoyancy of the parcel of air. The force pushing down is less than the force pushing up because of lower pressure on top than on bottom. That air stops rising when the force down equals the force up. The temperature at which that happens is what defines the lapse rate, the lapse rate doesn’t determine the height. The lapse rate is an output of the process not an input.
Temperatures and temperature gradients can truly only tell you about the efficiency of a process, it can’t tell you what is actually happening. You can increase the compressor output pressure and temperature in a refrigerator and make the expansion valve smaller so as to lower the temperature of the air at the output of the expansion valve in order to increase the efficiency but what impact does that have on how well the system cools the surroundings?
So the question remains: what determines the height a parcel of air reaches in the atmosphere? And don’t say the lapse rate, the lapse rate is a “result” and not a cause.
“So the question remains: what determines the height a parcel of air reaches in the atmosphere?”
It is the lapse rate, absent driving mechanical energy. The rising air cools at DALR. The ambient air cools as it goes up at lapse rate, which is usually less. So eventually it loses its excess warmth.
I gave the example in the earlier thread. If surface air is 3°C warmer than ambient, and the lapse rate is 7°C/km, with DALR=10°C/km, it will run out of puff at 1 km. If the lapse rate 9°C/km it will go 3 km. If the lapse rate is 10 °C/km, there is no stopping it.
As to why the lapse rate is what it is, well, that is what I have been explaining.
“It is the lapse rate”
I told you to not say the lapse rate. The lapse rate is *NOT* a cause. It is a result of various factors. Tell us what those factors are and how they determine the height a parcel of air will reach. If you can’t do that then you are just blowing smoke.
“and the lapse rate is 7°C/km”
And what determines that lapse rate?
“If the lapse rate 9°C/km”
And what determines that lapse rate?
Saying the lapse rate determines the lapse rate is just a prime example of circular logic. Is that the best you got?
Agreed. Again.
Nick is describing the lapse rate as “a neat control mechanism”.
Well… it is what it is: A description of how an ideal gas behaves in a gravitational field.
As you may have alluded to before, what happens in the real world when you heat a gas parcel? In the lab one says that the pressure increases if it is constrained. Yet on a planet scale these are often described as meteorologically low-pressure regions. It isn’t simple.
What disturbs me more is Nick saying that maintenance of the lapse rate requires work. It does not. It requires temperature. It will be there whatever the energy flux is.
First, your tutorial is of not much use because it doesn’t explain anything that I don’t know — but I am surprised that much of it appears to be saying what I am saying. In that case what are we arguing about? For instance…
The temperature of the atmosphere is a consequence of the first law — changes to internal energy (temperature is a proxy) = additions by way of heat minus withdrawals to work — both heat and work. Your point is, or seems to be, that the work requires KE from some other place, I say that the input of heat energy via insolation, and the GHE, is so large it supplies all the work needed.
Kevin,
“In that case what are we arguing about?”
In your first conclusion, you said:
“The atmosphere is less a heat engine than a collection of many self-running refrigerators/dehumidifiers operating in different ways to carry heat largely from surface to tropopause locally and the balance from equator to poles.”
You seem to be using refrigerator as a synonym for heat pump, which it is. The essence of a heat pump is that it uses energy to move heat from cold to hot. What you describe there is movement the other way. What I am describing is a classic Carnot heat pump (engine in reverse) which moves heat downward – ie cold to warm. What it achieves by this is maintenance of the lapse rate.
“Your point is, or seems to be, that the work requires KE from some other place, I say that the input of heat energy via insolation, and the GHE, is so large it supplies all the work needed.”
Insolation supplies plenty of energy, but not, on its own, work. That requires a heat engine. You have described lots of natural convection, which can indeed be regarded as KE output, and so a heat engine. But what then? My point is that you see a lot more if you distinguish carefully between heat engines and heat pumps in the atmosphere. Large scale motions like the Hadley cell are heat engines that produce wind. Wind can do work, and did even before turbines were invented. It drives the heat pumps I described.
“Insolation supplies plenty of energy, but not, on its own, work. “
Huh? That’s like saying the electricity input to a compressor supplies plenty of energy but not, on its own, work.
It is the electricity that turns the armature in the compressor thereby doing work. It is the sun’s insolation that raises the energy level of all of the various components in the system known as Earth thereby doing work. There is no difference between electricity turning the armature of a compressor and insolation increasing the KE of molecules (which means the temperature goes up). It takes “work” to make the molecules move more energetically. It takes “work” to turn an armature.
“That’s like saying the electricity input to a compressor supplies plenty of energy but not, on its own, work.”
Yes. You need a compressor.
