…
The ground is not the sky
Here’s a big big flaw that is easy for anyone to understand, yet has lain at the core of the climate models since at least 1984. Indeed, you’ll wonder why we all haven’t been chuckling at this simplistic caricature of our atmosphere for 31 years.
The theory underlying the alarm about CO2 is built around a bizarre idea that blocking outgoing energy in the CO2 pipe is equivalent to getting an increase in sunlight. The very architecture of all the mainstream climate models assumes that the Earth’s climate responds to all radiation imbalances or “forcings” as if they were all like extra sunlight. (We call that extra absorbed solar radiation (ASR) to be more precise. It’s all about the sunlight that makes it through to the surface.)
Extra sunlight adds heat directly to the Earth’s surface, and maybe the climate models have correctly estimated the feedbacks from clouds and evaporation and what-not to surface warming. But it is obvious, in a way even a child could comprehend, that this is not the same as blocking outgoing radiation in the upper atmosphere, which is the effect of increasing CO2. Why would the Earth’s climate respond to this in an identical way? Why would we think that evaporation, humidity, winds and clouds would all change in the same direction and by the same magnitude, whether the warming occurred by adding heat to the ground or by blocking heat from escaping to space from the upper atmosphere?
Computation diagrams like this expose the architecture of climate models much better than a bunch of equations.
The climate modelers have viewed Earth as a baby-simple energy-in energy-out diagram — but in reality, for starters, there is one path in, and four main paths out. Blocking the one solo path that energy comes in on is not the same as blocking one of the four exits, where energy escaping to space can reroute and flow out a different pipe. This is not a symmetric or reversible flow. Also, the energy flowing out is at different wavelengths to the energy flowing in; they don’t have the same effect as they travel through the air.
In short, the ground is not the sky, yet conventional climate models treat warming on the ground as the same as blocking outgoing radiation in the sky — they say they have cause the same radiation imbalance, so they have the same “forcing”, so they have the same effect.
Establishment scientists have been touting this simplicity as a feature for years, e.g. right in the abstract of James Hansen’s landmark 1984 paper[1]
“Our 3-D global climate model yields a warming of 4°C for either a 2 percent increase of [total solar irradiance] or doubled C02.”
And on page 138:
The patterns of temperature change are remarkably similar in the [total solar irradiance] and C02 experiments [i.e. the answers his models give him], suggesting that the climate response is to first order a function of the magnitude of the radiative forcing. The only major difference is in the temperature change as a function of altitude; increased C02 causes substantial stratospheric cooling [due to sunlight on the way in interacting with ozone]. This similarity suggests that, to first order, the climate effect due to several forcings including various tropospheric trace gases may be a simple function of the total forcing.
This is Hansen saying that experiments based on his computer models show extra sunlight and extra CO2 have the same effect (once the effect of incoming sunlight on ozone is stripped out). His models are based on the basic climate model, which treats all forcings the same. It’s circular all the way down.
This over-simplification is the inevitable result of an architecture based only on a simple radiation balance. There is more to the climate than balancing radiation! Any radiation imbalance, no matter what the source, has the same effect in the conventional basic climate model, including all the feedbacks to the imbalance (and its very nearly the same in the GCMs; the differences are second order). If some climate phenomenon (such as the rerouting feedback of post 7) isn’t a response to sunlight then it does not — cannot — exist in the conventional basic climate model, and basically doesn’t exist in a GCM.
Because of this architecture, the models keep making predictions that don’t work. Modelers are so sure that this is “basic physics” and the models are right that they assume the equipment needs correction — but really it is the models that need rebuilding. What’s more likely, the models are right, or all the radiosondes, satellites, Argo buoys, and ground thermometers need adjustment in the same direction?
Years from now people will wonder how such a simple mistake could have diverted so many lives and so much money — Jo
9. Error 3: All Radiation Imbalances Treated the Same
Dr David Evans, 4 October 2015, David Evans’ Basic Climate Models Home, Intro, Previous, Next, Nomenclature.
We call the response of a climate model to increased absorbed solar radiation (ASR) its “solar response”. Due to its architecture, the conventional basic climate model applies its solar response to the radiation imbalance caused by any influence on climate, even a radiation imbalance due to increased CO2 — one size fits all. This causes clashes with certain physical realities, which we explore in this post with the dual aim of developing a more realistic model for estimating sensitivity to increased CO2.
While no model is perfectly realistic, these clashes are sufficiently severe as to make it difficult to take the conventional architecture seriously. This architecture, based only on a radiation balance, is the foundation for both the basic climate model and the big computerized climate models (GCMs). Something more than a radiation balance is going to be required to more realistically model the effect of increased CO2.
Increased ASR primarily heats the surface, which could explain why the conventional model neglects feedbacks other than to surface warming (post 5), thereby excluding the possibility of a CO2-specific feedback such as the rerouting feedback (post 7). The conventional model considers only forcings (radiation imbalances due to influences on climate) and “feedbacks” (but only in response to surface warming), so it has a blindspot for feedbacks other than in response to surface warming. Due to the possibility of CO2-specific feedbacks that do not apply to increased ASR, climate model obviously needs a specific response to increased CO2. There is no place for a CO2 response distinct from the solar response in the conventional architecture, but there is in the alternative model developed later in the series.
Following the conventional architecture, the GCMs apply the solar response to all radiation balances to first order, where as we argue that the actual response to increasing CO2 is very different from the solar response.
Interchangeability
The conventional basic climate model treats climate influences that cause the same radiation imbalance as interchangeable. Consequently, increased CO2, which blocks some heat from escaping to space from the upper atmosphere, is treated the same as increased sunlight, which warms the surface. The basic model is structurally unable to distinguish them, applying the solar response (how the Earth responds to absorbed sunlight) to both. Physically, this is rather implausible.
Technically (see Fig. 2 of post 3), the conventional model computes the radiation imbalance ΔI, then from that calculates the no-feedbacks surface warming λ0ΔI, then from that the with-feedbacks warming
All of the information about the influence of the climate drivers is therefore encapsulated in the radiation imbalance ΔI; the model is blind to anything about the drivers that is not in ΔI.
The various climate drivers are thus all interchangeable (or “fungible”) — the influences of any two drivers that cause the same radiation imbalance (i.e. have the same forcing) are treated identically in the conventional model. Interchangeability is an inevitable consequence of the radiation balance architecture (Fig. 2 of post 3, Fig. 1 of post 5).
The conventional model is structurally unable to distinguish warming due to extra sunlight from warming due to extra CO2: same forcing, same contribution to the radiation imbalance, so same surface warming and same feedbacks. But these drivers are quite different: extra sunlight directs more input energy to the surface and changes the outgoing longwave radiation (OLR), whereas extra CO2 impedes energy radiation to space from the higher atmosphere and does not change OLR (by energy balance, because CO2 does not affect the amount of absorbed sunlight, ignoring the minor effect of albedo feedbacks in response to surface warming).
The feedbacks in the conventional model only respond to surface warming, so the feedbacks to extra sunlight and extra CO2 are identical in the conventional model — they drive identical changes in average height of the water vapor emission layer (WVEL) and cloud tops, changes in average lapse rate, etc. Given the physical differences involved, this seems implausible.
The concept of forcing relies on interchangeability to be useful. The semantics of the word “forcing” obscures important differences: while increased CO2 is obviously a “forcing”, in that it forces the climate to change ad creates a radiation imbalance, it is not the same type of “forcing” as increased sunlight — for instance, the latter changes OLR when steady state resumes, while the former does not (except in a minor way through albedo feedbacks).
Only CO2 enrichment triggers the rerouting feedback, further illustrating why the influence of extra CO2 is not interchangeable with extra sunlight.
Solar Response Applied to the CO2 Influence
In the conventional basic climate model all forcings are interchangeable, so they are all equivalent to increased absorbed sunlight (ASR). The model then applies its solar response to those forcings. Crucially, increased ASR is the one forcing whose effects on OLR, before feedbacks, we can be relatively certain of — via the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
The conventional model expresses the Stefan-Boltzmann law through the Planck feedback, which is the increase in OLR per unit of surface warming under the Planck conditions — namely that all else besides tropospheric temperature and OLR are held constant, there are no feedbacks, all tropospheric temperatures move uniformly, and stratospheric temperatures are unchanged (Soden & Held, 2006, pp. 3355-56[2]). The Planck conditions are motivated by the problematic use of partial derivatives in the conventional model — see post 2 and post 4.
Let us instead explore the solar response and the Stefan-Boltzmann law without partial derivatives and the Planck conditions, by instead using the radiating temperature TR and the Stefan-Boltzmann sensitivity (SBS), defined in post 8. The SBS applies to the Earth under all circumstances — unlike the Planck sensitivity, which is only applicable under the hypothetical Planck conditions.
The Stefan-Boltzmann law involves the OLR R and the radiating temperature TR. To find the increases in these quantities in the conventional model, we perform two rearrangements of Fig. 2 of post 3 — the first makes ΔR explicit, and the second reveals ΔTR. These re-arrangements also suggest how to develop a better model.
– First Rearrangement
The increase in OLR, ΔR, is equal to the increase in ASR, ΔA (by Eq. (1) of post 2), which in turn is the sum of the increase in no-feedbacks ASR, ΔANF, and the increase in ASR due to feedbacks in response to surface warming. So let us partition the feedbacks in response to surface warming into those that affect albedo, denoted by fα (all the “surface albedo” feedback and some of the “cloud” feedback in AR5), and those that do not, denoted by fα:
(For the feedback values in AR5, see Eq. (10) in post 3. However AR5 does not give the breakdown of the cloud feedback into shortwave effects, which affect albedo, and longwave effects, which do not. For those values we averaged the sources referenced by AR5, which break them down by SW and LW. Cloud feedbacks are notoriously the largest source of uncertainty in the solar response; hence the large uncertainties.)
Then Fig. 2 of post 3 becomes Fig. 1 here:
Figure 1: Conventional basic climate model, re-arranged to explicitly show the increase in ASR and thus in OLR. As per Fig. 2 of post 3 except feedbacks in response to surface warming are partitioned by whether or not they affect albedo.
(To compute the surface warming in Fig. 1, first apply Fig. 1 of post 3 with a equal to λ0 and b to fα to form the multiplier
then move the output of the albedo feedbacks to between the output of the purple adder and the Planck sensitivity, then re-apply Fig. 1 of post 3 with a equal to this multiplier and b to fα:
This agrees with Eq. (16) of post 3, so Fig. 2 of post 3 and Fig. 1 here are identical for computing surface warming.)
– Second Rearrangement
To reveal the increase in radiating temperature ΔTR, two changes are needed. First, we use the Stefan-Boltzmann sensitivity (SBS) λSB in place of the Planck sensitivity λ0, because (i) we are interested in ΔTR but λ0 involves ΔTS while λSB involves ΔTR, and (ii) λ0 only applies under the Planck conditions. So we define the sensitivity ratio as
and replace λ0 by ηλSB.
Second, by its definition in Eq. (5) of post 8, multiplication by the SBS only produces ΔTR when it multiplies ΔR. So we convert the non-albedo feedbacks into an equivalent open-loop multiplier e, so that they won’t add to the input as they do in Fig. 1. Applying the feedback loop diagram in Fig. 1 of post 3 to the loop consisting of the non-albedo-feedbacks and the Planck-sensitivity in Fig. 1, we set
Figure 2: Conventional basic climate model, re-arranged to explicitly show the OLR input to the Stefan-Boltzmann sensitivity.
(To compute the surface warming in Fig. 2, move the output of the albedo feedbacks to between the output of the purple adder and the SBS, then apply Fig. 1 of post 3 with a equal to λSBηe and b equal to fα:
This agrees with Eq. (16) of post 3 and Eq. (4) of this post, so Fig. 2 of post 3, Fig. 1 here, and Fig. 2 here are all identical for computing surface warming and ECS.)
– Remarks
The Stefan-Boltzmann law relates R to TR, and its slope, the SBS, relates ΔR to ΔTR. The Stefan-Boltzmann law, when applied to Earth, only says anything about R, ΔR, TR, and ΔTR; it says nothing about other amounts of radiation or other temperatures.
For a move between two steady states, the increase in ASR ΔA is equal to the increase in OLR ΔR, which the SBS converts to the increase in radiating temperature ΔTR, which in turn depends on the temperatures of the physical emission layers that emit OLR to space. Thus the SBS relates the response of temperatures on Earth to the energy coming in from the Sun; it describes the solar response of the Earth, before feedbacks.
In the conventional model, the influence of extra CO2 is fed into the SBS (purple adder, Fig. 2). If there is only a CO2 influence — no solar influence and no influence from the drivers marked “other” — the radiation imbalance ΔI is DR,2XΔL, which is input into the SBS along with the albedo feedback fαΔTS.
Now, finally, we come to the nub of the matter.
Fig. 2 demonstrates that the conventional basic climate model applies the solar response to the influence of CO2. More, it applies the solar response to all climate influences — one size fits all.
While it is the inevitable result of the radiation-balance architecture, how realistic can it be to apply the Earth’s solar response, its response to an increase in absorbed sunlight, to an increase in the amount of OLR blocked by a greenhouse gas? The former adds heat directly to the surface; the latter blocks some heat from escaping to space from the upper atmosphere. The former increases OLR; the latter leaves OLR constant (neglecting minor changes due to surface albedo feedbacks).
Shouldn’t a response specific to the greenhouse gas be applied instead? Applying the solar response to non-solar influences, seems to be inviting problems — yet the conventional model allows only the solar response to any influence.
The SBS, which is only about changes in OLR, is being applied to the influence of the extra CO2. Although it makes sense within the context of the radiation-balance architecture, this is unrealistic modeling.
