One of our most-read old posts is the step-by-step explanation for why increasing CO2 is a significant problem (The CO2 problem in 6 easy steps). However, that was written in 2007 – 15 years ago! While the basic steps and concepts have not changed, there’s 15 years of more data, updates in some of the details and concepts, and (it turns out) better graphics to accompany the text. And so, here is a mildly updated and referenced version that should be a little more useful.
Step 1: There is a natural greenhouse effect.
The fact that there is a natural greenhouse effect (that the atmosphere restricts the passage of infra-red (IR) radiation from the Earth’s surface to space) is easily deducible from; i) the mean temperature of the surface (around 15ºC) and, ii) knowing that the planet is normally close to radiative equilibrium. This means that there is an upward surface flux of IR around 
(~398 W/m2), while the outward flux at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) is roughly equivalent to the net solar radiation absorbed (~240 W/m2). Thus there must be a large amount of IR absorbed by the atmosphere (around 158 W/m2) – a number that would be zero in the absence of any greenhouse substances. Note that this IR radiation is sometimes called longwave (LW) radiation to distinguish it from the shortwave (SW) radiation coming from the sun.
Step 2: Trace gases contribute to the natural greenhouse effect.
The fact that different absorbers contribute to the atmospheric infrared absorption is clear from spectra observed from space (right) which show characteristic gaps associated with water vapour, CO2, O3, clouds, methane, CFCs etc. The only question is how much total energy is blocked by each. This can’t be calculated by hand (the number of absorption lines and the effects of pressure broadening preclude that), but it can be calculated using radiative transfer codes. For some parts of the spectrum, the IR can be either absorbed by CO2 or by water vapour or by clouds, but taking those overlaps into account we find that 50% of the greenhouse effect is from water vapour, 25% from clouds, and about 20% from CO2 and the rest absorbed by ozone, aerosols, and other trace gases (Schmidt et al, 2010). Note that the main constituents of the atmosphere (N2, O2, and Argon) do not absorb significantly in IR wavelength range, and so do not contribute to the greenhouse effect.
Step 3: Trace greenhouse gases have increased markedly due to human emissions
CO2 concentrations are up more than 50% since the pre-industrial, methane (CH4) has more than doubled and is accelerating once more, N2O is up 15%, and tropospheric O3 has also increased. New greenhouse gas compounds such as halocarbons (CFCs, HFCs) did not exist in the pre-industrial atmosphere. All of these increases contribute to an enhanced greenhouse effect.
The sources of these increases are dominated by the burning of fossil fuels, landfills, mining, oil and gas operations, agriculture (especially livestock for methane), and industry.
Step 4: Radiative forcing is a useful diagnostic and can easily be calculated
Lessons from simple toy models and experience with more sophisticated GCMs suggests that any perturbation to the TOA radiation budget from whatever source is a pretty good predictor of eventual surface temperature change. Thus if the sun were to become stronger by about 2%, the TOA radiation balance would change by 0.02*1361*0.7/4 = 4.8 W/m2 (taking albedo and geometry into account) (more energy would come in than was leaving). This would define the radiative forcing (RF). An increase in greenhouse absorbers, or a change in the albedo, have analogous impacts on the TOA balance (more energy would come in than leave). However, calculation of the radiative forcing is again a job for the radiative transfer codes that take into account atmospheric profiles of temperature, water vapour and aerosols. The IPCC AR6 report used the most up-to-date estimates from Etminan et al (2016) which are similar but slightly more complicated than the simplified, oft-used formula for CO2: RF = 5.35 ln(CO2/CO2_orig) (seen in Table 6.2 in IPCC TAR).
Note that the logarithmic form for the CO2 RF comes from the fact that some particular wavelengths are already saturated and that the increase in forcing depends on the ‘wings’ (see this post for more details). Forcings for lower concentration gases (such as CFCs) are linear in concentration. The different assumptions about clouds, their properties and the spatial heterogeneity mean that the global mean forcing is uncertain by about 10%. Thus the RF for a doubling of CO2 is likely 3.9±0.5 W/m2 – the same order of magnitude as an increase of solar forcing by 2%.
There are a couple of small twists on the radiative forcing concept. There are a number of processes that react very quickly to a change of GHG or aerosol concentrations that aren’t related to changes in the surface temperatures. It turns out that calculating this “effective” forcing, after these adjustments have occurred, makes the ERF more predictive of the eventual temperature rise. One such process is the stratospheric adjustment that happens with CO2 since it has an important role in the stratospheric radiation balance while another is very fast changes to clouds after an aerosol change. The other wrinkle is depending slightly on the spatial distribution of forcing agents, different feedbacks and processes might come into play and thus an equivalent forcing from two different sources might not give the same response. The factor that quantifies this effect is called the ‘efficacy’ of the forcing, which for the most part is reasonably close to one, and so doesn’t change the zeroth-order picture (Hansen et al, 2005). This means that climate forcings can be simply added to approximate the net effect.
The total forcing from the trace greenhouse gases mentioned in Step 3, is currently (to 2019) about 3.3 W/m2, and the net forcing (including cooling impacts of aerosols and natural changes) is 2.7±0.8 W/m2 since the pre-industrial (IPCC AR6 Chapter 7). Most of the uncertainty is still related to aerosol effects. Current growth in forcings is dominated by increasing CO2, with an increasing role for decreases in reflective aerosols (sulphates, particularly in the US and EU) and increases in absorbing aerosols (like soot, particularly from India and China and from biomass burning).
Step 5: Climate sensitivity is around 3ºC for a doubling of CO2
The climate sensitivity classically defined is the response of global mean temperature to a forcing once all the ‘fast feedbacks’ have occurred (atmospheric temperatures, clouds, water vapour, winds, snow, sea ice etc.), but before any of the ‘slow’ feedbacks have kicked in (ice sheets, vegetation, carbon cycle etc.). Given that it doesn’t matter much which forcing is changing, sensitivity can be assessed from any particular period in the past where the changes in forcing are known and the corresponding equilibrium temperature change can be estimated. As we have discussed previously, the last glacial period is a good example of a large forcing (~8 W/m2 from ice sheets, greenhouse gases, dust and vegetation) giving a large temperature response (~5 to 6ºC) and implying a sensitivity of about 3ºC (with substantial error bars). More formally, you can combine this estimate with others taken from the 20th century, the response to volcanoes, the last millennium, remote sensing etc. to get pretty good constraints on what the number should be. This was recently done by Sherwood et al (2020), and they come up with, you guessed it, 3ºC (and also a tighter uncertainty bound of 2.3 to 4.5ºC).
Converting the estimate for doubled CO2 to a more useful factor gives ~0.75 ºC/(W/m2).
Step 6: Radiative forcing x climate sensitivity is a significant number
Current forcings imply the planet would warm 2ºC (=2.7 W/m2 x 0.75ºC/(W/m2)) by the time the climate reaches equilibrium. Because the oceans take time to warm up, we are not yet there (so far we have experienced 1.2ºC), and so the remaining ~0.8ºC is ‘in the pipeline’ if we keep concentrations constant (equivalent to an immediate ~70% cut in emissions). Additional forcings in plausible future scenarios could reach 5 W/m2 and therefore additional warming (at equilibrium) could be more than 3ºC. Interestingly, if CO2 emissions were to cease entirely, the net heat uptake and decreasing radiative forcing would roughly balance, and we would not expect temperatures to rise any further. Thus our societal flexibility will allow us to end up somewhere between those two extremes.
These temperature changes might seem like small numbers, but on the scale of a planet they are a big deal. We are already seeing impacts from the warming so far in changing statistics of heat waves, extreme precipitation, and coastal flooding. Recall that the last ice age was only 5 to 6ºC cooler than the pre-industrial – and that was a massive shift. We have already warmed between a fifth and a quarter of an ‘ice age unit‘, and the worst case scenarios have a full ice age unit of warming in a couple of centuries, compared to the 10,000 years it took to warm before.
That is already significant and is going to get more so until emissions cease.
Q.E.D.?
[Translation in Dutch available]
References
- G.A. Schmidt, R.A. Ruedy, R.L. Miller, and A.A. Lacis, "Attribution of the present‐day total greenhouse effect", Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, vol. 115, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010JD014287
- M. Etminan, G. Myhre, E.J. Highwood, and K.P. Shine, "Radiative forcing of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide: A significant revision of the methane radiative forcing", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 43, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016GL071930
- J. Hansen, M. Sato, R. Ruedy, L. Nazarenko, A. Lacis, G.A. Schmidt, G. Russell, I. Aleinov, M. Bauer, S. Bauer, N. Bell, B. Cairns, V. Canuto, M. Chandler, Y. Cheng, A. Del Genio, G. Faluvegi, E. Fleming, A. Friend, T. Hall, C. Jackman, M. Kelley, N. Kiang, D. Koch, J. Lean, J. Lerner, K. Lo, S. Menon, R. Miller, P. Minnis, T. Novakov, V. Oinas, J. Perlwitz, J. Perlwitz, D. Rind, A. Romanou, D. Shindell, P. Stone, S. Sun, N. Tausnev, D. Thresher, B. Wielicki, T. Wong, M. Yao, and S. Zhang, "Efficacy of climate forcings", Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, vol. 110, 2005. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2005JD005776
- S.C. Sherwood, M.J. Webb, J.D. Annan, K.C. Armour, P.M. Forster, J.C. Hargreaves, G. Hegerl, S.A. Klein, K.D. Marvel, E.J. Rohling, M. Watanabe, T. Andrews, P. Braconnot, C.S. Bretherton, G.L. Foster, Z. Hausfather, A.S. von der Heydt, R. Knutti, T. Mauritsen, J.R. Norris, C. Proistosescu, M. Rugenstein, G.A. Schmidt, K.B. Tokarska, and M.D. Zelinka, "An Assessment of Earth's Climate Sensitivity Using Multiple Lines of Evidence", Reviews of Geophysics, vol. 58, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2019RG000678
Gavin!
+200 meters sea level??? Something is wrong with that…
No need to publish – just check please? XKCD source graphic
Thanks
BJ
I think the current estimate for sea level rise in today’s world without any land ice is about 80 meters. However, during the Cretaceous there were other factors related to the shape of the ocean basins, tectonic activity and mountain building that suggest that SLR may have been 170 meters higher at least (https://news.mongabay.com/2008/03/cretaceous-sea-levels-were-550-feet-higher-than-today/).
The ocean basins are the shape they are, and unlikely (I hope) to change dramatically in the next 2000 years. The function of temperature change now would SEEM to be the way XKCD was discussing it.
So I’d really prefer that XKCD used the 80 meters estimate we are all more familiar with, or that there might be just a small disclaimer/explainer here at Realclimate to make sure that it doesn’t serve as yet another source of strife.
Not sure how to get Randall Munroe’s attention on this. I suspect it’s just something that slipped in and I have no idea what he might want to do with it. I love XKCD but are any of us perfect?
YOU answered me though, and that gives me, at least, the feeling that I’ve done MY job. Realclimate is my go-to reference for accurate science.
You know about it. You will treat it as you reckon necessary.
Thanks
Deep ocean temperatures during the warmest period were as high as 20C.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0604
This would allow considerable thermal expansion. Current temperatures run closer to 0C as polar water sinks to the bottom.
I would be more concerned about the palm trees at the poles claim than the +200m. And before you point at any scientific paper, please be aware that the coast of Antarctica IS NOT at the pole, And who knows how much further north it was 60 MY ago.
A graphic like that just reinforces which side of the centre I would prefer to be on. If mankind has stopped any chance of being under half a mile of ice then that can only be a good thing. The graphic greatly detracts from what is an otherwise sensible and clear explanation
Spoken like a man who hasn’t thought this through.
KW: If mankind has stopped any chance of being under half a mile of ice then that can only be a good thing.
BPL: I’ve heard this objection to AGW before. “Global warming is good because it prevented an ice age.” Yeah, and the next ice age was due 20,000 years from now. And the one after that, 50,000 years from now.
And they were pretty much “stopped” at 350 ppm
More is not better
Thank the gods we dodged that bullet. I was so worried that we would be buried under half a mile of ice.
I’m sleeping much better because Wool*ard’s life’s work helped warm us to the point where we don’t have to cope with such nightmares.
The Ice Age Unit graph is excellent in its own right, but only distantly coupled to the time scale of himan experience.
Fortunately, a monumental reminder of how fast art and climate can interact was installed in Utah in 1970:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2022/07/truly-state-of-art-drought.html
I’d give that a “like” if this were social media…
Ditto!
GAvin,
This is the first time I have read your post and it is the most lucid and relevant I have seen. There are a few questions I have been meaning to ask about the effect of greenhouse gasses and these relate to the atmospheric mixing and vertical distribution.
It would apear the atmosphere has, since the advent of Covid, cleaned up considerably. In the first instance aircraft have ceased to be!! Therefore the distribution of a staggering amount in the upper atmosphere has virtually disappeared. At sea level the ocean gobbles up a significant quantity (the rise in carbonic acid doing damage to the structure of sea life is another discussion) as well as trees.
That said the traffic transporting our persons and goods down here on the surface has not changed all that much.
Another thing I find perplexingis about sea level rise I have seen no comment on at all. In around 800AD or thereabouts Greenland was called just that because it was Green, and people settled there for a few centuaries anyway till the ice cap formed again and made living untenable. There seems to be little evidence of a higher sea level in the middle ages as the ice cap was surely less wheras now we are told that if the ice cap melts we will be innundated. I suspect that as we know ice is heavy and if it builds up on top af a rock floating on the magma below it will displace itself into the molten rock by its acuumulated mass. Like you sitting on a floatie in the pool, you hop off but the pool doesn’t overflow. I guess the same could be said for antarctica. It is also a f;oating rock. That said we see little discussion on countries that live hard by subduction zones and the constant effect of tectonic plates moving. Obviously this is a dynamic in constant and variable flux.
While I agree with the ‘greenhouse gas’, ‘anthropogenic climate change’ model and I seriously DO know we are far over the edge in population and consumption (every girl born on a rubbish dump in Sao Paulo deserves the same education as you and I and it isn’t going to happen) I think there are a few amelioration factors the people in academic ‘silos’ who do not talk to each other and cross polinate ideas have been missing.
Your thoughts please.
Regards
Guy Vickerman
Guy,
1) Air traffic during the pandemic did not collapse. We’re looking at maybe 20% over a fairly short time.
2) Greenland was never green. The Viking settlements were in protected valleys where the microclimate was more palatable. The name Greenland was a marketing ploy to tempt settlers to make the arduous journey.
3) Why would you think that “academics” are too isolated to know about amelioration techniques. Why would you think those outside of academia would be better placed to understand what would work?
“Another thing I find perplexingis about sea level rise I have seen no comment on at all. In around 800AD or thereabouts Greenland was called just that because it was Green, and people settled there for a few centuaries anyway till the ice cap formed again and made living untenable.”
The Greenland ice cap has existed for a long time, a quick Google search suggests it started to form about three million years ago. When the vikings settled in Greenland, they landed on the southern coastline in summer where there is no ice, and they settled during the time of regional warming called the medieval warm period. Then the climate cooled, and they failed to adapt, so goodbye vikings. A bit like what could happen to many civilisations around the world if ongoing climate change makes some places unlivable or they are unable to adapt to the change.
Re. air travel “collapse”. …
1. Air freight never collapsed though was and still is affected.
2. If you deposit into your bank account for most of a 12 decades or more and stop for 12-24 months, it really doesn’t affect the balance all that greatly. Your century of deposits far outweigh the short term stoppage. Even neglecting any interest.
3. Greenland was never “green”. I thought everyone knew that.
GV: Greenland was called just that because it was Green, and people settled there for a few centuaries [sic] anyway till the ice cap formed again and made living untenable.
BPL: Greenland was called that, and Iceland was called Iceland, because the Vikings deliberately wanted to mislead people. The ice cap on Greenland is 120,000 years old.
The deepest ice in the current Greenland ice cap is at least older than the last interglacial, the Eemian period, between around 130000 and 115000 years BP. Cfr. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FqJLwJwndLI&t=1523s fx. at 12:26 . As explained in the lecture, deep ice cores at locations from north to south and east to west taken in the last twenty years have proven that the whole icecap in it’s full current length survived the Eemian, even if temperatures at the icecap for a few thousand years in the first half of the Eemian were several degrees C above the current, due to the Milankovitch cycles, which gave up to 25-30 watts more incoming solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere at around 65 degrees N in this period.
This is highly interesting, because we also know (among other things from old coral reef remains above current sea level at the australian coast) that the mean sea level was 6 to 9 meters above the current most of the Eemian. Even if the Greenland icecap was somewhat smaller than today, this isn’t enough to explain a so much higher sea level, only less than a meter of it. So what may have caused that? Here the main suspect is the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS), since most of it is sitting on ground below the current sea level, buttressed by big ice shelfs. If sea level rises, these ice shelves will begin to loosen from their current frontal grounding lines, meaning they begin to float and calving up/surge, as has been happening since the mid 1990s with the smaller Larsen A, B and parts of C ice shelves sitting on the Antarctic peninsula https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larsen_Ice_Shelf https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H2a3Oemo1e4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jDXr98pt0bg . That means that the WAIS it is much more vulnerable in a warming climate than the Greenland ice cap, and the ice volume in West Antarctica is enough to explain most of the 6-9 meters higher sea level during the Eemian.
Karsten V. Johansen,
In the YouTube video titled Professor Jason Box | Greenland today & [not for] tomorrow #COP26Glasgow, published on 12 Nov 2021, professor in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Jason Box said from time interval 0:04:13:
“Technically now, Greenland is beyond its viability threshold, because at the current level of warming in Greenland, which is about 1.4 Celsius above pre-industrial for summer temperatures, the Greenland Ice Sheet is losing ice equivalent to about 10,000 cubic metres of ice loss per second, when you average that around the clock. That number would deliver hypothetically to all inhabitants – human inhabitants on Earth – a bathtub of water every single day, around the year, every day.”
Melting of all of the Greenland Ice Sheet alone will contribute roughly 7 metres (23 feet) of sea level rise.
Jason Box said from time interval 0:13:50:
“A conservative lower-bound sea rise for land ice contributions, plus thermal expansion, translates to about a metre of sea level rise this century… from all global land ice, including Antarctica. Those projections, I say a lower bound because the Antarctic Ice Sheet, Greenland, other land ice, they have to continue behaving as they currently are. If we get a change in behaviour, for example, a major ice shelf disintegration in Antarctica, then the Antarctic contribution accelerates.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6LrGetz10g
The latest publication from Jason Box (Box et al (2022) ‘Greenland ice sheet climate disequilibrium and committed sea-level rise’) got well covered in the press, even making it into my local rag on Saturday (‘‘Zombie ice’ from Greenland will raise sea level by 10in, study suggests’)
Nice summary. Sadly, the truth matters only to those who value the truth as we’ll soon see here (or may already have).
Very good bit of teaching.
I would suggest, to all the people here who have spent lots of time and bandwidth answering Denialists, that, whatever the troll says, linking to this… and requiring them to address it… should be the only response.
It appears to me much of the spectral emission is not occurring from the surface in the water vapor bands, but higher in the troposphere. So there is some discontinuity i.e. not a single blackbody radiation temperature. The spectra only follows surface temperature outside the water vapor bands.
The water vapor bands appear to be emitting at a higher level in the troposphere. It seems climate sensitivity must be tightly bound to water phase changes, water cycles, and humidity profiles.
It seems to me humanity has substantial impacts on water cycles by our massive changes to the landscape, but I don’t often hear this discussed. This, both directly by drying landscapes and indirectly by impacting cloud microphysics such as abundance of hygroscopic precipitation nuclei.
Despite land area being a smaller proportion of the Earth system compared to ocean, the total 3D area of vegetation in terms of leaf area creates a massive evapotranspiration surface.
For radiative forcing from non condensing greenhouse gas water vapor and emission level must have some important impact on spectral feedback parameter lambda. OLR appears to be a culmination of different emission temperature at various altitudes. The water vapor bands appear to follow pretty closely the continuous IR blackbody emission of liquid and solid water phases in the troposphere around zero degrees Celcius.
Drying and moistening at different levels, condensation process, and overall precipitation efficiency must be important but difficult to quantify. Human influence can impact these important processes, I think.
Interestingly the spectral feedback parameter to initial forcing by might be one value assuming no human impacts to water cycle, and perhaps another when factoring in the human disruption to landscapes.
@JCM: – ” one value assuming no human impacts to water cycle, and perhaps another when factoring in the human disruption to landscapes. ”
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018AGUFM.A21H2774S/abstract
” The fact that H2O is understood primarily as a feedback constituent does not mean these forcings cannot be quantified, and the relatively new concept of “effective radiative forcing” allows for this to be done…. Water is introduced in vapor form at rates matching total anthropogenic emissions (mainly from irrigation)…”
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1004&context=nasapub
” Irrigation distributes about 2,560 km3 of water to the world’s agricultural lands each year This irrigation is equivalent to 17 mm of water spread evenly over the land surface, or 2.1% of the precipitation over land…Globally, irrigation led to an increase in annual LE of 0.656 W m-2.
This additional evapotranspiration, equivalent to 8.3 mm year-1 averaged over global land,, accounted for 38% of the extra water added to the surface. The rest (62%) of the added water was lost through runoff or sub-surface drainage., “
Hello Macias,
right, if I have understood the current state-of-the-art formulations correctly, the Forcing term and Lambda (so-called feedback term), are free to vary independently. My view is that humanity has an impact on both Forcing and Lambda, for different reasons. Perhaps we are in agreement based on your irrigation hypotheses.
When reading I think of the λ as not really a feedback to a radiative perturbation, but to the total radiative forcing from all sources, including net solar and greenhouse gas concentration, etc. In this view, the λ is the most basic and universal climate process. The result of total system thermodynamics. I think there is an assumption that humanity cannot have any impact on this term.
In reading about mitigation policy, there appears to be the perception that the only mitigation can be by efforts to sequester carbon dioxide and other trace gases. The policy recommendations only relate to the F term.
From this perspective the biosphere is thought of only in terms of carbon sequestration potential. Soils are only accounted in terms of carbon sequestration potential. Trees are viewed as sticks for storing carbon, etc etc. My ongoing perceptions of climate discussion is that there is a massive undervaluation of watersheds and biosystems by not accounting for their influence on water cycles. I notice, even, an increasingly active and ongoing campaign by the climate industrialists to diminish the roles of so-called “nature based solutions” and landscape management, and if they are mentioned, are only thought of in terms of adaptation. My impression is that landscape management is considered almost as an afterthought, but I am highly sensitive to any media on such matters. I do notice resources are dwindling in my sector.
However, I think there is little room to deny the massive impact humanity can have on water cycles, and the consequences for λ in the current formulations. For it is well known that once ancient civilizations desertified their lands, they found themselves living in desert-like climates with hydrological and temperature extremes. I think it is not unreasonable to think this could scale up to global scale today, with continuous and ongoing concurrent desiccation of landscapes globally. Once the land is cleared, it continues to dry for one or two more centuries, generally speaking. The exclusive focus on Forcing in policy recommendation has been net damaging to environmental outcomes, all things considered, in my view.