“Yes. You need a compressor.:”
The compressor sitting there does no work at all. It can’t. It contains no energy that can be used to do any work. It is the electricity that turns the armature, not the compressor unit itself. Now try and tell me that the magnetic force from the electricity isn’t capable of doing work. How deep are you going to dig the hole you are in?
You need a compressor.
“You need a compressor.”
So what? You also need pipe, an expansion valve, wire, and an operating fluid.
Are any of these capable of actually doing work on their own or do they need an external energy source?
You need *energy* to do work. Insolation *is* energy. It is the insolation that does the work. As I said before, how deep are you going to dig the hole you are in?
It’s called gravity, Nick.
The lapse rate is the behaviour of an ideal gas in a gravity field. No work required.
This doesn’t make any sense. It starts at a higher temperature, so it then rises. Rising air does expand and cools, but you’re postulating that it cools faster than ambient so becomes denser and colder than the surrounding ambient air? Where does equilibrium ever exist in this scenario? Warmer air may expand faster than ambient air does, but at some point, equilibrium must occur, PV=nRT requires it.
‘But the lapse rate is always there. How can that be?’
I’m guessing there’s a gravitational field, a relatively constant, but diurnal, source of short wave energy, a surface that converts short wave energy to long wave energy and an atmosphere above the surface that is transparent to short wave energy but absorbs some amount of long wave energy due to the trace presence of so-called greenhouse gases.
This results in differential heating of the atmosphere as air parcels near the surface warm / expand / rise while air parcels at the top of the troposphere cool / contract / descends, I.e., convect.
Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt.
“I’m guessing there’s a gravitational field, a relatively constant, but diurnal, source of short wave energy, a surface that converts short wave energy to long wave energy and an atmosphere above the surface that is transparent to short wave energy but absorbs some amount of long wave energy due to the trace presence of so-called greenhouse gases.”
But why does that give a lapse rate that is always close to g/cₚ? Almost everywhere around the globe?
because Cp is defined as being in a hydrostatic equilibrium where ΔP/Δz = density * g But the atmosphere is never (or at least very seldom) in a hydrostatic equilibrium. Do you think density of air is the same everywhere around the globe?
Nonsense. cₚ is just the specific heat capacity. Nothing to do with hydrostatics. For a diatomic gas like air, it is 3.5*R, where R is the gas constant.
Pressure * ΔV = R * ΔT for a constant pressure process.
i.e. ΔT = (P * ΔV)/R
Is the pressure of the atmosphere the same all the way from the ground to space?
If not, then ΔT is going to depend on the pressure change as well as the volume change. It doesn’t matter what R is.
That equation only applies for gases in equilibrium. The minute you have an open system (The atmosphere is an open system) the molecules are in a heat exchange relationship with neighboring molecules, and are no longer in equilibrium but are subject to the heat transfer mechanisms of convection, conduction, and radiation. Also, No compression is needed for the air to warm, and likewise, no expansion or pressure reduction is necessary for the air to cool. Convection, conduction and radiative heat transfer determine the air temperature.
See my post above to Nick about “adiabatic”. Adiabatic means no energy exchange with the surroundings. It’s a “blackboard” assumption meant to simplify calculations and modeling. But it’s not really “real world”. A parcel of air has to do “work” on the surroundings in order to expand as it rises and that is an exchange of energy.
I agree that neither pressure or volume has to change for a temp change to occur but that typically implies a change of state which is a different subject.
I think we agree for the most part.
ΔP/Δh = density * gravity
The issue is that density is a function of pressure and gravity is a function of height.
so ΔP/Δh = density(P) * gravity(h)
giving ΔP = [ density(P) * gravity(h) ] / Δh
So ΔT is a function of density(P), gravity(h). It is *NOT* a constant pressure process.
What do you mean with gravity is a function of height?
For all practical purposes within the atmosphere gravity can be considered constant, except for the small difference between gravity at the equator vs at the poles.
A small difference in gravity can be very significant when you are trying to identify temperature differences in the hundredths digit!
g_h = g [ R_e / (R_e + h) ] ^2
A small difference to be sure but, again, when trying to identify small differentials then small differences matter.
Vertically in the first 10-20 km of the atmosphere where our weather plays out gravity is constant for all practical purposes.
You keep trying to justify a blackboard assumption as being true in the real world. It isn’t. Are you confusing “G”, the gravitational constant, with “g”, the force applied by gravity field?
F = G * (m1 * m2)/r^2
(note that distance is a factor in both equations)
“If not, then ΔT is going to depend on the pressure change”
The ₚ in cₚ means constant pressure.
“The ₚ in cₚ means constant pressure.”
I know what it means. For the second time: “Is the pressure of the atmosphere the same all the way from the ground to space?”
No
So ΔT is not constant either. So how can Cp be a constant? If Cp is not a constant then neither is DALR.
