Demonstrating the Reverse Greenhouse Effect in the Laboratory – PART1

Editorial note: WUWT is publishing this paper as a contribution to open technical discussion, not as an endorsed or settled account of atmospheric physics. Readers should distinguish between the paper’s narrow laboratory claim—that IR-active gases can contribute measurable radiative effects under the conditions of this apparatus—and its much broader inferences about climate sensitivity, water-vapor feedback, Antarctica, and the relative role of CO2 in the real atmosphere. Those larger extrapolations remain contested, and this experiment by itself does not resolve them.- Anthony


Demonstrating the Reverse Greenhouse Effect in the Laboratory – Part 1 (Part 2 will be published tomorrow)

                                                Hermann Harde, Michael Schnell

Abstract

We present first quantitative studies demonstrating and using the principle of the reverse or so-called  negative Greenhouse-Effect (GH-effect). The common GH-effect is running backwards, when air is warmer than a solid body with which it exchanges Infrared (IR) radiation.  In this case, Greenhouse Gases (GH-gases) contribute to cooling of the air and to an increase in the outgoing IR radiation, which is detected by sensors on a cooled plate. With a series of laboratory experiments, it is shown that the IR radiation of GH-gases is not an “ominous” phenomenon but quite real and can be verified also under regular pressure conditions. The results were recently published in the journal Science of Climate Change [1] and are presented here in a slightly shortened, easy-to-understand form. Since the investigations are quite extensive, the studies are divided into two parts.

In this first part we consider some theoretical aspects of general interest: Why is the much stronger CO2 band of 4.3 μm compared to the 15 μm band, insignificant for heat transport, why is water vapor the dominant greenhouse gas, and why is in a laboratory experiment – like an iceberg – only seen the tip of the gas radiation.

We explain how the negative GH-effect in Antarctica contributes to cooling of the planet. We also support the thesis that the temperature of the water planet Earth is mainly determined by evaporation, convection and cloud cover and not by infrared radiation.

In addition, the general concept of experimental investigations and initial tests with the new apparatus are presented. It turns out that the experimental set-up can also detect water vapor radiation, which was not possible in our previous studies [2]. This opens up new perspectives for investigating the superposition of water vapor radiation with that of other greenhouse gases.

In the second part, it is shown that CO2, methane and nitrous oxide spontaneously convert heat of their environment to IR radiation, this also at normal air pressure and depending on the gas concentration, while water vapor exerts a damping effect.

Measurements and  radiation transfer calculations are in good agreement when the interfering background radiation of the apparatus, and unavoidable transmission losses are taken into account.

Most convincing, the negative greenhouse effect is demonstrated using Freon 134a, an extremely effective greenhouse gas. A strong increase in IR emissions combined with a significant cooling of the ambient air—even  with small amounts of freon—leaves no doubt: The thesis of thermalization or radiation-free deactivation is falsified according to K. Popper’s definition.

1. Introduction

Greenhouse gases (GH-gases) are well known as absorbers of thermal radiation, proven by countless infrared spectra. According to Kirchhoff’s radiation law, however, these gases can also be IR emitters. But this law is repeatedly questioned because, in contrast to condensed matter, the atmosphere – apart  from aerosols and water droplets – essentially consists of freely moving molecules. Depending on the molar mass, temperature and pressure, the molecules travel at sound speed or slightly above. Because of this speed and their enormous number of around 2.7∙1025 = 27 quadrillion molecules per cubic meter of air, these particles are continuously exposed to collisions of several GHz.

When a parcel of air is lifting up in the atmosphere, it is expanding and cooling down due to this volume work. As a result , less molecules at lower speed are found at higher altitudes in one cubic meter of air, so that the number of collisions decreases.

From this critics have concluded that GH-gases in the lower atmosphere are only absorbers and no or only weak emitters. They only acquire the property of a good emitter at higher altitudes, in the tropopause and stratosphere, where they contribute to the IR radiation to space.  As an explanation, they state that in the lower troposphere, collision processes in the form of hyperelastic collisions suppress spontaneous emissions. According to this, the absorbed energy would be converted mainly to kinetic energy as heat, which is called thermalization or radiation-less deactivation.

This interpretation ignores that there are also inelastic collisions which have the opposite effect to hyperelastic collisions. These collisions extract kinetic energy from the gas mixture and use this energy to excite GH-gas molecules to rotational-vibrational states. These processes ultimately lead to thermal radiation largely independent and parallel to the superelastic collisions. This is referred to as thermal background radiation (Harde 2013 [4], Chapter 2.3). The emission is determined by the air temperature and thus the population of excited levels according to a Boltzmann distribution. This is the main reason why the radiation intensity decreases significantly with increasing altitude. For example, at an altitude of 11 km, it is only 12 % of the CO2 intensity observed in a 100 m thick gas layer near the ground.

For several years now, these two opposing views have been clashing in EIKE articles, despite the existence of detailed laboratory experiments confirming the greenhouse effect (see Harde, Schnell 2024 and [2]). But perhaps some doubters can still be convinced by our laboratory experiments that the three most important infrared-active gases in the atmosphere – CO2, methane and nitrous oxide – spontaneously generate IR radiation at the expense of the heat of their environment even at normal pressure.

2. Theoretical Basics

GH-gases can absorb and re-emit radiation in the medium and long-wave IR spectral range. This spectral range extends on a wavelength scale λ from approximately 4 μm to the cm range. Within this spectral interval, the most important GH-gases in the atmosphere such as water vapor (WV), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3) have a total of 722,000 spectral lines. Many of these lines are very faint, but due to the long propagation paths in the atmosphere, they also contribute significantly to the interaction with radiation (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Line intensities of the greenhouse gases WV, CO2, CH4 and N2O over the spectral range from 0 – 2500 cm-1. This corresponds to a wavelength range of ∞ – 4 μm. The values apply to a temperature of T = 44 °C.

