Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach (@WEschenbach at X, my own blog is here.)
I’d like to take a moment to discuss some implications of my peer-reviewed paper about my implementation of a Constructal climate model. The paper is available here. I’ll steal some images from the paper for this discussion
To understand the model, it’s necessary to understand the Constructal Law. The Constructal Law is the most recently discovered fundamental law of thermodynamics. It applies to flow systems far from equilibrium, which is much of what we see in the world around us.
The Constructal Law was discovered by Adrian Bejan in 1996. His statement of it is as follows:
“For a flow system to persist in time it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to its currents.”
In terms of the Earth’s climate as a whole, what this means is that the climate system is always working to maximize the flow of power from the tropics to the poles and from there out to space.
This is the missing link in the current generation of climate models. They view the climate as a passive, linear system where if, say, the albedo increases by some amount X, then some other variable will perforce change by an amount Y. But that’s not the case.
Instead, the climate is dynamic. It responds to changing conditions, not randomly, but always following the Constructal Law by evolving in the direction of increasing the throughput of power from the tropics to the poles.
Now, Bejan and Reis applied the Constructal Law to the Earth’s climate and derived the equations governing the situation.
Fig. 1. Conceptual Constructal model. Earth’s surface is divided into a hot equatorial zone (area AH, temperature TH) and the cold polar zones (total area AL, temperature TL). Heat flow q is transported from hot to cold zones by atmospheric and oceanic circulation.
Clearly, that is an extremely simplified model. There’s no ocean, no mountains, just a simple sphere with some unspecified means of transporting the heat from the tropics to the poles.
The model calculates four different variables—the average temperatures TH and TL of the hot and cold zones, the area AH of the hot zone, and the power flow “q”.
The model calculates the temperature using two observable climate variables—the albedo (how much solar energy is reflected back to space) and the “greenhouse factor” (how much upwelling surface radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere). The short version is that the albedo regulates how quickly the power from the sun enters the system, and the greenhouse factor regulates how quickly that power leaves the system. Obviously, the temperature of the system will depend on the ratio of the two—if more power is entering than leaving the system will warm, and vice versa.
But as I said above, this is not a simple linear relationship. What happens is that the climate system is constantly evolving, subject to the constraints of power in and power out, to maximize the power throughput.
However, what Bejan and Reis didn’t do was to actually implement that model on a computer and test it against the actual Earth’s climate. So I set out to do that, and succeeded far beyond my expectations.
Here’s what the system looks like on the real Earth. Just as in the model, there is a clear hot zone and two cold zones, and the boundary between them is roughly linear and symmetrical north/south.
Fig. 2. Actual Earth hot equatorial zone (area AH, temperature TH) and cold polar zones (total area AL, temperature TL). Note that unlike the oceans that follow the theoretical boundaries shown in Fig. 1, the desert areas are in the cold zone.
And despite the model not having deserts and mountains and oceans and all the rest, here’s how well the model is able to emulate the actual average temperatures of the hot and cold zones.
Fig. 3. Annual mean temperatures from CERES observations (blue/cyan) and Constructal model (red/orange). Top: hot zone temperature TH. Bottom: cold zone temperature TL. Note that the model is NOT tuned to reproduce these temperatures, it is only tuned to reproduce the interzonal temperature difference.
Other than a slight variation around 2010, the computed and actual temperatures are so close that they overlap each other almost exactly.
And here are the annual changes in the anomalies of the actual and modeled power flow “q” from the tropics to the poles.
Fig. 4. Anomalies (about data mean) of the CERES satellite data (blue) and modeled Constructal results (red) for the amount of power flowing from the Equator to the Poles.
This graph is clear evidence that the model is actually capturing how the climate works. It does indeed follow the Constructal Law, maximizing the power flowing from the tropics to the poles just as the Constructal Law predicts.
Finally, here’s how well the model calculates the area of the hot zone “AH”.
Figure 5. As in Figure 1, but overlaid with what the model calculates as the boundaries between the hot and cold zones.
As I said, I was quite surprised by this. I didn’t expect the model to emulate the Earth anywhere near as well as it did.
Finally, I used the model to see what the climate sensitivity would be if the greenhouse factor were increased by, say, a doubling of CO2. I got an answer of an increase of 1.1°C from a doubling of CO2. This is at the lower end of the other previous estimates of this sensitivity, but it is not the lowest.
