Guest Post By Willis Eschenbach
Among my other sins, I have made money as an accountant for several businesses and non-profits plus two of my own businesses, as a tax preparer, and as the Chief Financial Officer for a company with $40 million in annual sales. So I often think in terms of things like Return On Investment (ROI) and Energy Return On Investment (EROI). From that excellent source:
Energy Return on Investment (EROI) is a ratio for describing a measure of energy produced in relation to the energy used to create it. For instance the ratio would illustrate how much energy is used to locate, extract, deliver, and refine crude oil relative to how much useable energy is created.
Today I realized I could create a similar ratio to analyze the climate, a ratio which I’ve called “WROI” for “Watts Return On Investment”. It is defined as the value at the surface of the earth of:
Downwelling thermal radiation from the atmosphere divided by upwelling thermal radiation from the surface
Conceptually, it works like this. Depending on its temperature, at each location the surface emits a certain amount of upwelling thermal radiation. That’s the investment, measured in watts per square meter of surface. (W/m2)
Some percentage of that upwelling thermal radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, and some percentage of that returns to the surface as downwelling thermal radiation. That’s the return, again in W/m2.
And Watts Return On Investment (WROI) is the ratio of those two. It’s the downwelling thermal radiation as a percentage of the upwelling surface thermal radiation.
And why is this of interest?
Well, the CO2 roolz temperature theory says that as CO2 increases, the amount of downwelling thermal radiation should increase worldwide due to the increased absorption of upwelling surface thermal radiation.
And more to the point, I realized that depending on its size, that change might be visible in the WROI data.
Here’s the funny part. At the time this morning when I was contemplating this, I was taking a break from riding my bike on a trail a ways from home.
There’s a bench at that spot where I sit and toss my thoughts around. It was there that I came up with the idea of the WROI.
As you might imagine, I was excited to flesh out this concept and learn what the data actually showed, would the CO2 change be visible, where would the WROI be greatest and smallest … and of course, no computer in sight. Grrr.
Frustrating, but it meant that I had time to think about what the CO2 roolz temperature theory would predict. It would predict that the WROI should increase over time, due to the increase in the percentage of upwelling longwave radiation absorbed by the increasing atmospheric CO2.
I also thought that the WROI might be larger in the northern hemisphere since atmospheric CO2 concentrations are higher in the north.
And better yet, I could calculate how much the WROI should increase due to the increase in CO2.
Buoyed by all that, I got back on my bike and kept riding. Clearly, I’m back home now. So here’s the log of some of my initial wanderings in the WROI data.
I took a look at the change in the WROI over time in the CERES satellite dataset. Remember that the CO2 roolz temperature theory predicts an increase in WROI over that period.
To that graphic of the WROI time series, I added a line showing the size and timing of the increase in WROI that is predicted by the increase in atmospheric CO2. (Red line in Figure 1 below, calculation details in a footnote.) Here is the result.
Figure 1. Percentage of upwelling surface radiation that is radiated back to the surface.
Dang-a-lang, sez I … that is a most interesting graph.
It shows that whatever has caused the temperature increase over the last two decades … it’s clearly not due to an increase in the amount of surface upwelling thermal radiation that is absorbed by atmospheric CO2.
Anyhow, that was my morning. I’m going for a walk now. There’s more to discuss in the WROI data, but that’s for another day.
My very best to all, including climate skeptics, heretics like me, and mainline folks,
w.
Yeah, you’ve heard it before: When you comment please quote the exact words you are referring to. I can only defend my words, not what you think my words said.
TRIGGER WARNING: MATH AHEAD!
To calculate the predicted percentage change in the WROI due to CO2 takes a few steps.
First I converted the time series of the CO2 change in ppmv to W/m2 of predicted forcing.
Forcing Anomaly (W/m2) = log2( CO2 time series / (first of CO2 time series) )*3.7 W/m2 per doubling of CO2
Then I converted that CO2 forcing anomaly time series to percentage units by dividing it by the same thing I used to create the WROI, which was the CERES time series of the upwelling thermal radiation from the surface. That gives me the CO2 forcing anomaly in the same percentage units as the WROI.
Finally, I added that CO2 forcing anomaly percentage time series to the starting point of the CEEMD smooth of the WROI time series. That gave me the red line in Figure 1, the percentage increase predicted by the increase in atmospheric CO2.