Notice that if the input to the SBS was only the solar influence, ΔA, then the output of the SBS would be the radiating temperature. Only under this condition does the SBS relate the increase in OLR to the increase in radiating temperature, which is the only thing it is qualified to do by the Stefan-Boltzmann law. This tells us how to improve the model — do not feed the non-solar influences into the SBS.
That the conventional model necessarily applies a specifically solar response to the influence of extra CO2 may have tended to be overlooked because the usual view of the conventional model (Fig. 2 of post 3) obscures the increases in OLR and radiating temperature, while entangling the albedo and non-albedo feedbacks.
References
[1^] Hansen J., A. Lacis, D. Rind, G. Russell, P. Stone, I. Fung, R. Ruedy and J. Lerner, (1984) Climate sensitivity: Analysis of feedback mechanisms. In Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity, AGU Geophysical Monograph 29, Maurice Ewing Vol. 5. J.E. Hansen and T. Takahashi, Eds. American Geophysical Union, pp. 130-163 [Abstract]
[2^] Soden, B. J., & Held, I. M. (2006). An assessment of climate feedbacks in coupled ocean-atmosphere models. J.Clim., 19, 3354-3360.
Excellent.
I love the use of the diagrams to make the relationships explicit.
What a very interesting effort you have been involved in.
Superb.
260
The diagrams are helpful, but I really need to have this explained by hand puppets.
71
What’s also interesting is the lack of Alarmists posting comments. Why are they not commenting?
150
Where are the alarmists?
Waiting for the skeptics to find some mistakes…
393
There might be many sceptics like me (and it is the only link I can claim with Galileo) – Mr Evans’ ideas intuitively feel right, but I cannot explain why, or prove them; however, unlike Galileo, I will never understand the maths.
110
”Waiting for the skeptics to find some mistakes…”
Jo, David is close to the right answer, but needs to stop trying to eliminate surface properties from the equation. In spacecraft thermal control, surface properties are everything.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
”The theory underlying the alarm about CO2 is built around a bizarre idea that blocking outgoing energy in the CO2 pipe is equivalent to getting an increase in sunlight. The very architecture of all the mainstream climate models assumes that the Earth’s climate responds to all radiation imbalances or “forcings” as if they were all like extra sunlight.”
David, this is close to correct, but you are still getting it wrong. The problem isn’t that they treated the effect of LWIR on the surface as having the same effect as solar UV/SW/SWIR, the problem is that climastrologists treated the effect of UV/SW/SWIR the same as surface incident LWIR. They are not “Applying the solar response to non-solar influences”, they are applying non-solar response* to solar influence.
This may sound like semantics, but not when you do the empirical experiments and realise that climastrologists used the wrong method to determine the effect of UV/SW/SWIR on surface temperatures. They used the S-B equation, which treated the oceans as opaque to UV/SW/SWIR, non-convecting and constantly illuminated.
Sure, the sky is not the surface, but the surface is LWIR opaque and UV/SW/SWIR translucent. There is a radiative GHE but it is in the oceans not the atmosphere.
*They even get non-solar response wrong. Surface incident LWIR can neither heat nor slow the cooling rate of water free to evaporatively cool.
1123
Konrad, the strategy in this series of blog posts is to accept establishment climate science, point out that there are errors in the architecture of the conventional basic climate model (i.e. the application of “basic physics”, not the basic physics itself), fix those errors by building an alternative model with which to apply the basic physics, and estimate the sensitivity to CO2. Doing so finds that the IPCC has overestimated the sensitivity by a factor of 5 to 10.
(Btw, the GCMs have the same architectural errors as the conventional basic climate model — omission of feedbacks that respond to climate drivers directly rather than to surface warming, and applying the solar response to non-solar climate influences. This could mostly explain their poor performance.
Then, since CO2 didn’t cause most of the global warming of the last few decades, what did? We put together some clues to form the notch-delay hypothesis, which can explain the warming.)
240
David,
nowhere do I dispute physics, rather I point out where excepted physics (and more importantly engineering) is missing in “basic physics” of the “settled science”. What is missing is the known physics of “selective surfaces”, it’s spacecraft thermal control 101.
What I am trying to get across is that climate sensitivity to CO2 is not just 10 times less than IPCC claims, it is actually negative (although immeasurably small). This is far more of a bombshell than “less warming than we thought”. “Baby steps” will do little against the vast propaganda machine of AGW. Viscount Monckton’s approach of “playing in their sand-pit with only their toys” failed.
Essentially I agree with your mathematical approach of restructuring the problem to eliminate unknowns. But I argue you should eliminate all atmospheric properties excepting pressure rather than try and avoid dealing with surface properties and their response to solar radiation. This approach is far easier as 71% of the surface has the same properties.
There is a second advantage to eliminating atmospheric properties not surface properties. There lays a solid physical mechanism to explain the “Notch”, but you cannot see the effect of solar spectral variance if you treat the oceans as a “near blackbody”.
Generally I am in agreement with you, treating the effect of LWIR on surface temps as the same as UV/SW/SWIR was wrong. What I am saying is if you don’t properly consider surface properties, you don’t know just how unbelievably wrong. The climastrologists have an 80K error for 71% of the planets surface in their foundation “surface without radiative atmosphere” calculation!
1217
Konrad,
You focus on the ocean surface discontinuity of fluid dynamics. David is focusing on the claimed thermodynamics of this atmosphere. Seems like you both wish to subsume the electromagnetic into your focus. The three are mostly independent. I see David’s as lots of heat here from the combustion, or sunlight… With your fluid dynamics, I see drip pans under every hydraulic cylinder!…. With the electromagnetic I see sparks, and wouldja look at dat! The three seem to be not only orthogonal, but vicious against anything else orthogonal. Can there be any understanding of this atmosphere?
All the best! -will-
28
Hoist by their own retard.
116
Hey, I was referring to the climate establishment scientists that Dr
Evans and Jo are showing the error
of their ways. My money is on Dr E.
40
The inability of D(ownward)LWIR to heat the ocean is a major flaw of AGW but is secondary to what David is saying which is solar forcing is fundamentally different from CO2 forcing in such ways as the log effect and how clouds effect either forcing.
1116
The characteristics of water are primary to the AGW flaws. The assumptions behind CO2 forcing melt/evaporate/dampen/absorb under the dominance of water. If CO2 forcing fails for 80% of the earth’s surface (water & ice), it’s forcing factor must increase by 5x to match the assumptions.
The CO2 forcing theory drowns in 1 millimeter of ocean water where there is a 1,200 times greater heat capacity than the air and a 40,000 greater heat capacity than atmospheric CO2.
44
FTOP wrote:
“The CO2 forcing theory drowns in 1 millimeter of ocean water where there is a 1,200 times greater heat capacity than the air and a 40,000 greater heat capacity than atmospheric CO2.”
I’m sure you can’t prove any of this with actual physics, but I’d like to see you try.
43
Konrad, cohenite:
The mechanism whereby increased backradiation causes oceans to warm has been understood for quite a long time.
In the top millimeter or so of the oceans heat energy goes to the cooler atmosphere by conduction (through the ‘skin’ formed by surface tension), followed by conduction and evaporation into the air. Increased atmospheric IR warms the surface, reduces the thermal gradient of that top millimeter, and thereby decreases energy loss to the atmosphere, thus the oceans warm. Deep IR penetration just isn’t required.
Here’s an excellent review of the empirical evidence supporting this, in an article from almost a decade ago. There’s really no justification for repeating such long-disproved nonsense.
84
And the ClimAstrologists completely neglect the ENERGY per PHOTON ( or whatever you want to call the packet of energy)
For an example (from NASA):
Ozone production is driven by UV radiation of wavelengths less than 240 nm. Ozone dissociation typically produces atomic oxygen (O) that is stable when exposed to longer UV wavelengths, up to 320 nm, and visible light wavelengths of 400-700 nm. When an ozone molecule absorbs even low energy UV, it splits into an ordinary oxygen molecule and a free oxygen atom.
CO2 produced LWIR can not drive that sort of chemical reaction because those UV/EUV wavelength photons are 10,000,000 times the electron volts of a CO2 produced photon.
Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation (IR) in three narrow bands of wavelengths, which are 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM) with the first to bands being non starters according to IR astronomers (referenced some where during the past few days.)
Here is a chart that compares ENERGY vs Frequency/wavelength.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Light_spectrum.svg/2000px-Light_spectrum.svg.png
1MeV = 1,000,000 eV (electron volts)
Energy wise we are comparing elephants to bacteria aren’t we?
27
I am trying to understand how someone can believe that the worldwide community of professional scientists do not understand that photons carry energy.
But I can’t. It simply escapes me how people come to such conclusions, how they assert that their misunderstanding of the science (here of ozone destruction) is right and the rest of the entire world is wrong.
Seriously, how does this happen?
95
David Appell October 10, 2015 at 9:05 am
“I am trying to understand”
David never tries to understand, he only believes his bible.
“how someone can believe that the worldwide community of professional scientists do not understand that photons carry energy.”
gai got a bit enthusiastic!!
A Solar sourced single cycle of a 0.26 micron wavelet can deliver 4 ev to the cold atmospheric O3 molecule, for a total of 60 ev in the same time interval that a 200K CO2 15 micron single cycle can deliver 0.667 ev to matter at a lower temperature. That 60 EV can disassociate that O3 molecule.
“But I can’t. It simply escapes me how people come to such conclusions, how they assert that their misunderstanding of the science (here of ozone destruction) is right and the rest of the entire world is wrong.
Seriously, how does this happen?”
Much seems to escape David seems like all is running away! Not the world, is only the ‘rotten apple’ that cannot understand that the 0.667ev cannot do much even if allowed to emit in the direction of a higher temperature ocean. Such emission never happens. A source of higher radiance may, but need not, emit only in a direction of lower radiance at that frequency.
Your Mommy seems to let you play with the computer! Why not use it to learn something, anything!
15
KR
October 9, 2015 at 11:48 pm · Reply
” There’s really no justification for repeating such long-disproved nonsense.”
The claim that surface incident LWIR has no significant effect on the temperature of liquid water free to evaporatively cool is not “nonsense”, it’s solid scientific fact.
You foolishly linked to Minnett’s ocean measurements (at “Realclimate” no less!). This is the only empirical “evidence” that defenders of the faith ever link to in attempting to justify the claims that LWIR is raising ocean temps by 33K.
Let’s examine Minnett –
No supporting repeatable clean lab experiment.
Half of measurements taken during the day when SW backscatter is occurring.
Surface following thermometer not measuring skin evaporation layer.
Surface thermometer not at the viewing point of LWIR instrument.
LWIR instrument measuring 30 degrees off vertical.
Claimed temperature response to DWLWIR fluctuation an order of magnitude less that the failed hypothesis indicated it should be.
Minnett’s work was intentionally designed to be noisy, expensive, difficult to repeat and open to interpretation.
My work was specifically designed to be clean, cheap, easy to repeat and not requiring statistics for interpretation. (You know, the traditional scientific method.)
You can build and run the latest version for yourself. Fill both target chambers with 40C water and observe their cooling rate under the strong and weak LWIR sources. Both cool at the same rate. Repeat, but put a couple of drops of baby oil on the water surfaces to suppress evaporative cooling. Now the sample under the strong LWIR source cools slower.
Surface incident LWIR can slow the cooling rate of almost all materials (even if emitted from a cooler source). It just doesn’t work for materials free to evaporatively cool.
My clear and direct challenge to you KR- present a clean repeatable lab empirical experiment comparable to mine showing surface incident LWIR slowing the cooling rate of water free to evaporatively cool. You can’t do that can you?
313
Konrad:
If you hold a heat lamp 3 inches above a bucket of water, will the water warm?
a) Yes.
b) No.
24
By the way, I clicked on your link, http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2h6rsoz&s=5#.Vhh4kflViko.
All I got was a bunch of ads, and a lot of white space.
03
Konrad – Having seen your postings here and at Roy Spencers blog, and perhaps at a few other climate discussion groups, I suspect that you will not be convinced of AGW by any evidence that I or anyone else presents.
Note that I do not consider that a compliment.
—
For other readers, though (various emphases added):
_Counterfactual statement_ – the basic greenhouse effect is supported by basically all of spectroscopy, atmospheric science, radiosondes, and all satellite spectral observations of the surface (which all show IR suppression at GHG frequencies). But Konrad claims: “This is the only empirical “evidence” that defenders of the faith ever link to in attempting to justify the claims that LWIR is raising ocean temps by 33K.”
This is simply wrong, and IMO an attempt to argue that one tiny point in a difficult to measure aspect of the science invalidates everything across multiple disciplines. In short, attempting to link and then dismiss the vast majority of evidence over a single (and incorrect) quibble.
The Minnett work involved very precise measurements in a very noisy environment, the top fraction of a millimeter in the open ocean surface. But note the _conspiracy theory_ Konrad presented: “Minnett’s work was intentionally designed to be noisy, expensive, difficult to repeat and open to interpretation.”
Seriously? Intentional deception? If such work could be disproved by someone working in their kitchen, just why haven’t those results been overturned in the past decade by some fame-hungry grad student? In the meantime, I consider all such conspiracy theories a sign of someone far more attentive to personal ideology than evidence.
If your homegrown experiments are sufficient to demonstrate that some major point of atmospheric science is incorrect, I suggest you write it up and _publish it under peer review_. And then await your Nobel prize. In the meantime, you’re essentially denying the entire existing greenhouse effect, and I would consider your personal and unexamined experiments poor evidence indeed – not to mention contrary to basic conservation of energy.
—
Enough said.