Figure 6. The climate sensitivity estimated from doubling the CO2 in the Constructal climate model.
However, this does not include any changes in the albedo or any effect of the warming on the prevalence or timing of thunderstorms and cumulus fields, so it is likely an upper bound on the climate sensitivity.
Let me close this section by noting that, as shown in Figure 6 above, despite hundreds of thousands of hours of computer time and human study, the uncertainty and spread of the estimates of the constant called the “climate sensitivity” have increased over time. I view this as evidence that the underlying theory is incorrect. That theory says that the changes in temperature are a simple linear function of the downwelling radiation times the constant climate sensitivity. The Constructal Law says that this is not the case, and the model demonstrates that.
Conclusions and Implications
1) The model shows that the Earth’s climate system is indeed ruled by the Constructal Law, in that it maximizes tropical-polar power flow. Any model that does not include this active evolution of the system is an incorrect representation of reality.
2) Two variables alone, the albedo and the greenhouse factor, are sufficient to explain the changes in the surface temperature, as well as the variations in the equatorial-polar energy flow and the area of the hot zone. So while the model clearly shows that the greenhouse effect is real and important … the model also shows that it’s only half the story.
3) The climate sensitivity, which is how much the temperature will rise from a doubling of CO2, is likely to be quite small. So it looks like Thermageddon™ is cancelled, sorry, no refunds of the billions spent on meaningless climate gestures.
4) While it is at least somewhat possible to provide some direction and bounds on the future evolution of the greenhouse factor, that’s only half of the equation. The other half is the albedo. The variations in albedo are mostly ruled by the clouds, which everyone agrees are the part of the climate that is least understood and hardest to model, measure, or predict. As a result, the state of our current knowledge of clouds makes any long-term projections of future climate states … well … let me call them wildly hubrimistic and leave it at that.
Late night here, the redwood forest is wrapped in fog. The fog channels sound and makes it carry, so I can hear the currently high Pacific Ocean surf grumbling and gnawing on the coast six miles (10 km) to the west. Ah, dear friends, what an amazing, entrancing, awesome world it is our privilege to inhabit.
I can only wish the best of life for all of you,
w.
PS—Yes, you’ve heard it before: when you comment, please QUOTE the exact words you are discussing. It helps greatly to avoid the misunderstandings that are the bane of the intarwebs.
PPS:
hubrimistic
adjective
hu·bri·mis·ticˌˈhyü-brə-ˈmi-stik
: of, relating to, or characterized by feeling or showing unwarranted hope for the future, with just a soupçon of hubris thrown in for good measure
Very interesting. How far back in time does it correlate? Occam’s razor comes to mind. Thanks for sharing and I believe Bejan is right on,.
2010 had a large volcano in Indonesia that released a lot of SO2 into the atmosphere.
Perhaps the next Law of Thermodynamics to be discovered will relate to the rate of adaptation of flows?
I wonder how many more laws are out there to be discovered before we are able to make accurate models.
I sent the Willis article to William Happer and here is his response.
“It makes more sense than the IPCC models. And it is certainly right that doubling CO2 will cause very small warming, but 1.1 C is still probably too large.”
Willis,
Would you need to take CO2 saturation into account to get a smaller number?
Addition
Here are four articles attesting to the small global warming role of CO2 in the atmosphere
.
Eight Taiwanese Engineers Determine Climate Sensitivity to a 300 ppm CO2 Increase Is ‘Negligibly Small’
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/eight-taiwanese-engineers-determine-climate-sensitivity-to-a-300
By Kenneth Richard
.
The Fairy Tale of The CO2 Paradise Before 1850…A Look at The Real Science
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-fairy-tale-of-the-co2-paradise-before-1850-a-look-at-the-real
By Fred F. Mueller
.
Achieving ‘Net Zero by 2050’ Reduces Temps by 0.28 C Costing Tens of $TRILLIONS
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/achieving-net-zero-by-2050-reduces-temps-by-0-28-c-costing-tens
By Kenneth Richard
.
German Researcher: Doubling Of Atmospheric CO2 Causes Only 0.24°C Of Warming …Practically Insignificant
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/german-researcher-doubling-of-atmospheric-co2-causes-only-0-24-c
By P Gosselin on 19. November 2024
another modeller finds ECS 1C per doubling.