In spectroscopy, it is common to specify absorption lines by wavenumbers , the reciprocal value of the wavelength. They indicate how many oscillations fit to one centimeter and are expressed in units cm-1. As for light waves it holds c =l·n  (c – speed of light, n – frequency of light), wavenumbers as  represent a frequency scale, where 1 cm-1 is equivalent  to 30 GHz. This has some consequences that can be confusing: the strong asymmetric CO2 stretching vibration at 4.3 μm is now on the right side at 2326 cm-1 and the weaker CO2 bending vibration at 15 μm on the left side at 667 cm-1 (Fig. 1, red lines).

However, the line intensity in Fig. 1 does not say too much about its share in the IR emission of an air parcel, which is additionally determined by the thermal population of excited states according to a Boltzmann distribution and Planck’s law (see Fig. 2; Harde 2013, chap. 2.3 [4]).

Fig. 2: Emission spectra of WV, CO2, CH4 and N2O over a propagation length of 70 cm for concentrations of 2 %, each in air for a gas temperature T = 44 °C and a pressure of 1013 hPa.

The red, dashed line displays the Planck distribution of a blackbody emitter at a temperature of 44 °C (emissivity ε = 100 %), corresponding to the temperature of the gases during the investigations. For each spectral line this is the maximum possible radiation density (spectral intensity) under these conditions, more is not possible. This is the reason why the very strong CO2 lines (Red) in Fig. 1 around 2300cm-1 with only 1.3 W/m2 play an absolutely subordinate role compared to a theoretical total emission of CO2 with 28.8 W/m2. In contrast, the relatively small CO2 emissions around 670 cm-1 with their many rotation lines practically coincide with the maximum and the band center already shows complete saturation over a propagation length of 70 cm. It significantly determines the share of CO2 to the GH-effect (Red lines).

Nitrous oxide (N2O, orange) with an own emission of 29.2 W/m2, is additionally masked by methane (CH4, Green) with 11.1 W/m2, and the strongest band of N2O around 2250 cm-1 has hardly any influence on the total emission.

It is also clear that not CO2 but water vapor (WV, Blue) with a total emission of 42.2 W/m2 is the dominant greenhouse gas and superimposes larger parts of the other gases, although  same concentrations were used for this comparison. While the individual contributions of the four gases add up to an intensity of 111.3 W/m2, the total effective intensity is only 75.8 W/m2 and is therefore 32 % lower.

This loss occurs when the different gases are overlapping in their emission bands and are radiating on the same wavenumbers, as especially observed for water vapor, which has also been proven experimentally (see Part 2).

In the lower atmosphere, the concentration of water vapor on average is 35 times higher than that of CO2. This results in such a strong overlap that the regularly expected radiation of CO2 with 83 W/m² (at a ground temperature of 15 °C) only contributes additional 22 W/m², i.e. about a quarter. On the other hand, WV alone already generates 281 W/m2, and together they radiate 304 W/m2 towards the surface. When we also consider that the increasing CO2 concentration from 280 to 420 ppm over the Industrial Era only contributes additional 2.2 W/m2 (increase from 301.4 to 303.6 W/m2) due to saturation effects on the molecular transitions, and that this fraction is further reduced to about 1.3 W/m2 (328.1 to 329.4 W/m2) under clouds (cloud cover of 66% and cloud height of 5 km), the contribution of CO2 to the total back-radiation is indeed almost negligible.

3. Experimental Concept and Analysis of Heat Flux

It is undeniable that greenhouse gases are also emitters, because the energy input of the Sun can ultimately only leave the Earth-Atmosphere-System (EASy) in form of electromagnetic radiation. The only point of contention is whether this also works at normal pressure. This is exactly where the idea for the new laboratory experiment comes in. An experiment under standard pressure conditions does not require any special measures. Therefore, without too much effort it is possible to investigate what can be observed when some smaller amount of an IR-active gas is added to a slightly warmed air volume.

To verify this, all you need is a heated air cylinder and a cooled plate PC with a radiation detector. Both parts are placed vertically on top of each other to prevent convection (Fig. 3). A polyethylene (PE) foil between the cylinder and the cooled plate reduces direct heat conduction, so that the heat is mainly transferred by infrared radiation to the cooled plate. This heat flux Q is registered by two sensors, TD and VP, which are located on the PC disk (for a detailed description of the apparatus, see Part 2).

   Fig. 3: Schematic experimental setup

The experimental setup allows for a continuous heat flow in only one direction, from the warm air cylinder to the colder PC disk. A possible violation of the second law of thermodynamics is thus ruled out per se, which eliminates the main argument of the skeptics.

Different to [2], the cylinder is not heated electrically, but indirectly by a jacket heater with thermostatized water TWof 51°C.  Between the TW jacket heater and the cylinder wall is a 2 mm thick polystyrene insulation, which causes a reduced heat flow from the heating water to the inner air of the cylinder. Due to this insulating layer, the cylinder temperatures T1  to T5 not only depend on the heating TW, but also on the outgoing heat flux Q. This can be demonstrated experimentally by a gradual increase of the TW temperature. Without heat flux Q to the PC disk, the heating temperature TW and the temperatures T1 to T5 would have to adapt after some delay. But it turns out that with increasing TW temperature, the differences become larger, which is caused by an increasing heat flux Q (Fig. 4a). Most of the heat is emitted at the T1 position. This interpretation is confirmed by an increasing heat flux Q, which is registered by the detectors TD and VP (Fig. 4b).

Fig. 4: a) Increase of temperatures T1 – T5 with increasing jacket temperature TW, b) Verification of the heat flux Q with increasing temperature by two sensors TD and VP and calculation of the mechanical heat conduction WL to the PC plate, H2O = 0.15 vol.-%.

The heat flux Q to the PC plate consists of the radiation I0and the outer heat conduction WL from the cylinder base to the PC plate. The gradual increase in TW was done in small increments with a rest period of 20 minutes. At the end of this rest phase, there is again an approximate thermal equilibrium. Due to the stationary air layers, mechanical heat conduction can be calculated according to

Here lair = 0.026 W/m/K is the thermal conductivity for air, DT = T1TC, A = 0.086 m2 the cylinder cross-sectional area and L = 20 cm the distance T1 – PC. According to this, the heat flux WL accounts for  only about 6% of the total heat flux Q (Fig. 4b, green curve).