I think it is an important subject for the climate community to understand and communicate. Perhaps studying this, where surface changes represent much more than simply albedo, can offer a role for GCMs. Your interests are in surface moisture levels and moisture availability, which directly relates to my viewpoint.
My current understanding is that GCMs have not advanced knowledge much for policy recommendation beyond the same assumptions from 40 years ago. But I could be mistaken. The GCMs give people like myself the impression of substantial knowledge from the climate community, but I think the GCMs have not yet been used to their full potential if the goal is to convey important and practical policy options. I think in certain cases their outputs are also misused which is hastening environmental decline..
Thanks.
@JCM: – ” In reading about mitigation policy, there appears to be the perception that the only mitigation can be by efforts to sequester carbon dioxide and other trace gases. ”
— This is also my perception. In addition, mitigation policy is the wrong term – it should long ago have been declared as an emergency or disaster policy.
Have you ever read of a climate scientist who is unequivocal about whether human emissions of H2O (irrigation, etc.) into the atmosphere are now warming or rather cooling the earth’s temperature. Concrete statements on Effects of global irrigation on the near-surface climate (see link above) are rather rare – and even rarer on the overall effect on the global climate.
Am I the only one looking at strategies to reduce sea level rise?
Thank God no – there is a little big girl who helps me with it.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2012GL053055
The 2011 La Niña: So strong, the oceans fell
Maybe we should just think and act pragmatically and simply expand the IPCC’s meager, current mitigation policy with our own personal suggestions – I cordially invite you to do so. Gladly also outside of this forum, if the various unqualified borehole commentators here bother you – you can find everything you need in the link under my name.
However, I do have a question now:
~1 kg of dry matter of organic matter is needed as an additional soil fraction to increase the soil moisture by ~9L under one m². Is that an amount that a soil expert like you can recommend as a (regular) yearly added dose?
What proportion of the mass is degraded again within a year? / Thanks
@Macias
To rebuild soils requires organic drawdown rates that exceed oxidation rates.
Our systems erode 1-10 tons of carbon per hectare per year from soils because oxidation exceeds bio-sequestration.
Carbon levels in soils have declined from over 5 percent to less than 1 percent, generally speaking.
One gram organics stores up to 8 times its weight in water.
Refer to the UNEP Soil Degradation spatial patterns, which incidentally has not been updated since 1997 just prior to signing the Kyoto Protocol. https://commons.princeton.edu/mg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Soil_Degradation,_1997.jpg
It is the responsibility of climate experts to recognize the scale of the problem, and to untangle the confounding correlations. It is the climatologists who have gained political support, and who have managed to earn respect and interest from certain sectors.
The soil oxidation has degraded the structure and capacity to infiltrate, retain, and sustain water. Eroded soils have a much higher bulk density and are less porous. They feel compacted. If you have trouble inserting a shovel into the ground the soils are dead. Mineral rockflour, hardened to concrete.
Adding just a small amount of organics, a few percent by weight, fundamentally changes the soil structure. The goal is a return to 5%..
A healthy soil has a bulk density of 1.2 grams per cc or less.
2/3ds of healthy soil is just space. Degraded soil has a bulk density in the range of 3 grams per cc.
The most important parts of the soils are the voids, the nothingness. The empty spaces. It is the ‘nothing’ that we add which creates its health. It is in the soil food web that creates this structure to support the voids. The soil becomes like a sponge.
The draw-down of organics into the soils to create this space is by bio-conversion, biodigesters and fungi.
Healthy soils, with ample voids, cycle nutrients much more easily. 80% of nutrient efficiency relates to soil structure.
The process to restore soils is to reverse the ratio of oxidation to bio-sequestration. This is a process. Adding dry organics will simply oxidize if there is not microbial food web to sustain. The goal is stable soil organics.
It is hard for us to imagine what is happening down there – once the soil is deeply tilled this structure is gone. There are up to 25,000 kilometers of fungal hyphae per cubic meter of healthy soil. That is not a typo, 15,000 miles.
In a healthy soil, the whole zoo of fungi, bacteria, actinomycetes, protozoa, nematodes, collembola, the whole network of organisms living below the ground is ten times the total mass of life that there is above the ground.
Summer fallowing, biocides, and deep tillage destroy this. Fragmentation of natural systems destroys food webs and the soils. Forests oxidize. Nutrient cycling and the important bio-conversion of leaf litter to stable soil carbon ceases. Instead, it burns.
There is a large body of literature to draw from, and a wide range of local solutions to suit different environments. As with anything, there is no silver bullet. I am reluctant to reduce the solutions to a simple equation, but maybe this is what people want to see (?).
Today the industrialists often cast these ideas aside as hippie dippy nonsense. It is not meant as ‘organic farming’ or something as such. It is not a worship of nature, but rather a recognition of the Earth system processes.
Once the scale of the problem is recognized, the ecologists and microbiologists are awaiting. The next generation of local restoration stewards can then be properly trained and resourced, with political support. I think this is an inevitable outcome.
However, at this time we see the opposite. Private landowners must be recognized and rewarded for their role, and to be compensated as such. The absolute opposite of effective stewardship is to tax, restrict, punish, or shame Conservationists know this. I am not an American, but in most countries the landowners are rural and of conservative mindset. It is not a game to play by divisive politics when it comes to environmental management. Academics from urban liberal institutions appear to need a bridge if they are serious. It is in trust, honesty, and incentives that progress is made.
It is not necessarily to return to an untouched eden – but to regain stability.
@JCM: – ” I am reluctant to reduce the solutions to a simple equation, but maybe this is what people want to see (?).
— Water + organic soil material and thus improved water retention index (WRI) is such a pretty simple equation and fly swatter that could kill a lot of flies and climate problems at once.
It acts on a sufficiently large (global)³ scale of increasing WRI against
– drought,
– flooding,
– sea level rise³,
– species extinction,
– destroyed soils,
– high CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere³
– drought-related temperature records … and much more.
People want simple equations because they’re just too stupid for the more complicated ones. Sell them the relatively cheap, moist humus with the above-mentioned 7 famous, positive side effects as a panacea against the consequences of climate change. – Thanks
@ macias.
I appreciate this perspective.
Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki once said
“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it.”
It could explain why people in large cities have confused CO2 for environment. Those surrounded by energy intensive systems, buildings, and transport see solutions only in energy systems, buildings, and transport. This perspective shapes the debate. Their viewscape is entirely paved, and so the only apparent lever left is the control of gas emission.
The consequence is the active and ongoing dismissal, and displacement, of natural restoration. Where 90% of political discourse, education, and expenditure on environment centers on CO2 emission today. A political environment platform entirely focused on CO2 emission is perfectly suitable to cater to the electorate. The net result is environmental decline.
Where even academia has apparently lost perspective, the urban intelligencia. and most certainly journalism. The bias is very powerful. I don’t doubt they have best intentions, but we collectively have much to learn. The arrogance of the bohemian urbanites is glaringly real.
When 2/3rds of population lives in cities, which cover 3% of the land surface, we collectively lose perspective of the other 97% of the land surface. This other 97% of the land surface, the watersheds, is the primary control of water cycles, carbon cycles, and the climates in which we live. But it is out of view, out of sight, out of mind.
The urban perspective, through the influence of academics, politicians, and media, is exported through our TV screens, education systems, and newsmedia. Those who see things differently are actively shouted down as uneducated rural hillbillies. The causal factors of wildfire, drought, runoff events, and temperature extremes today are explained through a very narrow lens to suit a very narrow perspective. Somewhere, somehow, there must be a rebalancing.
JCM: It could explain why people in large cities have confused CO2 for environment.
BPL: They haven’t. You’re just a denier in the guise of an environmentalist. BTW, your disguise is wearing thin.
@BPL
There are none so blind as those that will not see. I again erred in mistaking you for a person of reason. The myopic attitude and active dismissal of your allies in system stabilization is counter productive. The deliberate ignorance facilitates narrow perspectives and lack of imagination. It is a subject I find quite fascinating i.e. the active and ongoing shouting down of conservation specialists in defensiveness of a singular tenet.
Case in point is that I’ve been blocked by Dr. Hayhoe, astrophysicist and chief scientist of The Nature Conservancy, for pointing out Nature’s connection to climates and questioning a few posts. A striking moment of disillusionment for me. Do you see the quandary of political activism clouding one’s judgement?
Observing, quantifying, and restoring ecosystem function poses no threat to Earth system processes. Conversely, enforced reductionism of the science to facilitate unilateral policy recommendation does pose a threat to the holistic solutions required. The humble request from conservationists is only pennies for each dollar of the energy transition; and perhaps 1 minute carved out for each hour on communication of climates to make the ecosystem connections. At this time, not an inch will be given. It does not indicate any sort of good faith or sincerity.
Saving this update as a primer for students in my class on “Climate Change in Environmental Resource Management.” Thank you!
Gavin, thanks very much.
An issue that might benefit by some clarification of assumptions is the apparent discrepancy between these two statements: “remaining ~0.8ºC is ‘in the pipeline’ if we keep concentrations constant” and “if CO2 emissions were to cease entirely, the net heat uptake and decreasing radiative forcing would roughly balance, and we would not expect temperatures to rise any further.”
I assume the latter statement allows further uptake by oceans (due to partial vapor pressure?) and biosphere. However, from an ecological perspective (also of critical importance in addition to physics) does this not assume the earth system is not presently developing its own sources of new greenhouse gases as a result of currently increasing heating?
Thanks Gavin,
This is a very useful step-by-step explanation of the issue.
Quick question though:
Hansen estimates the (negative) forcing due to aerosols to be about as as high as that of CO₂. How does this square with the notion that: “The total forcing from the trace greenhouse gases mentioned in Step 3, is currently (to 2019) about 3.3 W/m2, and the net forcing (including cooling impacts of aerosols and natural changes) is 2.7±0.8 W/m2 since the pre-industrial …” ?
If the net forcing would be as low as 1.9 W/m2 (2.7-0.8) it would result in a 1.4 W/m2 negative forcing due to aerosols and natural changes, This doesn’t seem to approach the (0,75* x 3.3) 2.45 W/m2 that is ascribed to the increase of atmospheric CO₂.
*with 75% of the forcing ascribed to the increase of atmospheric CO₂
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/Emails/July2021.pdf
The best estimates for this are from the latest IPCC report. They have CO2 forcing as 2.2 W/m2, while total aerosols are -1.06 W/m2 with a ±0.8 W/m2 uncertainty. – gavin
Hi Gavin,
Thanks for taking the time to respond,
An error bar almost as high as the value itself doesn’t seem to make much sense to me, to be honest. What is your view on this?
Where does Hansen derive his number from, which is twice as high as the mean given by the IPPC? His article seems to gloss over that.
Can anyone link to any research that supports Hansen’s claims?
cheers,
– Peter
Guy Vickerman: Jared Diamond gives a good account of the Norse Greenland settlements to which you refer in his book “Collapse”. If you read it you will discover that contemporary documents show that the Greenland settlements (in just two sheltered fiords on the south eastern coast) was established by Eric the Red after he was exiled for involvement in a murder. Knowing that he had little chance of survival in Greenland without the support a community he invented the name Greenland as a means of encouraging people to join him. The Greenland ice cap had NOT then disappeared, and Greenland was NOT green.
Yes–the fact that the ice cap was there long, lo-o-o-ong before Eric the Red is eloquently attested by the fact that the GISP2 ice-core record goes back ~110,000 years.
Again (see also my reply above): the NEEM ice core goes back 128000 years BP, to the beginning of the Eemian period. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FqJLwJwndLI&t=1523s (at 12:36 fx.)
Thanks for the update, Gavin.
One of the more important points for a general audience to take away from the Earth’s Energy Budget diagram is the Net Absorbed energy of 0.6 Watts/square metre, (averaged over recent ten years). Yet, I think most of that general audience wouldn’t get much of a feeling for how much energy, how much warming, that represents. However, most would have a feeling for how much a kilowatt is, because that is what a one bar electric fire pumps out.
So, 0.6 Watts/sq metre is equivalent to having a one bar electric fire burning continuously, day and night, 24/7, on every 1,666 square metres of the Earth’s surface, land and sea, which is equivalent to having over four such 1kW electric fires burning continuously on every football pitch sized area of land or sea.
Alternatively, for example, that means the equivalent of having on the area of the USA (9,160,454 sq km) :
9,160,454 x 10^6/1,666 = 5,498,000,000 one bar electric fires burning continuously, day and night, just in the USA. That is equivalent to over 16 one bar electric fires burning continuously for every man, woman and child in the USA.
No wonder we are getting warmer.
Gavin, what is the importance of the two temperature lines in the graph. They do not appear to be mentioned.
They are the theoretical blackbody radiance at those two temperatures. It highlights that in some regions of the curve you are seeing LW from the surface and in regions where CO2 or O3 are important, you are seeing emissions from higher up (colder) levels. – gavin
Thanks, Gavin. If I translate it correctly that’s the vibrational frequency and the theoretical source temperature of that frequency? Also that temperature range can be translated to the source altitude or surface temperature of the emission?
Dr. G.Schmidt
If I were to suggest how to ruin the IPCC, I would set on 2 things.
1, the clouds, Nephelai by Aristoxenox, the foggy dews.
That is a large and white and diffuse- foggy thing, that is told to be 50% or more than half of the earthly greengouse effect. remaining in the fogs and the clouds. of unsettled orthodox interests.
For instance, if it clouds over during day and clears up during night, that will have a definite cooling effect And opposite, if it clears up during day and clouds over during night, that would work the opposite way, all other factors or vectors remaining constant.
Andv over the year, if it clears up in winter ancd clouds over during summer or vice versa, that would also disturb the IPCC idea severely if it can be shown only as a slight global tendency and given a physical cause and explaination and shown in the lab also.
Just think of that Dr. Schmidt. It would shake and shiver the very NASA GISS. We need no shark and swordfish on the New Engtland coasts for this, it takes only mackrels to show it.
2, and then hot and cool water in layers. And to what extent that is mixed more or less at any time. There you can suggest tidal forces and the sea serpent and exel in Luna- tics and even Saturnus if people will believe it.
I am experienced with it as a bather and free- diver in Drøbak, the fameous bathing town with all its fameous solar winds and tidal currents.
. It begins to heat up in spring so you must swim very flat in the shallow fjord pools and then heats up downwards further out at sea.. The warm phase can be seen from below as a green layer above if you dive and swim under it. Below there it is ice cold.. And in august it all heats up 10 and 12 meters down.
The large ferryboats in Skagerak have measured 23 celsius intake coolwater at high sea in August.
The Argus sondes are measuring this. And the jelly- fishes and firefishes are living in it and following it.
There I would also see a possibility of disqualifying and ruining the very IPCC and NASA-GISS main orthodoxy. . That may be as real as can be, but rather minor and irrelevant to the whole situation of . Whether warm and cool is nicely layered, or rather gets violently mixed by the sea serpent, trade winds, and tidal forces..
This . will decide a lot on marine boundary layer and onland wind temperatures. worldwide. Thus if there is changing tendencies in it over the years and decades, then you will have it, Severe problems for the climate response of CO2.
=============0000
All ye surrealists, desert walkers, flat earthers, blind believers and landcrabs here, better take my words for this on how to ruin NASA-GISS and the Paris Convention.
Carbomontanus, I realise your sabotage operation is tongue-in-cheek; maybe that is a free-diving technique that you have learned. But if I were to take it seriously, I would suggest (for instance) that the planetary response to external forcing has been well observed through the palaeoclimate record for some time, and spanners in the works from clouds, layers, or sea monsters are not very evident (no matter what role they may play in the machinery itself; probably amplification of the external forcing). So I think your diving would have to go deeper to stand a chance of finding a solid objection, since as Gavin’s post shows, the effect of CO2 forcing is closely analogous to an external forcing.
Hr Simon C
Think again.
CO2 climate response is set to 3 deg/doubling, +- 1.5 deg. that is what we call 50% inaccuracy. in what is supposed to be the most critical or vital parameter magnitude for most warmist arguments.
I compare that to other system discussions.
In an updated & especially good textbook on chosmology from early eighties, I found the very central parameter operator Hubbles constant defined and known also to only + – 50% inaccuracy, and serious orthodox estimates for the age of the universe ranging from 9 billion to 90 billion years, with serious observational evidence for both possibilities..
That situation improoved radically only a few years later by rather a paradigmatic shift in empirical methods, Namely proper industriallized (blind stupid automatic!) observations of myriades of remote supernova with dubious rinsing of data , and statistics on then same. So that the age of the universe converged from both sides onto 3 valid chiffers BASTA! namely to 14. z billion years.
But I have seen the chard- house of chosmology (=advanced system of arguments building on triangular arguments building on arguments building on arguments….) collapsing four times at least durng my lifetime.
That is so funny and entertaining each time.
So I would not bet that todays construction will stand forever either.
Then clouds – Nephelai and the sea serpent being reliable and constant also seems to me to be the 2 most critical dubious chards in the climate-… chardhouse.
The CO2 climate response of today looks as diffuse as a hubble constant of yesteryear.
In such typical cases when an operator or a parameter remains foggy uncertain year after year after year, a compulsary question is whether it is well chosen and whether it is a well formed formula at all, since it seems to remain uncertain and diffruse. Maybe that “chardhouse” has got a basically wrong architecture?
There I can remind of many examples in science history and even in my own experience. The wrong and the unqualified personel from the inadequate tradition and exsperience was given monopoly on scolarship and orthodox theoretical architecture.
In such cases, the paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions rather than evolusions is what brings it suddenly and dramatically onward .
I could once beat orthodox musical acoustics by distance and elegance knowing rather of radio oscillator and airplane desing and modern physical chemistery different from “Psi” and dry material sandstorm LEGO mechanics in the air (Classic dry material newtonian mechanics with statistics in the fluids.)
as you will also be able to beat vulgar Thinktank- capitalism and marxist leninism on Covid 19 by having rather Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and Friedrich Löfflers contributions on PENSVM. Allways ask a veterinarian also on human diseases.
Which faculty is better qualified for it? That often makes the great difference.
Such as rather chemistery on the climate because the chemists do have the stronger logics on how to dechipher a porridge and how to sort and define the mess and the garbage.
PS
I also thought my argument was clear enough
.
Let us assume that Hr Schmidt & al are right, I do not have any need to fight them.
But let us further assume an effect, where we only need a tiny one, of the sky getting more and more open and less cloudy during day, and more and more cloudy cowered over during night. And further, more cloudy in the winter darkness and less cloudy in the summer brightness. And on an average and over the years and decades,….,… worldwide.
I think, it has never been controlled, but taken for stable and constant on an average all over the years of recent global warming. But if that might be so, it will be a rather severe bias and systematic error to the CO2-AGW- theory. .
The seas being layered and more or less mixed is maybe better known and mapped. It is known as the ENSO- factor and the more disputed atlantic oscillation- factor and it is being carefully examined in detail now by the ARGO- zondes.
Regardless of how well you measure and describe the effect of CO2 forcing and its being closely analogous to any next measured and mapped thing, your very understanding and your mapped model may contain rather severe bias and systematic errors if the clouds and the large oceans are not yet under a similar and even better & more accurate mapping and control.
The surrealists are selling the moon, and the Galaxies, they even try and sell Saturnus and a chosmological cycle. …. instead of what is really more obvious, Aristoxenos`Nephelai…. with the foggy foggy dews, together with the sea serpent.
I only give them my strategic advice on how to make NASA-GISS & al shiver. DS.
C: 1, the clouds, Nephelai by Aristoxenox, the foggy dews. . . . That is a large and white and diffuse- foggy thing, that is told to be 50% or more than half of the earthly greengouse effect.
BPL: The Earth greenhouse effect averages 50% water vapor, 25% clouds, 20% carbon dioxide, 5% minor gases according to Lacis et al. 2010.
According to the Global Energy Budget radiation from the Sun heats the Earth’s the surface which radiates this energy to the the atmosphere where it is absorbed. The atmosphere then radiates this same energy back to the surface heating the surface by twice as much as the Sun. How can a gas, by absorbing and emitting energy in an open system create more energy – what is the mechanism? I have raised this question with numerous scientific bodies in Australia without receiving an explanation. Unlike convection and conduction, radiation will even pass through a vacuum.
I also note the Sun radiates around 50% of its energy in infrared and across a wider range of wavelengths than the cooler surface. If the greenhouse gases trap heat via infrared radiation from the surface they should also trap heat through infrared radiation from the Sun (a cooling effect).
The bench top experiment in schools which demonstrates carbon dioxide heats more than air assumes the cause is absorption of infrared radiation by the carbon dioxide. However, if Argon (non-absorbing IR gas) is substituted for carbon dioxide a similar additional warming occurs. Carbon dioxide and Argon have similar molar mass.
@ Ross Handsaker
Here you display several errors and misconceptions as if you have not understood your own learnings and stumble, , get fooled in your thoughts by your own language.
“……… radiates this energy to the atmosphere where it is absorbed. The atmos+phere then radiates this same energy back to the surface by twice as much as the sun. How can a gas by absorbing and emitting energy in an open system create more energy?- what is the mechanism?…”
“…. I also note that the Sun radiates around 50 % of its energy in infrared and across a wider range of wawelengts than the cooler surface…”
and
” the bench top experiment in schools which demonstrates carbon dioxide heats more than air….. however if Argon is substituted for carbon dioxide a similar additionalm warming occurs…”
Your thoughts are lacking accountable budget conscepts all the way.
I shall not comment on the Austrailans here, just cross my fingers for the development of their James Cook University. .
Ross, you should read Gavin’s post; it is a very clear explanation. Step #1 describes the physics, which you seem to be confused about.
If you have a question about what Gavin says there, I would be happy to attempt to answer it.
Thanks Zebra
Gavin states there would be no I/R absorption in the atmosphere if there were no greenhouse substances. Would not nitrogen, oxygen and argon absorb energy from condensing water vapour and conduction/convection/advection?
My comment about the greenhouse effect heating the surface by twice as much as the Sun is repeated in lessons for students at Oregon and Pennsylvania State universities. The Global Energy Budget supports this contention but I do not see where Gavin explains the origin of this additional energy. Circulating energy between different layers of the atmosphere and the surface will not create more energy.
I note that the surface temperature of 15C is actually for the bottom of the atmosphere rather than the surface (our thermometers are sited about 1.5 metres above ground). Given the temperature gradient of the troposphere the actual average temperature should be located about halfway between the bottom and top (minus 18C) which equates to the equivalent temperature of the outward longwave radiation (240 w/m2) at the top of the atmosphere.
It is interesting the lapse rate in mining ventilation shafts (the Sun does not reach the bottom of the shaft) is the same as the lapse rate above the surface. They call it auto-compression.