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulburgess3/p/explaining-every-temperature-change?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=17bedn
Following up on my 1st thought, it was implicitly done over a century ago when Arrhenius realised that the k of his famous equation is related to the equilibrium position between two states.
He linked kinetics and thermodynamics.
Differentiating for the distance from the nominal equilibrium would give the rate of recovery from perturbance. And this constructual law tells us which route towards equilibrium will be taken.
My only difficulty with this approach is that it does assume we have a solution to a p = np problem.
Thanks,
That plot of ECS is just, well, profound, considering the certitude of the green machine.
One has to ask:
“ does the code solve the right equations; are the boundary conditions implemented correctly; do conservation laws hold; does the solution converge as you refine the grid or timestep; and does the model reproduce known analytical or benchmark solutions when you feed it simple test cases? “
“And despite the model not having deserts and mountains and oceans…”
Oceans add significant thermal and heat transport delays. So how is it that Fig. 4 has all of the temporal features perfectly time aligned over a 24-year period?
ARGO indicates that differential ocean inputs are mostly a ‘shallow’ (mixing layer to thermocline) phenomena. That by itself sufficiently explains your F4 question.
One possibility is that “thermal and heat transport” are less significant than latent and kinetic energy transport.
So, I don’t have to worry about: a Godzilla El Niño; the AMO turning; or a cold blob and collapsing AMOC? They don’t affect power flow?
Given the (3) down votes, I guess I was wrong about the need to included a sarcasm indicator.
I’ve just published a new paper on Zenodo proposing the Vapour Phase Change Anchor Hypothesis.
The core idea is that the Lifting Condensation Level (LCL / cloud base), anchored by the dew-point temperature of water, together with the frost-point cirrus cap at ~–40 °C, functions as a dual thermodynamic control system that governs Earth’s tropospheric structure.
Instead of surface temperature driving everything (the usual top-down view), the hypothesis treats the LCL as a fundamental governor. Surface temperature and pressure adjust as co-dependent variables to satisfy the fixed dew-point boundary where phase change occurs. This framework naturally explains the distinct ascent (ITCZ-style) and descent (subtropical high) regimes, links LCL height to convective intensity, and produces strong negative feedbacks through cloud and latent heat responses.
When tested against the ERA5 global reanalysis (1981–2010), the dual-anchor model reproduces the observed mean temperature-pressure profile with high accuracy (RMS errors of 0.8–2.1 K).
Full paper (open access with DOI):
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20691914
Constructive comments and criticism are welcome.
See my long comment to WE just posted below. WE constructal model’s ECS result implies ~zero net feedbacks. The water vapor feedback must be significantly positive. What was missing is an equally significant negative feedback—your new ‘verified and validated’ dual anchor hypothesis provides that. I am off to read your new paper. Congrats.
The paper concludes a self-stabilising system, which is reasonably well known. However the surface temperature is warming. A valid test is predictive capability. What will the GAST be in 2030 and 2100AD.
If you want comments, why not ask WUWT to do an article on the paper? It would be better than hijacking this thread.
RickWill
I make one comment and you accuse me of thread bombing?
Is it not the prerogative of the host to decide when a comment is unacceptable?
Why not make your own thread as I suggested.
Would you host a post on Bomwatch?
What is wrong with WUWT. This site gets more eyeballs and is far more active than Bomwatch.
Send proposed article to Charles.
What makes you think that I have not already approached WUWT?
@RickWill. From my records: Email to Anthony Watts How the Dew Point Solves Our “Wicked” Climate Problem 2026/Apr/06 08:26. I have received no reply.
To date I have reached out to 91 world class scientists about my work. I have had a reply from 15 in total; of these replies, 8 were supportive, 4 were neutral and 3 were dismissive. I have submitted my work to world class journals and received multiple rejections. In the most recent example, the editor personally contacted 20 top academic professors for review, 19 of whom failed to engage with him. The editor received one rejection response and was forced by protocol to refuse my paper. That rejection was helpful to me because it allowed me to sharpen my focus in my most recent work. In my opinion all of this demonstrates that the science is closed.
Zenodo is the only door left open to me. Since my engagement there starting on 9th April 2026 I have made 23 deposits that have received in total 1,781 Views and 2,314 Downloads.
Bottom Line?
My own view is this. My work is unsettling for two reasons.
1. It is a clear paradigm shift that returns meteorology back to its primary role as a study and application of mass-motion physics within the confines of a gravitationally bound atmosphere.