So, about 94% of the heat flux Q is transferred by IR radiation I0. On the one hand, this is the desired energy transport, but on the other hand, it is also bad news, because this I0radiation is the background radiation of the air-filled cylinder without GH-gases. The background radiation superimposes and obscures the radiation of the GH-gases, so that only the tip of the gas radiation is visible during these experiments, similar to an iceberg (Chapter 4). This is the main reason why the detection of gas radiation is so difficult and why previous experiments have failed because of this problem.

At  first glance, a horizontally placed polystyrene box seems to be a convenient solution, as it is commercially available and easy to process. For example, Seim and Olsen [5] have tried to test our previous studies on the greenhouse effect [2] with such a setup. They were able to confirm that CO2 causes some temperature rise, but the levels were much smaller than we found. The various reasons for this failure are explained in Schnell & Harde (2025) [3].

4. Water Vapor Radiation

For the experiment in the previous chapter (Fig. 4), dried air with a concentration of about 0.15 % was used inside the cylinder. Repeating this experiment with normal laboratory air at a WV concentration of 1.1 % gave an increase of the outgoing heat flux Q of 5 – 8 W/m2 (Fig. 5).

This increase in Q is caused by the IR radiation of water vapor. This opens up new possibilities for investigating the role of water vapor in the greenhouse effect (see Part 2): either the cylinder air is left untreated, dried or additionally moistened for a measurement. In this way, three WV concentrations of 0.15, 1.1 and 1.9 vol. % could be achieved in the cylinder. However, additional humidification with 1.9 % water vapor is difficult, as water vapor condenses easily at uncontrollable thermal bridges. Therefore, the higher concentration was only realized for the CO2 investigation.

                                                   Fig. 5: Heat flux Q at 1.1 and 0.15% water vapor.

Part 2 shows that concentrations of up to 8% by volume are required to detect the emission of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. As explained above, this cannot be achieved with steam. Therefore, water vapor is not investigated as a greenhouse gas, but its influence on the other GH-gases with relatively low WV concentrations (Part 2).

5. Background Radiation and Transmission Losses

The great challenge measuring the gas radiation is to detect it on the large background radiation from the cylinder walls. The inner surface of the cylinder is more than 10 times larger than the radiation area, and together with multiple reflections makes the cylinder a cavity radiator, which emits significantly higher intensity than a flat plate of the same material, this despite a very low emissivity of the polished aluminum walls of only about 5% (see cavity radiators, e.g. Atkins & Friedman 2011[6]).

To get an idea of the gas to background radiation, Fig. 6 displays a calculation for CO2 and WV, superimposed by the wall radiation. The total emission of the cylinder walls can be characterized by an effective emissivity εeff  = 42 %, and the losses to the detectors – caused by a limited acceptance angle and the transmission of the PE foil – by  a dissipation factor of VΩ » 40 %. The stronger drops at 740 cm-1, 1,350 cm-1 and 1,400 cm-1 are caused by the transmission losses of the PE foil at these wavenumbers.

Fig. 6: Spectral intensity as a function of the wavenumber for 2 % CO2, 1 % H2O, L = 70 cm, e = 42% and VW = 40 % with a total intensity of 95.6 W/m2.

The emission from the walls (Grey) and water vapor (Blue) together give 90.3 W/m2. With additional  2 % of CO2, this intensity increases to 95.6 W/m2. This increase of 5.3 W/m2 is not more than 18.4 % of the expected CO2 radiation of 28.8 W/m2, which would be observed without an overlap with the other radiation sources. Despite the optimized experimental setup, the vertical setup and the polished aluminum surface, only the tip of the CO2 gas radiation is visible (red lines), like an iceberg.

6. The Negative Greenhouse Effect

6.1 Definition of the GH-Effect and Simplified Derivative

According to Thomas & Stamnes (1999) [7] and the actual assessment report of the IPCC, AR6 [8], the atmospheric greenhouse effect is defined as the difference of the radiation intensities emanating from the Earth’s surface FSand the upper atmosphere FTOA(Top of the Atmosphere).

The mean surface radiation can be approximated by the Stefan-Boltzmann law: 

with eS as emissivity and TS as temperature of the Earth’s surface and s = 5.67·108 W/m2/K4 as Boltz-mann constant.

The radiation to space  FTOAconsists partly of the Earth’s radiation not absorbed by the atmosphere (term 1), plus the radiation emitted by the atmosphere itself (term 2):

with  as absorptivity and TA as temperature of the atmosphere.

Assuming a simple two-layer model (see also Schmithüsen et al. [9]) and replacing the absorptivity αA by the numerically identical emissivity εA , the greenhouse effect (GHE) can be expressed as (see [1] for further details):

The emissivity eS includes all IR-active gases and depends on their concentrations.

6.2 Different Impacts of the GH-Effect

The temperature difference between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere determines whether the GH-effect warms or cools, whether it is positive or negative (Eq. 4). We distinguish three scenarios:

A) (TS> TA): Usually, the Earth’s surface is warmer than the troposphere, and the temperature over the troposphere is declining with increasing altitude, in average 6.5 °C/km. The greenhouse effect is positive and has a warming effect. Under these conditions the atmosphere hinders the IR radiation transport to space, and the intensity FTOAis less than the original Earth’s radiation FS. Thus, the greenhouse effect is a kind of thermal insulation of the radiative transport (here).

B) (TS  = TA): At the same temperatures and εS = 1 there would be no greenhouse effect, as Richard Lindzen has aptly formulated:
It is an interesting curiosity that in the case convection had produced a constant temperature, there would be no greenhouse effect“ (here).

C) (TS < TA): When the Earth is colder than the atmosphere, there is a negative GH-effect. In this case, the radiation to space FTOA is greater than that of the Earth’s radiation FS. The energy required for this additional radiation is taken from the atmosphere, which leads to cooling. Such a constellation is realized in the current experiments, on the one hand to show the emission properties of greenhouse gases and on the other hand to prove the existence of a negative GH-effect on a model scale.

     The negative greenhouse effect also occurs under inversion weather conditions or during nightly cooling, when the near-Earth’s air is warmer than the ground.