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All matter above Absolute Zero, including all atmospheric gases, radiates in all directions at all times. How can you not know that? Look at Wikipedia, or any physics or thermodynamics or Transport of Heat and Mass textbook. Your pyrgeometers measure the temp of the gas in contact, has nothing to do with the heat content of the atmosphere. Look it up. All Matter All the time in All directions. All matter is composed of charged particles, electrons and protons, and un-charged Neutrons. When a charged particle bumps into another one, photons are emitted.
CERES did not mention this?
I schooled your friend from BEST, is his name Moser, he must have told you. CO2 only affects the altitude at which the Atmosphere is able to radiate freely to space. More CO2 raises this altitude, thus lowering the temperature at which the atmosphere is able to freely radiate to space, thus lowering the Heat Transfer to space, but no one can calculate nor measure this, so no one knows the magnitude of the effect.
Once again, the Atmosphere cannot heat the surface of the Earth. The Sun heats the surface of the Earth, the Atmosphere cannot.
Trenberth went to my same university the glorious U of Michigan, and remains an embarrassment to all other grads. His cartoon depicts un-physical impossible effects.
CERES guys lie like rugs, and you bit.
Your favorite guy,
Moon
Michael, you say:
“All matter above Absolute Zero, including all atmospheric gases, radiates in all directions at all times.”
Close, but not true. Monatomic gases don’t either absorb or radiate IR.
As to your claim that “the Atmosphere cannot heat the surface of the Earth”, please see Experiment Results Show a Cool Object Can Make a Warm Object Warmer Still.
And you might dial back on the aggro, not a good look on you.
w.
Flowing down from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, chinooks cause a rapid heating of the earth surface in Alberta.
Be careful about what that essay is saying. Heat can only flow from hot to cold. Note, I didn’t say energy, I said heat. One must be careful about using the common Stefan-Boltzmann equation to discuss what happens based upon time. The S-B equation is only applicable to a infinitely small point in time. To do a time based analysis, one must write gradient equations for each body. When you do the gradients, you will see that the cooling gradient for the hot body will slow, yet it does not ever reverse to warming. It just cools more slowly. Similarly, the gradient for the cold body will continue to show warming even though it is also cooling. That is how thermodynamic equilibrium is achieved.
That is all your referenced document is showing.
Warmer than it would otherwise be. That is modifying the gradient of heat loss to a smaller value. It is not reversing the flow of heat making the hot body hotter.
That is one of the problems with the radiation diagrams. All parts of the earth act as heat sinks. They are not black bodies that instantaneously radiate away any absorbed heat. The surface stores some amount of heat for release after the sun goes down as does the atmosphere. You can’t just add and subtract fluxes over time without also taking into account the gradients involved.
Plus they are global averages (including the solar irradiance) that exist nowhere in the planet, and the measurement uncertainties of the radiometric quantities are routinely ignored.
You have touched on points about Black Body radiation that I am preparing to address. The first of which is BB only applies to a surface in an energy equilibrium state.
From Planck,
Now the condition of thermodynamic equilibrium requires that the temperature shall be everywhere the same and shall not vary in time. Therefore in any given arbitrary time just as much radiant heat must be absorbed as is emitted in each volume-element of the medium. For the heat of the body depends only on the heat radiation, since, on account of the uniformity in temperature, no conduction of heat takes place. This condition is not influenced by the phenomenon of scattering, because scattering refers only to a change in direction of the energy radiated, not to a creation or destruction of it. We shall, therefore, calculate the energy emitted and absorbed in the time dt by a volume element v.
He assumes the same temperature everywhere which means conduction will not be in play.
It does not have to be IR. All substances above absolute zero, including all monatomic gases, radiate ER. O2, as another example of a common atmospheric gas, radiates in the microwave band. Its particular frequency is how temperature is derived from satellite instruments.
Is it not true that the ER frequency is dependent on the temperature of the substance, regardless of the substance? Surely that radiation can go in any direction, and therefore some of it goes towards the surface and some of it readily escapes to space. There is considerably more O2 than CO2 in the atmosphere, not to mention N which must also radiate at some temperature dependent frequencies,
Andy, you say:
“All substances above absolute zero, including all monatomic gases, radiate ER”
This is a commonly held misconception. Not true for the monatomic gases.
Absorption of ER takes place by stretching, flexing, scissoring, or twisting of the interatomic bonds.
But monatomic gases don’t have none of them … see e.g.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330945016_Introductory_Chapter_Infrared_Spectroscopy_-_A_Synopsis_of_the_Fundamentals_and_Applications
w.
Commonly held by you, but I wish you would look it up. This site is important, but incorrect physics cannot help.
From your reference.
The document doesn’t say no rotation or no rotational energy, it says that rotational energy around the bond can’t be observed.