77
”If you hold a heat lamp 3 inches above a bucket of water, will the water warm?”
David,
the answer is “Yes”. A heat lamp puts out SW, SWIR and LWIR. While LWIR cannot penetrate the skin evaporation layer, SW and SWIR can.
Now try it with airspeed over the water set to Beaufort scale 4 and use only a pure LWIR source. No the answer is “No”
27
Moderators,
I note my last comment is in moderation. It also contains HTML “fat fingers” formatting fails. Could it be replaced with this ? –
@KR
”I suspect that you will not be convinced of AGW by any evidence that I or anyone else presents.”
What have you got that will counter the results of repeatable empirical experiment?
”the basic greenhouse effect is supported by basically all of spectroscopy, atmospheric science, radiosondes, and all satellite spectral observations of the surface (which all show IR suppression at GHG frequencies). But Konrad claims: “This is the only empirical “evidence” that defenders of the faith ever link to in attempting to justify the claims that LWIR is raising ocean temps by 33K.”
How utterly disingenuous. This truly speaks to the character of the AGW defender.
First off “all of spectroscopy, atmospheric science, radiosondes, and all satellite spectral observations of the surface” do not support the radiative GHE hypothesis. All they show is an atmosphere able to absorb and emit LWIR.
Second, when challenged to present empirical evidence countering my experiments showing incident LWIR cannot heat nor slow the cooling rate of water free to evaporatively cool, they always run back to Minnett’s failed study. Just as you did.
”This is simply wrong, and IMO an attempt to argue that one tiny point in a difficult to measure aspect of the science invalidates everything across multiple disciplines. In short, attempting to link and then dismiss the vast majority of evidence over a single (and incorrect) quibble.”
I am not dismissing a “vast majority of evidence”. I am just using repeatable empirical experiments to disprove the claim of a net radiative GHE. As to your provably false claim of a “single quibble”, my empirical experiments show the following many critical failings of the AGW hypothesis –
1. The Stefan-Boltzmann equation cannot be used to determine solar heating of the oceans. There is an 80K error covering 71% of the planet’s surface in the climastrologists foundation “surface without radiative atmosphere calculation.
2. Incident LWIR can neither heat nor slow the cooling rate of water free to evaporatively cool. The climastrologists defy empirical experiment and claim atmospheric LWIR is raising ocean temperatures by 33K.
3. Without radiative cooling at altitude, strong tropospheric circulation would stall and the bulk of the atmosphere would super heat. (Dr. Spencer is in agreement on that one).
4. Without radiative gases, the atmosphere would have no effective cooling mechanism. Experiment proves conduction back to the surface infective for a gas atmosphere in a gravity field.
5. Hemispherical LWIR emissivity for water is as low as 0.67 and measurements over 0.9 only apply to apparent emissivity near zenith within the Hohlrumn of the atmosphere.
”The Minnett work involved very precise measurements in a very noisy environment, the top fraction of a millimeter in the open ocean surface. But note the _conspiracy theory_ Konrad presented: “Minnett’s work was intentionally designed to be noisy, expensive, difficult to repeat and open to interpretation.”
1. Minnett has no supporting repeatable lab experiment supporting his flawed study.
2. Minnet’s work, showing an effect an order of magnitude below what the hypothesis demanded, was not accepted for publication. For climastrology to fail pal review is telling.
“someone working in their kitchen”
….,
If your homegrown experiments are sufficient to demonstrate that some major point of atmospheric science is incorrect, I suggest you write it up and _publish it under peer review_. And then await your Nobel prize.”
Ah, the old smear and snear Alinsky techniques. While the experiments I show are specifically designed to be easy for others replicate, they are not run in a “kitchen”. In my day job I have access to hydrodynamics facilities, wind tunnels and a bunch of materials and instrumentation I can’t expect others to have access to. You criticize me for making science safe and accessible.
And pal review? Funny story, someone once took some of my early work (without permission) and added it to a paper that passed peer review. I objected. The message from the AGW hoax has been that not only does the AGW hypothesis need to be shot down, so too the corruption of peer review. The right answers being in the public domain years before the “respected” journals is a step in the right direction.
PS. much of my other work is subject to peer review. Engineering peer review, a lot more serious as the public liability of the reviewer is at stake. Onerous, but that’s where engineering awards and technology museum exhibits come from 😉
”In the meantime, you’re essentially denying the entire existing greenhouse effect, and I would consider your personal and unexamined experiments poor evidence indeed – not to mention contrary to basic conservation of energy.”
I am only disproving the claims of a NET atmospheric radiative GHE. There is a radiative GHE in operation on this planet, raising surface temperatures above theoretical blackbody temperature, but it is in the oceans not the atmosphere. The atmosphere is cooling the oceans, not warming them as the climastrologists claim.
Nowhere do my experiments run contrary to conservation of energy. Nowhere.
In summary – KR, in your response you have used “call to authority argument”, you have smeared, you have smeared, you try to belittle. In this you fail. Engineers Australia Presidents Award vs. the shrieking of an fervent AGW believer? How was that supposed to work out?
”Enough said.”
You wish. Sceptics will never be silent as long as the foulest assault on science reason, freedom and democracy in human history continues. You and yours are not going to get away with this. Sceptics will fight you on the blogs, we will fight you on the news sites, we will fight you at the ballot box and we will never, ever surrender.
48
Konrad @ 2:49 pm
Lot of work in that.
A good read.
KK
28
Konrad,
Providing links to Tinypic showing photos of apparatus, surrounded by advertisments, and without any proper explanation of what is going on is really not going to help your cause.
If you are serious about having cracked the major issues in climate science, why not put all your research AND some careful explanations on a website and steer the whole argument from there?
As it is, you simply come over as some kind of angry eccentric who can’t communicate properly. This is a pity because I believe you have put a lot of effort over the years into experimentation. As a fellow engineer, I applaud that emphasis rather than the mind numbing pursuit of endless (and largely unverifiable) theory.
But I have to tell you this: I never understand what you are talking about on these blogs. You make no attempt to explain your solutions through clear exposition. Instead you just make endless (and to me incomprehensible, and therefore valueless) interventions. Perhaps I am the only one here who has that problem, but I rather doubt it.
If you really have worked climate out into a fully coherent story that proves that we have nothing to worry about from CO2 enhancement, I will be the first to congratulate you. So why not explain it to us simpletons in a lucid way rather than in your strange shorthand?
As always, all the best, David C
62
David Cosserat,
my apologies for the slow response. You are clearly not a simpleton. Your criticism of the TinyPic links and their annoying advertising is valid. But this is more a fault of Jo’s website. At other sites these become images in-line, without advertising.
Just ignore the advertising and follow the “view raw image” link and download and examine at your leisure.
But there is only one way you will understand. An ancient Chinese proverb – “Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I’ll understand. Let me do it, I will know.”
Maths can model the physical, but it can also model the physically impossible. Until you understand the physics, you can’t understand that AGW due to CO2 is a physical impossibility.
As to running my own website, the answer is no time. I’m working. My state needs new train stations. Some are underground. Solar access? Thermal loading of multi layered tinted armoured glass? The S-B equation does not apply. Empirical experiment and FEA is needed. I’m busy.
Don’t just look at selective surface experiments 1 & 2. Build them. Run them. Then you will know. “Surface without radiative atmosphere” is 312K not 255K.
Don’t make demands of me, make demands of yourself. Cut and paste don’t cut it.
26
This is a perfect example of climate “science”
Start by declaring that it is not possible to measure the effect that you are trying to prove:
“Clearly it is not possible to alter the concentration of greenhouse gases in a controlled experiment at sea to study the response of the skin-layer.”
Measure something completely different with a 20x order of magnitude greater forcing:
“Instead we use the natural variations in clouds to modulate the incident infrared radiation at the sea surface”
Use a measuring instrument calibrated to .01 C accuracy, but derive a signal change of .002 w/m2. Fail to provide any error calibration on the measurements.
“There is an associated reduction in the difference between the 5 cm and the skin temperatures. The slope of the relationship is 0.002ºK (W/m2)-1. Of course the range of net infrared forcing caused by changing cloud conditions (~100W/m2) is much greater than that caused by increasing levels of greenhouse gases (e.g. doubling pre-industrial CO2 levels will increase the net forcing by ~4W/m2)”
Tenuously “prove” that doubling pre-industrial CO2 reduces the differential between the skin layer and the 5cm level by .008. Thus a .1 acknowledged differential becomes .992.
Fail to present the mathematical conclusion reached from their own experiment. Yet boldly claim:
“To conclude, it is perfectly physically consistent to expect that increasing greenhouse gas driven warming will heat the oceans – as indeed is being observed.”
So, to summarize:
Let’s measure something different (clouds vs. CO2)
Something the researchers acknowledge has 20x the power of the item we are seeking to measure
Reach a trace signal of .002 rate of change with instrumentation that is accurate to an order of magnitude less
Provide no error bars in our analysis
Fail to calculate the impact of this on the item we are seeking to validate (.002 x 4 w/m2) = .008C
Determine that we have validated a “force” that SLOWS THE RATE of cooling by .008 degrees
Yet boldly claim that we have proven CO2 can HEAT the ocean
Can’t get more “settled” than that.
42
Correction…
“.1 signal becomes .092” not .992
00
Actually the ClimAstrologists swap the ‘Forcing’ Feedback relationship of CO2 and water.
The ClimAstrologists say a change of CO2 in the air when the baseline CO2 is 380 ppm has enough effective ‘back radiation’ to cause more water to evaporate.
Aside from the fact that CO2 at LWIR can not penetrate the oceans beyond a few millimeters while solar radiation at the most changeable wavelengths (UV and Vis) penetrate to 100 meters, the big clues they have the relationship backwards is:
#1. ice core data shows CO2 LAGS temperature by hundreds of years.
#2. As the oceans warm they out gas more CO2.
Therefore the relationship of oceans warm, THEN CO2 is outgassed fits the empirical data and the physics while CO2 DRIVES changes in water vapor is on really shaky legs.
Discussion of paper Contributions of stratospheric water vapor to decadal changes in the rate of global warming Sciencexpress: 10.1126/science.1182488
Link to paper: Contributions of stratospheric water vapor to decadal changes in the rate of global warming.
(wwwDOT)sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1219.abstract
Here is the ClimAstrologists with a MODEL saying Stratospheric water vapor feedback “…plays an important role in our climate system.”
And the Tropospheric water doesn’t save their bacon either.
Data source: The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP).
http://www.climate4you.com/images/TotalColumnWaterVapourDifferentAltitudesObservationsSince1983.gif
upper blue line shows the total amount of water in the atmosphere. The green line, the amount of water in the lower troposphere between 1000 and 680 mb, (altitudes up to about 3 km.) The red line shows the amount of water between 680 and 310 mb, altitudes from about 3 to 6 km.
From: (wwwDOT)climate4you.com/ClimateAndClouds.htm#Clouds and atmospheric water vapour
13
“The ClimAstrologists say a change of CO2 in the air when the baseline CO2 is 380 ppm has enough effective ‘back radiation’ to cause more water to evaporate.”
Evaporation happens when the evaporating molecules have enough kinetic energy to escape the intermolecular forces of liquid they’re in. So it depends on the temperature of the evaporating liquid, among other factors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporation#Factors_influencing_the_rate_of_evaporation
“Aside from the fact that CO2 at LWIR can not penetrate the oceans beyond a few millimeters while solar radiation at the most changeable wavelengths (UV and Vis) penetrate to 100 meters,”
Again, evaporation depends on the kinetic energy of the evaporating molecules. This depends on temperature, which, yes, is influence by downward-welling IR. Water surfaces are rarely perfectly flat, and the ocean surface is turbulent, so the skin layer atop the water quickly mixes. Temperature also changes by conduction with air molecules above the water.
“#1. ice core data shows CO2 LAGS temperature by hundreds of years.”
So what? That’s true for natural climate change — at least at the start; in actuality temperature and CO2 are in a mutually reinforcing feedback loop — but not for anthropogenic change, where humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere regardless of what the temperature is or whether it first changes. In that case, CO2 leads temperature (obviously).
“Thus, the ice cores cannot be used to quantify how large is the effect that CO2 has on the climate.”
Wrong. CO2 and temperature are in a mutually feedback loop — each influences the other. In fact, the temperature difference between the glacial and interglacial phases of the current ice age would only be about half as much without the feedback from CO2.
“In fact, there is no single time scale whatsoever over which CO2 variations can be shown to be the origin of temperature variations.”
Lookup the PETM. Lookup AGW.
“The authors write that “the trend in global surface temperatures has been nearly flat since the late 1990s”
False, clearly. See Karl et al, Science (2015). The GISS trend since Jan-2000 shows +0.21 C of warming. NOAA finds +0.22 C of warming.
75
“…False, clearly. See Karl et al, Science (2015). The GISS trend since Jan-2000 shows +0.21 C of warming. NOAA finds +0.22 C of warming….”
After much fudging and twisting of the Argo data Karl squeak out a tiny amount of warming to get rid of “The Pause”
IR which has very little energy at wavelengths corresponding to temperatures below even that of the south pole. compared to UV, EUV or even Vis., does not penetrate beyond the surface of the oceans. It is the highly energetic solar energy EUV to visible, that warms the oceans to a depth of 100 meters.
****************
David A also says
And I said he is comparing a bacteria to an elephant.
The elephant being the 300 feet deep ocean over 70% of the earth’s surface that is warmed by the sun ENERGETIC wavelengths, corresponding to temperatures of nuclear fission. (The rest of the ocean is near freezing in temperature.)