So it all boils down to a parcel of air will rise until the forces up and down balance. And you can’t determine that height using a constant value for DALR. And R in PV = nRT doesn’t give the change in that height based on different pressures and volume. It is differences in pressure, volume, density, etc that causes turbulence.
You are like every mathematician, the numbers are unchangeable and 100% accurate. It is obvious you have never had to do experiments to verify physical “constants” and had to subsequently justify the reasons you couldn’t obtain those numbers.
From:
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-specific-heat-capacity-d_705.html
Let’s reiterate, Cₚ and Cᵥ are not constant just because pressure is held constant. Good grief I log pressure every day, 7 am and 6 pm, it is never constant. Simply stated Cₚ, never has constant pressure nor constant temperature as the atmosphere is transited from the surface to TOA.
As Tim said earlier, Cₚ is a result, not a casual factor. It is why tables are used to determine it’s value.
Nick, hydrostatics defines a differential relationship between P and Z — engineering 2110 where I used to teach.
This now enters a statement of the first law using enthalpy,
Then since
and for an adiabatic process dQ=0,
We end up with
It’s thermomechanics, Nick. You always end up mixing thermodynamic quantities with mechanical ones when gasses or fluids enter a problem that looks like it should be purely mechanical.
Mathematician versus an engineer who must make things work from blackboard gyrations.
I should add that there is an unstated condition in this, and that is while dQ=0 because we assume no heat transfer, the implication is that there must be some flow work involved — otherwise there is nothing to talk about.
Kevin,
I was answering Tim Gorman:
“because Cp is defined as being in a hydrostatic equilibrium where ΔP/Δz = density * g But the atmosphere is never (or at least very seldom) in a hydrostatic equilibrium.”
The definition of cₚ has nothing to do with hydrostatics. As I said, for a diatomic ideal gas it is actually 3.5*R, where R is the gas constant. True here, on Mars, in a space station, wherever.
Just because R is constant that doesn’t mean Cp is as well!
That depends on what gas you’re talking about and the status of its rotational and vibrational states. For Nitrogen at 175K the Cp is 1.039 kJ/(kgK) whereas at 325K it’s 1.040 kJ/(kgK).
And 1.039 kJ/kgK=1.039*28 =29 J/mol/K (MW N2=28)
and 29/3.5=8.3 J/mol/K =R, the gas constant.
IOW to a very good approx, Cp=3.5*R
You need to learn some engineering.
Universal Gas Constant
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ideal-gas-law-d_157.html
Individual Gas Constant
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/individual-universal-gas-constant-d_588.html
Non-ideal Gas Corrections
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/non-ideal-gas-van-der-Waals-equation-constants-gas-law-d_1969.html
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-specific-heat-capacity-d_705.html
OK, here is the fig in your last link which shows that variation. 1 bar is the blue curve, and I have marked the atmospheric range in black. Dead flat; less than 1 % variation in the range. And as I calculated above, equal to 3.5*R.
“Dead flat; less than 1 % variation in the range”
If 1% variation is your goal post then how do you address the fact that the temperature increase being about 0.5% Kelvin? That sounds pretty flat to me!
The lapse rate in the ICAO standard atmosphere is 6,5 K/km. This is afaik the average lapse of many soundings at mid latitudes.
6,5 K/km is not close to the 9,8 K/km of the DALR.
Thanks for posting this – I wasn’t sure what Nick was really inquiring about here, but I think he might have found the attached paper useful:
https://wvanwijngaarden.info.yorku.ca/files/2023/03/GreenhousePrimerArxiv.pdf
I find it often difficult too determine if posters realize that the DALR and SALR are ONLY valid for rising or sinking air.
The vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere is firstly determined by gravity and the required opposing pressure to keep the atmosphere “in the air”
You raise an interesting point. Do any standard weather stations measure the vertical component of atmosphere movement? Or only horizontal movement? My personal station only measures the horizontal component.
I assume you talk about the weather balloons released by those stations? They report ao the wind at various altitudes. Never seen reports about vertical movement of the air.
Didn’t have weather balloons in mind. Just how fast the wind is going up and coming down. Non-tornadic, straight line winds are typically generated from falling air. Just how fast does it fall in order to generate large horizontal winds?
You would think climate science would be interested in this but I’ve never seen anything on it. Part of the vertical component has to be buoyancy forces but is there anything else?
“You would think climate science would be interested in this but I’ve never seen anything on it.”
That’s probably because the engineers went on to become Engineers.
The ones not up to the task became climate scientists.
“6,5 K/km is not close to the 9,8 K/km of the DALR”
As I’ve said elsewhere, it is almost everywhere a bit lower, on average. The main reason is condensation. You can think of air with condensing water, giving up latent heat, as having a larger Cₚ in that situation.