2. The application of Mark Chain Stochastic inverse modelling using simple python script on a modest Dell PC rides a coach and horses thru the apparent need for high-end and very expensive global climate models.
First, they ignore you…
I suggest you email Charles Rotter:
charlesthemoderator <charlesthemoderator@gmail.com>
It helps Charles to send as a word document without any complex formatting – just use Bold type for headings. Any images I include, I use PNG images and set to width of 16cm. Height is not as important.
I have doubts that you can get it published in a Climate related journal. They are not interested and it would lose them readership. You already have it in the public domain so you have prior claim.
In any case, the real test is predictive capability. So I would be looking at how you can use it to predict what will happen in 5 years and 80 years. The globe is warming for obvious reasons to those who understand precession of the orbit.
@RickWill Thank you for the advice.
See my analysis below.
w.
Here’s my analysis, Phil.
Your key move in the paper is to take the lifting condensation level (LCL) and a –40 °C cirrus level and promote them from diagnostic features of the atmospher to primary constraints that are supposed to determine the surface temperature and pressure.
In other words, you reverse the usual causal chain. In standard atmospheric theory, we start from surface energy balance and radiative transfer, add dynamics and phase changes, and from that machinery we get the temperature and humidity profiles; the LCL and cirrus levels then fall out of those profiles as derived quantities.
By contrast, you assume that the dew point at the LCL is “fixed,” and that the surface variables dutifully adjust themselves to make that happen.
The difficulty is that dew point and LCL height are not independent levers; they are empirically tied to the near‑surface water vapor content and temperature.
Those, in turn, are strongly shaped by radiative forcing, circulation, and boundary conditions at the surface. A substantial body of work on land–atmosphere coupling shows that if you change soil moisture, surface sensible and latent heat fluxes, or the radiation balance, you move the LCL height and you change the dew point.
In other words, the causality in both observations and theory runs from the surface and radiation field to the LCL, not the other way around. That makes it hard to sustain the idea that the dew point can serve as an independent thermodynamic “anchor” for the whole system.
On top of that, the global atmosphere is constrained by more than just two points on the water phase diagram. Large‑scale circulation, baroclinicity, and the vertical profile of radiative cooling all provide additional, independent constraints on the tropospheric state that you cannot simply compress into “liquid here, ice there, everything else follows.”
The paper does not, as far as I can see, offer a quantitative demonstration that specifying the dew point at the LCL and imposing a fixed –40 °C cap at a cirrus level is sufficient to determine the full range of tropospheric temperature, humidity, and pressure states. Nor does it really engage with the standard energy‑balance and radiative‑transfer equations that we already know place tight constraints on the system’s behavior.
So, while it is an interesting attempt to recast the problem in terms of a few special levels in the atmosphere, it seems to invert the usual direction of causality and to neglect several important physical constraints that any successful theory has to satisfy.
My best regards to you, thanks for a thought-provoking paper.
w.
PS—Here are some links to back that up.
Soil Moisture Conditions Determine Land‐Atmosphere Coupling
Land–Atmosphere Coupling Manifested in Warm-Season Observations on the U.S. Southern Great Plains
When, Where and to What Extent Do Temperature Perturbations Near Deep Convection Occur
@Willis Eschenbach Re: Your thoughtful analysis of my DPAH paper
Dear Willis,
Thank you for your detailed critique and for sharing the supporting references. I appreciate the time you invested in both reading the paper and providing these links:
Soil Moisture Conditions Determine Land‐Atmosphere CouplingLand–Atmosphere Coupling Manifested in Warm-Season Observations on the U.S. Southern Great PlainsWhen, Where and to What Extent Do Temperature Perturbations Near Deep Convection OccurThese studies clearly illustrate the important bidirectional interactions between surface conditions (soil moisture, sensible/latent heat fluxes) and atmospheric response, including effects on LCL height and convective development. They strengthen the conventional view that surface processes and radiation significantly influence boundary-layer thermodynamics and convection.
The core of the Dew-Point Anchor Hypothesis (DPAH) and its extension Frost-Point Anchor Hypothesis (FPAH) is to explore the complementary perspective: that the phase-change level of the dominant condensable volatile (LCL for dew or frost-point/sublimation level for ice) can act as a robust, observationally constrained internal thermodynamic anchor. From this anchor, surface temperature and pressure emerge as dependent variables through hydrostatic equilibrium, the adiabat, and top-of-atmosphere energy balance (Atmospheric Thermal Effect — ATE).