The bacteria (CO2) is emitting energy ‘warming’ only a few microns of the ocean’s surface. This IR energy is emitted over 40 kilometers above the earth’s surface in the stratosphere with a wavelength corresponding to temperatures below even that of the south pole. (See IR Astronomer above)
Remove the energy from the sun warming the oceans and CO2 isn’t going to keep you out of Ice ball earth. Of course that is where the ClimAstrologist’s claim of a constant sun comes in handy.
…..
So what has happened to the solar energy RATIO of the critical ocean warming wavelengths over the last three decades, 1979 to 2008, when the earth was warming?
In 2008, the sun set the following records:
32
“yes, is influence by downward-welling IR. Water”
Can you please demonstrate any down-welling IR except from the Sun?
45
Awww, only 92?
Come on, in this thread I have made claims backed by empirical experiment that largely support David’s claim that the “sky is not the surface” and only got 92 red thumbs?
Anyone would think people here are not truly committed to rejecting repeatable empirical experiment!
Come on folks, lets make it –
”100 red thumbs against Konrad.” 😉
41
KONRAD: “Come on folks, lets make it -”100 red thumbs against Konrad.”
You aint neva gonna get mor than I punk!!! 😉
Please check:
post 2.2.1.3.1 on Davids #9
30
Punk? Punk?!
Less of that grandpa, lest I use the Quantum Cascade Laser to teach you to suck eggs!
I already verified your earlier work with the cryo-cooled hohlrumn. What more did you need?
Sigh. The old people of today. No respect….
212
“Sigh. The old people of today. No respect….”
Indeed and get the hell ofin my lawn! 🙂
61
I’ll get the hell offa your lawn Grandpa, right after you show some interest in tending to it. 😉
Sure, you wrote the primary code for the basis of MODTRAN. People who know, know.
You wrote on the basis of empirical experiment. David is good, but has it occurred to you old-timer, he ain’t as good as you.
David is on the right track, but if you don’t support/ critique him, I am going to trash your lawn old person!
412
“David is on the right track, but if you don’t support/ critique him, I am going to trash your lawn old person!”
My critique is always here on this blog. Support comes from a PayPal account! Punk! 😉
31
KONRAD: (“Come on folks, lets make it -”100 red thumbs against Konrad.”)
‘You aint neva gonna get mor than I punk!!! 😉 ‘
Dis aint fair yous gittns lotz more red thumbz! Yous mus be payn punk. 😉
22
Hey KONRAD,
If we divide an icosahedron’s each face into four smaller equilaterals, a wee bit bent. Is this still a regular polyhedron? Why not?…If that works we can do it again the 80 equilaterals going to 320 equilaterals, less bent!… Will close hex-packs on a sphere work better for getting uniform coverage for 4 PI steradians non-uniform radiant exitance? How many? Punk 😉
10
Will, there are only five* “regular polyhedrons”.
”If we divide an icosahedron’s each face into four smaller equilaterals, a wee bit bent. Is this still a regular polyhedron? Why not?…
The definition of a regular polyhedron requires not just faces to be identical, but angles to be identical and vertices to be identical. You can sub-divide a icosahedron’s faces into four triangles but at minimum, you will end with four equilaterals. Because angles between faces after doing so is no longer constant (two angles now result) the solid volume is no longer a “regular” polyhedron.
A wee bit bent? Then the minimum you can end with per face is 3 non equilateral and one equilateral. Again not a regular polyhedron. Don’t yank the CAD designer’s chain. (you’ll just get flushed).
These cardboard indoor polyhedra are for amusement purposes only. My outdoor collection has over 100 species of cacti and succulent. Plants so ancient they developed photosynthesis in fractal offshoots from their stems before they ever developed leaves.
Did “Mr Old person” just put a shot across the bows of “Mr fully employed empiricist, occasional cacti gardener and all round evil guy”? How’s that gonna work out? My understanding is that empirical evidence says – aim away from face.
*OK six, but that requires an asymmetrical five sided face. You know that’s breaking the rules…
10
Konrad October 11, 2015 at 4:10 pm
“Will, there are only five* “regular polyhedrons”.
”If we divide an icosahedron’s each face into four smaller equilaterals, a wee bit bent. Is this still a regular polyhedron? Why not?…”
‘Twas a real question’. The cartographers tiling a sphere use the spherical equilaterals for the equal area tiling of a spherical 20 equal area icosahedron Earth. The smallest hexpacked earth is one of 2434 hexagons of 210,000 km^2 each. Quite a lot for any of my 64 bit quads. If I try to grow them they don’t fit.
I wish to represent Earth with annual latitude variation but longitude represented by a static time of day to see what patterns develop with respect to rotation angle from the Sun.
Got any ideas?
10
But once in space, spacecraft surface temperature is all there is – there is no atmosphere. 🙂
00
Joanne Nova October 4, 2015 at 8:47 pm
(“Where are the alarmists?”)
“Waiting for the skeptics to find some mistakes…”
A wonderful demonstration of important mathematical demands being truly ignored by every model. Congrats!
This article has one glaring and repeated error. The radiative EMR acceptance and promotion that the Schuster Schwarzschild two stream approximation (SSA) should ever apply to the exit flux from Earth.
The SSA is useful only when the gas makeup of a star is quite reflective causing scattering, sometimes referred to as back scattering of media bullet like photons. This is useful in determining the effective radiating temperature (RT) of a star! Indeed, with our Sun the effective RT is that as though the Sun has 100% emissivity, for ease in calculating gross effects!
Our Sun like Earth’s atmosphere has a emissivity of no more than 63%, i.e. that of one optical depth. More complicated is that Earth’s atmosphere has dimensionally wee molecules and almost no reflectivity to exit wavelengths. What this atmosphere does have is mass and temperature with 63% opposing radiance for each optical depth (OD). Such according to the S-B equation must limit surface exitance to a maximum of 37% of that claimed (T^4) of the Climate Clowns!
At Earth’s surface and the CO2 15 micron wave band one OD is less than 2 meters. By 10 meters (5 x OD) of same temperature now 99.66% emissivity, only 0.33% of that t^4 power/flux is ever emitted from the surface. There is no CO2 flux absorption anywhere in this atmosphere, as there is nothing ever generated to absorb! Earth’s exit flux is measurable. The defeat of the claim that the surface generates anything to be absorbed by CO2, is critical to any detailed examination of this intentional deception, for profit! 🙁
All the best! -will-
714
@Will
To test your theory, would one just point a spectrometer at the ground?
20
To a cooled spectrometer the surface can radiate flux even there the detector temperature still limits th amount radiated. Have you done such. Those that do measure actually know what is being measured. Thermal radiative flux from the surface has never ever been measured. All clueless fantasy. Show some flux measurements!!
16
Will Janoschka wrote: “Thermal radiative flux from the surface has never ever been measured.”
“Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997,” J.E. Harries et al, Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001).
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
“Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present,” J.A. Griggs et al, Proc SPIE 164, 5543 (2004). http://spiedigitallibrary.org/proceedings/resource/2/psisdg/5543/1/164_1
“Spectral signatures of climate change in the Earth’s infrared spectrum between 1970 and 2006,” Chen et al, (2007) http://www.eumetsat.int/Home/Main/Publications/Conference_and_Workshop_Proceedings/groups/cps/documents/document/pdf_conf_p50_s9_01_harries_v.pdf
“Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect,” R. Philipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018765/abstract
“Measurements of the Radiative Surface Forcing of Climate,” W.F.J. Evans, Jan 2006
https://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm
https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/100737.pdf
“Satellite-Based Reconstruction of the Tropical Oceanic Clear-Sky Outgoing Longwave Radiation and Comparison with Climate Models,” Gastineau et al, J Climate, vol 27, 941–957 (2014).
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00047.1
55
Joanne Nova October 4, 2015 at 8:47 pm · Reply
(‘Where are the alarmists?’)
“Waiting for the skeptics to find some mistakes…”
Joanne, In this article #9 by David. From so far, the replies by others, insist that ‘all’ are confused of the how this atmosphere may actually operate. But so far we all have been deliberately fed a pack of lies for immense political and financial gain. Did I avoid your F-word? grinn 😉
413
It would seem they are at other sites tilting at the GCMs Strawman.
http://deeptruths.com/letters/don-quixote/1.jpg
10
I’ve noticed that too. Let’s hope it’s because david’s argument against the classical model is making sense to them. On the other hand, they could be waiting to build a case against this whole series and then pounce from ambush like a lion on a gazelle.
And maybe they’re just a little bit scared to face off against Dr. David Evans after reading his arguments, which are thorough and understandable.
260
I’ve had this question in my mind for a long time and haven’t seen an answer. It may not be relevant but this seems like the time to ask it.
Does not incoming solar radiation heat the atmosphere as well as the surface? After all, a lot of it is infrared (plain old radiated heat), the same stuff that kept me warm in my office on a cold morning sitting in front of an electric heater’s parabolic reflector.
I may be way off base but until given a better answer I would think it’s yes, the atmosphere must be heated at least a little by solar radiation on its way down to the surface.
60
Roy,
Beneath the tropopause there is hardly any direct heating of atmospheric molecules by incoming solar shortwave. The bulk of the gases are transparent to it.
The atmosphere’s energy nearly all comes from conduction at the surface followed by convection which carries it upward until hydrostatic balance is achieved.
GHGs play a miniscule role in all that.
132
Thank you.
70
Roy,
You were more than a little correct. See my response to Stephen below.
David C
00
Stephen,
You say: Beneath the tropopause there is hardly any direct heating of atmospheric molecules by incoming solar shortwave. The bulk of the gases are transparent to it.
You are completely wrong. According to the Trenberth et. al.(2009) diagram, of the 239W/m2 from the Sun that is absorbed by the earth system, 161W/m2 is absorbed by the surface and 78W/m2 is absorbed directly by the atmosphere.
You say: The atmosphere’s energy nearly all comes from conduction at the surface followed by convection which carries it upward until hydrostatic balance is achieved.
Sorry, completely wrong again! Of the 161W/m2 absorbed by the surface, only 17W/m2 flows to the atmosphere by conduction from the surface. Another 80W/m2 flows by evapo-transpiration of water molecules, and 23W/m2 by radiation, making a total of 120W/m2 from surface to atmosphere. (There is another 40W/m2 of radiation from the surface which is not absorbed by the atmosphere but passes directly to space.)
So taking this 120W/m2 contribution from the earth’s surface and the 78W/m2 received directly from the Sun (making a total of 198W/m2), we see that the surface supplies the atmosphere with 61% of its energy and the Sun supplies it directly with 39% of its energy.
So there is no way you can airily dismiss the contribution from the Sun’s incident SW radiation to warming the atmosphere as insignificant when it is contributing nearly forty percent. 🙂
Regards, David C
60
Roy, you might find this interesting:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/physicist-cooling-effect-of-co2-is-100x.html
00
I remember something about that from quite a while back and probably forgot about it. So thanks for the reminder.
00
Roy Hogue asks:
“…Does not incoming solar radiation heat the atmosphere as well as the surface?…”
Yes the solar energy heats the thermosphere. Below it, the ionisphere lying 75-1000 km (46-621 miles) above the Earth is ionized by solar energy and cosmic rays.
In the stratosphere solar energy is strong enough to cause chemical reactions:
SEE: Chemical Reactions in the Stratosphere
10
Yes, many don’t understand it but there would not be ozone up there if sunlight wasn’t creating it constantly. The stuff has a relatively short half life here at the surface (hours if I remember) but I don’t know what it is at the very much lower temperature where it’s created. But no matter the half life, it couldn’t be there if solar radiation wasn’t constantly replenishing it. That’s why I’ve been appalled at the one sided understanding of ozone fed to the public for so long. It’s that interception of UV by O2 that creates ozone molecules in an O2 sparse environment that provides much of the protection from UV that we supposedly get from ozone.
Physics and chemistry are very useful things to understand in this world of misinformation and half truths. Though strictly speaking, ozone creation and transitioning back to Oxygen is more physics than chemistry.
I remember smelling ozone around those amusement park bumper cars that get power from a mast with a spring loaded pickup shoe against a steel roof and ground from a similar steel floor through the wheels. I could never ride them or even be around them for very long without seeing sparks from that pickup shoe and shortly after that you smelled ozone. I don’t know the mechanism of that for sure but any arc with enough power behind it will generate UV so that’s at least one mechanism to explain what I smelled.
20
Even in the Troposphere, more insolation power than is scattered outward is absorbed by the cloud water condensate and converted to water vapor at the rate of 2400 J/gm, This not precipitation, but part of the 2.8 cm (average) of atmospheric column water carried round with that latent heat continually dissipated at night to space.
All the best! -will-
25
Ex Warmist,
Probably because Anthony Watts busted a troll variously known as Harry Twinotter and Svante Callender about 2 days ago. IP address in Sydney, email as oneeyed2014 and oneeyed2012 on bigpond, probably living around Bestic St in Rockdale.
Jo,
While there are some genuine warmists that do post true to their belief (I am being very generous), the majority are trolls who take posts like these back to someone they think can pull them apart and then triumphantly return with all manner of rubbish to dispute it.
Obviously none of the trolls working against these posts have found any of their ‘science’ that can put a dent in it.
Go you good thing.
438
Geez, two red thumbs,Twatter,
That’d be one each from both your paranoid, delusional, propagandist personalities.
117
The red thumbs seem to be the best they can do. I sometimes call them out for it but largely I wear it as a badge of honor. Let them bang their heads against what they don’t like and just keep on keeping on.
21
But you knew that already. 🙂
00
Twinotter busted? Must be in the comments somewhere on WUWT. Which thread?