Jim, you’re missing the elephant in the room.
Monatomic gases have no bonds to rotate around.
Oh, and they’re also not “linear molecules”.
w.
There are a number of sources that describe diatomic molecules as being linear.
O₂ and N₂ are the predominate form of gases at atmospheric pressures and temperatures and are considered linear.
From:
http://www.chem.uiuc.edu/rogers/Text7/Tx73/tx73.html
Spectroscopy doesn’t discuss these much because they do not generate visible lines as the bonds vibrate and stretch.
I must apologize. You did say MONOATOMIC GASES. I have dealt with O₂ and N₂ as the only form of molecules in the atmosphere since my college days and just automatically made that connection in my mind.
Monoatomic atoms would be N and O, and those just don’t occur in the atmosphere naturally.
Monatomic gases are helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and radon (Rn).
None of them either emit or absorb IR, because they have no interatomic bonds to vibrate.
w.
No clue what your reply has to do with monatomic gases, which was the subject under discussion.
Next, N2 and O2, being diatomic, have only a couple of vibrational modes. So they do both absorb and emit IR … but only in tiny amounts. So they are not of much interest as greenhouse gases.
w.
Electromagnetic radiation is produced whenever electric charges accelerate—that is, when they change either the speed or direction of their movement. In a hot object, the molecules are continuously vibrating (if a solid) or bumping into each other (if a liquid or gas), sending each other off in different directions and at different speeds. Each of these collisions produces electromagnetic radiation at frequencies all across the electromagnetic spectrum. However, the amount of radiation emitted at each frequency (or frequency band) depends on the temperature of the material producing the radiation.
[…]
Any matter that is heated above absolute zero generates electromagnetic energy. The intensity of the emission and the distribution of frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum depend upon the temperature of the emitting matter. […]
The temperature is a measurement of the kinetic energy, which is based on the speed and mass.
So, yes.
All molecules are slightly charge negative just due to the geometry of protons versus electrons.
Willis, I can’t believe you wrote “Monatomic gases don’t either absorb or radiate IR.”
Yes they do. You are obviously living in an alternate universe. All matter above absolute zero emits IR. Whether you choose to accept reality is your choice.
As I said above, when a molecule absorbs IR, it does so by converting the energy in the photon to mechanical vibration of the molecular bonds.
Or from the document Introductory Chapter: Infrared Spectroscopy – A Synopsis of the Fundamentals and Applications, we find:
There are a number of possible types of vibrations of the atoms around their bonds, shown below from the same source.
Obviously, for diatomic molecules, many of these vibrational modes are not physically possible … and as a result, O2 and N2 are poor emitters/absorbers of IR radiation.
Now … given that the following are true:
• We know that IR affects molecules by “instigating recurring oscillations of the atoms’ positions around their bonds”, and
• We know that monatomic gases have no bonds …
Just how can they absorb and emit IR as you claim?
Unfortunately, in many schools they have taught that all objects above 0 kelvin radiate IR. And it’s 100% true … for all solid objects.
And for most gases as well.
But not for monatomic gases.
w.
The aggro is not a good look for anyone..
One of the easiest experiments you can do to prove that cool objects can make warm objects warmer is with your kitchen oven. Turn it on hi, open the door, and allow it to achieve a steady state. Record the temperature inside. Now close the door and allow it to achieve a steady state again and record the temperature again and compare. You will observe that the act of closing the cooler door causes the warmer inside to get even warmer.
Nonsense.
Complete nonsense.
An oven doesn’t only heat by radiation. Leaving the door open allows convection thus removing heat. Closing it TRAPS heated air because convection ceases. Just like in a greenhouse.
You want to study radiation? Get a vacuum chamber with heat resistant sides that are purely reflective.
You can also study Planck’s Theory of Heat Radiation to understand radiation in a cavity. He also treats entropy in a very detailed manner. When you understand entropy you’ll know why cold can not heat warm. In other words, reversing a state of maximum entropy requires work.
That’s funny.
What’s funny are those like the usual suspects above who dismiss this fact (which is so intuitive and obvious that it defies credulity that an experiment is even need) and call it nonsense. I trust that you are not one of the ones I’m speaking of and have tried the experiment yourself or at least understand what the result would be beforehand.
What is hilarious is that you think it is the cold door that is producing the heat.
Moronic ignorance doesn’t even start to describe you comments.
A long with your other physical science deficiencies, you have just shown you know nothing about baking or broiling.
Dude, heat an oven with a closed door to 400F. Stand close to the oven with your head right over the crack when you open it. Is that convective air you feel on your face, or is it radiative heat only?