I do not think it is correct to add together different fluxes. For example, would five elements at 36C have the same heating effect as one element of 180C? Or, stand next to a large block of ice – there is a lot of energy radiating from the ice but you cannot add this energy together with that radiating from you.
Ross, you do seem confused about basic physics, and it is necessary to get that straight before trying to understand something as complex as the climate system.
Quoting you:
But those mechanisms are not IR, so Gavin is correct. It is easy to measure the absorption spectrum of the different gases; there is no doubt about which absorbs what wavelength. This is basic.
Quoting Gavin:
I don’t see how you interpret that as requiring the “creation” of energy, which we know is not possible (again, basic physics). There is an input of energy from the sun, there is the existing energy in the climate system, and there is the radiation leaving the system going into space.
The interaction of the atmosphere and the surface… shown in the diagram as back radiation… is a function of the existing energy in the climate system. A term like “heating” can cause some confusion; it is better to say energy is exchanged back and forth, and the surface temperature and atmospheric gradient are determined by multiple factors, as you mention.
So, we have (had) an equilibrium state as Gavin describes, with a relatively constant surface temperature, and since the solar input is relatively constant, the current disequilibrium requires a reduction in the radiation leaving the system and going into space. At some point, there will be a new equilibrium state, with more energy in the climate system.
Not sure what you mean about “adding fluxes”; it sounds like the same confusion regarding the term “heating”. A flux is a flux, but the effects depend on multiple factors.
While the nitrogen, argon etc do not absorb infrared radiation they do absorb thermal radiation from other sources and emit energy in infrared – that was my point.
The Global Energy Budget depicts energy FLOWS which are averaged over a period. There is no mention of existing energy in the system. In any event most of the retained energy is in the oceans, not the atmosphere.
From the Energy Budget : 240 W/m2 from the Sun absorbed by the surface and the atmosphere. Atmospheric window 40 W/m2. Total energy available to be absorbed by I/R gases 200 W/m2. Back radiation from the atmosphere 340 W/m2. Discrepancy 140 W/m2.
Ross, your statement about nitrogen emitting IR is wrong.
But more important, you are, as I said, not understanding the very basic physics. I explained that energy is being exchanged back and forth between the surface and the atmosphere, and the diagram clearly shows that. So there is no “missing energy”.
If there were no existing energy in the system, and 200W came in and 200W went out, the planet would be a frozen ball of ice. So how do you explain that it isn’t??
Ross Handsaker,
You ask ‘Would not nitrogen, oxygen and argon absorb energy from condensing water vapour and conduction/convection/advection?’ From the latent heat and the conduction, yes. In the troposphere, convection tends to be adiabatic (thus the ‘lapse rate’, even down mine shafts) so, no there would be no energy transferred by convection.
Note, these gases nitrogen, oxygen and argon which constitute 99.95% of the atmosphere, do not absorb or emit radiation at the temperatures found in the atmosphere. N2, O2 & Ar however do bounce around in the atmosphere, bashing into other atmospheric molecules, the level of bashing being due to the temperature of the atmosphere. Indeed, such bashing defines the local temperature of the atmosphere.
So a greenhouse gas energised by absorbing radiation will bash into perhaps N2, O2 or Ar and pass that radiation-absorbed energy into the rest of the non-radiatively-active atmosphere. Conversely, also resulting from all this gas bashing into each other, the likes of CO2 will be bashed such as to take on the wobble that can result in the emission of radiation, and there is enough of such bashing to ensure CO2 radiates at a level you would expect from a substance at that temperature, although the radiation is only over a limited section of the IR spectrum.
Such is physics.
And the same physics tells us that energy fluxes are additive.
Thus 5x the radiating surface will radiate away 5x the radiation. At 36°C, such surfaces would be radiating at 518Wm^-2 so 5 sq m would radiate a flux of 2,600W. At [36 x 5 =] 180°C, the radiation would measure 2,400Wm^-2, so not a great difference, but this a matter of coincidence rather than the logic you set out.
Of course, 5 x the solid surfaces would represent 5 x the area of the radiating object. But in gases it can be different. If the five components were CO2, CH4, N2O, O3 and CFC-12 which operate at different wavelengths, they would be additive over the same area.
If you were standing by a large block of ice (in your thermals so you are not numb with cold,) you would notice if the ice (which is cold but still radiating energy at you) was replaced by with a large block of stuff at absolute zero (which radiates zip). Because you are describing and energy flux, the energy flux radiating from your thermals would take the opposite sign of the energy flux from the ice going in the opposite direction, and with that consideration they are still additive.
MA Rodger
You state there would be no energy transferred by convection in the atmosphere. The air (including nitrogen) in a room with a radiator is mainly heated by convection not by radiation. Why would the air in the atmosphere be any different?
If you think 5 elements at 36C have the same heating power as one element at 180C, try cooking a roast with the former.
Ross Handsaker,
Your domestic examples do rather demonstrate a serious problem with your understanding of physics.
You talk of convection being involved in the operation of a domestic radiator and ask “Why would the air in the atmosphere be any different?” Would that difference perhaps be because of the absence of radiators up in the atmosphere plumbed in to a boiler?
I would usually at this point explain about the gentle vertical circulations operating within the atmosphere (too gentle to even dry your socks), but for you I have second thoughts about further explanation.
And nobody is cooking a roast in an oven set at 36°C. But what has the temperature setting of a themostatically-controlled and insulated oven got to do with the number of elements it contains and their power-rating?
I conclude you are a bit of lost cause when it comes to physics.
RH: My comment about the greenhouse effect heating the surface by twice as much as the Sun is repeated in lessons for students at Oregon and Pennsylvania State universities. The Global Energy Budget supports this contention but I do not see where Gavin explains the origin of this additional energy.
BPL: I already explained this to you. You are failing to add in some of the inputs. Every element is balanced if you do the addition and subtraction correctly.
RH: “According to the Global Energy Budget radiation from the Sun heats the Earth’s the surface which radiates this energy to the the atmosphere where it is absorbed. The atmosphere then radiates this same energy back to the surface heating the surface by twice as much as the Sun. How can a gas, by absorbing and emitting energy in an open system create more energy – what is the mechanism? ”
BPL: It doesn’t. If you add up all inputs and all outputs from a given part, there is perfect balance. If you think there’s imbalance, you’re not adding them up correctly.
Note, also, that although energy is conserved, temperature is not. Energy is merely being moved through the system, not multiplied or created out of nowhere.
The diagram shows an influx of solar energy of 163 W/m2 at the Earth’s surface. It also appears to show an incident influx of 340 W/m2 from back radiation, So total incident radiation would appear to be approximately 500 W/m2. This is larger than the total solar energy flux of 340 W/m2. This may be the source of confusion. I assume this is an elementary error of incorrectly summing inputs and outputs as you suggest. But what is the error? Can you be more explicit to explain what appears to be at first glance, an anomaly?
Jonathan, I suggested in my reply to you previously you may be confused by terminology; in this case “incident”.
You are ignoring the upward radiation from the surface in the diagram, which is being absorbed by the atmosphere. So, the solar radiation is an external input, but the back radiation is an internal mechanism… it is energy being returned to the surface from where it mostly came.
Both are “incident” on the surface, but adding them together is simply incorrect in terms of the net energy budget.
Hi Zebra,
Actually my post was a rephrasing of the initial post above by Ross Handsaker. It appeared to him (and me too at first) that energy was being generated in the Earth’s atmosphere from nothing. What concerned me was that he stated he was unable to find someone that could explain this properly to him. That’s bad. Admittedly, the energy budget diagram is quite complicated. But for that reason it’s easy for a lay person (or even a non-specialist scientist) to draw wrong conclusions from it. If they do so these misconceptions need to be corrected quickly or doubt could be cast on the entire scientific integrity of climate science. A more detailed lay description of the energy budget would help. I’ve found surprisingly little on line that directly answered this question.
Sure. For starters, I’m referring to this version of the Trenberth diagram:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/what-is-earth-s-energy-budget-five-questions-with-a-guy-who-knows
At the surface, you have (all units W/m2):
Incoming energy:
(SW absorbed) 163.3 + (LW absorbed) 340.3 = 503.6
Outgoing energy:
(LW emitted) 398.2 + (conduction/convection) 18.4 + (evapotranspiration) 86.4 = 503
Very close–though since this a schematic diagram, I would have expected it to balance exactly. Anyway, continuing–
At TOA, you have:
Incoming energy:
(incoming solar SW) 340.4
Outgoing energy:
(reflected by surface & atmosphere) 99.9 + (LW emitted) 239.9 + (net energy retained) 0.6 = 340.4
So, if you include net energy retained under this heading, it does balance exactly.
The important thing is not to mix surface fluxes with TOA fluxes. Apples, oranges, and all that.
RH: The bench top experiment in schools which demonstrates carbon dioxide heats more than air assumes the cause is absorption of infrared radiation by the carbon dioxide. However, if Argon (non-absorbing IR gas) is substituted for carbon dioxide a similar additional warming occurs.
BPL: No, it does not. That is incorrect.
Hr Levenson
I have seen such experiments on youtube carried out on behalf of the surrealists even by an old colleague of mine, in physics.
Really snobbiish with cubic boxes of isopor foam, Taped corners, aluminium foil and teflon foil windows, IR heat lamps and thermometers. Showing that there is no difference whatsoever of what kind of gas they fill up in those boxes.
So what about the fameous magnitude Cp of the different natural gases, that we can find on the fameous website “The Engineering Toolbox” ? specific heat capacity of the respective gases at constant pressure.
I have only one comment to it: For calorimetric experiments, allways conscider the heat capacity of the calorimeter also!
It is fameous ” bench top” experiments carri9ed out by a certain Woods more than 100 years ago.
C: “there is no difference whatsoever of what kind of gas they fill up in those boxes.”
BPL: Look again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwtt51gvaJQ
I referred to local experiments carried out by a colleague in the service of Klimarealistene.no,
that are different from what you advice to.
Looking closer, I found Robert W Wood on wikipedia, who seems to have been well qualified and who carried out experiments rather similar to the fameous “greenhouse effect” of Fourier, having boxes painted black inside and isolated. Then with covers of common greenhouse glass, and rocksalt- sheets. Thus disqualified what I also learnt in school, that the sun shines in, but the sodaglass stops the IR going out. He showed that IR out hardly matters, the greenhouse glass stops air convection first of all.
The same is obvious when today they make very efficient greenhouses only with thin plastic sheeting that is rather IR transparent.
(I would suggest thin strong and clear, Teflon frying foil!)
The gas content inside hardly matters when the heat capacity of those “calorimetric” experimental walls is surely much higher than that of the enclosed gas. Which is what I also mentioned.
Moral:
Look over possible systematic experimental errors of that kind before you suggest and discuss experiments and their “results”. as definite proof of anytyhing.
Fouriers experiments and conclusions early 19th century seem rather in order.. He was able to show that the earthly atmosphere is having what he called “a greenhouse effect” by very conventional greenhouse remedies and techniques. Porous terracotta pottery packed in straw for isolation and cowered with layers of conventional greenhouse glass, and measured with conventional greenhouse termometers.
The earth atmosphere also has a convection stop or barrier on the top, and a volume, and a ground that gets sun- heated. Thus the old conscept is better than commonly told in our days.
Moral2
Allways see and care that it is shown or entailed by 3 systematically independent empirical methods at least, before you deliver science and hope that it stands.
RE. Ross Handsaker
According to the Global Energy Budget radiation from the Sun heats the Earth’s the surface which radiates this energy to the the atmosphere where it is absorbed. The atmosphere then radiates this same energy back to the surface heating the surface by twice as much as the Sun. How can a gas, by absorbing and emitting energy in an open system create more energy – what is the mechanism?
I’ll take a shot at explaining this.
It doesn’t “create” more energy. What it does is slow the energy flow upward and out of the system by absorbing some of the long wave radiation from the surface and reradiating it in all directions, half being back toward the surface rather than upward. When more greenhouse gases are added to the atmosphere, further slowing heat flow upward, in order to achieve a new thermal equilibrium (energy in = energy out) more heat energy must be retained (not created) at the surface raising temperatures. This in order to increase the amount of energy radiated upward per the Stefan-Boltzmann Law off-setting that portion of the energy that was absorbed and reradiated downward.
In other words, the surface temperature is determined by the height in the atmosphere where the density of CO2 is such that the long wave radiation can escape to space unimpeded. The atmospheric temperature at that height per the Stefan-Boltzmann Law must be such that causes radiation at a rate that balances the energy out to space with that of the sun coming in. That temperature along with the lapse rate determines the surface temperature required for equilibrium.
Adding CO2 to the atmosphere raises the height in the atmosphere where the long wave radiation from the surface can freely escape to space. The lapse rate in turn determines the increase surface temperature required for new equilibrium. The surface must warm. Again, it is the flow of heat upward that determines surface temperature. With no atmospheric gasses absorbing upward radiation the average surface temperature would be about 0 degrees Fahrenheit per the Stefan-Boltzmann Law where the surface radiation would then be equal to the solar energy reaching the surface. However, with greenhouse gases slowing heat loss upward that average surface temperature must be about 60 degrees Fahrenheit resulting in 0 degrees Fahrenheit at that height in the atmosphere where the long wave radiation escapes to space unimpeded thus putting the system in thermal equilibrium.
I also note the Sun radiates around 50% of its energy in infrared and across a wider range of wavelengths than the cooler surface. If the greenhouse gases trap heat via infrared radiation from the surface they should also trap heat through infrared radiation from the Sun (a cooling effect).
Yes, this is the case. About 79 watts per square meter of the 340 watts per square meter of solar energy arriving at the top of atmosphere are absorbed thusly. However, this is greatly off-set by the 342 watts per square meter of downward greenhouse gas radiation of the 398 watts per square meter radiated upward from the surface.
The bench top experiment in schools which demonstrates carbon dioxide heats more than air assumes the cause is absorption of infrared radiation by the carbon dioxide. However, if Argon (non-absorbing IR gas) is substituted for carbon dioxide a similar additional warming occurs. Carbon dioxide and Argon have similar molar mass.
I believe this paper is in response to this point.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243492513_Climate_change_in_a_shoebox_Right_result_wrong_physics
CC Holley,
I think his second point is better explained by saying that the IR emitted by the sun is of a shorter wavelength than the IR emitted by the Earth as the Earth’s surface and atmosphere is too cold to emit such short wavelengths.
CO2 has three main modes of wobble. It absorbs IR in sunlight at 2.7 microns. But this is not a wavelength that is emitted by the atmosphere as the atmosphere is too cold to induce the necessary wobble. The most powerful absorption band is at 4.3 microns which is not significantly emitted by the sun, so there is nothing to absorb while the atmosphere is still too cold to to emit at this wavelength.
Thus it is the 15 micron IR emissions that are absorbed by CO2, the CO2 also radiating this wavelength. As described (by CCHolley) in reply to the first point, it is the altitude within the atmosphere which radiates into space that is all-important as the temperature of that altitude determines how much is radiated into space at that wavelength. Increased concentrations of CO2 increases the altitude for emissions into space which (through the troposphere) decreases the emission temperature which reduces the radiation lost into space. The planet then has to warm to reach equilibrium.
MA Rodger.
Yes, thank you for that. I failed to mention that most atmospheric absorption of incoming sunlight is by water vapor, aerosols, and ozone. Not CO2.
Also, with Ross Handsacker’s fixation with water vapor, it should be noted that without CO2 in the atmosphere absorbing long wave radiation from the surface, there would be no water vapor–it would be too cold.
Ross Handsaker – we’re on an earth that is somewhere between an earth warmed almost entirely by sunlight where the energy leaves as soon as it arrives (a very very cold earth,) and an earth where the energy stays in the system for a very long time (a very very hot earth.) Same amount of energy for all earths: the cold one, ours, the hot one.. It’s up to you to figure out the difference between the three states is the amount of time the exact same amount of energy stays in the earth system. Or not. Up to you.
Russ, you are mixing surface fluxes with TOA fluxes. That’s why your numbers don’t add up.
There is a surface budget, in which:
Absorbed solar + backradiation = upwelling IR + thermals + latent heat
Then there’s a TOA budget, in which:
Incoming solar – reflected solar = Outgoing IR
Mix items from different budgets and you get nonsense.
Regarding Step 1: Surface emissions are not σT^4 but εσT^4. In other words, we will have to take emissivity into account. Apart from that, 5.67e-8 * 288 = 390, not 398. I know an arithemtic average of the surface temperature may underestimate emissions by a couple of Watt, as emissions are a logarithmic function. Yet, anything north of 390W/m2 is a bit odd in a purely theoretical figure.
The bigger issue however is surface emissivity. From satellite data within the atmospheric window we know there are substantial deviations from 1, especially with sand or arid regions in general. Regrettably we have very few data in the far-IR range, making up over 50% of emissions. But we have excellent data on water. Water has a very high emissivity to surface normal in the 10µm range (around 0.99), but that is not what matters. Rather we need to look up the hemispheric spectral emissivity, which is a lot lower (only 0.91!), especially because of the far-IR.
As water makes up for most of the surface, and land has a substantial deviation from 1 as well, we can approximate an average surface emissivity of only 0.91. And so εσT^4 gives us 0.91 * 5-67e-8 * 288 = 355W/m2. And for the magnitude of the GHE we get 355-240 = 115W/m2.
Emissivity is not part of that equation.
I am afraid it definitely is. Of course should ε = 1 it would not make a difference. In climate science the assumption of the surface being a black body with ε = 1 is common. But assumptions never beat reality.
E. Schaffer,
I appreciate you are wanting to “beat reality” with your denialism but you “definitely” need to be employing more than your bold-as-brass assertiveness here.
You assert up-thread that you “know an arithemtic average of the surface temperature may underestimate emissions by a couple of Watt, as emissions are a logarithmic function” which is odd. Assuming “arithemtic” is but a typo. I would have thought that using the “arithmetic average” would over-estimate emissions. And I’m not sure where your idea of there being a “logarithmic function” is coming from.
And typos aside, buried in all this up-thread assertiveness is the bizarre implication that you also have some better grasp of “an arithemtic average of the surface temperature” than I have heard claimed before.
But here you seem to want to continue arguing about the exact size of the GHE. Such argument runs well beyond the specific argument presented in the OP above. (Of course there will be more you would want to argue, you being all denialistical regarding AGW.)
The statement above in the OP is entirely well-founded.
You insist it must “definitely” contain some consideration of emissivity yet the statement is solely presented to explain that the IR emissions from planet Earth into space which are “roughly equivalent to the net solar radiation absorbed” are greatly exceeded by the upward surface IR flux of “around σT^4”. This is presented as evidence of a strong greenhouse effect at work as ‘upward surface IR’ and ‘outward TOA IR’ would be identical “in the absence of any greenhouse substances.”.
So would adding a realistic term for emissivity (or even that unrealistic value you elsewhere bandy about) make a ha’p’orth of difference to the veracity of this specific argument? Would it even make much of a difference to the “around 158 Wm-2” value given in the OP which you insist is way too high?
1. The arithemtic temperature issue should be easy do understand. Let me help you out. Let us say a simplified Earth had an average 288K, with one half at 268K and the other at 308K. Then averge emissions were (268^4+308^4)*5.67e-8/2 = 401.4W/m2. That would be 401.4W/m2 vs. only 390W/m2 you’d have with 288K instead. That is why an arithmetic average temperature will always underestimate actual emissions.
2. Again, the hemispheric spectral emissivity of water as a matter of fact is 0.91. One may discuss how this figure is attained, or what possible influences factors like waves or cold skin effect may have. But nothing will change the basic figure, or the fact that most of the surface consists of water.
3. There are many steps necessary to accurately attribute the role of specific GHGs. This needs to be done thoroughly and carefully, and not with two eyes shot or using assumptions only. As pointed out allowing for accurate surface emissivity makes a significant difference in the magnitude of the GHE, affecting both the attribution and furthermore climate sensitivity.
PS. throwing around “denier accusations” does not look very intelligent.
Good questions.
A person of apparently denialist bent–based on a gratuitous sneer thrown in at the end of this article–cites a mean emissivity of 0.93643, which I will round to 0.94. Taking that, and the proposed 390 W/m2, at face value gives ~367 W/m2, and therefore a GHE of 127 W/m2–not 115 W/m2.
But what difference does this make to the argument, really? It’s certainly not clear to me that it makes either the English ha’p’orth or the American plugged nickel.
But it does raise a question for me, which is that E. Schafer apparently assumes that the 398.2 W/m2 figure given in point one is best derived from basic theory, rather than empirically determined. I’d thought that the latter route was what led to the larger figure in the Trenberth diagram–and correctly so, apparently:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/downloadpdf/journals/bams/90/3/2008bams2634_1.pdf
(Trenberth et al (2009))
While we’re at it, (Loeb et al (2009)), which deals with the TOA piece:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/downloadpdf/journals/clim/22/3/2008jcli2637.1.pdf
TBF, Gavin’s OP did use the Stefan-Boltzman term, thus in a sense inviting the misunderstanding.
E. Schaffer,
What certainly does not look intelligent is running a website entitled ‘The Greenhouse Defect: Saving the planet ..from idiocy’ sporting a troll-like strap-line ‘The most disruptive site on climate science’, a website which continues to be packed full of ridiculous denialist nonsense, some of which long after the misguided ideas you present have been debunked for you. It thus appears evident that you are indeed in denial over large swathes of the science of climatology.
(1) You first point is a very narrow response and quite pointless on my count. This point is based on my misinterpreting your nonsense up-thread, nonsense which is so obviously wrong. (I don’t actually expend long unpacking such nonsense so such error is not impossible.) I say “quite pointless on my count” as I did note my mistake, a mis-diagnosis of your nonsense from which you conclude “anything north of 390W/m2 is a bit odd in a purely theoretical figure.”
A mean temperature will underestimate outward radiation (my error in saying otherwise) and a lot more than by “a couple of Watt.” While the actual global average temperature is not accurately known in absolute terms, consider estimated average temperatures by latitude, this fig 1 from Feulner et al (2013). Would a world cut in quarters (thus with averages by quarter of +25ºC, +22ºC, +12ºC, -5ºC) not be “north” by a lot more than an extra “a couple of Watt.”? And such calculation is still averaging both geographically and temporally so it yet remains a significantly a underestimation.
Thus what I find entirely “odd” is your appreciation of the physics which evidently does not bound the level of underestimation anything like as tightly as “a couple of Watt.”
(2) If “one may discuss how this figure [i.e. the surface emissivity] is attained,” perhaps it would have been better if you had explained further this ‘attainment’ rather than repeat you bold assertion.
Mind, the relevance of emissivity (which up-thread your assert is “the bigger issue”) to the level of IR flying off the surface is probably greatly less relevant to your grand theorising than you think. Perhaps you should read your own website!!
(3) An accurate estimate of the magnitude of the total GHE (which you seem so intent to discuss, but I don’t know to what purpose) will obviously in-turn require an accurate average surface temperature (or SAT). I did suggest you seem oblivious to the absence of any accurate average global SAT but you make no reply to this suggestion.