But coming back to the main point – as your source says, that has been embedded into a standard atmpsphere. It applies day-night, winter-summer, equator-temperate. That wouldn’t be if it depended on the variables that Frank is nominating. I have explained the control mechanism that keeps it there.
If rising air condenses it will cool according the SALR, which is initially much lower (eg 5K/km). When all water vapor has condensed and the air still rises, it will again cool according the DALR.
This has nothing to with the vertical temperature profile of the entire atmosphere.
btw I don’t like the terms DALR and SALR. Maybe NCALR and CALR would be better. (Non-Condensing and Condensing)
“This has nothing to with the vertical temperature profile of the entire atmosphere”
It does.What matters is the rate at which air cools on rising, relative to ambient. Condensation in effect raises Cₚ for a while, and makes a proportionate effect on that profile.
There are two things that bring the actual lapse rate down from DALR
Condensation almost exclusively happens within rising and thus expanding and cooling air. Notable exception radiation fog that forms when the air at the surface cools to below the condensation point. Nicely seen in the evening over meadows.
Since rising, condensing air cools according the CALR, it does not exchange energy with its surroundings (adiabatic assumption). Once the rising stops, its density (~temperature) is equal to that of the surrounding air, so the rising had no influence on the temperature profile.
Opposite happens eg in the high pressure areas of the Hadley circulation. Descending air warms according the DALR, although descent rate is low, and radiation and exchange with the surroundings may play a role.
You may find some soundings of the temp. profile that approach the DALR profile.
In this post and the following discussion I miss mention of the Hydrostatic Equilibrium against gravity the atmosphere is in. HE means that at every height the pressure must be equal to the weight of the atmospheric column above it. This determines roughly the temperature at every height, with (smallish) variations possible like eg in a temperature inversion or an advecting warm front.
The temperature vs height is the lapse rate. (I prefer temperature profile)
Air rises because its density is lower than the density of the surrounding air.
In practice the density is determined by its temperature. So a thermal starts usually with the sun heating the surface unevenly, the warmer air will leave the surface and rise, cooling at the DALR.
It will continue to rise as long as its temperature is higher than the temp. of the surrounding air.
At some point the temperature will reach condensation temp., and now the latent heat of condensation is released, lowering the temperature loss vs height to the SALR, and making further rising more probable than with the DALR.
In short, the DALR and SALR are ONLY valid for air that rises or sinks within an atmosphere that is in HE. The proces is assumed to be adiabatic since the times involved are relatively short and the exchange of energy from the rising/sinking parcel with its surrounding can be neglected.
“The proces is assumed to be adiabatic since the times involved are relatively short and the exchange of energy from the rising/sinking parcel with its surrounding can be neglected.”
I look at this as a “blackboard” assumption. The volume of the air changes as it rises, i.e. it’s density goes down. It can only expand by doing work on the surrounding gases. Work involves the exchange of energy.
I agree with you about HE. HE is another one of those blackboard assumptions used to simplify calculations and interaction models. In the real world the atmosphere is very seldom in HE.
The atmosphere is all the time and everywhere in HE.
Only possible exception is in violent phenomena like hurricanes and tornadoes.
That is a rather odd definition of the lapse rate, which comes from the ideal gas law and the first law of thermodynamics. When the atmosphere expands adiabatically, it cools. If the atmosphere were hydrogen, it would heat. It is above its Joule-Thompson inversion temperature. This would be a very interesting atmosphere to model.
“ If the atmosphere were hydrogen, it would heat.”
Not if it expanded isentropically, as here. It is only in the irreversible expansion through a nozzle that that happens.
“Not if it expanded isentropically, as here. It is only in the irreversible expansion through a nozzle that that happens.”
You TRULY need to get away from the blackboard and join humanity in the real world. Isentropic assumes a reversible process and a frictionless operation. In essence it’s assuming perpetual motion as an operating mode. It is a blackboard assumption meant to make it easier to calculate a result. That result might be useful in comparing two different processes but it simply doesn’t describe the real world. If the CGM’s are supposed to use fundamental physics then they shouldn’t be assuming isentropic processes because that isn’t fundamental physics in the real world.
I’ve covered this aspect previously here and elsewhere.
If air rises in one place it must descend elsewhere and the proper scale to consider is the three atmospheric cells known as the Hadley Ferrel and Polar cells in each hemisphere.
Cooling within rising air is always matched overall by warming in falling air so the author is only considering half the process.
The greenhouse effect is set by the time taken for one complete overturning cycle because that is what causes the delay in energy loss to space.
If anything seeks to alter the balance such as radiative components within the atmosphere then the rate of overturning changes to neutralise the thermal effect.