OMG what an idiot.
It is not the colder door that is causing the heat increase. It is the fact that you are now trapping the produced heat inside, preventing air movement and convection.
You really are a complete moron.
So is it your considered opinion that if I remove the colder door from the experiment the inside of the oven would still get warmer?
Do you realize you just keep stepping in it? You’d do well in my cow lot!
Take the door off and you just made a bigger oven! Of course conduction and convection is going to spread the heat further.
Growing up the family lived in a small plaster and lathe house with no insulation. We would all gather in the kitchen and use the oven to help keep the room warm. Slept there too. The shop had a coal stove and the kids would rotate running out opening the damper and shovel coal to get the heat going. Conduction and convection, very little radiation.
You have absolutely no idea of how an oven works. You don’t seem to know *anything* about the physical real world.
If the thermostat in the oven is broken then the oven will heat to the temperature of the heating element which is determined by either the temperature of burning natural gas or the resistance heating from current in the heating element.
The only reason why the temp of the heating element may not be reached is because of convection or conduction of heat to media outside the oven, i.e. heat loss to the surroundings.
Oh wow, I am not even going there. There is this word, “Convecton,” look it up.
Hi Willis
I also have a mystery related to that magical CO2….
https://breadonthewater.co.za/2024/07/28/the-mystery-of-the-missing-human-generated-carbon-dioxide/
Please let me know what you think on that one?
The Greenhouse Effect is real – you can show it with a non-contact thermometer. But it is due to H2O, not CO2. As Nelson explains, the relaxation time of the CO2 molecule is so long that the energy gets thermalised. So although surface temperatures have risen, the downwelling hasn’t and the Return ratio has fallen. The evidence suggests the recent modest warming is due to increased sunshine at the surface, not CO2
“So although surface temperatures have risen, the downwelling hasn’t …..”
….
Yes it has ….
https://escholarship.org/content/qt3428v1r6/qt3428v1r6_noSplash_b5903aebfe105b4071103e11197138f8.pdf
I happen to agree with Feldman. Increases in CO2 do lead to increases in downwelling IR. It has two effects:
1) More energy is conducted back to the atmosphere at about the same rate:
2) When the IR is absorbed by H2O, it will increase evaporation.
The net effect is cooling of the surface.
CERES says DWIR increased at a rate of +0.93 W.m-2.decade-1.
UAH says T increased at a rate of +0.22 C.decade-1 over the same period.
You left out the increase in absorbed solar energy. Why is that?
I was responding to your post in which no mention of absorbed solar energy occurred.
Feldman used supercooled sensors, thus creating the negative temperature gradient.
This of course leads to downwelling radiation.
Also the graph you show is actually a model.
FAIL !
I don’t think Tom Shula has the physics right. In his view CO2 can absorb energy nearly instantaneously but cannot reradiate for 0.46 seconds. During this period the the energy gets passed on to another molecule via kinetic collision. That seems reasonable.
Shula also claims that when a kinetic collision energizes a CO2 molecule it will not be instantaneously emitted but rather waits for that same 0.46 seconds and therefore also is likely to be de-excited by another collision.
I think this is where he goes wrong. I believe the emission occurs immediately and while the molecule may be unable to emit or absorb any other energy during the 0.46 seconds, the energy is already lost.
My description means Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation is valid for gases whereas Shula’s view violates the Law.
He also didn’t understand how a Pirani Guage works.
Thanks for the link. I didn’t realize WUWT had covered this topic.
From the document:
The gauge must be calibrated to the gas being used but one can calculate the power difference between a vacuum (radiation only) and a given pressure.
Please show how the author misstated how the device can be used to drive the difference between in radiation and radiation + convection + conduction.
The physics is a quantum of energy (aka photon) is reemitted in 85 femto second to 1 nano second depending on the valence frequency of the energy.
Also, there are multiple valence states. Each is achieved by adding to the valence electrons excitation (aka energy).
The valence electron is not inhibited from absorbing or emitting in the false 0.46 seconds.
The Climate Syndicate is constantly violating the laws.
Willis sez:
“downwelling thermal radiation. That’s the return, again in W/m2″
No it isn’t.
“I can only defend my words”
No you can’t.
“I’m not going to define radiation”
Naturally.
“You changed your mind”
No I didn’t.
“I am an honest man”
Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth…
It baffles me that there is so much focus on temperature. It’s just a proxy for energy and it seems to me that energy balance of our planet is what matters.