As to the hemisperhic spectral emissivity of water. We have..
a) German Wikipedia saying 0.91
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissionsgrad
Of course that is not so relevant, put it refers to a very respectable text book:
b) (H. D. Baehr, K. Stephan: Wärme- und Stoffübertragung 2004) which indeed names this figure.
c) Since there are many other figures circulating, I wanted to know for sure, and did my own research. Indeed the result was 0.91, or 0.908 to be precise. Not just that, the spectral curve I obtained is identical to what
d) Huang et al 2016 name. You may want to look up Fig.3(a). Note how emissivity drops off in the far-IR. And if you look up the Planck curve and compare it with this, you will see how 0.91 is a very fair guess anyway.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/73/9/jas-d-15-0355.1.xml
So the 0.91 is a very solid figure, and I do not say because I want to believe it, but because I can calculate it. The fact that it seems to be “unknown” in climate science, despite being a necessary fundamental, made me rightfully scratch my head. A climate scientist not knowing surface emissvity, is like a hairdresser not knowing a scissor. And calling someone a “denier” for doing long overdue basic research, is a category on its own.
Response: Not really sure why you think this, but LW emissivity for different surfaces is well-known and is represented in most (all?) GCMs and in the energy budget described above. – gavin
E. Schaffer,
I have a certain level of sympathy for your arguing about emissivity here in that you attempt to find sense in a corner of climatology which seems to you to have more than some minor significance to AGW. In the past I have myself stumbled across quite a few such ‘corners of climatology’ which seem very poorly explained by the literature and thus suggesting they are not being properly addressed. And in my experience it takes a serious amount of spadework to uncover the work that does address such ‘corners’.
However, the ‘corner of climatology’ you address here does not appear to require much spadework at all.
And I do wonder as to your motives for your concern.
You want to use a value of 0.91 IR emissivity for water as a proxy for the entire globe and then in turn to use this assumed global emissivity value along with an average global surface temperature (another problematic number) to calculate the radiative emissions from the planet surface (yet another problematic step) to be a far lower value than the usual value (such as the 398.2Wm^-2 given in the top graphic of the OP above) and all this to reduce the “magnitude of the GHE” saying “we get 355-240 = 115W/m2”, a reduction arrived-at by including the far IR emissivity which does drop like a stone through longer wavelengths
I’m not sure** of where you would go with this conclusion of 115W/m2 but, as folk hereabouts have been telling you, your derivation of it is complete tosh.
(**The website you link to with your comment identity has the strapline ‘The most disruptive site on climate science’ so that may be a clue.)
And the indelible fingerprints of ‘complete tosh’ continue to appear.
You are suggesting a corrective reduction in surface radiation emissions of a whopping 283Wm^-2 yet in support of this you reference Huang et al (2016) ‘An Observationally Based Global Band-by-Band Surface Emissivity Dataset for Climate and Weather Simulations’ which concludes somewhat differently. They find:-
So that would suggest a correction not of 283Wm^-2 but of just 1.1Wm^-2.
E. Schaffer, you may wish to explain this difference between your finding and the finding in your reference, or perhaps it would be better if you ask for explanation of where it is your grand theorising has gone so badly wrong.
The quote from Huang2016 refers to a different question. Only a small fraction of surface emissions ever make into space, as the energy budget diagram under “Step 1” shows. There the atmospheric window is 40.1W/m2, or just over 10% of surface emissions. Naturally surface emissions, or any deviation of it, will only have a moderate effect on total emissions.
If we say compared to a black body surface emissions were 9% lower, then potentially the 40.1W/m2 figure could drop by 0.09 x 40.1 = 3.6W/m2. However, in reality things are a bit different. Within the atmospheric window, the emissivity of water is much higher. Also the radiation emitted sideways (below an angle of 45°) where emissivity runs low (you may want to check Fresnel equations), will largely get absorbed anyway. So those emissions of water that pass the atmospheric window, will rather have an estimated emissivity of 0.98 maybe. Then the error margin would be (1-0.98) x 40.1 = 0.8W/m2, highly conistent with the range the paper names. No contradiction there.
What you do not seem to realize is, that I am not discussing emissions TOA. They ARE about 240W/m2, no doubt. I am talking about the magnitude of the GHE, which per definition is the difference in emissions at surface and TOA.
PS. I have no clue what the 283W/m2 figure you name is about
@Gavin
Given the spectral hemispheric emissivity of water IS 0.91, while reading a legion of statements the surface was emitting like a black body, I have one or two doubts there ;)
ES,
Konda et al. (1994) measured the emissivity of seawater as 0.984.
Konda, M., Imasato, N., Nishi, K., Toda, T. 1994. Measurement of the sea surface emissivity. J. Oceanogr. 50, 17-30.
E. Schaffer,
Yes, you are discussing surface IR but so is that Huang et al (2016) quotation (and you don’t cherry-pick cited references).
You are saying emissivity is not factored into the climate models and its absence (making a difference at the surface of -43Wm^-2, (this correcting my up-thread comment) makes a humongous difference.
Huang et al (2016) is saying that when emissivity is properly included, the difference from blackbody is “nonnegligible” which roughly means it doesn’t make a ha’p’orth of difference, just (and here also correcting my up-thread comment) -0.93Wm^-2 TOA.
So, are you happy with your massive change at the surface resulting in such a tiny TOA change?
Note that because such things work both ways, this suggests a massive climate sensitivity with just a small change in TOA emissions (thus a climate forcing) resulting in something in the order of
[43/0.93=] 46x the effect at the surface, temperature-wise equivalent to perhaps an ECS=80ºC.
Of course the 46:1 ratio is nonsense but you seem convinced that your factored-in -43Wm^-2 is real when it is as unrealistic as the 46:1 ratio. Perhaps if you read Huang et al (2016) rather than just looking at the pictures, you may learn something and thus cease making a fool of yourself.
@BPL
From the data I have, I will assume Konda et al (1994) are overestimating emissivity. I think it is not 0.984, but rather 0.98 straight. Such deviations however were seen in other occasions when comparing lab data vs. in situ observations.
Yet I think the point you try to make fails on a different, more obvious account. To quote the named article:
“Upward infrared radiation from the sea surface was measured by the Minolta IR-0510
infrared radiometer (A), which was mounted about 5 m above the mean sea surface. Its viewing solid angle was 1°, and the sensitive wave length range was between 8μm and 14μm”
So they tried to measure the emissivity within the atmospheric window towards (essentially) surface normal, for the sake of comparing it to satellite observations. That is very different from hemispheric spectral emissivity, accounting for real life, 3 dimensional, total emissivity.
The reflectivity chart I provided (emissivity = 1-reflectivity) may be helpful in this regard..
https://greenhousedefect.com/fileadmin/user_upload/water_fresnel_total.png
@MA Rodgers
“So, are you happy with your massive change at the surface resulting in such a tiny TOA change?”
Absolutely!
“you may learn something and thus cease making a fool of yourself.”
As any good-willed, self-thinking individual, I am always prepared to learn and make a fool of myself. I mean who else is to blame, if you are more than just a mindless follower?
Without endorsing it, the 1:46 ratio may be rougly accurate in the difference of the issues we are discussing. Again, actual surface emissivity has little impact on emissions TOA, but huge implications on the magnitude of the GHE.
E. Schaffers,
You make the grand assertion that “actual surface emissivity has little impact on emissions TOA.” Do explain that. This skinny film of gas covering the planet can have 43Wm^-2 less whizzing about just 10km below and it has little impact on “emissions TOA”? What physics is in operation to allow that? (Note that the literature-reading I recommended up-thread will not here provide any useful answer.s for you.)
Maybe you should read the following paper for an alternative rational view. http://www.ijaos.org/article/298/10.11648.j.ijaos.20210502.12
@David Coe: – ” This result strongly suggests that increasing levels of CO2 will not lead to significant changes in earth temperature and that increases in CH4 and N2O will have very little discernable impact. ”
ms — Maybe you should read the following paper for an alternative rational view.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument-part-ii/
Thank you for injecting humor into the comments.
With the graph on Earths Energy Budget I don’t see any allowance for the heat produced when burning Fossil Fuels, Every working machine on the planet produces heat, this heat enters the atmosphere just like the conversion of SW to LW radiation. Shouldn’t this add to the Atmosphere?
It’s a tiny amount comparatively, less than 0.1 W/m2, so it’s lost in the noise. It has an impact in concentrated locations (like cities), but that’s a very small fraction of the Earth. – gavin
Thank you Gavin.
@Dr. Gavin: – ” 0.1 W/m2 … but that’s a very small fraction of the Earth. ”
— Unfortunately, (large) cities are where most of humanity lives, works and sleeps.
In Paris, for example, already today the atmosphere can sometimes reach levels of CO2 of 950 ppm
Surprisingly, CO2 is only measured in very few places on our planet, and rarely in real time. This is due to some unfortunate circumstances where:
CO2 is considered a natural part of the atmosphere
CO2 levels are actually difficult to measure accurately
CO2 is not toxic
Due to all of the above, CO2 was not included in the standard set of required measurements for meteorology as defined by the World Meteorological Organization.
Is this perhaps a medium to serious omission? Can you fix it ?
Scientists could use statistical methods to analyse the effect of CO2, if data were available.
Precisely because all these warm machines are concentrated in a relatively small area of the earth, the average 0.1W/m² of OLR is multiplied accordingly in a small area.
A Frenchman consumes ~43000KWh of nuclear, fossil and renewable energy per capita and year. Paris is home to ~20500 people/km² and their machines, whether electric or fossil, generate ~100W/m² additional OLR, evaporation and convection. It’s the amount of energy that matters – not how it’s generated. All the drama is happening under an atmosphere inflated to 950ppm, ~3.5 times the pre-industrial CO2 concentration.
– Can you estimate how this rather futuristic scenario of CO2 concentrations and surface temperature can increase the average greenhouse effect (~115W/m²) in such type of cities ?
UHI is a symptom that will probably still accompany us even if we all CO2 emissions could stop and produce all energy consumption from renewable energies. Even then, similar problems arise, such as the decreasing albedo of big cities, which expand significant areas of the city with PV.
However, as a developer and troubleshooter, I think there is always a technical solution to respond to physical problems.
There are quite powerful (KW/Kg) drives that do not heat up a city – but can cool the ambient air of a large city to a certain degree (i.e. air motor for short distance public transport).
PV can also be cooled and thus its heat production can be used or brought underground seasonally for winter time.
A few things.
1) “CO2 is only measured in very few places on our planet, and rarely in real time.”
That’s because there can be huge local fluxes that obscure the true background value, which is the variable of climatic interest. Hence the typically remote locations for CO2 observatories–they want to get the ‘well-mixed’ value.
2) “Precisely because all these warm machines are concentrated in a relatively small area of the earth, the average 0.1W/m² of OLR…”
This is confusing; the heat in “UHI” is sensible heat (i.e., molecular kinetic motion). True, it gives rise to OLR, but that is in part how cooling occurs.
3) “All the drama is happening under an atmosphere inflated to 950ppm…”
The more scientifically knowledgeable are welcome to correct me here, but it’s my understanding that the GHE is mostly effective around notional “top of atmsophere’ which really seems to mean ‘top of the troposphere’. Convection sets the lapse rate, which is relatively stable, and that means that surface level overconcentrations won’t affect temperature very much.
4) “UHI is a symptom that will probably still accompany us even if we all CO2 emissions could stop…” Certainly correct; UHI isn’t a product of GHE in the first place, but of the waste heat & albedo change you cite, plus probably decreased mean wind velocity due to surface turbulence.
@KMcK: – ” there can be huge local fluxes that obscure the true background value, …
they want to get the ‘well-mixed’ value. ”
I love parrots – and their cognitive abilities. The greatest scientific evil that can happen in a city like Paris (that is unfamiliar to you) – is when you ask a passer-by for the fastest way to the train station – and he answers you with a counter-question like:
what do you want at the train station?
Billions of people do NOT live under the true background value, but in larger regions with significantly different CO2, O³, … etc. climate gas concentrations, air quality, greenhouse effect and energy (im)balance.
Don’t all these people have the right to monitor their actual, real climate conditions and resolve them into regional, mega-city models?
The fact that many measurements already exist there due to legally prescribed limit values for all possible pollutant emissions makes it all the more incomprehensible to me that, of all things, constant measured values for CO2 are missing.
After all, these mega-city regions are also the hot spots, which largely determine the “true background value” and basically show what future we can face outside of these cities with a 2xCO2, 3xCO2, 4xCO2 scenario. Here is the place to compare hundreds of simulated computer models with reality and measurement.
Just measure all the factors of the “Paris energy balance” and compare them with a neighboring rural region of similar size and basic parameters.
The temperature differences between the city and the surrounding area are greater the larger and more densely populated the city is. The difference to the surrounding area can be up to 10 Kelvin in large cities.
If that’s not “very much”, you don’t have to worry about a global increase of 2°C anymore.
KMcK.: – ” This is confusing; the heat in “UHI” is sensible heat … and that means that surface level overconcentrations won’t affect temperature very much.
You contradict yourself and that is part of your confusion.
UHI are always caused by a lack of latent evaporation and/or by higher temperatures (due to high solar radiation & low wind speed) of the ground, buildings and the strongly heated low albedo surfaces with correspondingly increased LW radiation, which is then reinforced by the higher “regional mega-city greenhouse gas effect”.
KMcK.: – ” my understanding that the GHE is mostly effective around notional “top of atmsophere’ which really seems to mean ‘top of the troposphere’.
— That is nonsence !
The troposphere is heated primarily from below by the absorption of solar radiation by the earth’s surface and the outgoing LW radiation
Responding to MS–
Sure, but where did I say otherwise? And the question remains, does a local ground-level CO2 overconcentration produce much GHE warming on its own?
No, if the current ‘hot spots’ have elevated CO2 concentrations, for say, the lowest kilometer of the atmosphere, then they do not provide a model for future “background values.”
None of which is due to CO2, apparently. So who is contradicting himself here?
Not sure what you’re really trying to say here, but regional increases are not equivalent to global ones, in several ways. For one, affected flora or fauna will by definition have refuges in the regional case–but not so much in the global one.
Per a whole lot of folks better versed in these matters than either of us, the mechanism is that the decrease in mean free path implies a rise in the altitude at which radiation is arbitrarily likely to reach space without further interaction. (This is the “effective radiating layer.”) But a higher altitude means colder temps, which in turn means decreased radiative efficacy, per the Stephan-Boltzman relation.
In turn, that means less cooling, which implies warming of the system as a whole.
Here’s Spencer Weart’s version of this model:
https://history.aip.org/climate/simple.htm#L_0141
“As the upper levels radiate some of the excess downwards, all the lower levels down to the surface warm up. The imbalance must continue until the upper levels get warmer and radiate out more energy.”
Kevin was not quite correct in saying “the GHE is mostly effective around notional “top of atmsophere’ which really seems to mean ‘top of the troposphere’,” but it is not at all nonsense.
What happens is that at ‘top of troposphere’, which can be assumed to be the effective radiating height where an emitted IR photon is more likely to be radiated directly to space than to be absorbed by another CO2 molecule, has been raised by a few tens of meters by adding more CO2 to the atmosphere, which thanks to the lapse rate, means that the new effective radiating height is a bit colder and therefore less energy is being emitted, thus causing the entire atmosphere below the effective radiating height to warm until once again IR energy radiated to space at top of atmosphere ~equals solar energy in.
This is key to understanding why adding more CO2 causes warming. Without the lapse rate adding more CO2 would not make any difference, since the new radiating elevation would not be colder and thus would still radiate at the same temperature.
Hr Schmidt & al:
I hate % pro-cents and watts per square meters, and set up the system in other terms, maybe in terms of how we interprete a complex chemical reaction system with dynamic balances, and the way that we discuss biochemical metabolisms.
And also a complex electronical printchard cirquit diagram with functional components input, output, capacities, and feedback loops. Thus I have something to compare with. And the tiny CO2 content in the atmosphere I would call a strong enzyme or Catalysator, not a “driving force” but a typical catalysator or enzyme for such one.
And the greenhouse effect, I recognize as a typical heat rectifiying system with capacities and resistance for the voltage, charge and current.
Temperature on earth seems rectified to the advantage of life.
It is the same when lipids and sugars are digested and shown and stored here and there in the organisms. And there is input and output of energy similar to current at high and low voltages that resemble temperatures. Low and high entrophy.
Your maps d/o are similar enough to this, but I see and discuss it in other cathegories and terms.
Both Arthur Eddington and Immanuel Kant have discussed the basic principles of this.
Regardless of what we observe or think, if we happen to be square- heads, then our thoughts and model conscepts will also be square. According to “Philosophy of physical science” and “The nature of the physical world” by Eddington and frurther Immanuelo Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft!
T0day it is called “models” and even “confidence”. What was rather called REALIA, Ideas, and “Cathegories”.
I preferre the original terms.
A GURU filled up his tin jug
from the well of truth.
Of diligent students stormed,
he concluded ot from a sample of Truth itself
that it is cylindric!
(Piet Hein, pupil of Niels Bohr)
Moral:
Be aware that truth as such may adapt to and appear in the forms of the arbitrary jugs and categories in which we are filling it up
By the way, “A heat rectifying system” as I wrote it, would be different from Kirchoffs rule , that the emittance is equal to the absorbance.
That would further be “a heat pump” or simply ” a greenhouse effect”
So my quite ingenious conscept there can be recommended and defended.
And even discussed in terms of rectifying diodes, that are said to be active components different from passive components, and we can even discuss clap- valves and transistors that are not to be confused with Maxwells demon, because they are very practicalo and work very well. They are for sale in the shops.- and even found onn the junkyard from where they can be be re- cycled.
Rectifiers are as common and as real as can be. They seem to lower the entrophy of partial systema and seem even to be vital.
Personally my background is not in atmospheric physics but I am somewhat baffled by the explanation presented above. Particularly the statement that there is an outward radiative heat flux of 398 W/m2 based on the fourth power surface temperature. This is true in the absence of an atmosphere. However, radiant heat transfer is proportional to the fourth power temperature difference between two surfaces. The temperature of the atmosphere is not at absolute zero K so there should be almost no radiant heat transfer between surface and atmosphere.
Jonathan, I have sometimes been critical of climate scientists, including Gavin, about how they communicate, but in this case it seems that your confusion comes from not reading carefully… the wording is correct.
Perhaps you are mixing up “flux” and “transfer”?
And perhaps you are forgetting, as even many of the people familiar with the topic sometimes do, that for equilibrium to continue, the level of energy previously existing in the climate system must be maintained by the solar input.
Hi zebra,
I’m not claiming that the statement you quoted is incorrect but it the phrase “must be” is not sufficiently demonstrated to my mind. For example, the statement that the Earth is in thermal equilibrium is assumed. There is no particular scientific reason to assume this. Particularly if there is a global net increase of temperature over time. The heat and mass transfer depicted in the diagram is dauntingly complex to a non-specialist. A more detailed explanation of the various components would give a reader more confidence. And yes, I assume I could be pointed to published results to verify such claims. However, it’s not really something I have the time to do. In any case there must be others who would like to see a simple explanation beyond the statement that you quote without needing to immerse themselves in the literature particularly those with little scientific background.
Jonathan, from your comment in the other subthread which I answered above, and this one, I think my “diagnosis” is correct… you need to be more careful with the meanings of the terms you are reading and using.
Gavin said “radiative equilibrium” referring to the “natural” greenhouse effect, and referring to the planet as a whole. So before we messed things up, radiation from the sun to the planet and radiation from the planet to space were equal… we can know that from measurements and physics. But that’s not what “thermal equilibrium”, which you used, refers to. From wiki-p:
See the difference? We aren’t in thermal equilibrium with either the sun or space, and the temperature within the climate system is obviously not spatially uniform.
Now, the planet is not currently in radiative equilibrium primarily because we’ve increased those GHG which absorb radiation headed for space and convert it to thermal energy. One manifestation of that is an increase in temperature. If we stop increasing GHG, then at some future point, we will again have radiative equilibrium, and a higher energy level in the climate system.
That. in my view, would be the “simple explanation” you are requesting… if you have further questions feel free to ask.
But I think that when you also say you want “a more detailed explanation of the various components”, you are contradicting yourself. You would not necessarily have to read papers, but you would have to have the specific scientific education to (correctly) speak the same language as the person explaining it… it gets complicated.
Hi zebra,
I think we are getting a little off the point. My concern over the post can be stated simply: I believe the core of this is the inclusion of the energy budget diagram. This diagram is complicated and shows a number of features which may appear counter-intuitive or even paradoxical to a naive observer. For example, the fact that back radiation flux exceeds solar flux which confused Ross Handsaker. These features can lead to confusion and miss-interpretation by a lay reader if not pointed out, discussed and explained. I would also have been satisfied if the diagram had simply been omitted. This really wouldn’t matter except that any perceived contradiction is liable to be seized upon by those seeking to discredit the science.
JD: the statement that the Earth is in thermal equilibrium is assumed. There is no particular scientific reason to assume this.
BPL: Google “Stefan-Boltzmann law.”
If Earth is receiving more energy than it radiates, it will heat up until it radiates as much as it receives.
If Earth is receiving less energy than it radiates, it will cool down until it radiates only as much as it receives.
That’s what causes the Earth (or any planet) to be in thermal equilibrium.
Right, but the Earth *is* heating up, is it not? I thought that was the whole point of global warming.
BPL, please see my comment above re “thermal equilibrium”.
You wonder why even sincere people can be confused about this topic; well, perhaps because even people like you who are familiar with it slip into colloquial usage that adds to that confusion.
Global Mean Surface Temperature is not “the temperature of the planet”… there’s no such thing.
It is an average of significantly different values (even in Kelvin), and it is the average temperature for a (very thin) spatial part of the climate system. The climate system is not a block of copper.
GMST is a proxy for the energy state of Earth’s climate system, and Gavin is exactly correct to use “radiative equilibrium”. Maybe the public could understand this stuff if the communication were better tailored to the audience and consistent.
z: Global Mean Surface Temperature is not “the temperature of the planet”… there’s no such thing.
BPL: No, but it’s the temperature of the surface, where we live.
In any case, thermal equilibrium of the planet refers to the radiative equilibrium temperature, also called the emission temperature or the effective temperature, not the surface temperature. Ts = 288 K, Te = 255 K.
BPL,
zebra:
“Maybe the public could understand this stuff if the communication were better tailored to the audience and consistent.”
BPL:
“thermal equilibrium of the planet refers to…
the radiative equilibrium temperature, also called…
the emission temperature or…
the effective temperature, …”
Hmmmmm…….
@ Jonathan David
Your idea of heat being exchanged between 2 plates with temperature difference deltaT and along with DeltaT^4 is quite fruitful and orderly.
I have it in my catechism of definitions referred to Ludwig Bolzmann. as the definition of heat as such.