40
Peter C
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/02/supermandia-doesnt-seem-to-like-questions-about-shukla-rico20-and-the-climate-science-legal-defense-fund/
*about the 20th comment onward commencing with Svante Callender complaining about WUWT censorship – gets really funny.
70
Thanks James,
I won’t go further, but others might like to have a look a look at that discussion. Harry/Svante gets defensive quite quickly. An actual name would be very interesting!
It also taught me a bit more about internet security (or lack thereof).
30
The other thing they do is, no matter how cogent or based in evidence a skeptic argument may be, they ignore it and post something like “But surely you don’t think ALL those scientists are part of some huge CONSPIRACY!!!” My answer to that: I have no interest in conspiracy; the facts are what they are. If you think that means there’s a conspiracy, that’s your problem.
100
The trolls pretty much own Watts Up With That’s public Facebook page. I’m all for debate, but it has gone way beyond that there. Anthony’s page admin needs to do some house cleaning there as well.
40
Send in the clowns
20
ExWarmist wrote:
“What’s also interesting is the lack of Alarmists posting comments. Why are they not commenting?”
I’m sorry to tell you this, and it’s nothing personal against the bloggers here, but those who follow the science of AGW abandoned this blog years ago. Same with WUWT. Good science simply does not come out of them. (That notch theory/Force X didn’t help.)
(Then why are you here?) CTS
[CTS, obviously the Notch/Force-X idea doesn’t matter so much that he has to come and tell us that. Thanks David A. Very helpful of you 😉 — Jo]
29
Was that David Apple/Appell, the one that fell on Newton’s head, or the one that William Tell Shot, off the head? Does it make any difference 😉
39
This blog allows ad hominem attacks? I though it was about the science….
68
”but those who follow the science of AGW”
Well that would be your problem right there, David. You follow and repeat the propaganda (no, AGW is not science), you don’t follow the scientific method and you don’t do your own empirical experiments. You consider yourself a “science communicator”, but you have wasted your years spreading propaganda and trying to suppressing the truth with Alinsky methods.
Let’s all look at what happens when Mr. Appell tries to debate science with an empiricist better at radiative physics and fluid dynamics than any climastrologist.
Indeed, I would advise other readers to peruse that whole thread to get a fair impression of Mr. Appell’s scientific capabilities and debating technique. (No David, don’t bother running back to add “killer retorts”, everything has been date stamped, and the sneak-back is just so “John Cook”.)
David, you claimed 255K for “surface without radiative atmosphere”. I have the screen shots. No matter what you bleat about “ad hominem attacks”, everyone gets to laugh at you from now until the end of time. Used the Stefan-Boltzmann equation did we darling? So sad, too bad. 😉
414
Konrad: I don’t “repeat” anything. I write what I know and understand, and I defend that with logic and science.
Of course AGW is based on science. Silly to pretend otherwise, IMO.
Yes, your apparent screen shot is correct: in the very simple zero-dimensional model with no atmosphere, a “planet” at Earth’s distance from the Sun has an average surface temperature of 255 K. There isn’t a thing controversial about that, and it’s the beginning point of climate modeling, not the end point.
117
PS: That’s assuming the planet had an albedo of 0.3. Thing is, if the Earth really did have an average surface temperaure of 255 K, it’s albedo wouldn’t be 0.3, but higher due to much more ice. So again we see that this simple little 0-dimensional model is a toy model, never intended to be a real model of the climate. (But it does give the right brightness temperature.)
106
@David
Konrad’s argument seems to be that the straightforward blackbody calculation does not make physical sense for a planet that is 70% covered in water. Is he right or wrong about that?
40
Is Konrad right or wrong?
Who cares?
It doesn’t matter. This is a baby tiny zero-dimensional model that every climate science student is taught on day 1. At the same time they’re taught its limitations given the approximations that are made in the calculation. This model doesn’t have an ocean. Or land. It doesn’t have an atmosphere. It’s a model.
It’s a billiard ball. OK?
Then the students come to class on day 2, and they move forward to a little more realistic model, like a billiard ball with a gray gas atmosphere.
Jeez. This is getting ridiculous.
86
OK, so Konrad is right and the black body model is physically inapt for Earth.
This is the part of your comment he was criticizing:
So you must agree that your statement, “the difference is the greenhouse effect” is completely incorrect, right? The original model finding 255K is physically and scientifically irrelevant, so the difference between that model’s results and observations must also be physically and scientifically irrelevant.
33
I’m here to discuss science, because when I do I learn things, including defending what I know and think. But I don’t make a habit of it. To your credit, you don’t censor people, like WUWT does.
99
We just giggle at your nonsence!
65
That’s about as enlightened a response as I expected.
64
David, I’m giving you a green thumb.
While I would normally disagree with you, you are right about the censorship at WUWT. All who don’t agree with the “cowboy” are censored at WUWT.
Now, in the interest of scientific discussion, can the Stefan-Boltzmann equation solve for SW illumination of SW translucent / IR opaque materials? A simple Yes or No is all that is required.
27
Konrad: The SB equation specifies the total radiation from a blackbody.
That’s all it does.
It doesn’t “solve” anything. Given a blackbody at temperature T and the body’s emissivity epsilon, the SB equation specifies the outgoing energy flux.
Whatever is incident on the blackbody is a whole different story, and has nothing to do wth the SB equation.
95
Well then, where are the really big hitters among the sceptics? Seems very strange so far, but perhaps they may come into play from now on?
WUWT have dipped in a toe but seem to be holding back as well.
[Note to unmentionable, sorry I know the cowboy’s win is exciting, but it’s OT. Moved to “unthreaded” – Jo]
41
When the Notch Delay theory was being posted one chapter at a time, many sceptics jumped in with premature comments (some quite rude).
So now maybe they’re waiting for the final post in this series to get stuck into it.
Then again, considering the egotistical and rude comments on the Notch Delay theory by self-important sceptical “cowboys” and “fishermen”, if they can’t find anything wrong with these series of posts, I expect silence.
202
Actually I have made lots of comments. I will comment here once I absorb it, conceptually David seems right, or at least more correct other than A=R being pure speculation.
110
Over the last few weeks I think a lot of skeptics here have provided good counterarguments to aspects of the conventional model that David and Jo have presented here.
One of the central tenets of the conventional model as I understand is that energy-input from the Sun should equal energy-output but this is not necessarily so. Venus, for example, radiates at 17,000 W/sq.m and yet due to its high albedo only absorbs about 65 W/sq.m. Even without taking into account albedo the planet is only getting 2,613 W/sq.m. Based on this observation alone the conventional model seems inadequate to me and there are probably many other factors and sources of heat that have not been properly accounted for, say, adiabatic compression perhaps.
Personally I disgaree with the claim that doubling CO2 will give us 1ºC of warming – not because the math and calculations are wrong, but because I think the empirical basis is somewhat lacking. To determine how much radiation CO2 is absorbing and returning to the surface all we would need to do is measure the radiative imbalance on CO2 absorption wavelengths and see if there is a decrease over time. However papers that claim to have done this, such as Harries 2001 – when people have investigated their methods (such as John Daly did some years ago, see ‘Harries 2001 Smoking Pee Shooter’) it turns out that their results do not support the conventional theory.
That said, I can understand why skeptics accept it for argument’s sake. CAGW has never been about science of course. Skeptics could hit CAGW-advocates with all the facts in the world and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. This is all about winning over the public, and skeptics can’t be seen as being too extremist by arguing against supposedly ‘well-established’ facts.
110
Richard,
Note that the conventional model is for transition between steady states, in which energy in equals energy out by definition.
We have not yet estimated how much surface warming is caused by doubling CO2. I gave the conventional answer in post 3, but over the next few posts we’ll build the alternative model without the errors of the basic model described in this post and others. The issue is more complicated than back radiation from CO2, because it involves feedbacks.
Showing the conventional basic model is faulty does matter, because the basic model (the application of the much quoted “basic physics”) is the reason most establishment climate scientists are alarmed by CO2 — please read the introduction in post 1.
201
There still must be something else going on that the conventional model is not accounting for it seems to me. The “greenhouse” model would have us believe that the 65 W/sq.m of radiation that Venus receives at the surface is increased to 17,000 W/sq.m through ‘back-radiation’. Solar isolation for Venus is 2,613 W/sq.m and so I am unsure how Venus is able to generate more energy than it receives. Earth is different of course since solar isolation is 1368 W/sq.m and Earth is radiating at only 390 W/sq.m. I have heard the argument that the assumed incoming/outgoing solar radiation balance at equilibrium is invalid because it ignores gravitational pressure heat that (the argument goes) is a form of heat not related to incoming solar radiation. An example of this gravitational heat is a sun; suns are formed when gravity compresses hydrogen into an increasingly smaller space until temperatures reach 10 million degrees Kelvin and hydrogen fuses. Could this pressure heat be a possible mechanism for increasing the temperature of Venus to a level much higher than the radiation from the sun alone could achieve?
I understand that. But you and Jo do agree that without feedbacks the assumed 3.7 W/sq.m of increased back-radiation from doubling CO2 would produce around 1ºC of warming and that is what I was referring to. The measurements by Harries 2001 I mentioned above claimed to have measured a radiative imbalance on CO2 absorption bands but when their paper was investigated it turned out that their results were not statistically significant and there was no real measured radiative imbalance. This is what I meant when I said I thought the basis of the theory lacked proper empirical validation. Of course the IPCC usually cite the HITRAN and MODTRAN computer model codes when it comes to showing how much radiation enhancement the extra CO2 is causing and those models are meant to be based on empirical measurements. The empirical measurements do not appear to support the models though, at least Harries 2001 didn’t and warmists happily used that paper as ‘proof’ of CO2’s direct effect for years. The measurements by Hottel and Leckner would also suggest the models overestimate CO2’s direct effect.
100
But I accept the 1ºC of warming from a doubling of CO2 (without feedbacks) as you do, as I think skeptics should be careful with which facts they choose to dispute. Disputing the 1ºC of warming from CO2 alone without feedbacks I don’t think is necessary and would only make skeptics look silly to the public.
51
Richard,
I happily dispute it on the basis of repeatable empirical experiment. I would argue that failure to dispute it is what is making lukewarmers look foolish.
The most critical calculation in all of climate science is “average surface temperature without radiative atmosphere” ie: eliminate all atmospheric properties except pressure and find how how the sun averaging 240 w/m2 could drive our average surface temperature. Is it higher or lower than our current 288K? Correct calculation of this figure gives the net warming or cooling effect of our radiatively cooled atmosphere.
On the basis of assumptions, climastrologists claim 255K. On the basis of repeatable empirical experiment I estimate 312K. Climastrologist determine their 255K by treating the oceans as solar opaque, constantly illuminated and non-convecting. I treat the oceans as solar translucent, intermittently illuminated and convecting.
If the net effect of our radiatively cooled atmosphere is surface cooling, what then for your “1ºC of warming from CO2”?
1318
If the atmosphere is eliminated the solar radiation flux at the surface averages 350W/sq.m,. The 240W/sq.m is absorbed solar flux, which is after the atmosphere, predominantly clouds, has reflected about 30%.
Without atmosphere I would expect an average surface temperature of 286K. However that is primarily the result of oceans, which will give rise to an atmosphere anyhow. So is something that cannot happen.
118
Rick,
I use 240 w/m2 as this allows for albedo of 0.3. (not the whole story, I consider diurnal cycle as 240 w/m2 constant also gives the wrong answer). Without a radiatively cooled atmosphere, the sun would drive the oceans to an average of 335K. (Global surface average ~312K)
If you arrived at 286K for surface without atmosphere by eliminating albedo, then you have clearly ignored the fact that the oceans are not a “near blackbody”.
You cannot determine “surface without atmosphere” without empirical experiment or CFD. The S-B equation gives the wrong answer. Empirical experiment proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
418
Konrad
If there is no atmosphere the albedo is considerably less than 0.3. Oceans dominate the equatorial zone where most of the heat input occurs.
I used measured values of ocean albedo and emissivity, including changes with angle of incidence for the solar insolation. I determined an ocean surface ice line based on stable sea ice at 1.5m thick and neglected heat loss through ice.
I concluded that surface water was a key factor in maintaing Earth’s temperature near the present level.
202
”If there is no atmosphere the albedo is considerably less than 0.3”
Sigh. Yes Rick, everyone knows this. That’s why I use 240 w/m2 for average surface solar insolation in calculating “average surface without radiative atmosphere”.
But if you ignore albedo and use around 1400 w/m2 solar radiation on a rotating blackbody you end up with ~280K average temperature. So what? The surface of our planet is an extreme SW selective surface, not a “near blackbody”. You can’t use the S-B equation as you assume and the climastrologists claim. Correct “average surface temperature without radiative atmosphere” for this planet is above 300K, far higher than our current 288K.
You can dispute the maths all you like, but you can’t dispute empirical experiment. The S-B equation says that for identical SW illumination of those target blocks, both will rise to the same temperature. Empirical experiment says no. 3 hours of solar illumination results in a 20C temperature differential between the target blocks. Cliamastrologists claim this is impossible. But empirical experiments don’t lie, climastrologists do.
518
Konrad
My simple model does use a selective surface based on measured values of ocean albedo for solar insolation and long wave emissivity. These are not my measurements I have made. They are taken from literature for ocean surfaces. The albedo for water ranges from 0.05 to 0.25 as a function of latitude. There were two sources of this information Sivkov and Grishchenko that were similar. The long wave emissivity was taken as 0.984.
The model is based on a transparent atmosphere so the solar insolation arrives at 1380w/sq.m at the surface on a plane normal to the sun’s radiation for half of the globe. I use 1 x 1 degree surface blocks, adjusting the heat flux by the angle of incidence, to arrive at an average sea surface temperature. I determine an ice line and do not allow heat input or loss at higher latitudes.