I may have missed it but is there a study of our total energy balance? We’re a black box, after all, with one energy input and one energy output. It should be an obvious primary data point. Everything else is just weather.
It brings to mind the three blind mice examining the elephant.
CERES provides the total energy balance. I plotted the 12m moving average here.
CERES provides data on a rather narrowly defined energy balance, the “radiation energy balance”, which includes only the incident solar flux and the sort-of-measured reflected plus sort-of-measured thermal radiation outgoing flux. Assuming we had a perfect measurement of both incident and outgoing radiation, it still wouldn’t be the last word on “climate change” that there is no breakdown of the internal storage mechanisms of solar energy. The time dependent First Law of Thermodynamics, after all, includes the difference between energy entering and leaving a system boundary, and the internal sources and sinks inside the system boundary.
A smaller rate of energy emitted to energy entering the Earth control volume via electromagnetic radiation can’t be completely construed as “warming” the planet. A huge amount of the energy that is not radiated back to space is photosynthetically stored in the form of created biomass. Most of that biomass is in the oceans, in the form of plankton, most of which either directly or indirectly winds up at the bottom of the oceans, and most of that is ultimately sucked into the Earth’s interior at tectonic subduction boundaries, where it will ultimately become petroleum again.
Air temperature isn’t a measure of stored energy in the Earth’s atmosphere. Enthalpy is, and it involve both air temperature and humidity ratio, measured at the same time and at the same locations. There is a big gaslighting campaign in my area of the country (DC area) to convince people of global warming by reporting both the forecasted temperature, and what it “feels like” based on humidity. In the DC area, the latter sounds horrible in the summer time. But it isn’t any worse than it was 20 years ago, when I first spent a lot of summer time here. Back then, they didn’t include the “feels like” “heat index” in the weather porn forecasts.
One other comment on the energy balance: CERES, and all other such surveys, “measure” (or use measurements) only of incoming optical radiation and outgoing thermal radiation. I submit that the time integrated outgoing electromagnetic radiation doesn’t account for all of that energy flux.
The Earth doesn’t just emit long-wave infrared, but that is all we include in the energy out of the Earth control boundary. It also emits a stupendous amount of radio-frequency energy, generated by the lightning which occurs almost everywhere on Earth, constantly. Associated with lightning is not only low-energy RF, but high-energy optical radiation. And recently, scientists were surprised to find that the Earth emits X-rays due to lightning. (Who would have expected multi-million volt electrical discharges to generate X-rays?) Lightning is ultimately produced from the incoming solar energy, so has to be included in the balance.
We don’t include it, though. How large is it? I don’t know. Neither do you. But to say “it’s negligible” without knowing is anti-scientific.
What is always ignored in the 1D energy balance drawings is that the numbers are global averages, which are very close to meaningless.
Not just close to meaningless. They *are* meaningless. Heat loss to space by radiation is an exponential decay. That means the radiation flux is also an exponential decay. What exactly are they using for an “average” value? (Max + Min)/2? That’s not an AVERAGE.
EEI as it is known appears to reflect the delayed surface climate response (surface temperature change) to the increasing absorption of the solar beam.
There should be no expectation of an instantaneous compensation of the increased SW accumulation to manifest in LW emission. Much of the energy goes to a change in ocean heat content, a proportion of which is unavailable to re-radiate from surface.
The result is an accumulation of energy in the SW, much of which the surface-atmosphere system does not immediately register.
It’s not only the ocean. Land also stores quite a bit heat for later release in colder seasons. They are both heat sinks, similar to what is used in electronics. Heat sinks in electronics don’t go to cold as soon as you turn a device off. Depending on their mass they can stay warm for a goodly amount of time.
I guess so. Interannually you might get some net accumulation through the phase change from ice to liquid. At any rate, there should not be any expectation to see an increasing proportion of surface LW up registering in the surface LW down. The mechanisms of planetary heat uptake manifest observationally as increasing SW accumulation.
This is easily demonstrated with domestic cold water taps — nice non-temperate locations that don’t have extended periods of winter cold, do not have running cold water.
Very interesting analysis and probably not a surprising conclusions for many who follow this site. The sad thing is that no matter how many times people pull back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz to show him in his threadbare pajamas, pretending to be a god, there remain a large mass of people lacking critical thinking skills who still see the Wizard as all knowing and full of virtue.
Brilliant, Willis!
Send a copy to Lord Christopher Monckton.
Looks like a slam dunk!
I think everyone is missing the point. The most important thing about feedbacks is the ratio of incoming radiation reradiated to space relative to the radiation radiated from the surface reradiated to the surface