The change in the rate of overturning is an inevitable consequence of radiative material locally or regionally seeking to alter the background lapse rate slope set by gravity working on atmospheric mass.
All one would see from our emissions would be an
indiscernible change in the overturning rate swamped by natural variability.
Note that the decline in temperature with height is due to declining density with height and it is gravity that sorts the atmospheric density to create an exponential fall in density with height. That happens because in three dimensions there is an exponential rise in volume available with height so as one goes up the molecules occupy more and more space and the average density falls.
In a three dimensional environment an exponential decline in density produces a linear fall in temperature as surface KE is progressively converted to atmospheric PE with increasing height.
This principle applies to all planets with a hard surface beneath a fluid atmosphere.
There is a whole host of factors that must be considered. The lapse rate is a result of those factors and not a cause of anything. It can be used as a “calculation term” but only if you know all the other factors first.
Gravity is not the only factor to be considered. I believe Kevin showed several heat reservoirs/sinks in his original post. Those determine initial densities at ground level. It seems to be hardly recognized in climate science but land is a big heat reservoir, different from the ocean but acting similarly. It is also time variant and affects the asymptotic point known as the daily Tmin.
I’ve never seen anyone mention that the climate models use ground temps as an input to their models. Yet ground temps have bee measured for agricultural purposes for decades. And ground temp does have an impact on air temp, especially over time. Makes one wonder how such an input factor can be so ignored.
Gravity supplies an initial baseline lapse rate but multiple other factors seek to disturb it and compete with one another.
What you are saying, in effect, is that what matters is the equation of state for the material (dry or moist air). Yet, this ignores the first law of thermodynamics; that what determines temperature is the balance of all heat input/out and work input/output. The equation of state simply determines the effect of heat or work on the internal energy of the substance. The first law is what counts.
In brief, isn’t a temperature inversion a refutation of your statement?
A temperature inversion is not a refutation at all because it will be local or regional and not system wide. Just a part of internal system variability.
Yet another “blackboard scientist” – calculating based on dry air all the way.
H2O is a CONDENSING gas – it is convected to the upper atmosphere, where it condenses, releasing a great deal of latent energy. Energy which, in great part, is radiated, not passed to non-condensing gases by kinetic collision. Radiation which is at an altitude where there is FAR less atmosphere to absorb it and reradiate downwards.
Real world – thunderstorms here are almost always accompanied by massive rushes of air, air which is much drier than in the upward convection column, AND is much, much cooler. Take a walk around here during monsoon season! (Or just wait for one to come for you – from inside a well-built house.)
Ok, Kids discover the troposphere (Greek words tropos (rotating) and sphaira (sphere))
Because of the continuous air mixing up, the temperature follows the (wet) adiabate.
This is bit random and sails past the main point of maintaining global energy balance. AKA “CLimate change”. The temperature at which long term energy balance exists in the aearth energy system as energy flows change, for whatever reason. But its intersting local knowledge of what happens in tiny local desert environment on land where climate is not substantively determined. Which is a quite different and rather ineffectual heat exchange compared to oceans. I hope I have not missed the original point, which I believe to be how earth’s whole heat engine balances the enrgy in and out of the system.
Only the oceans transport large amounts of heat to space by adiabatic convection in this way, because they carry the latent heat of evaporation of water, that cools the oceans and is released to space as radiation when the water vapour condenses in the colder troposphere.
And that varies by 7% per deg K ocean SST. Its 86.4W/m^2 currently, per NASA. So negative global feedback is 6W/m^2 deg K SST.
The heat transfer effect of dry convection must follow absolute temperature by Charles law, so I suggest 1 deg changes density by 1/300, roughly. The total effect is 18.4W/m^2, so that’s almost undetectable additional heat transfer per deg desert surface change .
BUT convection DOES provide the water vapour elevator above the oceans, so plays an important part there as transport of our water refrigerant to the troposphere where it liquifies..
THis is rather obvious, I suggest. But people just find it hard to understand the obvious they don’t see. Except sailors. Heat transport is the key factor in our subject of whole earth climate stability, and that happens at sea, not on land. Because its not wet, mostly.
That’s why deserts gain few clouds when they get hot, clouds on land mostly come from elsewhere. And when they don’t you get a desert, as happened in the Sahara 8Ka BP when it was green with huge lakes – until the monsoons failed as the earth cooled in the early Holocene, not warmed.
I suggest the phsyics says Climate on 30% land with no heat capacity of note is noise in global climate balance, and land climate in a small US desert is largely insignificant in the energy transfers of the whole earth global climate. Because its not an ocean.