But, I do not quite like it because I have also seen it misconsceived and mis-used for the denial of atmospheric back- radiation, that heat cannot be conducted or radiated from a cooler to a hotter place.
Which it can indeed.
It allways goes both ways and superposes, the cooler site actually warms up the hotter site also, unless its temperature is zero Kelvin. What only decides is the conductivity of the field. Which is easily shown experimentally. It is even quite trivial. Take on a pullover in the cold and it will actually heat up your body so that you can relax and eat less fuel and still keep warm.
Truly, it will warm you!
Being aquainted to the discussion and understanding and balance of chemical reactions that are written A B meaning that it goes both ways also when apparently stable and nothing happens, this is elementary to me. It is the nature of heat in terms of molecular moovement and electromagnetic radiation. It mooves and vibrates and radiates at any temperature different from Zero.,
Such a deeper more fruitful realistic conscept of heat and heating is just as trivial to me.
The stronger heat does not block for and push back the weaker heat from lower temperatures, it adds and superposes.
Both heat sources in watts heat each other up proportionally. and quite undisturbed
As also 2 lights superposes. The softer or weaker light will light up the stronger light source still a bit so that it shines out even stronger than it would without the weaker illumination onto it..
And radio- transmitters. The stronger radio station does not stop and push and “showel” back the weaker station in space, on broad wave- front by any logical and physical effect.. .
The universal back radiation 0f only 3K all around does actually heat up to an even higher temperature than normal, the antennas and devices by which we are receiving it, to the extent that they are actually receiving anything at all..
As the earth receives most of it, it actually wams us still a bit more, from 3K.
The earth is also heating up the sun a tiny bit. ”
incadescent lamps side by side heats and lights each other up. to higher luminescence in lux and watts. and hitgher filament temperatures in T…… at lower current because the filaments are metallic conductors.
You save fuel by isolating the fireplace and earn that saving in joules or kilowatt- hours that can be utillized and sold on the free market against hard cash.
This is as real as can be and no perpetuum mobile. On the contrary, it is very practical and traditional and known by intelligent people all through stone- age, that was really very long Namely how to dress and how to heat properly, how and why.
Wherefore, only apes and bears among us have not yet understood this, and are likely to deny it… .
PS
The system does not display the chemical both- directions symbol. 2 arrows in opposite direction from A to B, and at the same time from B to A, but at maybe different rates, and in balance. Think in terms of an ant- road between 2 ant- hills, where traffic goes both ways undisturbed by each other. Making both hills a bit more active than they else would have been. DS.
JD: The temperature of the atmosphere is not at absolute zero K so there should be almost no radiant heat transfer between surface and atmosphere.
BPL: The NET heat transfer is small, but the fluxes up and down are large.
Having spent a dozen years or so actually measuring those fluxes, and having spent a lot more of my career studying them, I can assure you that the difference in IR radiation fluxes at the surface (up from the ground, down from the sky) is typically 100 W/m^2 or more in a clear sky. (Flux up from surface is the larger of the two.)
@BL: – ” a dozen years or so actually measuring those fluxes, and having spent a lot more of my career studying them, ”
— If you state that you have measured the differences between thermal down and up surfaces for decades, that you have even allegedly studied this and that these differences have always been > 100W/m² – then you should not hide the fact that you have apparently always practiced this in the same place – and that place is very likely to be an arid, hot & sunny desert.
However, global energy balances (which are discussed here) often differ enormously from regional energy balances, as you have hopefully learned during your “study”.
Global means for difference of thermal up surface and thermal down surface are about:
Land areas ~ 66W/m²
Ocean areas ~ 53W/m²
clear sky ~ 84W/m²
all sky ~ 56W/m²
All values are far below 100W/m², which should not doubt that you actually measured these values anywhere.
Unfortunately, your brain dead attempt to refute what I say ignores the “typically” and “in a clear sky” parts of my statement. “Always” is a figment of your imagination.
At least you are consistently wrong. Clear skies are not isolated to “arid, hot & sunny desert”. You suffer from weapons grade Dunning Kruger.
@BL: – ” is typically 100 W/m^2 or more ”
— The “Typically” fits in a GEB – and 100+W/m² do NOT fit.
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs00382-018-4413-y/MediaObjects/382_2018_4413_Fig1_HTML.gif?as=webp
Congratulations. You found a graph that shows a global average value.
Now try collecting enough data to examine the distribution of those clear sky values. And determine whether it is normally-distributed or not. And determine whether the median or mode is the same as the mean. Do a probability distribution function.
When you figure out what any of that means, come back to play with the adults.
Have you found out which parts of the world have clear skies that are not “arid, hot, and sunny deserts”?
@BL says: – ” I know Dr. Wild. I’ve worked with him in the past. I have many years of experience in the measurment of radiation. ”
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=4&t=132&&a=141#137694
— The graphic of the global energy balance / clear-sky I linked was created by Prof. Dr. M. Wild as lead author for the latest IPCC AR6 WG1 and shows a mean value for thermal net clear-sky surface (STRC) = -84W/m².
I assume you know much better what a spatially and temporally averaged “mean” value is.
and it’s a pity that Mr. Prof. Dr. Martin Wild couldn’t benefit from your knowledge through your centuries-long cooperation.
@BL says: – ” Have you found out which parts of the world have clear skies that are not “arid, hot, and sunny deserts”?
— All places in the world have a clear-sky atmosphere from time to time – nevertheless a scientist should avoid thermal radiation measurements over the barbecue, active volcanoes and hot coffee pots within deeper boreholes in order not to falsify these mean values.
“Typical values” for STRC that are too high suggest a much too low GHE.
Climate change deniers will love you.
Just as I figured. Yo don’t know what you are talking about.
@JD
I think your point is an important one. I have never understood the IR radiation discontinuity assumed between the surface and near surface air temperature in global formulations.
In my study of boundary layer climates, with strong emphasis on the surface air interface, my understanding is that net flow to atmosphere is by enthalpy flux of sensible and latent heat, not by radiation. The only net IR heat flow from the surface is outward instantaneously via the IR windows. If global average surface temperature were to increase, a few more water vapor bands are exposed resulting in a slight closure of IR windows as observed from space.
From a practical, human relevant perspective, near surface LW radiation budgets are largely dependent on the ratio of latent and sensible heat fluxes in response to solar heating, and the instantaneous window losses.
Where net LW radiation near the surface at any particular location is a function of L = (latent heat of vaporization); E (rate of evapotranspiration from the surface); H (vertical turbulent fluxes of sensible heat flux into the atmosphere by thermal convection); J (latent and sensible heat stored by vegetation); M (energy absorbed by metabolism (photosynthesis minus respiration), and Ad (horizontal advection).
Where, conceptually, a shift to a larger proportion of sensible heat flux H will register a higher near surface temperature with thermometer. This is overwhelmingly dependent on surface properties such as moisture availability and vegetation.
Those inclined to use theory based on astrophysics models for observed spectra have not adequately characterized the nature of surface energy budgets on Earth, in my opinion.
The upper boundary TOA is well characterized with spectral radiation schemes, the lower boundary surface in the moist system, however, is not.
Surface energy budgets have not been closed to better than 10 W m-2 to the best of my knowledge, unless there have been some advancements. This is because the nature of surface flux is turbulent and not easily observed. Vegetation, soils, and water and inextricably linked through energy and hydrological cycles.
The policy specific relevance of communicating the importance of surface energy budget components relates to extreme temperature events that get a lot of attention in the press. I do not believe radiation theorists can claim to know with confidence the relative importance of trace gases vs surface energy budget components when it comes to locally observed temperature extremes.
JCM: I have never understood the IR radiation discontinuity assumed between the surface and near surface air temperature in global formulations.
BPL: They are at slightly different temperatures.
Also, look up the derivation of the greenhouse effect under pure radiative equilibrium in an atmosphere physics textbook–Houghton gives a good example. You always wind up with a temperature discontinuity at the surface. In practice, conduction and convection eliminate this.
@ BPL thanks for the reference.
In analyzing the diagram above I see what you mean i.e. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/ceres-poster-011-v2.jpg
Here I see 398.2 units surface upward radiation – 40.1 window loss = 358.1 upward flux to atmosphere.
I also see 340.3 units of back radiation.
358.1 – 340.3 = a difference of 17.8 units.
I see 18.4 units of “convection/conduction” delivered to the lower troposphere attempting to eliminate this (in your words).
18.4 – 17.8 = 0.6 units.
It looks like we have 0.6 units too much sensible heat flux circulating in the turbulent boundary layer. Is it over-compensating?
Or is this 0.6 just a coincidence that matches the 0.6 “net absorbed” depicted in the diagram?
Is it, in your opinion, an option to shift this 0.6 units over to latent heat flux, which tends to transmit through the turbulent boundary layer? This might help reduce the apparent imbalance. However, I never see this is presented as an option. In fact, it is actively vetoed as an option.
Thanks
@JCM: – ” Or is this 0.6 just a coincidence that matches the 0.6 “net absorbed” depicted in the diagram? Is it, in your opinion, an option to shift this 0.6 units over to latent heat flux, ”
– The 0.6W/m² “net absorbed” imbalance is best defined and measured at TOA //
+340,4 -99,9 – 239,9 = 0,6W/m².
at the surface you find also 0,6W/m² of imbalance //
(+163,3 +340,3 -398,2 – 86,4 -18,4 = 0,6W/m²)
but a ~90% is stored in the oceans, ice-melting, ground water etc. and evaporation, convection & conduction are far more difficult to measure than factors at TOA.
Whether Mr. BPL gives you permission to simply shift the imbalance of 0.6W/m² to the latent evaporation “production” ??? – I doubt it.
For over a year I have now been asking him for permission for 0.7W/m² additional evaporation – he refuses it on the grounds because Messrs. Clausius & Clapeyron have put a physical law into force since centuries, which do NOT allow the additional evaporation of water to form water vapour and clouds. Under threat of dungeon and borehole, it is forbidden to water the tomatoes on the balcony – based on his views the sky is complete – no more water vapor allowed – and that I´m not even able to evaporate water in a hot dry desert. But my art project: “1001 Mio. clouds” still keeps on moving even without his permission.
Hopefully you remember my link describing the climatic observations and effects of artificial irrigation with a global realistic volume of 2560km³/y.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1004&context=nasapub
Of this volume, only 38% was eventually fed to evaporation – the rest of the water was above and below ground runoff (an indication of inefficient irrigation technology to those skilled in the art).
Spread over the global land area covered with vegetation, the volume of 38% = 972.8Km³ corresponds to approximately 8.3mm(L)/m² of artificial irrigation or 0.6W/m² evapotranspiration (water = 0.~68KWh/Kg evaporation energy).
But that doesn’t mean that with the additional irrigation and latent energy flow you are able to eliminate/compensate the imbalance, since this energy is released again within the troposphere. With additional evaporation we can only achieve a cooling effect on the earth’s temperature (geoengineering) by an improved cloud albedo.
This is “only” ~ 0.2W/m² per additional volume of almost 1000km³ (assumption by the editor). It’s a great (last) chance to reduce that hated positive imbalance by a third. Since this volume also corresponds to the annual sea level rise (SLR), strained water retention over land and the conversion of runoff volume into evaporation volume results in the fantastic combination to lower sea level rise and earth temperature simultaneously.
Securing global food security and biodiversity, like many other positive influences, will certainly also reward this shurely enormous effort. You could contribute with a professional assessment of the hypothetical global retention volumes in soil and subsoil –
and at the same time calculate how much Gt of carbon we can burry underground each year. – Thanks
ms: based on his views the sky is complete – no more water vapor allowed
BPL: Not based on my views, pal. Based on physical chemistry. You can put more water vapor in the air, and it will rain out in approximately 9 days. Humans simply cannot raise the ambient level of water vapor without changing another factor, the ambient temperature. You might change the average relative humidity, but that would depend on still other factors, most of them uncontrollable on a global scale (e.g. the wind). Your plan won’t work. Your idea is a grandiose mistake. It’s pseudoscience. Get over yourself.
@ macias
For further reading into the fascinating nature of climates in the perturbed environment please see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311340976_The_role_of_water_and_vegetation_in_the_distribution_of_solar_energy_and_local_climate_a_review
There you will find many case examples in units that you might find useful.
Somewhere between 40-60% of land surfaces have been transformed since 1700. I think there can be little question that massive deforestation, soil erosion, and introduction of non-native shallow rooted vegetation has led to a disruption of water cycles, and an increase in average temperature over many continents. These changes are not limited to surface energy budget components, but filter all the way up to cloud nucleation and precipitation. The moderating effects of the water cycle over land surface has been massively disrupted.
In a scenario of unlimited water supply from soil, the actual transpiration is linearly dependent on potential evapotranspiration, reaching perhaps 80% of potential ET. In reality, we observe increasing vapor pressure deficits on land today. This is normally attributed to increasing greenhouse gas concentration and global warming, but there is more to the story.
Reducing the narrative to global averages with simple rule of thumb relationships obscures reality and limits the policy recommendations offered. These concepts fall well outside the scope of UNFCC type associated scientists. This reductionism of climate science will continue to have severe negative consequences.
JCM
@JCM: – ” Somewhere between 40-60% of land surfaces have been transformed since 1700. I think there can be little question that massive deforestation, soil erosion, and introduction of non-native shallow rooted vegetation has led to a disruption of water cycles, and an increase in average temperature over many continents. ”
— Motivated by your e-mail, I tried to get a quantitative overview of how much area and to what extent people have influenced the *evaporation* factor in the past and present and continue to do so.
After that, my view of climate change was strangely changed – but at the same time profoundly confirmed.
The decrease in mean annual evaporation in cities (25-50% on ~1 million km²)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2021EF002045 -(page 7)-
and agriculture (~40% on 48 million km²) is enormus.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214581815000543
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Temporal-changes-black-line-m-m-in-area-averaged-annual-SM-anomalies-relative-to_fig1_330767129
On a third of the land area (~49 million km²) , I estimate this decrease in evaporation to be roughly 1/3 of the average precipitation (250mm) over land (38 + 19W/m² = ~750mm).
Humans have therefore accumulated a lack of evaporation capacity over the course of thousands of years with a today’s total volume of possibly — ! 12250km³/y ! .
This is the estimated amount of potential evapotranspiration (PET) that land surfaces “could” evaporate compared to today – if mankind did not exist in the evolution.
These ~12250km³ correspond to ~
– the average total global water vapor content in the atmosphere.
– An increase in latent evaporation in the global energy balance for land areas from 38W/m² to 45W/m² (+18.4%) and corresponding reduction/cooling of the sensitive heat and thermal up surface from an impressive ! 7W/m² !
– The absolute water vapor content (and energy) in the atmosphere over land will be increased by 12.28%
– 2.5% of global evaporation (490000 km³)/y.
– 10 x Sea Level Rise/y = 3.5cm
– According to Aristotle, fluffy white clouds are also formed from 12250 km³ H2O.
Since a medium-sized fair weather cloud (cumulus) with a spherical volume of 1km³ and
1g H2O/m³ weighs about 1000t — 12.25 billion clouds with 1.2 km² cloud albedo each could arise from 12250km³ evaporation per year. Calculated over a year (with water vapor remaining in the atmosphere for 8.5 days), these cover ~ 336 million km² or 66% of the earth’s surface.
In the tropics, however, there are also huge storm clouds which, with an absolute humidity of 7g/m³ and several thousand km³, having a ratio of spherical volume and circular disk correspondingly to much smaller total areas — and thus form “only” 4.8 million km² of cloud surface.
Evenly calculated globally over the year (43 cycles x 285 km³), this evaporation/cloud volume improves the Earth’s albedo by 0.475 W/m² and thus corresponds to ~0.175°C cooling of the Earth’s temperature.
http://www.climate4you.com/
” A simple linear fit model suggests that an increase in global cloud cover of 1 percent corresponds to a global temperature decrease of about 0.07°C. ”
” A 3 percent cloud cover change corresponds to a radiative net change of about 0.57W/m2. ”
The cloud feedback of 0.42W/m² °K determined by the IPCC AR6 WG1 could therefore very quickly prove to be man-made climate change, which has no causal connection with the CO2 emissions and concentrations, — but is exclusively due to changing land use and wrong water management starting long before 1750.
However, 12250 km³ of water correspond to 44.1 – 88.2Gt CO2 during transpiration in the photosynthesis of plants when binding carbon (~ 1m³/1-2Kg carbon or 3.6-7.2Kg CO2).
! That’s about 2.5 times the annual human emissions. !
@BPL: – ” You can put more water vapor in the air, and it will rain out in approximately 9 days.”
— Adorable Mr. Levenson – that’s great.
Now, if only you could realize within the next 30 years that for people (like me) who want to run rain and water retention to optimize cooling evaporation and CO2 uptake, these rains are the most ideal conditions.
BPL: ” You can put more water vapor in the air, and it will rain out in approximately 9 days.”
ms: — Adorable Mr. Levenson – that’s great.
Now, if only you could realize within the next 30 years that for people (like me) who want to run rain and water retention to optimize cooling evaporation and CO2 uptake, these rains are the most ideal conditions.
BPL: Way to miss the point, MS.
@ macias
These are excellent observations, macias. The quantitative analysis is extremely valuable.
Here I will offer more on the mechanisms involved:
The importance of ecosystems, not widely recognized, is that their very existence regulates hydroclimates. The active dismissal of the relationship between ecosystem change and climate change is due in part to the apparent limited knowledge of evapotranspiration ET.
According to the planetary boundary layer (PBL) theory, PBL is shallowest over wet, vegetated surface and deepest over dry, bare land.
There is an immense amount of moist static energy (MSE) over moist vegetated landscapes. A shallower PBL with bigger MSE implies a bigger MSE per unit of PBL, which is supportive to an increase of potential for convective development, moist convection, and moisture convergence.
In return, the increase of moisture convergence boosts convective activity, leading to positive feedback of moisture recycling and greater water yield. These processes have been disrupted over vast areas of the human modified landscape.
Reduced soil moisture availability/stability, by active drainage and eroded stable organics, has resulted in crop properties selected for low stomatal porosity to reduce vegetation conductance.
In a degraded landscape the conventional belief is that ET is a ‘bad thing’ because it is thought to waste water. The degradation of soils has the net effect of further increasing surface resistance to ET by human intervention in crop selection, and thus amplification of reduced actual ET.
As you have clearly quantified, macias, the decrease in ET decreases precipitation, warms the surface, and increases net radiation by altering cloud. More broadly, thermodynamic pressure gradients, convection, and zonal jets are disrupted.
Earth System Models are an essential tool to study these feedbacks, as they must be used to couple the vegetation and soils with the atmosphere and the water cycle in relation to human development and policy options.
@JCM: –
“Here I will offer more about the mechanisms involved…”
“As you clearly quantified, … the decrease in ET decreases precipitation, warms the surface and increases net radiation by changing clouds.”
— Thank you for the instructive mechanisms – you will be hired as head gardener and employee in “home office” – please send salary expectations to my private address. (That may be more serious than you think today – since I’m planning a start-up )
The volume 12250km³ of missing evaporation is only a rough estimate on my part, based on comparative values with the original neighboring regions of cities and agriculture. One could estimate the volume is even higher if one considers that megacities with ~20000 inhabitants/km² have to obtain their average water requirement of 1350m³ per capita from extensive catchment areas (mostly from the adjacent regions) in order to cover the demand.
E.g. in Paris with 2500 km² and 11 million inhabitants ~ 15.5 km³ of water /y are consumed and with own, rather sparse natural precipitation of 610 mm/y over the city (1.5 km³/y) at least 14 km³/y are imported from others Regions. Since this foreign extraction from neighboring regions cannot amount to 100% or 610mm/y, but perhaps at most 25% (which is already a lot), such megacities extract areas ~ 40 times the city`s own floor space.
Wherever agriculture is carried out industrially and large areas are irrigated, the groundwater level often drops by several meters and there is a high risk that adjacent natural areas will no longer be adequately supplied with water.
The desertification trend IS CLEAR – the media is whining about global water shortages, drought and burning forests.
– Water retention, water conservation and seawater desalination plants seem to be the only hope. No water -> no life.
With the following graphic I show how water, evaporation rate and cloud albedo affect the global energy balance:
https://02adf5ae1c.cbaul-cdnwnd.com/da475a79e4bc41c3b64b8d393a44d235/200000065-843b1843b3/1GEB9L.webp?ph=02adf5ae1c
However, it refers to an additional, annual (land) evaporation of “only” 1350 km³ (~9L/m²), i.e. about 10% of 12250 km³ (90L/m²). Therefore you have to multiply the difference values shown in the graphic between “Only land” and “Only land +9L/m²” tenfold in order to obtain a changed energy balance over land for 12250 km³ (90L/m²).
i.e. 112W/m² solar reflected TOA (albedo) is increased by 0.33W/m² with +9L/m² evaporation – with +90L/m² by 3.3W/m² – etc.
However, the effects to be expected are already enormous with an additional evaporation of 9L/m² (=~0.7W/m²) over land areas and should be explained in more detail here.
The most important climate factor (for me) in the graph is the change in Earth Energy Imbalance at TOA above land ( EEI / land ) with an actual value of ~0.05-0.1W/m²,
which will decrease by 0,05W/m² due to 1350 km³ of evaporation, additional cloud formation.
EEI above land can thus be halved or even completely compensated to zero.
This simple number, EEI, is the most fundamental metric that the scientific community and public must be aware of as the measure of how well the world is doing in the task of bringing climate change under control.
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/2013/2020/#abstract
The cooling of the land surface increases by
-0.7W/m² evaporation
-0.12W/m² less incoming SW & LW radiation
= 0.82 W/m², since due to an increased evapotranspiration of 0.7 W/m² over land correspondingly less evaporation energy is imported from the oceans (19 –> 18.3 W/m²).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-020-05451-8/figures/5
The cooling effects of the negative surface radiation balance of 0.82W/m² on land temperatures average = ~ 0.28°C.
A temperature difference that occurs similarly when comparing El Nino to La Nina periods.
The cooler La Nina years are characterized by storing huge amounts of energy in deeper ocean layers and by shifting an additional 1800 km³ of precipitation from the Pacific Ocean to land areas. In principle, it has a quantitatively very similar effect as additional irrigation i.e. in agriculture with similar water volumes.
@macias
“you will be hired as head gardener”
Honored, and in many ways it’s a simple task. The trouble will be for conservationists to garner broader attention and resources.
In the following article we observe the ongoing misrepresentation of ecosystems.
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/3589562-fires-put-californias-forest-offset-program-at-risk-of-collapse/
In summary: trees (sticks for storing carbon) are deemed useless for the climate because they burn.
From the perspective eco-hydrology:
Media promotion of such articles sow doubt into ecological restoration and conservation.
The relentless impression I observe from the climate community is that solutions are only to be found in venture capital injections for tech solutions. True or not, this is what is being advertised. I observe a lack of self awareness and certain deep biases.