This view is motivated by comparative planetary atmospheres. Venus and Mars, for example, show tropopauses at similar elevations despite radically different compositions and solar inputs. Analogous anchoring appears in Earth cirrus (FPAH), Martian CO₂ frost cycles, and outer solar system bodies. The framework does not deny surface coupling or radiative transfer — it proposes that the phase-change anchor provides a powerful first-order constraint that operates alongside those processes.
Our Python-based DPAH Testbed toolbox (Run3001–Run3017 series) now includes dynamic LCL/frost-point physics, composition sweeps, temperature-dependent heat capacities, and MCMC inverse modelling. These tools quantitatively show that anchoring at the phase-change level plus ATE balance can reproduce plausible surface conditions across a range of cases.
I would be pleased to share the complete toolbox (scripts, diagnostic plots, CSV outputs, and MCMC results for both Venus and terrestrial/Moore 2013 cases) so you can examine the quantitative demonstrations directly. I believe they address some of the points regarding sufficiency of the anchor constraints.
Thank you again for the stimulating feedback and the additional references. I remain very open to continued discussion.
With best regards,
Phil Mulholland
p.s. Rather than further derail your WUWT thread (as per @RickWill concerns) please suggest a contact point for my revised work based on your criticisms.
p.p.s. If you prefer to work in R rather than glitchy Python I will switch my focus to using RStudio.
Albedo si.
CO2 climate sensitivity nyet.
Simple & wrong. H. L. Mencken
Yep – 100% correct. It is all bullshit. Will go into history as the greatest hoax.
POTUS Trump’s greatest legacy is that he was brave enough to call out the bullshit and defund the protagonists.
UN cuts for 2026 mostly spare its elite, draft budget shows | Reuters
It has underscored the global reliance on carbon based fuels and the high cost of so-called “renewables”.
Q = 1/R A (Thot – Tcold)
R is composite thermal resistance of the atmosphere.
Universal heat transfer equation.
No CO2 hocus pocus.
Your equation works for house walls, and and most heat exchangers of common design that “don’t” rely on radiation ……But Radiative Heat Transfer is proportional to [Thot^4-Tcold^4] so you are WRONG before you even start to consider CO2 and other GHG bandwidths….and our planet ONLY can get rid of heat by radiation….
Well of course.
More radiative material in an atmosphere results in faster convective overturning and thus faster emission of solar energy to space to keep the system energy content stable.
I’ve been saying that for nearly 20 years now.
The system always adapts automatically to ensure that the upward pessure gradient within an atmosphere equals the downward force of gravity, otherwise no atmosphere.
In the case of our emissions the necessary adjustment would be too small to measure.
Atmospheric R = Conduction + Convection + Advection +Latent + Radiation = 100%
I have an experiment that demonstrates this relationship.
Can your correlating disparate causes be confirmed by experiment?
What is “Atmospheric R”? Should “Absorption” come before “Conduction”?
The basic process for heating the atmosphere is: Absorption of sunlight by the surface which then heats up. Air contacts warm surface and by conduction heats up. Warm air rises up by convection and heats up the atmosphere.
Last winter in the Yukon temperatures plunged to -50° C, which broke all previous low temperature records. Sunlight is the most factor causing warming of the air.
The tilted axis and spherical surface have major roles in the W/m^2 at both ToA & surface.
WE, an impressive paper and post. A verified and validated yet simple ‘climate’ model.
I am very intrigued by your model’s ECS of ~1.1C. The no feedbacks ECS has been variously estimated as 1.1 (Curry 2010), 1.2 (Lindzen 2011), or 1.16 (me ~2016 using Monckton’s then new and contentious ‘irreducible equations’ paper and his parameters therefor).
Your result implies the net sum of all feedbacks is zero or slightly negative. That is counterintuitive, since water vapor is a GHG that by itself implies a significant positive feedback given Clausius-Clapeyron. IPCC itself said (in AR4, 5, and 6) all else except water vapor and clouds nets out to about zero. Clouds are the most inherently uncertain thing in conventional climate models per the IPCC. Can a negative cloud feedback be offsetting a positive water vapor feedback? Or is there also some other IPCC overlooked or misestimated negative feedback?