The negative effect at the Earth’s poles is climatically significant, as often the interior of the Antarctica’s surface is colder than the air layers above. This increases the long-wave radiation in these regions and intensifies the cooling of the planet (Schmithüsen, 2015 [9], see also Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis.

A special case is heat, released by uplifting air as sensible or latent heat at higher altitudes (around 5 km or more). Here, particularly CO2 causes cooling and thus a negative greenhouse effect, as the cold universe with around -270 °C is the direct radiation partner and only a small amount of water vapor exists at higher altitudes (see also: Harde [4], Section 3, Cooling in the stratosphere, Fig. 10).

To avoid a misunderstanding: The recognition of the GH-effect is not a plea for a climate catastrophe, but merely the existence of a real atmospheric phenomenon. For the heat flows in the atmosphere, however, the greenhouse effect is of secondary importance. The Earth, 70% covered by water, controls its surface temperature mainly through evaporation, convection and, above all, by clouds. Vahrenholt  argues that a substantial fraction of recent warming may be attributable to reduced cloud cover driven by aerosol changes rather than greenhouse gases alone – a hypothesis that deserves serious consideration alongside the radiative forcing literature.

The formation of clouds depends critically on the existence of condensation nuclei, including the harmful sulfuric acid aerosols that form sulfur dioxide. Their reduction through flue gas desulfurization – a  process that has measurably improved air quality across Europe and North America since the 1970s – has also reduced the aerosol load that previously suppressed incoming solar radiation. Several researchers, including Wild (2009) [10], Rosenfeld et al. (2014) [11] and Schilliger et al. (2024) [12] have documented a corresponding increase in surface solar radiation (“global brightening”) that may have contributed to warming trends independent of greenhouse gas forcing. The climate consequences of aerosol reduction deserve more attention than they typically receive in mainstream attribution studies.

But there is also a significant natural influence on the cloud cover, as this can be derived from the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) data and the solar wind with its impact on cosmic rays, which also affect the formation of clouds (see: Svensmark et al., 2016 [13]; Harde, 2022 [14]).

The importance of clouds or their lack can be easily demonstrated by looking at the areas with the highest recorded Earth temperatures so far. In these areas, there are neither clouds nor large amounts of water vapor. The latter is of particular importance for the CO2 GH-effect, because according to the IPCC it is the so-called “water vapor feedback” that makes the harmless gas a global threat. The only strange thing is that the warmest places in the world are not the humid rainforests at the equator, but the dry or tropic deserts in the subtropics. The place with the highest ground temperature of 70 – 78 °C is the Dasht-e Kawir Desert in Iran with an annual rainfall of < 50 mm (here).

The Death Valley is one of the driest regions on earth. There, on  July 10, 1913, the air had a temperature of 56.7 °C, the highest value ever measured there (here).

Of course, these temperatures are driven by the proximity to the equator, the clear sky with the maximum possible hours of sunshine and a dry soil without water evaporation. But also the downdrafts, which counteract cooling by convection.

In the presence of larger amounts of water vapor, temperatures look quite different. For example, despite their proximity to the equator and their high humidity, the daily maximum values in the tropical rainforests are only about 30 °C (here). Since moist air increases convection due to its low density, this particularly strong buoyancy leads to climate stability in the tropics and to a so-called tropical attenuation. As a result of the upwelling in the tropics, dry downdrafts are created in the subtropics. These create additional areas of clear skies, so that the long-wave radiation can be emitted to space more efficiently (here). However, it must be admitted that in the tropics, in addition to evaporative cooling, cloud formation and the resulting reduced solar radiation as well as the almost daily rainfalls are responsible for the moderate day-night temperatures between 25 and 30 °C.

The oceans cannot keep up with the temperatures of the dry deserts.  The warmest of them, the Indian Ocean, reaches a maximum of 28 °C (as of 2021) (here). This is not only due to its enormous heat capacity and thermohaline circulation (ocean currents that connect warm and cold oceans, also known as the global conveyor belt). Above all, however, it is due to its evaporative cooling, which leads to cloud formation and precipitation (see, e.g., Clauser, 2024 [15]), but also to a negative feedback for the CO2 Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity ECS (Harde, 2017 [16], Subsec. 4.3.5). If humans intervene here, e.g. with well-intentioned measures for air purity, they cause more damage to the climate than through the release of CO2 (here, here).

It bears noting that claims of an impending “boiling” of the oceans are not physically plausible. The boiling point of water at sea level is 100 °C (212 °F), and dissolved salts raise this further. A 1–2 °C increase in ocean surface temperature, while consequential for marine ecosystems, is an entirely different physical regime from boiling. The laws of thermodynamics are not subject to rhetorical revision.