Ecologies are self regulating, in terms of vegetation density, canopy structure, species composition, and abundance. The optimization of these properties is governed by moisture availability in soils.
The plantations in semi-arid climates are pointed out as a failure. This, because they are. What I observe is that climate media capitalize on this false representation of ecology.
The failure is due to viewing ecosystems solely in terms of trees, as sticks for storing carbon. This notion enforced by climate communicators.
When one discusses a tree as a mere stick of carbon, credibility is lost.
When one sees the ecology for what it really is (once was), the system becomes quite elegant. Biosystems are self regulating, and moderate climates by balancing evapotranspiration to moisture availability.
During a drought period, the ecosystem has requirement to become more sparse. This, in order to balance available moisture. This relates to the properties of maximum entropy production. The soils require a reduction of evapotranspiration when soil moisture is sparse.
One way the system achieves this is by drying and burning the canopy.
Decades of fire suppression in semi-arid forest plantations results in increasing soil moisture deficit, and hotter burn when the inevitable happens. The plantations themselves can result in reduced moisture in the system, when chosen unwisely.
It is true that the system will reject inappropriate species or canopy properties when soils have inadequate moisture. The system will force an appropriate balance.
Inappropriate plantation in semi-arid environments, by human intervention, will indeed result in increasing vapor pressure deficits and successional burns.
It is the human failure to recognize the nature of things that results in system valuation only in terms of carbon storage potential. Most ideally, the system should be viewed to its maximum moisture sustainability potential.
By the arrogance to select the monoculture and spacing of plantation. By the arrogance to select successional timing. Nature has been neglected in sorting out these details. Vegetation cannot just be planted anywhere to maximize woody carbon sequestration.
The semi arid plantations are deemed worthless, when 10x the mass of organics is found naturally below the soil surface, as compared to what’s visible above. The carbon content, and moisture storage capacity critical. The system will optimize duration of green growth within the ecology. With green growth comes many goodies in the soil and climate.
While the total carbon and moisture content is lower in semi-arid environments, the vegetation properties will tend to be more shrub-like. Plantation of maximum carbon sequestering tree species, with large transpiring canopy, appears inappropriate for the state of California at this time. This ultimately reduces the duration of green growth, dries soils, and net delays/reduces transpiring cooling fluxes.
Climate scientists, with tremendous training in atmospheres and radiation properties, give the appearance being out of their depth when it comes to ecologies and environmental management. Once one has identified a problem, it is necessary to allow the community to explore and discuss appropriate action.
I observe certain deficiencies in the self-recognition of limited knowledge horizons. It presents a certain hypocrisy, I think, to be lectured on ecological function by an astrophysicist. To be dismissed when it comes to practical environmental management from those less than qualified. It presents as a certain arrogance, I think. Such qualities are unbecoming of a scientist.
JCM: Climate scientists, with tremendous training in atmospheres and radiation properties, give the appearance being out of their depth when it comes to ecologies and environmental management.
BPL: You appear to be out of your depth when talking about climate scientists, whom you appear to have confused with atmosphere physicists. The latter are a subgroup of the former. In fact, you’ve committed a fallacy of composition.
“you’ve committed a fallacy of composition”
@ BPL has committed a fallacy of relevance with this conclusion. A deliberate red herring, I suspect. Ignoratio elenchi.
JCM: BPL has committed a fallacy of relevance
BPL: There’s no such thing as “a fallacy of relevance.” If you’ve made a mistake, the thing to do is admit it, not just make shit up and pretend you didn’t get burned.
@ BPL is advised to save the pedantry and burns for whom it is warranted. His quarrel is not with me. The trivial quibbling indicates we’re not so far apart. Once we recognize this we can get back to work towards our mutual goals of stabilizing climates.
JCM: BPL is advised to save the pedantry and burns for whom it is warranted. His quarrel is not with me.
BPL: YOUR quarrel is with climate scientists, whom you are constantly insulting and putting down in this forum. Since I am a planetary astronomer and a climate scientist, albeit a very minor one, your attacks cover me as well.
But the atmosphere isn’t “a surface” (even if it’s pretty thin compared to the planetary diameter). Considered in bulk, it’s a *volume*–and the optic properties of that volume are the essence of the greenhouse effect.
Think about it this way: the Earth’s surface emission is set solely by its temperature, and has no necessary connection to the presence or absence of an atmosphere, in the sense that any body at that temperature will show the same outward radiative flux, whether there is an atmosphere above, or not.
Now, the atmosphere, too, will emit according to its temperature–but since it’s not a surface, it will vary not only in two (spheroid) dimensions, but three dimensions. Notably, the near surface emits at close to surface rates–if it didn’t, surface temp wouldn’t be even as quasi-stable as it is. (That’s your 398 W/m2.)
(That’s also the point to BPL’s admirably pithy comment that while large fluxes occur in each direction, the net energy transfer is small–and in line with your original comment.)
But at so-called TOA, the outgoing energy flux is just ~240 W/m2–and again, it has to be close to that because otherwise, T would be much less stable. All of which makes sense from another perspective, in that at TOA level the temperature is tens of degrees C colder than at the surface. Of course it emits less!
Now, what would happen if you magically rendered the atmosphere completely transparent to outgoing IR? There’d be nothing balancing the outgoing 398 W/m2, past the incoming 240 W/m2 of solar radiation. With a radiation imbalance like that, Earth would begin to cool very rapidly indeed.
All of which–OT alert!–reminds me of the much more extreme scenario in Fritz Leiber’s 1951 classic “A Pail Of Air.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pail_of_Air
Some of the numbers above are a bit off–consider that I was speaking quickly & rather schematically. For more exact ones, see:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/what-is-earth-s-energy-budget-five-questions-with-a-guy-who-knows
For example, per the energy budget diagram, at TOA it’s actually ~240 W/m2 IR emitted PLUS ~100 W/m2 reflected, to balance 340 W/m2 of incoming solar radiation.
Please note that this NASA diagram is from the century’s first decade. More recent analysis indicates that actual heat flux, as opposed to radiative forcing, is now about 1.0 watt, rather than the stated 0.6 w, over every square meter of the earth’s surface. (see Hansen)
It is my understanding that actual heat flux will continue to increase toward meeting the Net Radiative Forcing. If that forcing is near 3 watts/m2, then it would appear we, and all life, have a ways to go.
Thanks Kevin, for straightening up the point that is often missed/or deliberately misrepresented.
For those who still don’t get it, I would rephrase as:
IR emitted by the Earth’s surface is first absorbed in low atmosphere, and from there radiated in all directions:
– the radiation emitted downward is absorbed by the Earth surface, and is called “back-radiation”
-the radiation emitted upward will typically be absorbed at a higher height, where it will be again radiated in all directions – the portion going up would be absorbed at even higher height, radiated in all directions again, and so on, until at high enough level where the upward portion of radiation is no longer absorbed and escapes into space.
With the radiation flux emitted being 4th-power function of the absolute. temp. of an object. and the air close to Earth being much warmer than at the top of the troposphere:
– the “first” radiation (and its portion toward the Earth) is much larger than the “last” radiation which outward portion escapes into space: hence in your heat budget: Earth surface receives =340 W/m2, while final reemission into space, from many kms of height AND therefore very low temperature is =200 W/m2 (+ 40W/m2 of Earth’s surface IR that sneaks through the atmosphere avoiding absorption- i.e. via “atmospheric window”)
Implications:
Without greenhouse gases, back-radiation drops from 340 W/m2 to 0 W/m2, and Earth cools until it gets so cold that its IR emission get low enough that the heat lost to space from the Earth surface becomes = the absorbed portion of the solar radiation
Humans increase conc. of greenhouse gases and by doing so:
a) make the first absorption, and therefore the first radiation, happen at lower height i.e. at a higher T => higher flux toward Earth surface
b) reduce the atmospheric window – more GHG particles the bigger chance of Earth’s IR being absorbed on the way through the atmosphere by at least one them. Thus, some the current 40W/m2 atmospheric window is now absorbed, and part of it – radiated toward Earth
c) average number of absorptions and radiations in all directions increases – which means a smaller fraction of the initial IR making to the top of the atmosphere to be radiated toward space (and larger fraction radiated toward the Earth)
BTW – in places with thick and tall clouds – there are so many absorption-reemission steps
(high conc. of IR absorbing water and ice crystals) and the last step is so high thus so cold
– that hardly any IR is emitted toward space.
See the low IR belt corresponding to the dense tall clouds forming near the equator on NASA outgoing IR radiation satellite image
A small but important nit: It is not just a matter of re-radiation. The vibrationally excited state of the CO2 molecule is quite long-lived. Long enough in fact that there is a significant chance of it colliding with an N2 or O2 molecule and imparting its energy to the latter. That heats the majority of the atmosphere and all of the collisional energy remains in the atmosphere. Collisional relaxation is especially important at low altitudes where atmospheric density is high.
@ McKinney
“But the atmosphere isn`t a surface ….Conscidered in bulk Its a volume, and the optic properties of that volume are the essemnce of the greenhouse effect. ”
Your ideas of things and optical surfaces are miserable then.
Light heat and radio wave interaction absorbance emittance, anyting different from absolute mirroring goes into the atomic and molecular depths, Not even in the “bulk” space, but into the square of bulk / space. namely into the atomic and molecular van der Waals forcfes- level. Into the square of molecular material molar volumes.
Causing things like dispersion polarization and the “colours” and diffusion of what eventually shines further out again from things. and through things.
A very imp9ortant EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYP is the lit candle, That is useful for a long series of educative “desktop” experiments.
The shadow of a lit candle in the sun onto a white wall behind it is showing a sooty- black carbon flame- core and a huge schlierenoptik phaenomena arond and above the visible flame, that is totally invisible if the same candle is lit in a dark room.
Common sunlight is black body thermal radeiation at 5850 K
Then try the same by an incadescent “halogen” lamp, whete T= 2800K according to its label. Only a faint grey shadow can be glimpsed then.
(The maximum flame temperature can be shown by a 0.15 millimeter copper wire. to be just slightly above the melting point of pure copper. It even melts as well slitghtly aove the tip of the flame, where it does not shine at all, telling us that those combustion products have no emission bands in visibgle light at all. Thus cannot shine at all.
Explain….
That lit candle flame can futher easily be shown to contain very pure, elementary back carbon in solid form. Impenetrable to light, It is impossibe to see anything at all through that flame. Thus in must obvgiously absorb all incoming light at the same time that it also quite obvgiously radiates out visible light.
Q: Has that sooty shiny/ black “thing” got any surface? (examine that very closely)
Q2, is Surface relevant to the very question or problem? Yes or no.
A next, extreemly eduicative EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYP is the snowball lamp for the children in the dark winter night with white snow all around and one lit candle inside of it.
Observe, explain, discuss, be honest, Remember nullius in verbum. take nobodys word for it,,. that is science. Do not leave such things over to the experts and to their scriptures. EXPERIMENTA and experimental science is what`is needed for higher wisdom you see.
That Snowball- lamp is an exellent example of diffuse light reflection. with no molecular absorption bands in the visible light spectrum.
Q : it is a real and physicalo thing quite obviously, but is surfaces (2 dimensinal material and solid) any appliciable and fruitful conscept for its discussion and explaination?
It is relevant indeed to the explaination and discussion of “atmospheric back- radiation” , that is better named Gjenskinn Gjen is the short- form of again, (it is the same the same and better than “back-“). The candle shines and the snowballs shine again and further on .
When the snow and the clouds are white , it is not “back” but again- radiation from the sun even with intact Fraunhofer- lines.
“Back- radiation” is stupid and misleading when it actually shines again and in all directions and mostly in the easiest way. Gjen-skinn,
Skinn is shine.
Then you have all the remedies, white snow and black carbon, heat, light. and darklness. And control of temperatures for experimental design and study.
I haven’t the faintest idea what you are trying to communicate here.
McKinney
If so, then look back into yourself and your deep, basic background experience and knowledge, your very premises of thinking and understanding.
It is called Epistemology or self- analysis or psycho- analysis. Think deeper and tink back into your basic experience and learnings.
Not having a faintest idea about a lit candle just ahead of a white wall and the low sun shining onto that, and the shadow of that candle with flame in bright sunshine…. sooty black shadow really also from that bright whiten hot shining candle flame,…
……is rather easily understood and explained
given that you ever were shown and taught physics and chemistery that way.
And that igloo- formed hollow lamp built up by a lot of white snowballs with one lit candle inside,………… in the winter darkness.
“Laterne laterne, sonne mond und sterne…” even the Germans have lantern festivals in the snow.
Does that show and entail anything in what we ought to know first and quite basically about light. diffusion and radiation?
If you are hardly aquainted to that kind of experimental examples and not forced in school to remember, recall, explain, and to calculate on such arrangements,……
…………which takes a minimum of knowledge of natural principles and laws also,…
………then we can judge and tell quite a lot of sad things about your basic style and culture of upbringintg learning , thaining, thinking and judging.
A lot of people are actually very snobbish proud of their lacks of any such rather elementary basic scientific experience and understanding.
And that is what I am after and teasing in the climate dispute.
Find and study
http://www.Charles_Percival_Snow Wikipedia. on “The two cultures”.
PS
Another thing that really ought not to be strange and alian to you is that of van der Waals effects and forces, nobel price of physics 1910, the fameous Dutch Windmill, Grachts,Tulips, and Gouda- effect of physical material behaviours.
that are discussed in terms of R^6, but j. van der Waals wrote the cubic- liter, as incredible as the cubic- gallon and the square of the cubic inch. Believe it or not, the sixth potensial of the length distance .
But thus it comes when you multiply volume or bulk with volume or bulk.
It is as neasy as that.
And thus it comes whe you begtin to irritate or activate the atoms and the molecules with normal electromagnetic radiation. Then it is no “bulk” anymore but the “Qvadratliter,” the square of the barrels and the gallons , jugs, bottles, and bitties.
The sixth potencial dimensions , you see. DS
I understand the basics about the two phenomena you point to, I think. What I don’t understand is the relevance to what I said.
–The atmosphere is indeed a volume rather than a surface, and this is a fact that is definitely relevant for the greenhouse effect. It is not clear to me how anything you said relates to this statement–which, may I remind you, you quoted?
–The atmosphere’s optical properties are indeed the essence of the GH. This is a very basic fact, and again, although you quote this statement of mine, it is very unclear how your examples relate to it.
Dr. McKinney
Then be quite more aware of wyhat you said.
Light and or heat interaction to molecular matter hardly happens on 2 and 3- dimensional level.
“2 and 3- dimensional level?”
I don’t know what that means, either; dimensions refer to extension, not to “levels”. But explain away if you choose.
We weren’t considering, in the original comment I made, phenomena on the molecular or quantum scale. We were considered the macro scale. In that context, it seems quite sensible to me to refer to the bulk optical properties of the atmosphere.
If you wish to explain further why you disagree, feel free.
Well, if you are so minute and must have it in teaspoons, it happens neither in spain not in the plain, it happens in bitties times bitties or in barrels times barrels., and if that aint not macro- scale…?
The square of bulk optical properies of the atmosphere, pleace… that is where it happens.
So, does that mean you now agree with what I said in the first place?
???
No, I aint not.
You must multiply space with space first and divide it all through that, in order to know how and where such things actually happen.
But that is the nature of matter reacting with matter and of light and energy reacting with matter and vice versa in both directions, so it is quite common and trivial…
….thus should be everyones experience, further blearnt in school… and not so difficult. to understand.
Inscrutable, as always.
Perhaps you know what you mean to say. But I assure you, you are in a *very* small minority.
Ladies and Gentlemen
I glimpsed a warning to the NASA-GISS & al early this norning shortly after sunrise, that is the coldest hour or temperature minimum of the day.
There were low, foggy clouds over the Oslofjord like we often see it in early winter, but not at this time of the year. It means that the fjord or the lake or the marshes and moors are warmer than the air above, and that it is windstill.
That “foggy goggy dew” or special Aristophanean “NEPHELAI”, that I warned against, does work as a wo0olen blanket or pullover, actually warming the landscape a bit when it should rather cool down.
it is a negative feedback to cooling.
When such things begin to show up more at unusual times, like it did today, ( low morning fogs) it could be alarming.
Don`t call me an alarmist for that, but I told everyone how to make the NASA GISS shiver because if that is not well mapped and understo0od and integrated in the longtime temperature- graphs, it may be as much as a quite ugly bias and systematic error to the CO2- AGW- theory. and gefundenes Fressen for Denialists.
The phaenomenon is mostly seen in the autumn over the landsccapes when the air is generally cooling down and nights get cooler and longer, and the meadows and waters are still summer warm. It will obviously delay the winter chills a bit. It is obviously an effect of moisture, not cooling but rather warming the situation.
Matthias Schürle must adjust to reality. there also.
@carbonito: – ” I glimpsed a warning to the NASA-GISS ”
LMAO / SMH — Strange things happen on your doorstep. We know that you are the champion of freediving in Drøbak Frog Bay and that Santa Claus has his own post office there.
Trillions of people and frogs have seen morning fogs – almost all survived. I wouldn’t be sure about you either. And anyway – how do you want to tell with your Norwegian frog eyes of a drunken sailor whether the morning mist in the morning sun has warming or cooling properties? After all, these are the lowest-flying clouds that I know of, and they are generally said to have a cooling effect.
Thank God you have now understood that (warming & cooling) clouds tend to have warming properties at night and in winter and vice versa in summer during the day. But how do you measure the cloud radiative effect of a cloud that casts its shadow over the sea one second and onto a light sandy beach or ice surface the next second with or without changing the clouds albedo itself ? This is just one of the many difficult-to-measure uncertainties surrounding the cooling or warming effects of clouds.
C: ” how to make the NASA GISS tremble ”
Just carry on as before. Posting your daily 3 Santa Claus comments from Frog Bay
– to keep the NASA GISS crew trembling with laughter.
PS.
From next Wednesday / Thursday you can tremble with them a bit and hope that your friends and frogs don’t straddle at ~40°C.
Frogn pr Drøbak
(Learn to read first.)
Einstein was there, “Santa” was not.
If there has been danger of night frost, beople have been smoking with wet straw or fresh Picea alba. It saves a deg and a half in windstill by the fameous woolen blanket effect 0f clouds.
On clear afternoons in winter, even in summer, the classic copper telephone wires were “singing” due to0 rapid temperature fall shortly after sunset.
That never happens in gray weather, and the nights remain warmer.
Dilettants never observe or learn such elementary things. Clouds and fogs in the nights and in the winters are actually warming and isolating the earth and the seas against the chill 0f BIG BANG
all around us down at 3K. Or maybe rather about 20K that is more the mean local temperature of the Galaxy, but that is also extreemly cold.
Moral:
Learn better physics and you can deliver better and more appliciable art and arguments.
Thanks for people’s interesting comments. I thought it might be interesting to address the comment of Ross Handsaker regarding the apparent generation of energy by the Earth climate system. This is what I’ve been able to cobble together from online sources:
As written above, in the absence of an atmosphere (or in an atmosphere completely transparent to thermal radiation) the earth would maintain a state of radiative thermal equilibrium. There are some subtleties, though. Most important is that incoming solar radiation is of different spectral properties than outgoing thermal radiation. Green house gases are much more opaque to outgoing long wave thermal radiation than to the incoming short wavelength radiation emitted by the sun. The consequence is an inhibition of the planetary cooling mechanism. This is exacerbated by a positive feedback loop within the planetary atmosphere resulting in additional warming of the surface per the back radiation mechanism. As the surface warms the radiant flux from the surface will increase per the Stefan-Boltzmann law. In the diagram outgoing radiant flux from the surface is 398 W/m2. This number is higher than incoming solar flux absorbed by the surface. But this can be attributed to an overheated surface and trapping of thermal energy in the lower atmosphere. Hope this helps.
“I thought it might be interesting to address the comment of Ross Handsaker regarding the apparent generation of energy by the Earth climate system. ”
There is no “regeneration” of energy. It’s the same energy. Energy from the sun. If the energy from the sun leaves the earth system very fast: cold surface. If the energy from the sun leaves the east system very slowly: hot planet. Both states possible with the same amount of energy from the sun. The greenhouse effect is the thermostat. Small effect: cold surface. Big effect: hot surface. No “regeneration” required.
@ J.David & al
“Opaque” is not quite the word, Opal ( gemstone) is opaque, thus the word.
Personally I set it all on another formula, due to learnt habits and the ease of remembering and understanding.
A “model” thatr is quite much rougher, but that should interest NASA GISS and Gavin Schmidt & al because of its simplicity. And as far as I can see, does not contradict or conflict the NASA.
First, I ask what cools us. What cools us is a relativistic phaenomenon BIG BANG, that measures 2pi minus 30 seconds of arc, keeping 3 K.
Then, what warms us? That is another relativistic phaenomenon measuring 3o seconds of arc as seen from here, and keeps 5850K on its surface..
The temperature in between that on a rorating sphaerical grey stone in vacuum at eqvilinrium will be the fameous -17 Celsius. And the moon must be checked up, mapped measured and integrated all around to control if this is true.
If we measure anything else, it is because it is summer or because we heat or someone or something is heating in addition Or…. because it radiates on dis- continuous atomic and molecxular spectra. Different from continuous thermal Planc spectra. like for instance an incadescent lamp, glowing charcoal, or a lit candle. The spectra are then checked up by the reflex in a common CD disc, where the categorical difference is easily seen. between todays types of lamps.
If rather dis- continous spectra, we must study and discuss quantum mechanics and material sciences.
It is as easy as that Dr.Schmidt, and then we have it, BIG BANG and the hydrogen fusion with further quantum physics on molecular matter in between.
I am not aquainted to statistics and “error bars”,… so this entails that we rather have to study the physical chemistery and material sciences and the electromagnetisms and quantum spectra of the atmosphere.
And it rules out misconsceptions and dilettantisms, that do not take the big bang and the hydrogen to helium fusion and the updated physical chemistery of the atmjosphere for serious. And have cared to learn how to observe that in everyday life, day and night summer and winter, onshore and offshore and in the ices by own and easy means.
If I may appear strange, Hr Schmidt, then it is as easy as that.
I once studied the optical spectra of coloured gases that are coloured not opaque. And looked by
a Busen- Kirchoff prism spectroscope through test tubes with iodine vapour and N2O4 (NO2) gas.. on a white background
That looked really fine with molecular absorption bands all through the visible light spectra, so the H2O and CO2 IR spectra later did not surprize me at all. It is not “Opa1que” buth with such absoprption- bands in dis- continous spectra.
Opaqueness it when it comes to clouds also. But if not coloured, they are opaque on continuous spectra and will not change the situation unless thay come and go systematically.. They are absolutely more or less grey like the moon.
Much of this we do not see because it is rather inn the IR. Then we must know how to look after possible secondary consequenses of it.
Arrhenius is told to have spectral analyzed the moonshine to find the absorptionn spectra in IR of the atmosphere.