Your model using acrylic plates demonstrates that surfaces can be selective to radiation. As far as I can ascertain it does not give you any useful values for albedo or emissivity of oceans. I have selected values stated by various sources noted.
203
Rick,
you have failed.
The point of selective surface experiment 1 (AKA Shredded Lukewarm Turkey in Boltzmannic Vinegar) is that for SW translucent / IR opaque materials, the S-B equation does not apply.
Your comments about albedo and emissivity indicate you cannot even understand the problem, let alone the physics. The experiment was about depth of SW absorption in IR opaque materials! Now spread your fingers, place your hand upright on your head and say “gobble gobble”. You’re a turkey!
Why oh why do scientifically illiterate warmulonians always assume they are better at radiative physics and fluid dynamics than those that work in engineering
418
Konrad
If you could now relate your little experiment to real oceans you might be on to something. I look forward to the connection and the detailed calculations.
Show me the maths.
182
Rick,
that “little” experiment and how it relates to the oceans is painfully simple. All it does is isolate and test one factor in SW illumination of an LWIR opaque material that can only radiatively cool from the illuminated upper surface. The only difference between the target blocks is depth of SW absorption, the factor being tested. How does it relate to the oceans? Simple, the oceans are LWIR opaque but absorb SW at depth like block A. But climastrologists, in misusing the S-B equation, treated our oceans as opaque to both SW and LWIR.
”Show me the maths.”
Your taunt reveals that you don’t understand the calculations required. (But your use of the S-B equation up-thread already told future readers that). The only way to do “the maths” is iterative calculation, ie: FEA or finite element analysis. You can’t handle the maths. That is the output of a simple FEA model run of the empirical experiment. (Or did you want 1000 pages of iterative calculations instead of the graphical output?)
Now Rick, which block is heated more by exactly the same amount of SW radiation? The one that absorbs SW at depth, not at the surface, just as my empirical experiment shows. The oceans absorb SW at depth but the Stefan-Boltzmann equation treats them as SW opaque. Add convection and intermittent diurnal illumination, and you will find that the climastrologists have gotten a hideous 80K error for 71% of our planets surface in their critical “average surface temperature without radiative atmosphere” calculation.
314
Konrad
You wrote earlier that the power flux in your model was 240W/sq.m. Where did the value come from? Was this just a guess or do you have some measurement behind it?
Your little experiment shows that the piece of acrylic gets hotter when it has a black bottom than with a black top. You than say with FEA you can apply this insight to the oceans. A simply iterative model does not take more than a few lines of executable code or even an excel spreadsheet. You can post in a dropbox and I can download to verify your analysis.
I want to see how you arrived at your 80C error with climate models. I am particularly interested in the temperature profile of the ocean with depth and if you can verify this with any actual measurements.
142
No need to bother with any calculations on your model. All it shows is that acrylic is a better thermal insulator than a convective layer of air. It has nothing to do with SW selective material.
Applying any outcome from this model to a turbulent convective ocean surface is simply nonsense.
141
Rick,
first off the 240 w/m2 question. It is generally accepted that the power of the sun at TOA is around 1366 w//m2, however peak at surface averages around 960 w/m2 due to the albedo of clouds. 240 w/m2 is the diurnal surface average. This is commonly used in the “settled science” claims of “240 w/m2 could only drive the surface to an average of 255K (-18C) without the addition of a radiative atmosphere”. It is this claim I prove wrong through empirical experiment.
Second, nowhere do I claim that that simple experiment can determine solar heating of the oceans. It is simply designed to show, as it does, that the Stefan-Boltzmann equation ignores depth of absorption and is therefore inapplicable to solar heating of SW translucent / LWIR opaque materials. Further, while FEA can solve for the acrylic blocks where the S-B equation can’t, FEA can’t solve for the oceans as they are a convective fluid. CDF, computational fluid dynamics would be required.
On selective surfaces, there are many factors that make a selective surface. Most common is asymmetry between absorption and emission at differing frequencies. Examples would be black nickel used in solar collectors and titanium oxide paints used on spacecraft. But depth of absorption or emission, or transparency a selected frequencies can also make a selective surface. A common example of this is architectural glazing, where the PVB bonding layer stops UV but transmits SW causing greater thermal loading than non laminated glass.
My claim of an 80K error for 71% of the planets surface in the critical “average surface temperature without radiative atmosphere” comes from empirical experiment not CFD. (the CFD required would be beyond the capability of my computer). The closest match to treating the oceans as “surface without atmosphere” is to look to convecting freshwater solar ponds. (a technology abandoned in the 60’s in favour of salt gradient ponds.). In these water is heated by sunlight, but prevented from conductive or evaporative cooling (Just like surface without atmosphere). Temperatures can top 353K (80C). But this type of pond was abandoned as convection and overnight radiative cooling meant average temperature was lower than non convecting ponds. Some research indicated that an average of 335K could be obtained, but the convecting pond would have to be built impractically deep. Sunlight penetrates our oceans to 200m. 335K-255K=?
The bottom line is that when determining “surface without radiative atmosphere”, climastrologists simply hammered 240 w/m2 into the S-B equation with emissivity and absorptivity set to unity and got 255K. They effectively treated the oceans as SW opaque, non convecting and constantly illuminated. You cant solve for “surface without atmosphere” on an ocean planet without empirical experiment of CFD. Nowhere is this used in the “basic physics” of the “settled science”.
312
Konrad
The 240W/sq.m you use is based on cloud albedo. If there is no atmosphere there are no clouds. Sp using 240W/sq.m is wrong for the question posed.
Your little model simply proves that acrylic is a poor thermal conductor while reasonably transparent to SW radiation and opaque to long wave radiation. It does not relate to convecting water. Water convection can transport heat at very high rates. Oceans are also mixed to significant depth by wave action.
Solar ponds work because convection is prevented using density gradients. In that regard they are similar to your model as water is a poor thermal conductor albeit a little better than acrylic. If the ponds did not have a density gradient that prevented convection then the surface will be the hottest level and freely radiate from there. It does not require evaporation to lose heat from the surface. Unless ice is forming, the surface will always be hottest. This is easy to test using a thin film that prevents evaporation. Replace the acrylic in your model with water and you will get a different result.
Real oceans undergo convection and the surface or near surface is warmer than at depth unless the surface temperature is less than 277K.
It is not valid to relate temperatures observed in solar ponds to what happens in oceans whether there is an atmosphere or not. Oceans will have convective currents that transport heat upward making the surface layer warmer than below.
142
Rick,
That red thumb was mine. I’m not objecting to all of your response, but just the point that I did try to make it clear – I typed “convecting freshwater solar ponds. (a technology abandoned in the 60′s in favour of salt gradient ponds.)”, yet you have responded with discussion of convection constrained salt water solar ponds.
Here for reference is a diagram of a convecting freshwater solar pond.
I can make near 80C with even the simplest poorly insulated version.
More links in the next comment.
21
Konrad
All solar ponds have convective layers. There is a non-convective middle layer.
I gather you are referring to plastic or glass covered ponds. It is the covering that is selective for SWR/LWR. The covering also has low thermal conductivity. The water is simply the heat transfer medium. Such ponds do not have a free water surface. Accordingly they bear no relevance to a convective oceans with no surface covering.
132
”Your little model simply proves that acrylic is a poor thermal conductor while reasonably transparent to SW radiation and opaque to long wave radiation.”
Actually, all it proves is that you cannot use the Stefan-Boltzmann equation to determine average surface temperature for SW illuminated SW translucent / LWIR opaque materials. That’s all I designed it to do and that’s all it does.
”Replace the acrylic in your model with water and you will get a different result.”
No Rick, tub A still runs far hotter.
Do you have a “Big Oil” cheque and a lab?
Try this.Same answer, S-B equation won’t work.
PS. “The long wave emissivity [of water] was taken as 0.984”. Have you empirically checked this Rick? I have. Will Janoschka commenting here also knows from his early empirical work. LWIR emissivity for water (effective, not apparent) falls of a cliff after 55 degrees from vertical. Figures above 0.9 only relate to apparent emissivity measured near zenith within the Hohlrumn of the atmosphere. Effective LWIR emissivity? 0.67 hemispherical. But this mistake is nothing compared to failing to account for depth of SW/UV absorbency in the oceans.
213
@Konrad
What external environment do you run those experiments in? Daylight? Lab room with an overhead light bulb?
10
Konrad: Climatologists determine 255 K by treating the planet as a billiard ball.
Why are you trying to overanalyze a billiard ball that everyone knows is a very limited model for the Earth?
Time to turn to page 2, Konrad.
83
Ryan, a fair question. Far better than just clicking a red thumb 😉
Selective surface experiment 1 (AKA Shredded Lukewarm Turkey in Boltzmannic vinegar) can be run indoors or outdoors as the LDPE film “double glazing” insulates against conductive loses. The staggering 20C temperature differential between blocks was achieved in outdoor runs with solar isolation close to 1000 w/m2. But I have also done indoor runs under intermittent halogens to check the effects of diurnal illumination cycles. In that photo you will notice air cooled glass plates between the halogens and target surfaces. This is to block the excessive LWIR halogens emit, which would heat the blocks from the upper surface, which sunlight doesn’t do.
In my response to KR’s repetition of Realclimate propaganda up-thread, I posted images of experiments showing surface incident LWIR cannot slow the cooling rate of water free to evaporatively cool. These were run indoors with background IR emitted from 20C surfaces. Here the vast difference in specific sample LWIR illumination eliminates background IR from results.
With regard selective surface experiment 2 (AKA The Deep Black Sea), it can be run outdoors, but pick a day with good sun and very low wind. On 2 hours of solar exposure I got over 5C temperature differential with only 400 ml of water. Build the experiment bigger (deeper) and the differential gets bigger.
Ryan, my experiments are designed to conclusively demonstrate principles of physics, not quantify them. “If you need statistics to interpret the results of your experiment, you should have designed a better experiment”. My experiments demonstrate that the “basic physics” of the “settled science” is utter garbage. These experiments are so simple, so solid, that numbers no longer matter. (Hence the storm of red thumbs).
410
@Konrad
I may misunderstand part of your point. How does heat from the sun not affect the rate of evaporation of water from the ocean, assuming wind flow keeps the above atmosphere below equilibrium chemical potential? Water is just going to evaporate according to the laws of physics. If it contains more heat because of greater solar heating then the liquid chemical potential is greater and the gas potential hasn’t changed; evaporation rate should increase.
10
While strategically this is probably wise, in actual fact you can’t establish the fate of a photon of 15 micron emission from the surface with any certainty. The models in shunting everything through warming the surface make the foolhardy assumption that the fate of upwelling IR is to be either emitted or thermalised at the surface. There are plenty of mechanisms (mostly involving water) where other fates of 15 micron photons are likely. For the curious, in latent heat of evaporation of clouds for example. What if the relative absence of upwelling 15 micron emission is due to those photons being sopped up, either as CO2 dissolved in water, or by water and emitted as brodband IR or water emission lines later.
In a test tube of dry CO2 the relation might be trivially true but anywhere else all bets are off.
70
Be skeptical.
Question everything.
Demand proof.
Argue.
Debate.
That’s real science.
Your “advice” to accept +1 degrees C. will result from a doubling of CO2 is anti-science.
There is no scientific proof CO2 caused ANY of the slight warming since 1850.
There is evidence that no greenhouse gas was responsible for the warming (assuming the measurements are correct — it’s possible the average temperature change since 1850 is nothing more than measurement error) … such as the cooling from 1940 to 1976, the “pause” in the past 10 to 15 years (before it is “erased” by smarmy bureaucrats), and the lack of a mid-troposphere “hot spot”.
Even if they assume more CO2 ALWAYS causes warming, scientists have no idea if a rise from 400 ppmv to 500 ppmv would cause enough warming to be noticed, or measured.
I see CO2 as equivalent to putting a curtain over a window.
(Of course, unlike “climate scientists” I admit I could be wrong.)
400 ppmv would be like having four curtains over a window.
Would a fifth curtain (500 ppmv) do much more than four curtains?
Would people even notice the change from “four curtains” to “five curtains” ?
30
Richard,
Not quite. Without feedbacks, warming the surface of the planet by 1.2 deg C and keeping all else constant will cause an extra 3.7 W/m2 of OLR.* Also, doubling CO2 decreases OLR emitted by CO2 molecules by 3.7 W/m2. That’s it. See post 2.
From this it is often deduced that, without feedbacks, doubling CO2 would warm the surface by 1.2C. But it is hypothetical, because one cannot keep all else constant and there are feedbacks.
Presumably, yes, this involves back radiation, but in this series we do not need to calculate back radiation because we focus on the OLR, which is sufficient to explain the greenhouse effect — see post 6.
The total solar irradiance (TSI) present at 1 AU is ~1,361 W/m2, but what falls on an average square meter of Earth is a quarter of that, ~340 W/m2.
Our strategy here is to accept all IPCC science except the architecture of the conventional basic model, show that the conventional basic model have architectural flaws, fix them, and estimate CO2 sensitivity correctly. The GCMs share the same two main architectural flaws.
*Under the Planck conditions: All tropospheric temperatures change uniformly (the same as the surface temperature), stratospheric temperatures constant, all else constant.
40
If you do not know how GCMs work how can you assert they share the same architectural flaws as the so-termed “basic” model?
74
Later.
30
We know this because GCMs cannot do proper CFD in the vertical dimension. They are instead “parametrised” with 2D modelling for energy transport in the vertical. Most of those 2D parametrisations treat the surface as a “near blackbody” and worse, invoke “immaculate convection”.