We do know from the Russian paper on why INM CM5 does not produce a spurious tropical troposphere hot spot that the water vapor feedback in all the rest of CMIP6 is about 2x too high. Ocean rainfall in INM CM5 was parameterized using ARGO—one of its three specific design intents. As a result, INM CM5 had ~twice the tropical rainfall so half the tropical water vapor positive feedback. So there does not need to be a strong negative cloud feedback to net to about zero feedbacks assuming IPCC got the others right.
Just adding Lindzen’s adaptive iris thunderstorm effect to an EU climate model cut its ECS in half. Judith and I did back to back posts on that some years ago over at her Climate Etc. She interviewed Lindzen about the history of his paper, I reviewed the then new paper where an adaptive iris was added to a conventional model cutting its ECS in half.
Thanks, Rud, your comments are always most fascinating.
I have to disagree, however, with your statement, viz:
The global average surface temperature only varied by less than half a percent over the entire 20th Century. This is surprising stability. To me, this clearly implies that the net feedback must be negative.
Yes, there is an increase in water vapor with temperature. But there are also corresponding increases in cloud cover, the timing of cloud emergence, and the amount and timing of thunderstorms.
In addition, increased water vapor only makes a significant difference in the GHE in clear conditions. Under cloudy conditions the GHE is mostly set by the clouds … and about 70% of the planet is covered with clouds.
I just ran the numbers. The GHE absorbs around 40% of upwelling radiation. Yes, this increases with increasing total precipitable water. But a 3% increase in precipitable water only causes about a 0.1% increase in the GHE percentage.
And while the increase in water vapor causes small positive changes in radiation, the increase in clouds and thunderstorms causes large negative changes in radiation.
You seem to be admitting that with your comments on Lindzen’s adaptive iris.
See my post “Observational and theoretical evidence that cloud feedback decreases global warming” for a deeper discussion of this question.
My best to you as always,
w.
I think we are actually agreeing to agree. My ‘counterintuitive’ comment concerned Clausius-Claperyon and water vapor ‘by itself’. The rest of my comment was in search of the implied negative offset. We both agree (and so does Mulholland’s new paper he commented on above and which I just finished studying to return here) it is clouds.
Now that is important for three reasons.
“which ‘climate scientists’ persist in ignoring because it means they are all wrong and have been since the beginning. I think your hypothesis is correct, and that you have shown it many times in many ways”
Yes, they have been wrong from the beginning. And I too think Willis is on the right track. We’ll get this figured out one of these days, and I don’t think it will be that long. We are getting close.
It’s exciting to watch some of the really smart people here at WUWT making what look to be breakthroughs in “the Science”. There is no climate crisis.
My highest praise for this contribution.
Just back to the elementary level, let us all remind ourselves that positive feedback in any system implies that the system is like gunpowder, liable to go off explosively.
The globe is, to me, akin to a living organism and all living organisms which persist for any length of time confine themselves to using negative feedback mechanisms.
Externally stress the whole system sufficiently and a positive feedback occurs, death or should one feedback element internally reach a critical stage, and death results too.
I learn this from more than half a century of medical practice which included development of the cardiac crash carts with medications and electroshock apparatus which sometimes reversed the process and resuscitated the dying patient.
People’s belief that a single factor or feedback dominates all others is exactly why Willis is describing a more comprehensive way to understand the processes that describe climate.
I agree with both you and Willis. See my reply comment to him just above. It is not ‘People’s belief’. It is the IPCC belief and their continued insistence that both WVF and CF are significantly positive, so ECS must be high. ‘Everybody knows’ that the no feedbacks ECS is between 1.1 and 1.2. My own estimate using Monckton’s equations and parameters is 1.16. Without significant positive feedbacks, IPCC is out of business— not their preferred outcome.
Rud Istvan: “Your result implies the net sum of all feedbacks is zero or slightly negative. That is counterintuitive, since water vapor is a GHG that by itself implies a significant positive feedback given Clausius-Clapeyron.”
Two questions:
(1) Is the ‘positive water vapor feedback‘ you refer to here essentially the same one that is cited by Soden & Held as being a positive feedback mechanism for amplifying the basic warming effects of CO2 above and beyond what CO2 by itself is capable of doing?
(2) Is this positive water vapor feedback mechanism physically observable in real time as it is operating within the earth’s actual atmosphere; i.e., it is not simply a post-hoc means for explaining why a variety of computer model runs deliver the results that they do?
Thanks.