References

  1. H. Harde, M. Schnell 2025: The Negative Greenhouse Effect Part II: Studies of Infrared Gas Emission with an Advanced Experimental Set-Up, Science of Climate Change, Vol. 5.3., pp. 10-34.
    https://doi.org/10.53234/scc202510/03.
  2. H. Harde, M. Schnell, 2022: Verification of the Greenhouse Effect in the Laboratory, Science of Climate Change, Vol. 2.1, 1-33. https://doi.org/10.53234/scc202203/10
  3. M. Schnell, H. Harde, 2025: The Negative Greenhouse Effect Part I: Experimental Studies with a Common Laboratory Set-Up, Science of Climate Change, Vol. 5.3., pp. 1-9.         
    https://doi.org/10.53234/scc202510/02
  4. H. Harde, 2013: Radiation and Heat Transfer in the Atmosphere: A Comprehensive Approach on a Molecular Basis, International Journal of Atmospheric Sciences (Open Access), vol. 2013, http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/503727
  5. T.O. Seim, B.T. Olsen 2023: The Influence of Heat Source IR Radiation on Black-Body Heat- ing/Cooling with Increased CO2 Concentration, Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 13, 240-254. https://www.scirp.org/journal/acs
  6. P. Atkins, R. Friedman, 2011: Molecular Quantum Mechanics, 5. Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, Schwarzkörperstrahlung | tec-science
  7. G. E. Thomas, K. Stamnes, 1999: Radiative Transfer in the Atmosphere and Ocean, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U. K., equation 12.19.
  8. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), 2021: V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, A. Pirani et al.: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press.
  9. H. Schmithüsen, J. Notholt, G. König-Langlo, P. Lemke, T. Jung, 2015: How increasing CO2 leads to an increased negative greenhouse effect in Antarctica, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, pp. 10422 –10428, https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL066749
  10. M. Wild, 2009: Global dimming and brightening: A review, J. Geophys. Res., 114, D00D16, https://doi.org/10.1029/2008JD011470.
  11. D. Rosenfeld et al., 2014: Global observations of aerosol-cloud-precipitation-climate interactions, Rev. Geophys., 52, 750–808, https://doi.org/10.1002/2013RG000441
  12. L. Schilliger, A. Tetzlaff, Q. Bourgeois, L. F. Correa, M. Wild, 2024: An investigation on causes of the detected surface solar radiation brightening in Europe using satellite data, J. Geophys. Res.: Atmospheres, 129, e2024JD041101, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JD041101.
  13. J, Svensmark, M. A. B. Enghoff, N. J. Shaviv, H. Svensmark, 2016: The response of clouds and aerosols to cosmic ray decreases, Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, Vol. 121.9, pp. 8152–8181, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JA022689.
  14. H. Harde, 2022: How Much CO2 and the Sun Contribute to Global Warming: Comparison of Simulated Temperature Trends with Last Century Observations, Science of Climate Change, Vol. 2.2, pp. 105-133, https://doi.org/10.53234/scc202206/10.
  15. J. Clauser, 2024: The Cloud Thermostat Controls the Climate, EIKE-Conference, Wien, https://eike-klima-energie.eu/2024/08/01/john-clauser-der-wolken-thermostat-reguliert-das-klima-deutsche-version/
  16. H. Harde, 2017: Radiation Transfer Calculations and Assessment of Global Warming by CO2, International Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Volume 2017, Article ID 9251034, pp. 1-30, https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijas/2017/9251034/, https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/9251034
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Gregg Eshelman
April 5, 2026 2:11 am

Look into the tests using CO2 as a filler gas in double pane windows, and how it completely failed because it let more IR through than windows filled with normal air.

atticman
Reply to  Gregg Eshelman
April 5, 2026 2:40 am

The problem with sealed double panes filled with air is condensation just where you don’t want it.

Reply to  atticman
April 6, 2026 11:16 pm

You can use air with a dew point below -30 C. Condensation will occur if the dew point is above 15 C.

Robertvd
Reply to  Gregg Eshelman
April 5, 2026 3:25 am

If CO2 radiates in all directions would that not mean there is no change at all? More CO2 means more radiation going down but also more radiation going up.

MarkW
Reply to  Robertvd
April 5, 2026 8:07 am

That would be true if the only way CO2 looses energy is by radiation.
When the atmosphere is dense the CI2 molecule losses the energy gained from an IR photon by physical collision with another molecule in the atmosphere before it has a chance to radiate.

don k
Reply to  Gregg Eshelman
April 5, 2026 5:27 am

I was curious about this, so I did some quick research. (i.e. I could be dead wrong). The answer seems to be that radiation is a relatively minor mode for heat transfer through windows. The major mode is conduction. And/or conduction if the gap between panes in multipaned windows is too large. CO2 is actually a bit better than dry air at limiting conduction. But Argon is cheap and better than CO2 at limiting conduction. There’s a Quora thread that sounds sane discussing all this at length https://www.quora.com/If-CO2-is-good-at-keeping-heat-in-why-dont-we-use-it-in-double-glazing.

Kevin Kilty
Reply to  don k
April 5, 2026 11:40 am

don k,

You understand the issue, but I think you misspoke. If the gap between panels is too large it allows convection within the gap which increases heat transfer. The increasing gap distance increases the resistance to heat transfer by conduction, but if too large will allow convection which then decreases thermal resistance.

Rick C
Reply to  don k
April 5, 2026 3:40 pm

Don K> Actually CO2 has a slightly lower conduction coefficient (16.9 mW/m-K) than Argon (17.9 mW/m-K). Also, argon costs more than CO2 by around twice as much. I used to regularly buy both as welding shield gases. The main reason Argon is used in high performance windows is that it sounds high tech and appeals to consumers. IR properties are unimportant as glass is opaque to IR.

Rick C
Reply to  don k
April 5, 2026 3:40 pm

Don K> Actually CO2 has a slightly lower conduction coefficient (16.9 mW/m-K) than Argon (17.9 mW/m-K). Also, argon costs more than CO2 by around twice as much. I used to regularly buy both as welding shield gases. The main reason Argon is used in high performance windows is that it sounds high tech and appeals to consumers. IR properties are unimportant as glass is opaque to IR.

Robertvd
April 5, 2026 3:17 am

So the Polar ocean would boil first because of the lower surface pressure ?

Robertvd
Reply to  Robertvd
April 5, 2026 3:50 am

Antarctica is mostly a 2 to 3km high ice plateau. Counting that the Poles also have a lower atmosphere, is even less surface pressure at 3km above sea level, it is no wonder it can not hold any heat. I don’t think it would make any difference if 100% of the air over the Antarctica plateau would be CO2.

ScienceABC123
April 5, 2026 3:43 am

“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” – Albert Einstein

Henry Pool
April 5, 2026 4:09 am

Anyone can understand that the effect from 0.01% extra CO2 in the air must be next to nothing.

https://sciencepublishinggroup.com/article/10.11648/j.earth.20170606.18

Reply to  Henry Pool
April 5, 2026 4:44 am

Henry. that article is pure nonsense: the GHG effect is about radiation, as the current article by Hermann Harde says, not about the physical properties of every gas…

Henry Pool
Reply to  Ferdinand Engelbeen
April 5, 2026 8:13 am

His formula works for Venus and even for the south pole.The increase in CO2 over the past 50 years was only 0.01% of the total atmosphere. Using Holmes formula you get nothing….no extra warming. I got the same result. Remember?