By sharp slit spectroscopes we see Fraunhofer lines in the white clouds, that seem to shine by spectrally undisturbed, thermal white solar light then. That is spectrallyn undisturbed diffuse refrlection like the pale grey moon also.
Dr. Schmidt & al
On global warming and cooling
I hope I am not teacing wrong and confusing anyone by sligtly different model (experimental archetype) model conscepts here.
There was a popular scientific show on NRK.TV by Helmut Ormestad and Otto Øgrim, (those fameous 2 on the rubbish- room of the institute of physics). Both of them were my professors.
It came to hydraulic and air pressure , where for some reason the word and the conscept of “suckle” is religiously banned in the books.(scriptures). It shall all be more or less pressure, and never any “suckle” despite of its convenience elsewhere.
LECTOR Ormestad was obviously a bit fed up with that, and mentioned and suggested “… suckle…” to an extent that his colleague Øgrim got clearly angry on NRK.TV. , when having to teach popular science orthodoxy to the people.
(I have seen them quattelig privately on the backstage also at the institute.)
As there hardly can be any negative pressure, only near to zero pressure along with classical positivism,…
………..there also can be no negative temperature or warming or heat. Along with the same orthodox traditional positivism.
So what about the chill?
that seems as banned as the physical “suckle” however obvious.
“Horror vacuui..” anyone heard of that?
Is that the fear of suck and sucking from anxie4nt on and thus to be disqualified and dismissed as a conscept……, so that we can also discuss abscence and emptiness?
In any case, Dr. Schmidt, as everyone began discussing global warming, I got sceptic, and decided rather to look the opposite way, after global cooling or chill, and se whether there has been any change of that in recent time.
Not to global warming, but to global chilling or cooling..
And I must say, that has been to my great advantage beacause that is quite easier. That is, whether the climatic and global heat sinks have changed quite obviously in recent decades.
To my wiew, it gives the easier natural and physical descriptions and understanding. But that will depend on what you have learnt from before. and what you are supposed to be and to represent.
Itb is about your very deep, fix ideas,
Namely your EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYPS of true reality. That will follow you rather unconsciously up into your most distal and advanced, rubbish formulas.
Thanks for your great efforts explaining the physics of the global warming. Sorry If I missed explanations in the comments, but I have these questions puzzling me.
1. looking at the energy budget picture. For completeness, should there be also downward arrows of heat conduction and condensation? Are these very small?
2. The downward IR flux, how much is from greenhouse gases and how much is from other gases? I think som of the confusion for laymen in physics (like me) comes from the common use of infrared transfer and heat transfer as the same thing (is it?). Is it green house gases that account for all the downward recycled energy, in the form of IR? I mean the heated atmosphere must mean that all molecules have gained heat. And everything emits heat radiation, right? Stated in a different way (and completely exposing my lack of understanding) : If greenhouse gases only recycle energy, what is heated in the end, and how is that energy lost, and in whar form ?
With all the respect to your excellent work, I think som of the confusion also among climate change sceptics (Which I am not) is in difficult finding detailed but very pedagogic explanations of how this works. Any text book or link recomendations?
3. Related to 2. The spectrum of earth misses the wavelenhths absorbed by CO2 and water. So this must mean other wavelengths are emitted more than expected to maintain energy balance?
4. The average global energy budget of course does not show the latitudinal differences and south to north heat flows that exist. Do these flows mean that there is more IR downward than upward in northern areas on average?
Jakob, you used an expression very similar to one used by Jonathan David above, which is of particular interest to me:
Hi Zebra,
Just to be clear, my concern is not the education of the skeptic. That person has already decided what they will believe and trying to convince such a person is a waste of time. My concern is depriving the skeptic of “ammunition” that can be used to sow confusion among a lay audience.
I works like this: skeptic identifies a fact or talking point that can be plausibly construed to be contradictory or (better) violating a conservation law. Skeptic then claims that they have repeatedly asked for an explanation of said phenomenon from sources that ought to be authoritative (such as academia) and have been unable to be provided by one. This is then used to throw the entire argument in doubt.
I don’t really think that this is a lack of knowledge of “basic physics” (however this is defined). To my mind Climate Science is an applied discipline and understanding “basic physics” is only the initial stepping stone. The climate system is complicated as you state and dominant effects are not easily identifiable without actually looking at the numbers. In fact, many phenomena in the physical world are the result of multiple interacting effects that are not easily quantified by a simple understanding of the laws of thermodynamics. That’s why we have specialists, I guess.
Yes, Jonathan, there are specialist who do things like write climate models that attempt to improve the quantification of various components of the climate system, and how those components will change with increases in GHG.
The contradiction, as I’ve pointed out previously, is in you (and Jakob) asking that somehow, the layperson could be convinced of the quantitative validity of those models “in detail”. That makes no sense; if they could, they wouldn’t be laypeople.
However, as to refuting the various claims from Denialists that you describe, those are only effective with people who don’t have a clear understanding of the basic physics and terminology, and correcting that is indeed possible when we have a “sincere student” willing to engage in learning.
Hi Zebra,
Not to keep drawing this out but I was referring to detailed qualitative, not quantitative explanations. Also, I expect the “lay” reader to have some level of exposure to scientific concepts at least of basic chemistry and physics. If not, the post by Dr Schmidt would not be comprehensible at all. In fact, it would be interesting to know the level of scientific knowledge expected of the potential reader. Perhaps the reader might have scientific knowledge at, say, the high school science teacher level? Addressing that level of reader is tricky because they have had sufficient exposure to scientific concepts to draw false conclusions. I return again to the comment of Mr Handsaker above. He drew a false conclusion regarding back radiation based on a miss-application of conservation of energy. A number of good explanations were given by other posters. But ideally, I think it would have been better to be aware of possible sources of such points of confusion and address them (or avoid them) in advance. This might have been avoided by not including the energy budget diagram. I think it’s better to minimize the presentation of data when no explanation of its relevance is given. That diagram should probably merit an entire post, including, yes, detailed qualitative explanations of its intricacies.
Jonathan, you seem to be doing a good job of debating with yourself, and I guess I will leave you to it. (my bolds)
Jonathan 1:
Jonathan 2:
Carry on.
Jakob Walve,
Hope the following makes some form of sense.
(1) Conduction is (always) a net value in that it is all about a cold thing waggling less than a hot thing and so the waggling (aka heat) is spread from hot to cold.
The evaporation into the atmosphere is naturally a one-way process as the water condensing out of the atmosphere is on a one-way ticket downward (assuming it doesn’t evaporate again on its way down).
(2) This can be perhaps a bit of a strong message to grasp but 99.95% of the atmosphere comprises N2, O2 & Ar and these gases do not have any way of emitting IR at atmospheric temperatures. Nor do they impede IR at the wavelengths propagated by the atmosphere or the Earth’s surface. N2 O2 & Ar are thus passengers that are heated up by the GHGs and, through bashing into and thus energising the GHGs that then emit IR, also cooled by IR. I agree that explanations in commonly-found literature is very poor.
(3) I think this question again is born of those poor explanations. The IR washing round the atmosphere are solely due to GHGs be they long-lived GHGs (like CO2) or sort-lived GHGs (like H2O). How much is emitted by these GHGs depends solely on the temperature of the atmosphere. Warmer altitudes emit more while colder altitudes emit less. So if the IR that escapes into space comes from a warmer part of the atmosphere, there will be more space-ward IR. And those bigger space-ward emissions will mean a cooler world. But if the space-ward emissions come from a cooler part of the atmosphere (say because there is more CO2 so the IR has to be higher up to escape the thickened CO2), there will be less space-ward IR, so less energy lost and the world will have to warm to reach equilibrium – aka global warming.
(4) The global average means just that, a global average. The ‘Budget’ diagram (the top graphic in the OP above) would be a lot different for different latitudes. There is a big energy flux North & South from the tropics which peaks at about 45º of latitude at which point the N & S fluxes together total roughly 12 PW (mainly through atmospheric transport but ocean currents also contribute). So that compares to solar warming of the whole planet of 240Wm^-2 = 120PW. And that sort of makes sense if you consider that the planet is (in the grand scheme of things) very roughly the same temperature while the solar warming beyond 45º of latitude amounts to ~20% of the total solar warming into ~30% of the global area.
But because the temperatures do drop (that is the surface temperatures) as you move well beyond the tropics with increasing latitude, the level of IR also drops with that dropping surface temperature.
Thanks! This helped a lot!
JW: 1. looking at the energy budget picture. For completeness, should there be also downward arrows of heat conduction and condensation? Are these very small?
BPL: Since temperature is greater below, conduction goes upward. It is very small. Condensation also happens on the way up, in the water cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.
JW: 2. The downward IR flux, how much is from greenhouse gases and how much is from other gases?
BPL: All from greenhouse gases. If a gas has no absorption/emission lines in the infrared, it won’t radiate infrared.
JW: Any text book or link recomendations?
BPL: See if you can find John Houghton’s “The Physics of Atmospheres.” On a more popular level, George S. Philander’s “Is the Temperature Rising?” is pretty good.
JW: 3. Related to 2. The spectrum of earth misses the wavelenhths [sic] absorbed by CO2 and water. So this must mean other wavelengths are emitted more than expected to maintain energy balance?
BPL: The radiation that does emit to space must come from hotter material to compensate.
JW: 4. The average global energy budget of course does not show the latitudinal differences and south to north heat flows that exist. Do these flows mean that there is more IR downward than upward in northern areas on average?
BPL: No, but movements of air and ocean transfer heat from poles to equator.
@bpl: – ” All from greenhouse gases. ”
For over a year now I’ve been trying to improve your knowledge – i.e. of the rather uncomplicated cloud radiative effect (-47(SW) + 28(LW) = -19W/m²). – Hopeless !
The water in the clouds is NOT a greenhouse gas ! Black carbon in soot is NOT a greenhouse gas !
You also do not explain how to evaluate the 80W/m² SW absorbed by the atmosphere.
Maybe this will help:
https://02adf5ae1c.cbaul-cdnwnd.com/da475a79e4bc41c3b64b8d393a44d235/200000065-843b1843b3/1GEB9L.webp?ph=02adf5ae1c
ms: The water in the clouds is NOT a greenhouse gas !
BPL: No, it’s either liquid droplets or ice crystals. But it does exert a greenhouse effect. You caught me in a careless moment. In fact clouds do account for 25% of the greenhouse effect on Earth, compared to 50% for water vapor, 20% for CO2, and 5% for minor gases (Lacis et al. 2010), so when I said all the back-radiation was from greenhouse gases, I exaggerated by about a factor of one and a half. Good catch.
@BPL — You are a taxi driver who, according to the order, is supposed to drive 4 people to the airport quickly – and only find out at the airport that there are only 3 passengers in the taxi and one is standing somewhere on the side of the road. — Good catch.
Jacob, relative to your question #1, here’s a simple explainer on conduction in the atmosphere from UCAR:
https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/earth-system/conduction
I’d only add to their discussion that since the surface is always at least a bit optically uneven, it therefore heats unevenly, and that gives rise to upward currents (convection).
I’m going to be uncharacteristically sensible on question #2, and defer to those who understand this in more depth than I do.
On #3, I’d say “yes, the other parts of the spectrum end up emitting more in proportion to the ‘filtering’ due to GHGs.” I’d also say that it’s worth noting the mechanism by which it happens: the warming of the entire system!
On #4–“[is there] more IR downward than upward in northern areas on average?”–I think the simple answer is “almost always, no.” I say that because the only way you can have that situation is if the atmosphere is warmer than the surface–net heat transfer is always from hotter to cooler. Other than quite transient situations, the only place that happens much is in the Antarctic highlands at certain times of the year.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/31/1/jcli-d-17-0418.1.xml
MA Roger
I have told here now many times that
heat is conducted from the hot heat source solely dependent of the heat conductivity of the field, and not dependent of temperature at all..
We can exel in examples where the temperature in the hottest spot or area is raised or leveled still a bit up to higher degrees, by giving a lower or weaker heat in from aside in the field from a lower temperature there.
But all this depends a lot of your learnt definitions of heat and of the nature of heat. The stronger heat does not stop or push back again the weaker heat, it adds and superposes in the common conductive field of course and allways goes both ways at the same time.
The easiest most practical definition is that heat is something that we measure in watts. And not in calories or joule f0r instance, or in Faraday or Kelvin.
If 2 hot spots or heat sources in the same field such as a conducting copper or aluminium plate, and 2 mounted power transistors are heating equally in watts, they will rise to the same temperature to give off their heat in watts. and no netto heat will travel between them, but both will be a bit warmer and heat out a bit more in watts because they rise to slightly higher temperatures, than if they were heating alone in that field orv conductive heat sink… You must conscider and discuss the common field background temperature also
Ifr your soldering iron is too small and weak with not enough watts, your tin will not melt and solder on the plate. Then heat that plate a bit softhy from the side by a lower temperature, and your too weak soldering iron in watts will melt the tin and solder indeed.
Or if your iron workpiece is too thick and large and your acetylene torch flame too weak for it, despite its temperature that is obviously high enough…. then heat that workpiece from the side and all over to deep red hot on charcoal……. and your too weak flame in watts will melt and weld that iron at high yellow hot, the melting point of iron.
This is elementary and known by human masters of art and of craft all through stroneage , that was very very long…….since ridiculed and forgotten by many…..On how to heat when it really matters.
Only surviving apes and bears from stone- age are denying this in our days and are teaching us of the alternatives
Of course, you can simply help- heat it from the side by a heat source of lower temperature and raise the essencial temperature in the hottest area and spot where it really matters for you.
On electronic printchards and engines where heat temperatures and cooling must be in order, this is essencial routine for the control of heat and temperature.. Essencial also for pottery and bakery in pre- electric time, and in the scientific lab as in daily life.
Cabomontanus,
And computerdiddlyisation being such a wondrous thing, perhaps if I cut-&-pasted your comment here into an English-German(?) translator and waggled the text back-&-forth a few times, the text would slowly convert to say “Conduction is (always) a net value in that it is all about a cold thing waggling less than a hot thing and so the waggling (aka heat) is spread from hot to cold..” But this back-&-forth should not be run too quickly as a back-&-forth that is too quick will put the otherwisewise orderly words into a state of mixed-up flux and, if yet quicker, fling them off in all directions. So perhaps this excessive quickness is the cause of the extraordinary use of English words within your comments. And, yes, they are measured in units of WattTheFucks.
Main thing that you get it.
Waggling matter does waggle matter further and around it regardless of how that matter around it waggled from before. It simply sums up and waggles even more.
If anything else happens, it is because the molecular composition , the chemical nature of the material is being changed by too much or too little waggling of it. Then your field will be “unlinear”.
I repeat….!
What`s hard fir you is not my lantguage, but the peculiar and sad fact that youn never learnt this. It must have been forbidden for social and political reaqsons in your case, then. The Apart- heid and the one way walking and communication, you see may have been in charge where y0u learnt systematic behaviours.. .
It is elementary on master- level even all the way through stone- age and ever since . Onloy apes and bears still cannot beloieve it even in our days.
I also had to change my mind there when I came to the institute of chemistery.
But that change of mind and opinion was easy in my case, because the natural and obvious and even congruent examples from other domains of experience were so plenty and common and cannot be explained better.
No, wiggling and waggling conduction mostly goes both ways at the same time on the highways on the sidewalks and on the ant- roads in Nature
And if not, then hydraulic pressure, osmotic pressure and barometric pressure……….. chemical activity,..could not be naturally and spontaneously equal in all directions.
Carbomontanus,
I am going to write you off as a lost cause. But as a courtesy, do note the following corrections to you comment up-thread addressing me.
☻ Heat is thermal energy and so is measured in joules while the flow of heat (an energy flux) is measured in watts although heat can also be ranked in intensity, thus its temperature measured in kelvin or degrees celsius. It is differences in temperature that drives thermal energy fluxes.
☻ Two equal heat sources applied to the same object can result in a heat flux betwix & between the points of these equal sources as one may be positioned on that object where it is more readily cooled by its surroundings.
MA, Carbo has long been a lost cause… that you spend time reading his performance art is a sign of true dedication (or insanity).
However, I have to make a correction, as I have previously with you and others, about the word “heat”.
Wiki-p says, and you can check other sources as well (my bold):
“In thermodynamics, heat is energy in transfer to or from a thermodynamic system, by mechanisms other than thermodynamic work or transfer of matter (e.g. conduction, radiation, and friction).”
Which is why I try to discipline myself and use “thermal energy” for the equivalent to the colloquial usage of “heat”. They are not identical, and the distinction is important in explaining this climate stuff.
As I recall, the issue last time this came up involved radiant energy, and the expression “CO2 traps heat”, which is actually valid according to the definition above; it captures and converts it to thermal energy.
(If I were Carbo, I would go on to liken the radiant energy (heat) to a rabbit, and then list some ethnic recipes in various pidgin dialects as analogies to the various manifestations of the energy within the molecule. But I leave that to the expert.)
Hr Rodger
You did obviously not understand that example of the large copper plate and the too small and weak soldering iron. And the large and heavy iron workpiece to be welded or hard soldered with brass by a too weak and small acetylene welding torch, And that you can “help- heat it..” from beside or from outside with a heat- source of lower temperature.
Unaquaintedness with heat and temperature, you see, does 0ften make one quite a teacher of principles and physics in the climate dispute as elsewhere.
Because the very nature of heat and temperature and energy is not elementary grasped yet…by apes and bears,. Allthough it is as trivial and common as can be.
I can suggest and design several different experimental examples for you,
Such as a hot iron rod let`s say 7mm concrete reinforcement steel about 30 cm long, hanging horizontally in 2 very thin steel wires that will hardly conduct any heat, All air- cooled. And one bunsen- burner at each end, strong enough to make the iron rod red hot at the ends but still with enough unburnt paint in the middle. , it all air- cooled by stable room temperature and painted engine- green with Cr2O3 in whale- oil or cod- liver oil, (Proper Omega 3 polyunsaturated) the way we paint our expensive delicate machineries green for temperature and corrosion control.
The smell of hot frying pan, in the entgine room will then be engine- alarm. and you need no thermometers. and will see by the burnt paint where it has gone too hot.
The hotrod experiment with bunsenburners and professional engine- green smell and smoke is a very educative deskop experiment. Can be shown by just burnt paint and fingertip inspections Iron is a pleasantly poor heat conductor, Red hot irons can be kept by hand from the other end.
By which you can demonstrate by smell and burnt paints and finger feeling that heat is conducted just as well also from low to high temperatures. and just as plentiful in watts.
But you must resi9n on your definition of heat being something that flows like a material liquid in tubes and runs only one way from high to low pressure . Just Like gases, heat can also have partial pressures and has no definite material volume and mooves in the given field very simmilar to gaseous diffusion, and settles and balancesa out to obey Boyles law. The one gas occupying the room will not press or stop or show back and stop the creeping the other gas in the given field or room- space.
Or you can take a copper orv aluminium plate 1.5 mm thick, 10 cm wide and 50 cm long and mount a large 50 watt power transistor exactly in the middle.. Paint it all black, put it up horizontally on steel or glass- peaks wit least possible contact with the plate. and use a Thermocamera.
And if you cannot afford that, paint it all further over with Paraffinum solidum, to see the hottest spot and area by where that wax gets melted. by heat
It all being air- cooled, and room temperature should be kept as uniform and stable as possible.
Turn it carefully on … slowly… regulate it by transiswtor basis current, until the wax mets on the transistor but not at the ends of the plate. Let it stabilize there. It will be symmetric
Then cool down one end with icewater or liquid nitrogen until the wax solidifies on the hottest spot. discuss the temperatures all the way from end to end. It will be assymetric
Then stop the cooling and let it all warm up again in the room.
Then try the opposite. rather heat up one end with warm enough water well above room temperature but well below the meltpoint of the temperature indicator- wax. Discuss and explain the assymetric melt and temperature figure in the warmest area with transistor..
Since there is hotter there now, it will also have melted a bit more over the temperature- top and over to the distal side. And then try and deny that it takes necessary heat in calories and joules to heat up that transisto0r and that plate in grams and melt that wax in milligrams. When it obviously got hotter at the top than without extra sidev warming from below the wax indicator temperature., then something must have heated it up.
And since the hottest spot got hotter by just a milde heating from one side , then also the distal end will have become a bit warmer since it lags behind but followsn the hottest area by conduction. You heated up that distal end by letting heat in watts be conducted through and beyond the hottest area. As you also co0oled it a bit down from then other end through a good heat conductor. Temperature underway seem not to matter for how heat is conducted from A to B. unless the field conductivity itself changes enough by temperature., In that case it will have changed chemically
And since room temperaqture was stable and voltage times current from the leads and through that transistor was strictly constant, no milliwatt more,.. what can possibly be that heated up the hottest spot in joule 9or volt ampere seconds or calories?,
the explaination is very trivial
So trivial that only apes and bears and atmospheric back radiation deniers have problems with it and will begin to deny and to teach.
Its being misconsceived because it is against the 2nd law is old supersticion because nothing can happen in the lab or in the workshop or in nature that is against the 2nd law. But such tings do happen all the way and all the time thus surely not against the 2nd law.. But you may have to resign on that doctrine of heat conduction going only one way and from high to low temperature.
It takes energy in joules or kilowatt hours to heat up and to melt molecular matter, Not even Nicola Tesla could show anything else, And heat energy arrived up- hill in watts against positive temperature graqdient in this case,
To all and everyone about MA Rogers lectures
“It is difference in temperature that drives thermal energy fluxes”…
No, that is obviously wrong and against elementary measurement an experience.. It denies and conflicts the law of conservation of energy and of heat.
heat will flux out and flux further to the end of the world in watts…. quite regardless of its initial and original temperature at the place or spot that it did origine… and travel through and cross ove any other flux or wave of heat inn any other direction from other sources and origines rather quite undisturbed despite that its amplitude will fall as it travels and widens out,… to the end of the world / field .. solely dependent of the conductivity of the field!.
I repeat,…!
the fameous alternative has got a quacky, deep0ly religious political and military basic fix idea that interpretes mooving waves and mooving particles in terms of prussian diciplinary Adolf Hitler Josef Stalin red army drilled and organized soldiers in corporative unified batallion fronts marching out from the stronger to the weaker land and leadershi tat are being beaten and anihilated .by the stronger force / heat.
It is not the way we discuss gas behaviour and waves.
This Stalin Shukov Adolf military army idea of heat, its essence and principles its travel and leadership and causes,…… is how the function of CO2 & cetera in the climate on earth is ridiculed, falsified, and denied.
So that the more logical progressive scientific alternatives can be enjoined on the websides… and onto the people.
Translated from M.A Rodgers teachings of physical principles:
” it is difference in blood etniticity and class autenticity, rulership and warrant that drives the Peoples moovement onward from A to B wherever the earth is flat and plain, and drives back, conquer, and eradicates the B that is helpless against our stronger A. .”