Harold The Organic Chemist Says:
CO2 Does Not Cause Warming Of The Air!
ECS Is Zero!
Shown in the chart (See below) is plot of the annual mean temperature in Adelaide from 1857 to 1999. In 1857 the concentration of CO2 was ca. 280 ppmv (0.52 g CO2/cu. m. of air), and by 1999 it had increased to 368 ppmv
(0.72g CO2/cu. m. of air), but there was no increase in air temperature in this port city. Instead there was cooling that began in ca. 1940. In 1857 the average mean temperature (Tav) was 17.2° C, and by 1999 it had declined to 16.7° C.
To obtain recent Adelaide temperature data I went to:
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/adelaide/average-temperature-by-year. The Thi and Tlo data from 1887 to 2025 is displayed in a table. The computed Tav for 2025 is 17.4° C. Since temperature measurement error is +/-0.1° C, it is concluded that there has been no warming of the air for 168 years in Adelaide, that CO2 has no influence on air temperature and therefore the ECS must be zero.
In 2025 at the Mauna Loa Obs. in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air was 429 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has a mass of 1,290 g and contains a mere 0.84 g of CO2, a 17% increase from 1999. Please note and never forget how very little CO2 there is in the air. The above empirical data falsifies the claims by the corrupt IPCC and the unscrupulous collaborating scientists that CO2 causes global and is the control knob of climate change. Please keep in mind and never forget how very little CO2 there is in the air.
The chart was obtained from the late John L. Daly website:
“Still Waiting For Greenhouse” available at: http://www.john-daly.com. From the home page go to the end and click on “Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map”, click on “Australia”. There is displayed a list of stations. Click on “Adelaide”. Click on the back arrow to redisplay the list of stations. Click on the back arrow again to display the “World Map”. John Daly found over 200 weather stations that had no warming up to 1002.
NB: If click on the chart it will expand and become clear. Click on the “X” in the circle to contract the chart and return to Comments.
Harold, how can an Organic chemist, whose standard tools of the trade are IR and UV spectroscopy believe that CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t cause the air to be heated by absorption of Earthly emitted IR…by at least some small amount ?
True. But if a person simply points out the contradictory beliefs on this site, it often leads to a flame war rather than introspection.
You are corect. Small towns in country Australia show little warming in 130 years. Likewise, Roy Spencer’s data for towns in the cornbelt of the USA show little warming. The 1.1oC figure is surely the heating of the oceans from El Nino warming. Monckton revealed this in his pause papers, and of course Bob Tisdale in his book – Who Turned on the Heat.
Willis:
Nice post! and I appreciate you walking us lay-people through the details.
Next up is to read your paper.
Your ‘maximizing the power’ reminded me of the Lagrangian “least action” principle [for transport of heat to the poles].
Typo alert: Fig 3 title should be “2000-2024”.
Fun factoids. The “least action” principle (mathematically the Lagrangian integral) can be used as an alternate derivation of Newton’s three laws of motion. It also explains why mirages appear.
The Lagrangian formulation is not just an alternative, but turns out to be much easier to use in very complex situations.
Mirages, though, result not from least action, but because a particular curved path results in “least time” which also means a path leading to a stationary phase to a wavefront: Fermat’s principle. I haven’t thought of time and action being analogous to one another, but at first blush it seems a stretch to equate the two because they involve such different physical domains.
‘Your ‘maximizing the power’ reminded me of the Lagrangian “least action” principle [for transport of heat to the poles].’
I recently viewed one of those ‘Feynman’ videos wherein the ‘least action principle’ was discussed and had a similar thought..
IMO, The primary driver is to increase throughput of power from the surface to space. Throughput of power to the poles may support that but isn’t primary and shouldn’t be the focus of understanding.
There is much qualitative evidence that the poles are where most of Earth’s heat escapes. Winter sea ice formation, which also drives the ocean thermohaline circulation, is but one example. Polar winter temperatures are another. Zonal versus meridional jet streams are a third.
It’s a question of driver. All the internal processes maximise energy transfer to space, not energy transfer to the poles. Energy transfer to the poles might facilitate maximum energy loss to space but if that’s the focus then it’s likely to lead to incorrect thinking.
“There is much qualitative evidence that the poles are where most of Earth’s heat escapes.”
Really? Science says most of the heat escapes between ±40°, not from higher latitudes.
Constructal law shows where the longwave and shortwave curves meet – nothing new here.