Reply to  Henry Pool
April 6, 2026 12:37 am

Henry, that is curve fitting, just like the work of Nikolov and Zeller, whom invented a perpetuum mobile by “proving” that the atmospheric pressure was responsible for the temperature of the planet’s surface.

The extra “weight” of CO2 has zero influence on the temperature of the surface. The same CO2 added 0.2 W/m2 as back radiation to the surface in the period 2000-2010 as measured (!) by extreme accurate AERI meters.

Again not much, but anyway measurable. Nothing to do with the weight or specific heat of CO2…
https://escholarship.org/content/qt3428v1r6/qt3428v1r6.pdf

MarkW
Reply to  Henry Pool
April 5, 2026 8:13 am

A few grams of arsenic can kill a fully grown man.

rhs
Reply to  MarkW
April 5, 2026 5:18 pm

Dilute it with enough water and water toxicity will kill first.

Reply to  rhs
April 6, 2026 12:42 am

even at the current level of CO2, HCN would be enough to kill all life on earth with red blood cells…
MarkW’s and my point is that levels don’t say anything about effects…

Reply to  MarkW
April 5, 2026 6:16 pm

Using chemistry to explain physics – not a good idea.

John XB
April 5, 2026 5:36 am

Greenhouse effect of C02: in commercial greenhouses atmospheric C02 concentration of between 1 000ppm to 1 200ppm is maintained for better and quicker plant growth.

Why don’t they catch fire?

MarkW
Reply to  John XB
April 5, 2026 8:16 am

Because the energy absorbed by the CO is radiated to the rest of the world through the very large surface area of the greenhouse.

April 5, 2026 5:51 am

‘This interpretation ignores that there are also inelastic collisions which have the opposite effect to hyperelastic collisions.’

No it doesn’t. I don’t think the skeptics that Harde refers to ignore that the troposphere exhibits radiance in accordance with its temperature at various levels.

What they are skeptical of is that this radiance is evidence that radiative transfer, rather than convection, is the primary driver of energy transport through the lower troposphere.

Tom Johnson
April 5, 2026 5:58 am

The article is riddled with non-sensical sentences. Look at this first sentence of the second paragraph:
In this first part we consider some theoretical aspects of general interest: Why is the much stronger CO2 band of 4.3 μm compared to the 15 μm band, insignificant for heat transport, why is water vapor the dominant greenhouse gas, and why is in a laboratory experiment – like an iceberg – only seen the tip of the gas radiation.”

This makes no sense to me, and there are many others like it. One should not have to parse and diagram every sentence in order to make enough inferences and guesses as to divine what is meant by the statement.

Reply to  Tom Johnson
April 6, 2026 5:32 am

One that stood out to me was when he said 2.7 times ten to the 25th, was 27 quadrillion.
A quadrillion is ten to the 15th. So this is wrong by iirc 9 orders of magnitude.
Not sure if it is relevent, but it is sloppy. And wrong.

Dave Burton
April 5, 2026 6:37 am

[part 1 of 2]

It’s strange to read successive paragraphs which alternate between things that are clear and correct, and things that seem to make no sense.

For instance, this paragraph describes the mechanism which accounts for the well known dry adiabatic lapse rate. Harde & Schnell (hereafter HS) wrote:

When a parcel of air is lifting up in the atmosphere, it is expanding and cooling down due to this volume work. As a result , less molecules at lower speed are found at higher altitudes in one cubic meter of air, so that the number of collisions decreases.

That’s perfectly fine. But it is immediately followed by this mess:

From this critics have concluded that GH-gases in the lower atmosphere are only absorbers and no or only weak emitters. They only acquire the property of a good emitter at higher altitudes, in the tropopause and stratosphere, where they contribute to the IR radiation to space. As an explanation, they state that in the lower troposphere, collision processes in the form of hyperelastic collisions suppress spontaneous emissions. According to this, the absorbed energy would be converted mainly to kinetic energy as heat, which is called thermalization or radiation-less deactivation.

In flagrant violation of (Arlen & Mercer, 1945) I’m going to ignore the positive and just discuss what’s wrong.

HS: “…critics have concluded…”

Who are these “critics?” Critics of what?

HS: “…have concluded that GH-gases in the lower atmosphere are only absorbers and no or only weak emitters.”

I’ve never heard anyone suggest such a thing. Everyone who understands the so-called (poorly-named!) “greenhouse effect” understands that GHGs in the lower troposphere radiate more strongly than GHGs higher up, because the lower troposphere is warmer (thanks to the lapse rate which the preceding paragraph correctly described).

HS: “[according to the critics] They [the GHGs] only acquire the property of a good emitter at higher altitudes, in the tropopause and stratosphere, where they contribute to the IR radiation to space.”

Again, AFAIK, nobody of consequence says such a thing.

When you “look down” from outer space at the Earth’s atmosphere with an instrument which detects 15 µm radiation, the reason that the radiation you see comes from near the tropopause is not that CO2 at lower altitudes doesn’t emit 15 µm radiation. The reason is that the atmosphere is too optically thick at that wavelength for 15 µm radiation to travel so far.

At some wavelengths, CO2 is transparent, so the amount of CO2 in the air has no effect on those wavelengths. In fact, in “atmospheric window” around about 10 µm none of the GHGs in the air absorb appreciably, so most radiation passes right through

But at some wavelengths, CO2 absorbs and emits so strongly that ALL of the radiation at those wavelengths which escapes to space originates within the atmosphere. If you “look down” from space at the Earth with a spectrophotometer, the radiation you “see” at any given wavelength will be from some average altitude, called the “emission height.”

The intensity of that radiation depends on the air temperature where it is emitted: the higher the temperature, the more intensely the GHG emits.

Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere increases the emission heights. The question you should be wondering is how that affects the air temperature at the average emission height.

At some of those wavelengths, the emission height is so high that it is approximately at the tropopause. At the tropopause, changes in altitude have little or no effect on air temperature. So for those wavelengths, additional CO2 has no warming effect.