Can you show me a model where the speed of convective circulation (the primary energy transport from the surface) increases for increasing radiative gas concentration?
617
Okay, thanks David.
Is that ‘340 W/sq.m’ a typo?
00
No. The cross sectional area of a sphere is a quarter of its surface area, so the 1,361 W/m2 at 1 astronomical unit (average Earth-Sun distance) gets smeared out and averages only 340 W/m2 of solar radiation falling on the Earth. About 30% gets reflected, leaving about 239 W/m2 of absorbed solar radiation (ASR).
110
Yours is a perennial problem. However, although I was initially puzzled myself by the same apparent violation of conservation of energy, I was able to explain the effect’s validity to my own satisfaction by a simplified one-dimensional model of photon propagation.
If you treat the atmosphere as one-dimensional and divide it into lumped altitude layers of equal-sized pressure ranges in each of which an upward or downward propagating photon has a given probability of being absorbed, and once absorbed, re-emitted up or down with equal probability, you’ll find that back radiation can actually cause the surface to radiate at a power level higher than that of the radiation received directly from the sun.
This demonstration, although simple in principle, is difficult in practice because it’s hard to keep the locations of the several propagating photons in your head at the same time (or, at least, it’s hard for me to). To overcome that problem, I wrote myself an R script to demonstrate it.
Result: Surface radiation can exceed insolation without violating energy conservation; what they refer to as the “greenhouse effect” does indeed seem to be valid at least theoretically.
52
Interesting that you would “gravitate” to an explanation that involves photon propagation like a ping pong ball vs. some well known physics like:
Boyle’s Law
Atmospheric pressure gradient
Lapse rate
According to Robinson & Catling 2012, the surface of any non-gaseous planetary orb can be determined by finding the inflection point of the atmosphere (tropopause at .10 bar) and calculating down to the surface via the lapse rate.
According to their approach, all you need is tropopause height, atmospheric pressure gradient (lapse rate) and you can accurately determine surface value. Venus is hot because the pressure is much higher at the surface when calculated down from the .1 bar of atmospheric pressure than earth. Thus, it is hotter at the bottom of the Grand Canyon than at the rim.
http://astrobites.org/2013/12/31/unifying-planetary-atmospheres/
Occam’s Razor would suggest this is a more simple and elegant solution than following the bouncing photons.
01
Richard,
I sense that you are new to this climate science game but are nevertheless a sceptic and also technically qualified in some field. As a technologist (electrical engineer and computer scientist) I am also very sceptical about CAGW.
I can assure you that you will be constantly bewildered by the number of your fellow sceptics who confuse you with inane rubbish on all the blog trails including this one. I don’t claim to know all the answers but I can at least give you some straightforward responses to your questions.
You say: The “greenhouse” model would have us believe that the 65W/sq.m of radiation that Venus receives at the surface is increased to 17,000 W/sq.m through ‘back-radiation’. Solar i[n]solation for Venus is 2,613 W/sq.m and so I am unsure how Venus is able to generate more energy than it receives. Earth is different of course since solar isolation is 1368 W/sq.m and Earth is radiating at only 390 W/sq.m.
The number comparisons you have made in the two cases are coincidental. In neither case is there a direct connection between received radiation and the temperature of the surface. Specifically, in the case of Venus, there is no direct connection between the 65w/sq.m of radiation that makes it to the Venus surface and the 460degC temperature of that surface. The Venus surface is at a very high temperature because energy has a tough time escaping through its very dense atmosphere. And the 17,000W/sq.m downwelling radiation from atmosphere to surface is a reaction to that high temperature not the cause of it. It is more than offset by an upward energy flow of 17,065W/sqm. This is EXACTLY 65W/sq.m larger, as it must be to balance the meagre incoming 65W/sq.m from the Sun that makes it through to the surface. So that is why the Venus surface is so hot. And why it only needs 65W/sq.m ‘top up’ to keep it at that steady state 460degC temperature.
It is, after all, pretty basic physics: imagine a very highly insulated container of gas at 460degC. If the insulation is good enough, you wouldn’t need much incoming energy to keep it at that temperature would you? Just enough to balance the energy leakage. So see how simple this stuff is if you just keep on the right rational track?
Some climate sceptics construct laughable false arguments about back radiation in their eagerness to promote the sceptical cause. In doing so they fall flat on their faces and look ridiculous. The fact is that the energy flowing upwards from surface to atmosphere, from hotter to cooler, ALWAYS exceeds the energy flowing downwards, from atmosphere to surface. This of course is in full accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
I hope this assists you in getting on to the right track and takes you far away from fanciful speculations about “gravitational pressure heat” and so on. 🙂
50
Richard wrote:
“Earth is different of course since solar isolation is 1368 W/sq.m and Earth is radiating at only 390 W/sq.m.”
This is also wrong, but I’m curious, Richard: just where do you think this missing 978 W/m2 goes?
After all, it comes to 500,000 trillion Watts. Vanished.
40
Richard wrote:
“The “greenhouse” model would have us believe that the 65 W/sq.m of radiation that Venus receives at the surface is increased to 17,000 W/sq.m through ‘back-radiation’. Solar isolation for Venus is 2,613 W/sq.m and so I am unsure how Venus is able to generate more energy than it receives.”
There’s nothing sadder in this business than people who completely misunderstand the science, then go around using — even flaunting — their misunderstanding as a reason to dismiss the science.
Please, study some basic physics.
50
Good comment Richard.
You make two very on the ball comments:
“There still must be something else going on that the conventional model is not accounting for it seems to me”.
You’re not kidding there.
And:
“This is what I meant when I said I thought the basis of the theory lacked proper empirical validation”
In both of those statements you state or more likely understate the truth of the matter.
We are dealing with Computer Simulations that are untested and these are NOT models in the true engineering sense.
This is because they have not been shown to model the very relationship which they claim to model.
What you have said there is all good science.
Then you go off the science track and concede: “But I accept the 1ºC of warming from a doubling of CO2 (without feedbacks) as you do”.
I can guess from your statement that this is more of a political statement designed to not push people too far away from the argument but it has the unfortunate issue attached to it that it reveals a potential lack of understanding of science.
Both of your earlier statements show that you understand proper scientific process and the third comment shows that you understand
media manipulation and politics.
The problem as I see it is that there are so many energy mechanisms at work it would take a week to label them all; and then you would have to quantify them.
Somebody once put up a comment here about a Russian attempt to model the Atmosphere which had about forty factors in it.
It didn’t work either.
The process is too complex and Human Origin CO2 is so insignificant it defies understanding how all this fuss is still going on.
🙂
KK
121
Yeah, I guess so. It also looks bad to the passer-by when skeptics argue over the fundementals and are unable to reach an agreement on the most basic of things. They must think ‘Gosh, they’re a shambolic, confused lot’ and I think it ends up with people viewing skeptics with less credibility. So, even though I don’t agree the 3.7 W/sq.m from doubling CO2 is settled science, I think it’s best for skeptics to agree with it for argument’s sake. After all, the feedbacks are where the vast majority of warming comes from say the IPCC – that’s where the fight should be and our efforts concentrated.
45
“looks bad”, “Gosh, they’re a shambolic, confused lot”, “less credibility”. These are all political, not scientific concerns.
I’m sorry Richard, but advocating that “I think it’s best for skeptics to agree with it for argument’s sake”, is to advocate argument from ignorance.
It is the unwillingness of the lukewarmer to challenge the idea that our radiatively cooled atmosphere has a net warming effect on surface temperatures that has allowed this debate to go on so long. “Warming but less than we thought” is not a winning argument.
Should atmospheric physics remain stuck in the dark ages for fear of “looking bad”?
1418
Thank You!! 🙂
84
Richard: There have been many such studies over the years, including Harries et al (2001). Perhaps the best measurements were published earlier this year:
“Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010,” D. R. Feldman et al, Nature 519, 339–343 (19 March 2015)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7543/full/nature14240.html
Press release: “First Direct Observation of Carbon Dioxide’s Increasing Greenhouse Effect at the Earth’s Surface,” Berkeley Lab, 2/25/15
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
58
One point to mention is that the predicted atmospheric ‘hotspot’ has now been observed – since that would appear to disagree with your model, how would you respond or account for that?
233
Stephan, so far I have only presented the conventional model, as found in textbooks and leading papers. I have not presented my model, so how would you know what it agrees or disagrees with?
351
If you read the actual papers behind the Conversations assertion that the hotspot has been found, you will find a lot of dubious data manipulation.
The unmanipulated radiosonde data DOES NOT show a hotspot. Further, one of the virtues of the UAH aperture refinement in V6 is it can now discriminate the upper troposphere. In the satellite era there is no hotspot. See Roy Spencer’s posts on this. And see John Christy’s input to the APS review committee. You can find links at Judy Curry’s.
Your premise is based on one faulty paper, not the preponderance of actual observations.
331
Rud Istvan wrote:
“In the satellite era there is no hotspot.”
It depends on whose data you look at. UAH (still in beta, remember) finds a TMT-to-global_LT ratio of 0.82. But RSS finds this ratio to be 1.11.
05
It took them twenty years of creativity to “find” it by iterating their iteration, kriging the gaps and homogenizing radiosondes — but they still could only manage to do it by adding in years of recent data during the pause when there should be no hot spot.
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/05/desperation-who-needs-thermometers-sherwood-finds-missing-hot-spot-with-homogenized-wind-data/
Plus the humidity readings fell, when they were supposed to rise. So either 28 million radiosondes were wrong in both temperature and humidity or the models were.
433
Joanne,
I need to read and re-read Davids presentation, and I will!
I offer, for consideration of you both, a different, perhaps useful, POV for lapse rate:
Lapse rate!
All the best! -will-
71
More surprising things have happened in science, Jo. You should be a little more open-minded to innovative science, even if it does blow one of the key planks in your ricketty denialist u-boat out of the water.
114
Is this the same Steven C Sherwood who found a “Red Splodge” for a “Zero” degree change.
That sort of behavior – manipulating the axis of a graph to produce the desired image is just plain [snip “bad”] – obvious to anyone with a shred of decency, an ounce of honesty, and the wit to see it.
Here is the noble prize winning inventor of quantum electrodynamics explaining how science is actually done.
Richard Feynman
Be prepared to spend 10 minutes being schooled.
70
Noted Mods – no problem – I will avoid that word in future.
00
I hate to point out the obvious but hotspot or no hotspot, the doom and gloom prophecy of global warming has failed miserably. Do you not notice that actual measurable conditions are not in agreement with the global warming theory? Rud Istvan points out some glaring deficiencies in the article you link to. So I wont repeat them. But you should pay attention to them.
On and on it goes and where it stops nobody knows… …ad infinitum… …and ad nauseum too.
Maybe Earth’s climate is changing at the moment or maybe not. But I don’t disagree with the theory that it can change. We have too much evidence that it does. The real problem is that whatever is happening, the supposed evidence that CO2 is responsible doesn’t hold up under examination. Whatever is happening I’m well satisfied that the cause is both natural and outside of any possible human control. I expect David’s theory to be convincing that another explanation is both credible and probable. And we need only wait long enough to see whether he’s right or not.
Let him whose prophecies come true be the real prophet. So far the IPCC and all their acolytes have failed. It’s time to consider a different road to get to the truth of the matter.
173
Oh dear, Stephan,
The excitement has obvously gotten too much for you, and you have failed to wait until you could see “the whites of their eyes”, before firing your killer question. So now you have lost the element of surprise.
You will have to research another put-down, and that will require you to actually read, and understand, what David is presenting. How sad, for you.
272
Stephan,
You are such a typical warmist – already in a panic and nothing published so far is in dispute.
222
Listen Braddo, I’m a busy man, MSc recipient and Greens voter. You look like you’ve cropped your high-vis shirt out of your photo. ‘Nuff said.
116
Some oxymorons there.
132
Stephan,
Close, it’s a gas-vest.
10
Typical Green, hating on the working class.
40
Confirmation bias on stilts, Climate Change™ so-called science is certainly in a sorry state:
“Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses while giving disproportionately less attention to information that contradicts it …” (Wiki).
131
In Climate Models we have the emotive and unscientific term “forcing” to create an image of the atmosphere being
pushed to its’ thermodynamic limit by the cruel and immoral humans who produce a very small amount of CO2.
Properly in describing these “things” it is the accepted scientific practice to refer to them as “Factors”.
From the description given by David it is obvious that the people who created the “models” and those who used
them had little understanding of or intent to convey accurately the workings of the atmosphere with respect
to Man Made CO2 variations.
These things are not models and never have been; their only purpose was to have something to hang a debate on which was so vague that it could not be challenged.
Time that the “models” were exposed for the frauds that they are and always have been.
KK
223
I absolutely hate the term “forcing” too.
50
It does imply an outside force not in evidence that forces something to happen, doesn’t it?
50
“It does imply an outside force not in evidence”
You mean like God?
🙂 KK
51
If not for the smile I might think you’re implying that God is playing tricks on us, causing things that violate the rules we’ve spent so many centuries figuring out. I think that if he’s really out there somewhere he’s more honest with us than that.
More likely the language is being manipulated, as I think you believe.
60
If God is out there, he has a sense of humor.
Also note that God changed the laws of physics after the great flood of Noah.
10
You betcha! Similar to dronk, or elsewhen!
For you my special friend…….
20
It has always had more to do with the social sciences than the physical sciences.
Physical sciences have their own disciplines, whereas the social sciences less so. That is why the term “Climate Science” was introduced, in place of “Atmospheric Physics”.
Why replace a perfectly adequate name, with a less distinct name? Because precise definitions of terms are an anathema in the social sciences, and are an impediment in the production of effective propaganda.