Yet another fascinating post, Willis!
I think you may have inadvertently proven the rule;
Old-time Marxist: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime!”
Modern Meteorological Marxist: “Show me the molecule, and I’ll build you the model!”
Very nice Willis, explained in easy to understand language.
Willis, then why does the Fig. 4 Constructal model hot zone temperature only have a correlation of 0.56 with the CERES hot zone temperature? The r^2 value is then 0.31, which means that only 31% of the variance is explained or predicted by the other (You don’t specify which you are using as the independent variable.). It seems that your correlation coefficient should be higher than what you are claiming.
It’s a question of scale. At a human scale, you see Fig. 4. If you take a close-up, it looks like this:
The differences are on the order of tenths of a degree.
Generally good, but the model swings are larger than the real swings. I suspect this is because the model doesn’t account for the ~ 20% of the upwelling longwave going out the atmospheric window.
w.
“…following the Constructal Law by evolving in the direction of increasing the throughput of power from the tropics to the poles.”
Does the CL, in any way, effect changes to the system which optimize the CL outcomes?
For example, a river flowing downhill changes the landscape by etching away the riverbed to optimize the downward flow.
The rate of flow tropics-poles is a function inter alia of ocean currents, atmospheric wind patterns, strength and location of the ITCZ, state of the La Nina pump moving warm ocean water poleward, strength of the Gulf Stream doing the same, and the like.
So the basic answer is “yes”, although it is modifying flows rather than landforms.
w.
Hi Willis, thanks, very interesting. Re 2010: I think the AMOC is an important contributor to the poleward heat transport you modelled. There was a downward -Blib around 2010 in the “Rapid” Data.! Correlation by chance??
best Frank
Earth’s atmosphere (1.5 metres above the ground where the thermometers usually are) is warmed and cooled by diverse mechanisms like day and night all of the time. Yet, the overall temperatures averaged over a decade or so varies not much. So there are mechanisms that cope with constantly changing local temperatures, to return them to a fairly tight long term average, plus or minus very little.
Questions:
Why do people claim that greenhouse gas mechanisms are excluded from this self-correction back to the norm?
What is the specific mechanism that leads some people to claim that GHG is different, because it can change the baseline when other mechanisms are returned to the baseline?
Geoff S
USCRN has sites that measure actual ground temperature.
Locations w lots of agriculture, e.g. La Junta, CO, use that to plow and plant.
And what else does ground temperature reveal?
Sun heats the ground, ground heats the air.
Air does not heat ground w CO2 “back” radiation.
Well, you state the obvious….without mentioning that it is the “back radiation” which reduces the rate at which the sun-warmed surface can emit its heat to outer space….and imply that back radiation does not exist…which is NOT the case…
Y’all make it way too complex so you can dismiss anybody without a PhD or several and 1,000s of pages of echo chambered peer reviewed & published handwavium.
Does the sea reflect more solar radiation than land?
Is sunbathing on a boat in the sea more effective than sunbathing on land?
Don’t go to sleep sunbathing. I made that painful mistake once.
Excellent article that should give the modelers something to think about. Something about KISS applies here.
This is a model built from observations. Current GCM’s are built upon what scientists think should happen, not observations. It is why planes fly, observations win every time.
It’s the easy button.
Earth is cooler not warmer & surface BB is not possible.
GHE, “back” radiation, CO2 climate sensitivity & radiative forcing go straight in the dumpster of failed science along with caloric, phlogiston & luminiferous ether.
I wonder if anyone has won a Nobel prize without having the proper credentials…
I wonder if anyone has won a Nobel prize without having the proper credentials…
“Finally, I used the model to see what the climate sensitivity would be if the greenhouse factor were increased by, say, a doubling of CO2. I got an answer of an increase of 1.1°C from a doubling of CO2.”
The GHE is uniquely an atmospheric mechanism; CO2 in the air does not warm the warmer ocean.
The trend in atmospheric temperatures is very nearly the same as the ocean trend, however the atmosphere follows ocean temperature, and globally it is 6° colder on average than the ocean.
Therefore it can be determined that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is effectively near zero.
The latitudinal boundaries predicted by the Constructal Law were already discovered years ago, as seen in this plot below, where the Constructal Climate Model hot/cold area boundaries are located at the ±40° latitudes, where the longwave and shortwave curves intersect.
Credit the author for confirming this Constructal Law understanding with modern data.