But at fringe wavelengths, where CO2 absorbs and emits only weakly, the emission height is lower, i.e., down in the troposphere. Within the troposphere, increasing the altitude decreases the average air temperature. So raising the emission height lowers the temperature at the emission height, which reduces the intensity of the emissions which escape to space. That reduces energy lost to space, so it has a warming effect.

The effect is small, but not zero. The most comprehensive analyses are by van Wijingaarden & Happer. This figure is from one of their papers; I added the blinking ovals, which highlight the small effect (only about 3 W/m²) on radiative emissions to space from doubling the CO2 level:

comment image

HS: “As an explanation, they state that in the lower troposphere, collision processes in the form of hyperelastic collisions suppress spontaneous emissions.”

Again, who are “they?” I’ve never heard anyone make such a claim. I asked ChatGPT to find examples of people making that claim, and it couldn’t find any. All it found was Harde & Schnell debunking the claim.

[…cont’d in part 2…]

Dave Burton
Reply to  Dave Burton
April 5, 2026 7:07 am

[part 2 of 2]

HS: “According to this, the absorbed energy would be converted mainly to kinetic energy as heat, which is called thermalization or radiation-less deactivation.”

The absorbed LW IR energy is converted entirely (not “mainly”) to heat, but that is not called radiation-less deactivation.

Absorbing non-ionizing radiation always warms whatever absorbed it.

At 1 atm and moderate temperatures, a CO2 molecule which has been vibrationally excited with with 82.7 meV of energy (either by absorbing a 15 µm LW IR photon, or by collisional transfer from another air molecule) will lose that energy to another air molecule by collision within a matter of nanoseconds (some sources say microseconds).

Alternatively, it can give up the energy by emission of another 15 µm photon, but the average time for that to occur is about one second.

Both processes happen continually, but below the Karman line collisional transfers of energy are many orders of magnitude more frequent than radiative emissions.

Those continual, rapid, collisional exchanges of energy are why the various gases in the atmosphere stay at the same temperature, even if some are absorbing and/or emitting radiation and others are not.

Most of the time when a CO2 molecule is vibrationally excited with with 82.7 meV of energy, it is through collisional transfer from another air molecule, so this cute animation (from UCAR, funded by the NSF) of a CO2 molecule absorbing a 15 µm photon and then emitting another one, represents a very low probability pair of events:

comment image

If anyone wants to learn about this, I recommend Prof. Happer’s UNC Physics seminar, under “Physics & geophysics,” on this resource list:

https://sealevel.info/learnmore.html?0=co2lines

HS: “For several years now, these two opposing views have been clashing in EIKE articles… (see Harde, Schnell 2024 and [2]).”

But both of the cited references are to other Harde & Schnell articles. In fact, only one of the 16 citations in their “References” section is to EIKE, and that’s to a youtube video (not an article), of Dr. Clauser discussing “The cloud thermostat,” which doesn’t seem pertinent.

So, where are the EIKE articles by those “critics” claiming that collision processes suppress spontaneous emissions of radiation by GHGs in the lower troposphere?

Richard M
Reply to  Dave Burton
April 5, 2026 7:41 am

See the videos from Marcus Ott.

Richard M
Reply to  Richard M
April 5, 2026 9:14 am

Sorry, wrong video. This is the one I meant to provide.

Reply to  Dave Burton
April 5, 2026 7:48 am

Then you also have to add vibrational modes of molecules and the relation ie interaction w water vapour.

Reply to  Dave Burton
April 5, 2026 8:48 am

DB,

You make many good points in your responses. The only ‘nit’ I have is that you invoke van Wijngaarden & Happer (vW&H) as a supposed counter to Harde given that the latter’s work / approach in calculating atmospheric radiances using the phenomenological physics of radiative transfer theory preceded the former’s efforts by many years.

While I admire their collective efforts on the basis that none of their calculations provide any support to the current paradigm of climate alarmism, no one to my knowledge has ever provided any evidence that the ‘back radiation’ inherent to these calculations has ever been measured.

Dave Burton
Reply to  Frank from NoVA
April 5, 2026 12:23 pm

Back radiation (IR emitted from the atmosphere which reaches the surface) is easily detected and measured. There’s no challenge at all to that.

The challenge is in measuring it precisely enough, over long enough periods of time, to detect the effect of changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration. That, too, can be done, but it isn’t easy.

Here’s a synopsis of various effects to calculate or measure that:

https://sealevel.info/Radiative_Forcing_synopsis.html

Reply to  Dave Burton
April 5, 2026 7:42 pm

‘Back radiation (IR emitted from the atmosphere which reaches the surface) is easily detected and measured. There’s no challenge at all to that.’

If you’re referring to radiation that originates from dust, water droplets, clouds and other forms of ‘condensed matter’ (note that the authors use this term), i.e., radiation that lies inside the so-called atmospheric window, I wouldn’t challenge that such can be detected at the surface. To that, I would also include atmospheric ‘radiance’ in the immediate vicinity of the detector.

On the other hand, based on my understanding of the attached paper by the late Michael Mishchenko of NASA-GISS, I would challenge the premise that energy in the form of ‘back radiation’ originating from, say, mid-tropospheric CO2 radiating at 15 microns, has ever been measured at the surface:

https://pubs.aip.org/aip/acp/article/1531/1/11/922276/125-years-of-radiative-transfer-Enduring-triumphs

The paper is short, but if you’re in a hurry, I would recommend reading the three paragraphs of the paper’s Conclusion, which I think present a formidable hurdle to those who believe that back radiation, as posited by the phenomenological physics of radiant transfer theory, provides a sound foundation for climate alarmism.

Crisp
Reply to  Frank from NoVA
April 5, 2026 10:50 pm

Wow, if these guys are correct, then all scientists have been misinterpreting the data from their WCS’s and other radiometers for over a century. The measurements may be right but they are simply not measuring what they thought they were measuring. Hence, their conclusions in relation of radiation energy are meaningless.