Zebra (3 comments up-thread),
I do not as a rule read the apparently crazy rants of Carbomontanus which are probably better directed to the borehole than remain where he posts them. But he was addressing me up-thread which is why I made an exception. He is now on notice that I have written him off as a lost cause and will not be examining any further comment he addresses towards me. So I will not be curious to see if in Carbomontanus’s latest serving (2 comments up-thread) I am perhaps being accused of murdering Roger Rabbit to make rabbit stifado (as you suggest he might). Instead my reading will skip over certainly the first 9 letters of his commenter-name along with the comment itself.
Concerning ‘heat’, the Wikkithing page you quote specifically deals with heat as “a mode of transfer of energy” (as do two other Wikkithing pages, one of them more about the physics than the second), so it will be discussing ‘heat’ in terms of “energy in transfer“
Being down to molecular motion, thermal energy (aka ‘heat’) does have a dynamical aspect but thermal energy is surely primarily as per the dictionary definition of ‘heat’ which is a static thing – ” the quality of being hot.
But I agree that there can be much confusion to be had (and wielded) in describing the working of this phenomenon, and appropriate care should thus be taken.
Rodgers
You seem to be a crazy and narrow minded ignorant rant and prosfessionally snobbish and unpolite.
Immune against deeper understanding of physics and common phaenomena by common experimental examples, because you were never introduced to it that royal society experimental way.
That is different from having to poke it by the authorized orthodox scriptures and be able to repeat that minutely litterary and give a damn to what it might be about.
Labeling it “rant” when we describe hardware obvious experience and experiments in words.
This seems to be your class, national and tribal, socially professionally provincial warfare against the autentic hardware workshops and scientific labs of western civilization. .
Such trained corporative manners characteriz3es republican and soviet academy warfare against science.
Thus watch your behaviours.
I did show to WWW. C. P. Snow “The two0 culures” that is basics on this.
Itb is also very typical of dia- lectic materialism that they slam down the iron curtain and fall back on their racial class warfare diciplines when being thrown too much light on..
They fear and they hate lit candles, , snow lamps, red hot irons with bunsenburners and traditional Chromoxide- green lipid oil engine paint for temperature control and alarm.
And power transistors mounted in metal plates with suggested black paint w2ith white stearin temperature indicator all over it. AQ s+pecial waqx with very definite melting point.
“Rant!” theyn call such tings when such elementary remedies it can show easily that they got it wrong and hardly learnt of heat and temperature from autentic side.
Then they learnt it rather from the Alternatives, from the Party and become helpless when that alternative system unravels. .
I’ve mentioned all these statistics in today’s class. It’s a great way to start the conversation.
I can also add If I get it in here,
that the cause of heat being conducted from A to B is that B has a lower temperature than A,… is to put the things the false way around. And showed by experimental examples that it does obviously not rule for a series of important and general cases.
Truth is rather that the temperature will fall in the conducting room or field as the temperature wave impulse widens out into larger space. But it will “widen out” or conduct away from the heating source in any case regardless of what it meets of hotter areas with higher temperatures or temperatures than of itself, on its way. And melt ice, wax, tin, brass and iron in joules per cubic centimeter or kilograms that is allready heated near high enough from another source..
And if that is so incredeibly difficult when it is so obhvious and traditional,…. then look back and ask who did teach and convince you that it is ridiculous and impossible. .
I also had to tackle such Peculiar, Professors (Shortened PP) on my way..
Not everyone has learnt how to discuss gas behaviour
A gas has no specific volume but will expand and widen out until it fills the whole available room / conductive field by equal pressure.
Heat in liquid solids and gases carried on material molecular level in the field will moove interact and conduct on the same level. And energy is not material. It is weightless and has no charge. And has no specific surface or volume. It hardy is particular,
The end- conditions of heat is what is material and particular. Not heat or light or radiowaves itself.
Denial of such things and terming it “Carbomontanus`”rants” is snobbish denial elements instructed from thinktank against the atmospheric back- radiation and such things..
Thus avoid it and resign on it.
The climate surrealist moovement has also spread other upside down- ideas of similar fashion..
Poor me learnt in school that the summer sun warms up the ground Hot and moist air goes aloft like a hot air balloon, and gives those summer cumulus clouds up to Cumulonimbus. But Climate surrealism has denied that even fiercefully, and reminded the the very worshipful class around me of the diesel adiabatic comression warming up to ignition. So that vertical diesling and pumping pumps up the average gtlobal ground and sea temperatures, which does fully explain global warming. CO2 producers can thus be completely absolved of any guilt.
Such tings reminds us further of how to be a contrarian. One only has to switch cause and effect. as with heat expansion conduction and temperature fall also as shown here by M A Rodger.
=======0000
I have collected the following litt. sources to see the learning sources and roots of CO2- AGW antagonism, who may have learnt what from whoom, who and what inspired whoom in technical history..
1, http://www.Hans_Jelbring, as far as I can see the earliest one (anyone earlier?)
2, wwwGehrlich_and_Tscheuschner Who obviously has followed Jelbring. The fameous pair G.Tullberg & P. Engene in Norway Klimarealistene .no has obviously adapted Jelbring- ideas such as the fameous “Atmosfäriska effekten” Permanent high ground temperatures by falling down in the gravitational field together with adiabatic compression. No “greenhouse gases” needed.
3, http://www.Nicolov_Zeller. who published that the atmospheric pressures on ground level alone do fully explain the temperatures on the planets in the solar system to convincingly high accuracy.
I took it from rather the cool side of the globe and could disqualify that gravitational adiabatic theory independently by first asking what makes those incredibly low temperatures in the isoterm- layer on earth where also the laps- rate knicks. What makes it so incredibly chill there even with sun right in zenith?
GIVE THE TRUE, PHYSICAL EXPLAINATION OF THAT REMARKABLE GLOBAL PHAENOMENON FIRST , and the very c9omplex climate Cabbala clears up first.
Else you will hardly be qualified for climate dispute.
4, http://www.Dipl_Ing_Heinz _Thieme , retired Technischer Assessor from Upstairs at the Railways in Dresden.
(that must have been upstairs at the Ostbahnhof in old Dresden,.)
His Essays are really best in original.
(Or what, Genosse Schürle? )
5, wwwGiving _credit_to_Willis_Eschenbach_for_setting_ the Nicolov_Zeller _ silliness_ straight.
By Roy Spencer, (Peace be with him)
6, http://www.slaying the slayers by Watts I & II
Really very good also on 2 videos probably instructed by Roy Spencer( peace be with him)
They show explicitely Carbomontanus` “rant” by still another laboratory experiment of heat in watts travelling upwards as easy as if it was downwards. They even show that the current in a tungsten filament incadescens lamp falls a tiny bit when the lamp sees itself closely in a mirror. Then the metallic filament will shine out even a bit more in watts or lux despite its voltage times current watt input has sunk.
And it aint not “free energy”, quite on the contrary, it is very traditional and very trivial. Remember, Metallic conductors are PTC resistors
. and if that aint not back- radiation and heat in watt going up against positive temperature gradients?
And routine on how to direct a radio or light beam by reflectors and directors to save input watt energy.
Moral:
Krjemlinology is very important.. !
I repeat…!
else we may overlook secret, highly trained, scilled, trustful and obedient agents among us.
Phantastic, Dr Schmidt, that I got this in.
It is one of my best essays.
But I would like to have the further opportunity to correct some orthographical errors.
It is strictly impossible for the temperature to rise of 4,5°C. That’s the warming associated with the ssp5-8.5. With this ssp, it is supposed that carbon emissions triple by 2075. It is impossible to occur. China has exhausted its reserves of energy-efficient coal and there are about 25 years left, at current consumption level, of ”bad” coal. The OPEC, the major oil producing countries to be specific, has (have) made it clear that they have run out of spare capacities and, collectively, OPEC is in oil production decline since late 2018. Russia is in oil production decline since 2019. The USA are in oil production decline since the end of 2019. And the rest of the world is in oil production decline. The peak of oil (all kinds) production occured in October or November 2018. The gas production peak will occur during the 2040s or the 2030s if fossil fuels consumption is shifted to natural gas. So, someone will explain to me how we are going to triple the carbon dioxide emissions by 2075. When I see the different ssp, I think that we are going to be between the ssp1-2.6 and the ssp2-4.5, which gives by 2100 between 1,8° and 2,7° of warming and which is already a terrifying prospect. To have good informations about oil production and energy, I suggest people take a look at the blog Peakoilbarrel.
I note in your citations you stay away from scientists like Happer & Dyson & Salby, Spencer & Christy. No one is in disagreement that co2 is a ghg but it is only sensitive to certain IR frequencies, not all. There is a very famous set of graphs on the www that illustrates that fact. The literature always seems to mention the 15 micron band. In addition, water vapor is much more prevalent & more potent in this ability. We don’t pick on water because it is essential for life. Indeed as I came home from practice today, we were rained out by a T-storm. Boy the heat emanating off the ground you could even see the steam. That is the beauty of water vapor condensation. It is Mother Nature’s way of releasing heat. I do buy the co2 sensitivity & saturation arguments out there. No gas heats up an entire globe like this. Indeed co2 responds logarithmically & eventually stabilizes. The current weather: we have jetstream buckling, the Bermuda High, the Hadley Cell, & we are currently in a la nina. Those are the dynamics of the climate.
Kim, this is utter, complete bullshit. The treatments of the greenhouse action are quite explicit in noting where CO2 absorbs. That is the entire key to why CO2 plays such an important role–it absorbs where water doesn’t. Please, educate yourself from reputable sources and not just the ones that stroke your ego and your politics.
KL: No one is in disagreement that co2 is a ghg but it is only sensitive to certain IR frequencies, not all.
BPL: It doesn’t have to be sensitive to all of them. No greenhouse gas is. CO2 absorbs between 12 and 18 microns, not to mention small peaks earlier in the near-infrared spectrum, and that’s enough for it to be a major greenhouse gas.
KL: In addition, water vapor is much more prevalent & more potent in this ability.
BPL: But water vapor is near its condensation point in this atmosphere and rains out as quickly as it accumulates. A pulse of carbon dioxide, on the other hand, stays up for 200 years with a long tail out to 100,000 years. We can affect the level of CO2, we can do little or nothing to affect the level of H2O. So CO2 is the driver.
@bpl: – ” We can affect the level of CO2, we can do little or nothing to affect the level of H2O.
So CO2 is the driver. ”
— Levenson! You’re a hopeless case of narrow-minded ignorance.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/07/the-cos2-problem-in-six-easy-steps-2022-update/#comment-805349
More than once I have presented the human, qualitative and quantitative influence on water and evaporation. But with the “little or nothing” under your cap in your thinking apparatus, you seem incapable of understanding the simplest, most fundamental physical relationships between water and climate.
https://www.climate4you.com/images/Clouds%20TransportOfHeatAndWaterVapour.jpg
This has the little-noticed effect that the upper troposphere stays much too cold, much less IR radiation is emitted into space and the global cloud cover is reduced as a result.
Due to human development over the last ~8000 years ~6000-12000 km³/y of water are missing in the global energy balance for land areas (-3.5 – 7W/m²) and are no longer available as evaporative cooling for the land surfaces.
Superficially, this has absolutely nothing to do with human CO2 emissions – but it also affects the decreasing ability of land areas and vegetation to absorb CO2 (1m³ of water = 1-2kg of carbon absorption through photosynthesis).
@Kim Libera rightly doubted that CO2 is the sole driver of higher temperatures.
@Dr. Gavin Schmidt / @Prof. Stephan Rahmstorf & others – it is high time that the international elite of climate science and the IPCC dealt with the topic and took a stand.
Hr Schürle
And this you dare to teach as 1/3 of Pakistan is flooded, over an area greater than Britain..
It is going to cost.
And it has been dry enough before,
Your fameous worlodw2ide “lacks of evapotranspiration” is not what causes that record monsune rain of all times.
Snobbish arrogance and dilettantism, supersticion,… in physics,……. your teaching here of the same, is only what makes such cathastrophies worse, when it is not even understood..
“Unbelieveable… unbelieveable…… unbelieveable…..” we allwaays see and hear people say, when the cathastrophies hit.
Because Spindoctors and false prophets “artists…” have been teaching belief for too long time and for too many people now. .
And at the same time, Hail- showers in Spania, record hail size of 15 cm and one little girl dead in hospital from such an icy tennis ball on her head.
Cars, buses and an enormeous lot of expensive spanish tiles on their roofs are battered.
Too little H2O in the atmosphere, a spindoctor wrote.
To0 low temperature in the upper troposphere, he also wrote,
And did teach on how to improove that.
He did teach further on narrow minded ignorance.
I kinow similars from musical art and technology where ” artists” claim to have the tone in their belly, or, in their chest, or in their empty scull when it ought rather to be in the emptiness inside of their horns and their flutes
Such is elementary silly and false identification of the physical origins and causes of sensual impressions.. People are taught to be unable to identify what they can easily hear and. see, and shown by perfumed examples how to be snobbish fine that way..
Tyranny teaches that way, telling us of things that is that it is not, and of things that is not, that it is. .
Such is DADA- ism simply, . alian to any kind of cunning, fine, and responsible arts, work, and production. .
No one has ever said that CO2 is the sole driver unless they are saying that with an agenda.
For goodness sake, read the peer reviewed science. There are many greenhouse gases at play: methane (far worse effect than CO2), ozone, N2O, CF4, SF6 (perhaps the worst one), etc. See a good list of them here: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/list-of-greenhouse-gases.html Guess what? They are address in the science. Specifically in the IPCC reports.
OK. let’s see if I can get two dumb frogs into afterlife with one stone.
https://www.climate4you.com/images/Clouds%20TransportOfHeatAndWaterVapour.jpg
https://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericRelativeHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
https://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20ESRL%20AtmospericSpecificHumidity%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1948%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
https://www.climate4you.com/images/CloudCover_and_MSU%20UAH%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage%20With201505Reference.gif
@carbonito says:
1. – “Too little H2O in the atmosphere, wrote a spindoctor.
Too low temperature in the upper troposphere, he also wrote…
2. – “There is water and vapor enough in the world…
and there are clouds enough also in the world and can hardly be made more. ”
3. – “remember sodium yellow is in the middle by 550 nanometers)…”
1&2 – ms. — You’re a blind wide-mouthed frog as the 4 graphs above show, or the NASA, ISCCP & NOAA guys were measuring shit – which I don’t believe.
–
Only they do not draw the right conclusions from what land use change, heat-stressed, closed stomata of the vegetation mean for land evapotranspiration & the atmosphere.
This is a historic blunder by the IPCC since many years.
I conclude from these graphs that in 1948 – 75 years ago the evaporation energy over land was not 38W/m² as it is today, but rather ~ 41.5W/m² and cloud albedo also was ~0,5 W/m² higher in those years after WW II.
550nm is not sodium yellow, but frog-pussy green.
High pressure sodium lamps emit @589.5nm and have a low Color Rendering Index (CRI), that means – you eyes feel color blind. But the Norwegian fuckfrog clown just takes too much Lucy Sky Drop (LSD) and shifts & trips his colors Hoffmann’s way.
@Dan says; – “For goodness sake, read the peer reviewed science. There are many greenhouse gases at play: methane (far worse effect than CO2), ozone, N2O, CF4, SF6
ms. — SMH – maybe you should read a post first before commenting. I’m talking about
!!! H2O !!! and the energy transport of latent heat flux and NOT about methane , ozone, N2O, CF4, SF6 and GHE . Otherwise I would have to think that your proud grandmother, the magnificent mare wide-mouthed frog lady, was inseminated by a Norwegian parrot frog.
ms: Levenson! You’re a hopeless case of narrow-minded ignorance.
BPL: Not as much as you are, pal.
Given that atmospheric water vapor continues to increase, he certainly is.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022JD036728
Excuse me, guys, but how does this advance anyone’s cause?
@KMcK says: – ” … atmospheric water vapor continues to increase… ”
— But NOT the relative humidity over land I’m talking about.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-investigating-climate-changes-humidity-paradox/
@RL says: – ” how does this advance anyone’s cause? ”
— From the falling rH, I calculate the quantitative lack of evaporation over land areas that man has caused through land use change over the millennias.
Another reason for the decreasing rH lies in the vegetation itself, which closes the stomata during drought stress.
What do you conclude from this? – I do not really care.
But you can also give your own explanation as to why the rH went down
– or just don`t care.
@RL / KMcK
— A little food for thought.
Over land we (still) have an average of 38W/m² evaporation / over water it`s 100W/m².
During a drought, evaporation tends to zero with every day without rain.
! A regional feedback amount of theoretical 38-100W/m² due to missing evaporation,
but if that is not enough for you to explain thermal runaway over land areas,
you can consult the clouds.
Without or less evaporation –> no or less clouds – keeping an average of -19W/m² away from the surface. – A terrible deadly vicious circle for nature.
Huge amounts of solar energy are used on the earth’s surface but also within the troposphere for the non-temperature-increasing process of evaporation. Even if this energy is released again through condensation in the atmosphere – it is an energy transport in the right direction to space. The production of clouds during condensation also increases the cooling efficiency of water.
The more intensive this dissipating water cycle takes place, the cooler the temperature structure of air and soil will be.
In order to prevent rising temperatures over land areas, there is no alternative to an adequate supply of water, because without available water only increasing, sensible heat and LW radiation are available as land surface cooling.
A humanity that has drained land areas for thousands of years and thus today continues to have a steadily reducing influence on the evaporation rate on 1/3 of the land area – is surprised today that it has one foot in the desert and the other in hell – and is confronted with increasing record temperatures, droughts and crop failures.
Using the reduced rH by 1% over land…
https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/a2-1662423892.5218.png
I calculated a ~10% lack of absolute water content and evaporation over land accumulated by land use change and closed stomata of vegetation of ~ 6800 km³ within the last 50-75 years alone.
This can explain a warming effect of +3.5W/m² on the land surface – but also the spreading global desertification.
HUMANITY AND ESPECIALLY THE IPCC IS AS STUPID AS MY BREAD IN THE KITCHEN CUPBOARD.
The stupidity of the IPCC can now even be proven relatively “watertight”.
In their graphs on cooling & warming contributions of climate factors, the cooling factor “land-use reflectance / irrigation” < (~ -0.125°C) appears for the first time in the history of the IPCC in 2020/8.
https://cdn.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/26145918/contributions-to-warming.png
Thus, the albedo is assessed over urban areas such as cities (~1.5 million km²) and global agriculture (~48 million km²).
Global irrigation/y is ~2600 km³, with only ~1000 km³ going to evaporation and 1600 km³ lost to surface or underground runoff.
If the IPCC now for the first time ascribes a cooling effect to the “additional evaporation” via irrigation, that is correct…
but – WHERE IS THE WARMING EFFECT ??? that people continue to exert through “additional drainage, sealing…etc.
“??? INNER LOGIC OF IPCC GRAPH — NOT AVAILABLE !!!
These 3.5W/m² are attributed “generously” to CO2 emissions by the IPCC,
AND SO THAT THE STUPIDITY WILL NOT DECREASE…
…continuously rising (record) temperatures have been (BOM) measured over land for decades and blindly ascribe their increase to global warming caused by GHE & climate gases –
but the only thing missing is evaporation on land, water or intelligent water management.
BTW — With 6800 km³/y of water, plants can absorb about 25-50 Gt CO2 through photosynthesis (1m³ evapotranspiration = 3.7 – 7.4Kg CO2 absorption).
More than mankind produces annually.
There would have been no appreciable climate change since 1750 due to the burning of fossil fuels if mankind had not ironed down millions of km² of moors, (rain) forests, wetlands and vegetation so mercilessly stupidly.
The GEB / land+9L/m² graph show how we can cool the land surface by evaporation of ~1250 km³ Water – and cool the earth by clouds.
https://climateprotectionhardware.files.wordpress.com/2022/08/1geb9l.jpg?w=775&zoom=2
https://climateprotectionhardware.wordpress.com/
It stands still here.
So I try and lift it further.
The disadvantage of false explainations is that it also hurts other interests and horizons that the lyer or false explainer is mostly not aware of, because he / she does not see things connected and together. He/ she is no normal wiewer or o0pinion – keeper, but tends quite a lot more to just give a damn to such things.
The common sociopat or spindoctor or false explainer may also have a lot of experience and training in his style or profession, and thus often have success also.
We can exel in examples for all this. .
The given theme was the CO2 problem in 6 easy steps. and what has further come to it in recent years.
As I have derived and built together my holistic wiew and opinion about it from somewhat different horizons of knowledge and facultary training rather in order to0 check up from other horizons also and by other means whether the “mainstream” is OK enough and can be reliede on or not, that is whether I rather should become a denier and climate- surrealist or not,… and arrive roughly essencially at least on the “mainstream” wiew and strandpoint,….. It sustains my holistic ideas of geophysics material sciences, biology and økosystems, and of meteorology & glaciology. And local history of gardening bathing icefreight winter sports and political economy. Our seasonal habits and rules will have to change a bit.
)I can report that denialism and surrealism argument of the sort that I have also checked up a bit, is actually violating and hurting, fighting those other horizons of necessary knowledge and experience. And that comes because of a rather basic paradigma of nature and of science, namely that nature and reality however large and complex in detail, is one and only one, and truth is to tell of what is that it is, and falseness is to tell of what is that it is not and what is not that it is. We must share and a certain respect of nature and of reality and of truth,…. and avoid falseness.
A next important principle is that Matter is hardly dia- lectic., Such eventual matter will not be vital, not universal, and not molecular massive and electromagnetid or energic. It will not work, it will work only on supersticion and illusoric level that is also human and political indeed, even commerciallized and industrialized and for sale on the free market and on the websites.
It is now and then dramatic. Due to the war in Ukraina, pricesw of electricity have 10 doubbled here in one year. There are allways majorv tyhings to be conscidered and decided on the bcunning and well informed way. Shall we buy an electric car, yes or no. Shal we set on outdoor gangway electric heating? For other reasons I allways was against it and now I seem very right. What shal we set on and plant in the s7unny wall and on the roadsides? a professional gardener said “Roses are impossible here” and now we must get rid of 2-3 bitties of sweet vino biancho. I dared to set on wild apples also and we exel in them. But first of all set on and try and save and to keep the “weeds”, the wild local flora after Linnes system and proper healthy belief.
I hade to recommend Otto Schmeils Tierkunde und Pflanzenkunde in order to save my fiancee against dadaism and progressive arts and larger”weeds” with deeper roots so water will be no problem either and protect that further against Killianism. We collect and burn, yes, but not for Te4rrapreta but for some apple and raspberry Potassium and phosphate fertillizer. Because, will there be russian “sylvin”, “Apatit” and ammonium nitrate for sale after Ukraina?
Here is rain enough but the peasants are plowing down large areas of localvegetable support because the electricity prizes suddenly became too high for their large industrial refrigerators.
My diagnosis is that opportunists political commercial mafiosi +p0lan and speculate in alternative tense conflictys and possible imperial wars if for instance also the climate dispute becomes alarming enough.
It is the style of tyranny.