The equatorial oceans are another scale of heat engine energy transfer to space altogether, as Willis reported elsewhere, and is well known. If you wanna transfer heat, serious heat, you need a pahase change, hence steam boilers to create an intense energy source from water, available to do work by expansion and condensation.
So American desert effects are interesting local knowledge of desert weather, if that was the intent. But of no global significance as regards maintaining Earth’s energy balance..
Without the latent leat effect of the phase changes of water, the convective atmospheric energy transport would be massively reduced, and the control range of Earth climate would then depend mainly on depend on S-B temperature effect alone, and be far more extreme.
Because the S-B change is only 3.3W/m^2 ped Deg K. (I=kT^4 so 240W/m^2 changes by 1.4% per deg {(289/288)^4} per deg. So S-B effect is about half the feedback that the earth system gets from the oceanic evaporation change response to SST change over the oceans. And the S-B effect is still there as a complement when there is evaporation at the surface, , so total negative feedback is just short of 10W/m^@2 per deg K, about what it needs to handle i orbital insolation varaiability on 10 deg K. Surprise!
I have , probaly controversially, assumed that the other effect of more water vapour, GHE ampification of warming is 2W/m^2 per deg SST per NASA and that this is cancelled by the net negative feedback of the additional (7% per deg?) clouds the water vapour forms,
Simples?
Almost.
However in a water free world the convective overturning system would just run faster.
Radiation from within an atmosphere allows convection to run slower.
Deserts comprise a large area of subtropics, North America (including Albuquerque), Middle East, North Africa, Asia, South America … and they all act rather similarly. Collectively they are very important because they allow a large heat transport to space because of their subsiding dry air leading to relative transparency to LWIR and because they are linked in ways to monsoonal flows.
‘Only the oceans transport large amounts of heat to space by adiabatic convection in this way, because they carry the latent heat of evaporation of water, that cools the oceans and is released to space as radiation when the water vapour condenses in the colder troposphere.
And that varies by 7% per deg K ocean SST. Its 86.4W/m^2 currently, per NASA. So negative global feedback is 6W/m^2 deg K SST.’
I’m afraid that you greatly underestimate water vapor. You say that water evaporation varies by ‘7% per deg K’. This not quite correct. The vapor pressure of water increases by 7% per deg K. But this ignores the effect of the water vapor content of the air on wind and wave action which can greatly increase the rate of evaporation of water. If you look at Figure 5 from Willis Eschenbach’s paper ‘Rainergy’ (WUWT – May 22, 2024) you will note that total cloud cooling varies from < 100 W/m^2 at sea surface temperatures of 25 C to > 400 W/m^2 at 30 C. That would be a negative feed-back that is an order of magnitude greater than the 7% that would be expected due to vapor pressure alone.
Well put. (Except that during monsoon season, we get that massive cooling at the edges of a fully developed storm. Frequently without the rain – but humidity takes a huge dip.)
I fly sailplanes and especially during the spring and fall months when the Sun is fairly strong but the air starts out cool, you get the best thermals. But it isn’t all up. There are updrafts but also downdrafts as the system gets going. The air sinks over water and woodlots and rises over freshly plowed land and paved urban areas. And the thermals go up until they form a cloud where it generally stops. I say generally because in some cases the thermals continue up forming thunderstorms.
Convective heating of the surface and the consequential effect on the atmosphere isn’t as simple as it seems. The water vapor content of the air mass matters a lot. In fact here is a calculator that will give you the estimated cloud base height based on dew points. https://physicscalc.com/physics/cloud-base-calculator/
Exactly, except that the updrafts and downdrafts are not separate entities. When there are updrafts the conservation of mass requires either a downdraft to compensate for it or a combination of convergence near the surface and divergence above. Paired combinations of updraft and downdraft are common as all of my sailplane acquaintances tell me and are what was measured in the original Albuquerque data and in the MONEX project. There are larger influences at times, too.
The core issue under debate involves why the atmosphere has a thermal gradient. Kelvin was first to propose it was a gravitational effect (g/Cp) and a function of water vapor content (1862). Maxwell and Boltzmann then argued equilibria remained isothermal in gravitational fields. Loschmidt argued for isentropic equilibria. For a discussion thereof,
https://www.ifi.unicamp.br/~mtamash/f320_termo/continuum_mech_thermodyn12_151.pdf
Should I move a 1kg parcel adiabatically to a higher altitude has the vertical center of gravity shifted upward increasing the gravitational potential energy of the system at the expense of its thermal energy? Or has it been replaced by 1kg moving adiabatically downwards leaving the system unchanged?
The system is not unchanged, if lapse rate <DALR. The kg you moved up arrives colder than ambient, because of cexpansion. And the kg you moved down arrives warmer than ambient, because of compression. Net result, heat moves down, against the T gradient. Work done, heat pumped.