Reply to  Frank from NoVA
April 6, 2026 2:23 am

Frank, some devices only measure total incoming IR, of whatever origin, but in the laboratory (HITRAN and MODTRAN) they have measured the complete spectrum of all atmospheric constituents in different compositions and at different air pressures, so that thy could compute the resulting IR energy up and down, depending of the height in the atmosphere:
https://hitran.org/

Then we have instruments that measure all incoming IR in detail for each wavelength and compare that to two black bodies at different temperatures. These show – again – the change in back radiation of CO2 and other GHGs over a period of 10 years:
https://escholarship.org/content/qt3428v1r6/qt3428v1r6.pdf

That are real measurements, not theoretical assessments…

Reply to  Ferdinand Engelbeen
April 6, 2026 8:35 am

FE,

We’ve discussed Feldman in the past. It relies on RT models, so it’s a circular argument. And as Mishchenko points out, there is a fundamental problem in that so-called well-collimated radiometers don’t measure energy flows. You might want to view this video of Mishchenko speaking to a number of modelers – long, but enlightening.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hjKJyn_uoIE&ra=m

PS – Whoever downvoted you, it wasn’t me.

April 5, 2026 8:22 am

From ref 1:”Addition of CO2
leads to a significant cooling of the gas temperatures T1 and T2 with a simultaneous increase in
the measured IR radiation intensity I0,av (Fig. 17).”

At first blush seems to vindicate what I have been saying that CO2 and H2O are coolants in the atmosphere.

The levels of CO2 were very high 2%, 4% and 8% along with the temperatures. 51C or 44C are not STP.

I was unable find what emissivity they used for CO2.

Michael S. Kelly
April 5, 2026 1:05 pm

What’s a plate PC?

Reply to  Michael S. Kelly
April 5, 2026 1:41 pm

Good question. Poly carbonate?

Reply to  Michael S. Kelly
April 6, 2026 5:47 am

I wondered that too.
Very annoying.

Alexy Scherbakoff
Reply to  Michael S. Kelly
April 7, 2026 10:48 pm

Probably Plate Cool. It’s translated from the original language.

April 5, 2026 2:48 pm

Gemini summary:
Laboratory Breakthrough: Scientists Demonstrate “Reverse Greenhouse Effect”BERLIN — In a study challenging conventional climate narratives, physicists Hermann Harde and Michael Schnell have published laboratory results demonstrating what they call the “reverse” or “negative” greenhouse effect. Using a specialized experimental apparatus, the researchers showed that greenhouse gases—including CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide—can actually facilitate the cooling of a system under specific thermal conditions. This occurs when the surrounding air is warmer than a solid surface it exchanges radiation with, causing the gases to spontaneously convert ambient heat into infrared radiation that escapes to the environment.
The experiment, detailed in the journal Science of Climate Change, aims to verify the dual nature of greenhouse gases as both absorbers and emitters of radiation. While traditional climate models emphasize how these gases trap heat (absorption), Harde and Schnell’s work focuses on their role as emitters. By cooling a detector plate and measuring the heat flux, the team observed that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases increased outgoing radiation, thereby cooling the air. The researchers argue this effect is climatically significant in regions like Antarctica, where the surface is often colder than the air above, allowing greenhouse gases to accelerate the planet’s cooling.
Beyond the laboratory, the authors suggest that the “water vapor feedback” often cited as a primary driver of global warming may be overestimated. Their findings indicate that while water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, its overlap with other gases like CO2 creates a “saturation effect” that diminishes the marginal impact of rising CO2 levels. Harde and Schnell conclude that Earth’s temperature is more heavily regulated by evaporation, convection, and cloud cover than by infrared radiation alone, suggesting that natural variations and aerosol changes play a much larger role in climate trends than currently acknowledged by mainstream models.

Crisp
April 5, 2026 10:44 pm

Their concluding sentence: The laws of thermodynamics are not subject to rhetorical revision.
But isn’t that exactly what the AGW theory relies on, i.e. trashing the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?
Why would they present an emission spectra for 44 deg and 1031hPa when that rarely occurs, and only at the Earth’s surface, certainly never over the oceans and never in the upper troposphere where it below 0 deg? Why would they then compare this with radiation at a ground temperature of 15 °C. And why would they use 2% CO2 concentration, 50 times higher than actual? Can someone make sense of this.

Reply to  Crisp
April 6, 2026 5:51 am

Those other gasses at 2% is even more questionable.

April 6, 2026 3:04 am

It is quite difficult to follow what the proof exactly does, maybe it gets clear in the second part…

Besides what David Burton already said, I have one remark that must be solved to know what the real energy flows are:

In the earlier experiments, the air was heated with an electric heater. That gives a constant input Q to the upper air in the cylinder, independent of the temperature inside the cylinder.

In the current experiment, Harde uses a water jacket at constant temperature, which gives different energy inputs Q(in) to the upper air, dependent of the temperature difference between water and inner atmosphere. That makes it far more difficult to conclude anything about the GHG effect, as only the output energy Q(out) is measured.

Without the measurement or calculation of Q(in), the experiment does not show what Harde wants to show…

Alexy Scherbakoff
Reply to  Ferdinand Engelbeen
April 7, 2026 4:55 am

It seems like a variant of measuring the specific heat of gases with extra thermometers in strange places.

steenr
April 6, 2026 4:53 am

We often see the planck curve for the temperature of 288,7K =15,55 °C (or the postulated average temperature of the surfface of the Earth). But actually the Happer and Wijngaarden papers show that this emission curve actually varies by temperature, and the LWR absorption by atmospheric CO2 is negative (= emission) with low temperatures.
The Greenhouse effect is a real effect, but in the troposphere the most energy transportation is done by water vapor also as mentioned here and not solely by radiative emissions. For the black and grey body theory to work, you need a vacuum. Shule and Ott has demonstrated that this only can be considered in an altitude of approximately 80km. So when we observe the outbound radiation from Earth at TOA. Therefor it could be interesting to see the various planck curves from TOA over respectively Arctic and equator.

April 6, 2026 11:13 pm

Thank you, Anthony,

I have checked the H2O and CO2 absorption graphs in my classic edition of CRC and used them to argue for H2O as much broader absorption than CO2. The difference in the concentration of H2O and CO2 should make it obvious that H2O is the much stronger GHG. Your graphs make this very clear..