Quondam,
First, I liked your series of PDF files. I read them all.
Now to the issue at hand. What has brought me here is something that occurred to me in answering Nick in a comment he made above “that the specific heat of air at constant pressure has nothing to do with hydrostatics”. I won’t repeat the little derivation I used to show that Cp shows up in perhaps surprising places if we involve a First Law statement using enthalpyv and a mechanical problem that involves fluids. Thermomechanics, which is rarely taught as a separate subject, provides some surprises. Let me just start here …
You as a P-Chemist know why Cp is called specific heat at constant pressure. Because if dP=0 in the above relationship (constant pressure), then
What this does not mean is that Cp applies only to constant pressure processes. This is the error that Tim Gorman made above while arguing with Nick. Cp will show up in all sorts of thermomechanical circumstances — but especially when flow-work is involved.
Now back to the central issue. We very often assume that in the atmosphere dQ=0 because diffusion by turbulence is so “slow” that very little heat is transferred out of a body of fluid. Now if dQ=0 then Vdp cannot be zero also, otherwise there is nothing to speak about and all one can say is dH=0. Not interesting. Thus VdP is not zero, and there is flow work in the problem by implication.
It is possible, in the limit if you will, of fast process, that dQ=0 and Vdp is not zero. This now imposes a relationship on dT/dZ ( or dT/dP etc or even dT/d(KE)). But there are all sorts of circumstances in which dQ does not equal zero and neither does VdP. My examples here of the daily cycle of atmospheric temperature profile is a case in point. The atmosphere is not static and pointing to some great significance to an adiabatic lapse rate is maybe misleading because of unstated assumptions. When it comes to the general circulation of the atmosphere dQ is not zero high in the atmosphere where radiation to space is significant and temperature might change by several K per day — Temperature change of a flowing parcel of air. I am assuming a LaGrangian viewpoint here where we follow a kilogram of air.
I am baffled about why someone downvoted you.
“This is the error that Tim Gorman made above while arguing with Nick. Cp will show up in all sorts of thermomechanical circumstances — but especially when flow-work is involved.”
I think you missed my point. Cp is not a single valued constant, as your derivation AND MINE shows.
Sorry, Tim. What I did was misread something Nick said that you were quoting, as being something you said. Reading back through this thread I see a Tim and Jim Gorman.
We’re related but not the same!
Kevin,
First, my appreciation for your efforts. I have a decided preference for mathematical description over the rhetorical, i.e. equations per page.
As to Nick’s comment, I need only note that the condition that convection be absent is (Landau):
dT/dz > -g / Cp
The essential question needing resolution is what would be the temperature gradient for an atmosphere of pure argon. The Loschmidt solution, favored by climate science, is about 19K/km (g/Cp). The Maxwell-Boltzmann answer, 0.000. Greenhouse gases, clouds, feedbacks and such are secondary distractions. This is a very basic problem mathematically posed. Rhetorical solutions with ill-defined parameters such as heat and work I find not convincing. If we can’t agree on the answer, no point chasing after red herrings.
“As to Nick’s comment, I need only note that the condition that convection be absent is (Landau):
dT/dz > -g / Cp”
Yes. As I pointed out many tmes, the DALR g / Cp (I use an axis convention where it is positive) is the dividing line between where forced convection requires energy from the wind (heat pump) and where it gives energy to the wind (heat engine). The former regime, which is usual, is one of conventive stability. The latter is unstable, and associated with stormy weather.
At any rate, the sustained atmospheric heat transport must be matched by radiative cooling else the whole thing shuts down (the heat engine quits).
It’s all baked in.
Assuming an all-sky optical depth = 2, and only radiative transfer:
The surface LW up = 2x the outgoing LW to space. Globally averaged 240 OLR vs 480 Surface LW up (sic)
In reality, however, the 2xOLR -80 = 400 Surface LW up.
That -80 W/m2 is the atmospheric heat transport, net away from surface and radiated to space. It is a consequence of dynamic instability and the associated turbulent flux. It is precisely equal to the latent flux.
Therefore, the latent heat flux = the atmospheric heat transport. The sensible heat flux is not to be counted in the heat transport.
So, there is no 20 W/m2 (or whatever) sensible heat flux net up and away from the surface as depicted in global energy budget diagrams. To include that results in a double accounting which must be compensated by an imaginary 20 W/m2 downward LW flux to balance the surface budget. This is normally said to be found in a cloud radiative effect.
Naturally, the atmospheric heat transport, 80 W/m2, reduces the apparent greenhouse effect intensity from (480-240) 240 W/m2 to (400-240) 160 W/m2 with an optical depth = 2.
That is all straightforward and perfectly inferred from NASA data.
Tangentially related to this, a new pre-print article, linked below makes much use of CERES data. It seems to touch on many of the issues frequently discussed on this web site. I suspect that Willis will have some good thoughts on it.
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202404.0309/v1
story tip
Thanks for the heads-up. I read an article by Demetris Koutsoyiannis some time ago dealing with, more or less, this same topic — I.e. surface evaporation and greenhouse effect. He argued that the older hydrological correlation between evaporation and the causative influences has remained the same despite lots more CO2 in the past eight or so decades.
Many thanks to everyone contributing knowledge here so far.
I have to take the perspective of a conscripted juror listening to evidence from expert upon expert from the prosecution and the defense, whilst having very limited capacity to judge the implications of such evidence.
If we jurors as random members of the public were sent to deliberate at this stage of the trial, we’d have to find CO2 not guilty on the basis of inconclusive evidence.
(Unless of course we were judges in a certain NY court, whereupon we would have concluded guilt way before any charges were laid 🙃
Is this an attempt to refute the role of greenhouse gases in elevating earth’s temperature above the temperature it would be without the GHGs? If so, it fails
Says Mr. Beeton.
A huge amount of heat is transfered from the earth’s surface to a higher level in the atmosphere by convection of sensible and latent heat — more at the surface than net radiation flux upward. At a higher level radiation to space is more effective and convection less. Radiation is also more effective when the air above is less humid. You can argue about the GH effect all you wish, but denying what I have said in this response and in this and the earlier essay — well, maybe you should do a bit more research.
Without getting in to the weeds on your comments, the key point is that any heat energy leaving earth is accomplished by thermal radiation only — convection and conduction only serve to move heat energy around within earths system. They cannot convey heat energy to space.
So there is no radiation to space from the phase change in H2O going from vapor to liquid because of convection? There is also no cooling in the adiabatic movement of “air” to a higher altitude?
You should leave well enough alone what you don’t understand. Your ipse dixit proclamations aren’t backed up by resources.
You are so buried in minutia that you’ve forgotten the basics. Write the equation for heat in – heat out = internal energy increase for the planet, and then settle down and think about what it means
You have no idea what you are talking about. Kevin Kilty, Willis Eschenbach, and others have been giving you information using data and you simply ignore it. Why do you believe the absorbed energy from the sun has been increasing? Because of CO2?
If you want to win a Noble Prize, why don’t you write a heat equation covering all the bases of insolation, clouds, albedo, etc. and show that the earth has been retaining energy that increases temperature.
You probably have no idea if Tmax in increasing faster than Tmin, do you? You won’t find that it peer reviewed papers using Tavg anomalies.
Maybe you should review some agricultural papers to see if First Frost Days and Last Frost Days are giving increased Growing Degree Days. Then you might learn about which causes that, Tmax or Tmin.
Willis Eschenbach!! The Massage Therapist! Your version of a scientific consultant. You’re as deluded as he is.
So sad. All you have is character assignation as an argument! 🤡🤡
You seem to be familiar with the peer-reviewed literature on climate.
Could you point me to a paper that explains how those GHG gasses have warmed our ~4km deep oceans to the current ~270K?
As you know the avg.surface temperature without GHG gasses is supposed to be 255K, so the deepest oceans are already 15K warmer than this.
Going back to the Cretaceous we saw deep ocean temperatures even higher, like 15-20K higher.
Very interested in an explanation for all this.
I’m sorry, but I’m not familiar with the peer reviewed literature on this particular topic.
There is a plethora of university and teaching sites on the internet. You could learn a lot by studying them. It will take some brain power but will stand you in good stead when you need to support your assertions.
You quoted me the real climate site. Are all their papers peer reviewed? If not, don’t be a hypocrite!
There is no convection, and therefore no lapse rate, without greenhouse gases, the most important of which is in dynamic equilibrium with a reservoir in liquid form that covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface to an average depth of over a mile. The net effect of the entirety of the Earth’s climate system is to maintain thermal stasis, meaning advanced life thrives on Earth notwithstanding its daily rotation.
are you aware how hot earths climate was when CO2 levels were 2000 ppmv, even though the sun was 15% dimmer than today?
Show us a graph with absolute temperatures from those times. Don’t show a graph with ΔT’s, because you have no idea what the baseline is.
“There is no convection, and therefore no lapse rate, without greenhouse gases”
Not true. All you need for thermal convection is a temperature difference, eg latitude.
Water vapor H2O is slightly more than 1/2 the weight of air. This includes warm air.
I would expect that convection is largely driven by the evaporation and condensation of water, powered by solar energy.
Phase change is much more efficient than simple heating and cooling, because it is a much larger volume/pressure effect over a much narrower temperature range.
Otherwise, why have steam engines? Why not use air as the working fluid.