Most things in this world already have names. So, if people have to resort to thinking up alternative names for things, then that is a clear indication that those things are different in some way, and usually imaginary.
261
I always loved the redefining of terms. Such as a Classic Liberal is the opposite of a liberal in the USA. But this one really takes the cake:
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change official definition:
That’s from the official UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (http://unfccc.int/essential_background/convention/background/items/2536.php). or
https://web.archive.org/web/20140913102734/http://unfccc.int/files/documentation/text/html/list_search.php?what=keywords&val=&valan=a&anf=84&id=10
The term specifically excludes all natural climate change, and even excludes any caused by humans due to, for example, land clearance or city building, considering only atmospheric changes.
30
The Surface behaves differently to the air. The surface energy balance equation is quite different to the atmospheric energy balance equation, evaporation from the surface being the major net energy flow into the atmosphere.
I get very different sensitivities to a change in energy balance. In the case of the Surface, the sensitivity is between 0.05 and 0.1 DegC/W/m^2.
The argument that the atmospheric lapse rate must remain unchanged, and therefore a small energy imbalance high in the Troposphere somehow propagates downwards to the surface via a constant lapse rate (resulting in a very much amplified surface energy imbalance) has always seemed to me to be the great flaw in the conventional approach. I worry about First and Second Law violations.
I am very interested in your novel approach. Keep going!
110
Alright,
I can’t see any obvious mistake, again this is a derivative of the conventional model and does not take account of the non radiative feedbacks or rerouted feedbacks. For example the change to lapse rate of increasing radiative gasses or increased CO2 reactivity of the atmosphere with higher CO2 partial pressure or photosynthesis increases.
I wrote another Post at WUWT today about this.
The basic model fails to account the multiple destinies of the CO2 having absorbed a photon. For example the excited CO2 might
Get dissolved in water, ocean, ocean spray, clouds. Get inhaled by vegetation or animal or bacteria. It might be involved in a chemical reaction, could get ionised or elevated to an even higher energy state the question needs to be answered what happens next for each case. For example a large amount of CO2 ends up dissolved in water and washed out of the atmosphere, is the portion of CO2 so dissolved even capable of acting as a GHG independently of the water it’s absorbed in, so does the water feedback result in a lowering of the effective CO2 level?.
A simple problem I have too is you say, for a doubling of CO2, OLR decreases by 3.7Watts per square meter, implying that after some 100 doublings (atmosphere being unconstrained) that OLR would be less than zero, clearly there is a boundary problem here.
60
bobl, the conventional model presented here is as found in textbooks and leading papers, and contains all feedbacks known to AR5 (see post 3 for the feedbacks). If omits feedbacks other than to surface warming (post 5 and post 7), but so do all conventional models. Again, the thrust of this blog series is not to question the parameter values in the basic model (the usual strategy of skeptics), but to question the architecture of the basic model (novel, AFAIK).
The 3.7 W/m2 loss of OLR from CO2 molecules per CO2 doubling only applies for CO2 concentrations near current. We are only going to get three doublings at most, for which the 3.7 W/m2 figure is good enough (it’s got a pretty wide uncertainty btw). For doublings beyond that, the loss of OLR in the CO2 pipe per CO2 doubling would decrease towards zero.
130
Strategy 1. Wrestle with the pig in the mud.
Strategy 2. Build a new pig pen.
20
Strategy 3
Go find someone you like. 😉
32
You are a bit odd, funny but odd.
50
It is a basic understanding of systems analysis that the behavior of a system depends upon three things.
1. The magnitude and nature of the inputs.
2. The behavior of the individual components.
3. How the individual components are interconnected and interact.
The interesting thing is item three has a more profound effect upon system behavior than does the other two. It is quite easy to get a different system behavior by simply rearranging the components and the connections between them. For example, when I was in High School. I rearranged the components of a late 1930’s console radio and made a quite good broadcast transmitter out of it. To test it, I had a friend talk into a microphone. I traveled over 20 miles from the transmitter and it was still coming in loud and clear. I immediately returned and terminated the experiment.
It is not so easy but still quite possible to arrange a different assemblage of components and still get the same behavior. For example, the current level of integrated components can make a radio that is as effective as that small refrigerator sized console radio of the late 1930’s.
So in designing a system or in analyzing a system, the architecture of the system must be a primary focus. What you are actually most interested in is getting the same system behavior as the real thing. It is not as relevant if some components are missing or wrongly specified. However, it does help if you do get the components and their specifications right but that is a secondary goal.
90
Bear with me David,
As I have posted before, I do understand what you are doing here. What I am doing however is leaving a crumb trail of reasons why the basic model is inappropriate, in the hope that when you come to improve the model you might take account of some of the things I have said, for example by adding a fifth – non radiative losses (other…) pipe to the model to represent losses.
This is how I would begin if I was modelling say a motor. I would lump the losses into “other”, then refine OTHER down to more specific losses so that I could improve the design, eg by reducing magnetic leakage, or friction.
So David, these comments are for your benefit later, should you choose to scoop them up and consider them.
20
Which defies the log law, CO2 only approximately follows the log law there are boundary issues that impinge, one I point out is an upper boundary saturation limit, the other is the lower boundary, if I halve the CO2 say 50 times at a constant loss in temperature per halving of say 1.2 deg, then the drop in temperature is -60 deg or at the IPCC central estimate -180 deg, and the earth temperature falls below it’s theoretical black body – not going to happen
The characteristic must therefore linearise near zero, and saturate near 1 – now, the kicker question : exactly what values of CO2 are these linearisation and saturation effects felt, how do we know that these effects are not in play already?
20
“The characteristic must therefore linearise near zero, and saturate near 1 – now, the kicker question : exactly what values of CO2 are these linearisation and saturation effects felt, how do we know that these effects are not in play already?”
The effect on atmospheric exitance in the 15 micron band is complete at 100 ppmv CO2. This is when the optical depth (63%) absorption by CO2 at the 10 kPa altitude reaches less than 1Km. Since the temperature at that pressure does not change in 4Km altitude the total radiative exitance from CO2 is limited at that temperature (100% emissivity). increasing CO2 levels of CO2 continue to decrease optical depth at that pressure, but there is no other effect as 100% emissivity is your saturation limit.
In effect that 10kPa pressure altitude is the surface of the Earth for that waveband. At any lower altitude EMR effects in this waveband are insufficient to change in “any known way” the temperature of the surface or atmospheric column. Such effects might as well be under water!
David is trying to do the same thing for cloud and WV exitance. They simply are never affected by CO2, or any other claimed watermelon gas! This Earth’s surface temperature, is at every location, the local lapse rate above the 6km atmospheric temperature. This seems to remain true even at the poles, except for temporary lapse inversions.
All the best! -will-
04
“For doublings beyond that, the loss of OLR in the CO2 pipe per CO2 doubling would decrease towards zero.”
I don’t know what a “CO2 pipe” is, but CO2 is nowhere near saturation, even on Venus. The radiating level would simply go higher.
And recent work says the second doubling of CO2 is different from the first, which isn’t especially surprising, because the ocean is already warming during the second doubling and absorbs less CO2, radiates more, etc.
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2015/does-climate-sensitivity-change-with-time/
In other words, transient climate response and equilibrium climate sensitivity are not necessarily constants.
53
David A: “CO2 pipe”? Useful shorthand. See post 6.
30
Excellent comment bob.
20
Thanks KK
20
As somebody recently pointed out we exist on a Planet which has water in three forms.
Because of the triple point of water we have a self righting boat.
At zero deg C we can have solid, liquid and gaseous water.
The heat transfer budget for water moving from state to state is a CONTROLLING factor in our biosphere.
40
bobl, the conventional model presented here is as found in textbooks and leading papers, and contains all feedbacks known to AR5 (see post 3 for the feedbacks). If omits feedbacks other than to surface warming (post 5 and post 7), but so do all conventional models. Again, the thrust of this blog series is not to question the parameter values in the basic model (the usual strategy of skeptics), but to question the architecture of the basic model (novel, AFAIK).
The 3.7 W/m2 loss of OLR from CO2 molecules per CO2 doubling only applies for CO2 concentrations near current. We are only going to get three doublings at most, for which the 3.7 W/m2 figure is good enough (it’s got a pretty wide uncertainty btw). For doublings beyond that, the loss of OLR in the CO2 pipe per CO2 doubling would decrease towards zero.
10
David, one thing that you seem to have forgotten is the Magic DWLR, which is on top of the slowing of heat released to space and which supposedly supplies more watts at the surface than the Sun does.
Except that the Solar Watts can do WORK (ie make stuff hotter) whereas DWLR actually makes stuff Colder.
When asked about how we can use these DWIR Watts the warmists finally admit that any machine that uses it would have to be COLDER than where the DWLR came from.
So it looks like all Watts are Not Created Equal.
113
The purpose of the original ultra simplistic model was clear, to establish credibility of the theory that CO2 was an immediate and terrible threat to mankind. Proof was not needed. To that end the IPCC quietly ignored anyting which stood in the way including the total lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature and historical records and any other explanations. Our former Prime Minister called it the “greatest moral challenge of our time” and no one laughed. Obama continues the falsehood. The proponents of man made global warming do not care about facts and theories and they never did. As only 1% of people are scientists, they get away with it. Still it needs debunking.
One previous Nova reader post I loved was from an astronomer who worked in infrared astronomy all his life. Clearly an expert in infra red absorption, he never saw any such back radiation from infrared. Theoretically he said this would only happen when the temperature of the surface matched the absorption bands of the atmosphere, which would only happen in very cold places but in three trips to antarctica, he still did not see any interference. So as an expert in infra red, he not only did not believe the theory, he never saw the core phenomenon which was alleged to be the mechanism for global warming. It was a devastating comment. He was a living witness to the folly of the theory.
As also said many times, if the CO2 levels are not man made, what does it matter anyway? The core IPCC claim that extra CO2 hangs around for hundreds of years is demonstrably scientific nonsense. Again, does anyone really care about real science?
While the demolition of the warming mechanism by allowing heat to escape is reasonable, the warming lobby will never admit defeat. Man made global warming was never science fact, just a remotely plausible story based on the slimmest argument that a short term coincidence was causality. It was the story the left of politics wanted, that Western democracies should be punished. From that point the slimmest justification became and remains established science fact even when shot full of holes.
You can be sure that the planning for Paris is in full swing and Malcolm Turnbull, betraying every Liberal and National party voter in the country will take us back to his beloved Carbon ‘trading’ system’ which saw him lose the leadership before. He has not changed his mind and is more determined than ever.
You can also hope the cowards in the Liberal party who betrayed their voters and their Prime Minister will really be scared for their jobs. This was the first time in Liberal party history that such disloyalty was shown, especially to someone who led them to overwhelming victory.
With both sides now promising a carbon tax and a return to mass drownings, the massive coalition majority will evaporate. Tony Abbott was the only politician who promised an end to the deaths and the hated carbon tax. (Labor) leader Malcolm Turnbull is leading his Liberal lemmings over a cliff. I doubt the Labor people can believe their luck and the IPCC will be partying. Two months to Paris and even the Pope is praying for taxes on the ‘rich’. Us.
283
I am not sure if this is the same astronomer who worked in infrared astronomy, but it is a infrared astronomer, now retired and able to speak the truth for the first time.
310
Thanks Gai. Well done.
50
Gai: We’ll be describing where the OLR, with numbers, later in the series. For now note that the effect of CO2 is between 13 and 18 microns — your quote covers the atmospheric window, mainly.
32
Absolutely Stunning
Regards
Climate Heretic
31
Brilliant.
51
Mr. Evans your flow chart show dL equal to log base 2 of the CO2 change. Should that not be natural log, ln.
00
mkelly, log base 2 is chosen so that delta-L is one for a CO2 doubling. See Eq.s 2 and 8 of post 2.
40
One of the odd things about these radiation models is the idea that this is all steady state stuff. Things which can completely upset include turbulence, storms, sea surface conditions (and seas cover 2/3 of the planet and contain a great deal of heat), night and day variations, seasonal variations (huge areas in perpetual darkness and others in six months of light), changes in colour with seasons, changes in vegetation. Consider that even a thousand meters higher, the air is always much colder and turbulence mixes this. You also have the huge and steady heat escaping from this very hot metal planet, heat which is not incident light. Even without an atmosphere, this would be a warm planet and I see no provision for exiting planet heat at all.
The engineer’s approach to treat such a complex chaotic non homogenous system as a steady state one with fixed physical characteristics across time is fine for first order calculation and especially to show someone else’s similar assumptions are full of holes. However so is any steady state analysis. The earth is simply not a single colour golf ball in space. It is a hot turbulent, wet, coloured system with clouds, night and day, summers, winters, storms and a huge amount of air trapped in the oceans. Even trying to predict surface temperatures from first principles at any location to 1C would have no credibility but it would be interesting to try. How then anyone comes up with a single temperature for a planet is beyond me.
121
TdeF, the basic models only model transitions between steady states in order that they can set absorbed solar radiation (ASR, energy in) equal to outgoing longwave radiation (OLR, energy out). Cannot solve them otherwise.
141
Understood, but while the conclusions may be valid, and the arithmetic fine, the model may be quite inadequate to represent the real world and the steady heat/infra red radiation from the planet is where? Then the huge cumulo nimbus clouds I saw last week in India, wet updrafts pushed up to 6,000 metres in the monsoons, massive vertical circulation. Humans largely inhabit only the first 1,000 metres of the planet surface and it is that temperature alone which is of concern in all this, which must make it incredibly hard to predict even in a gross way. A global model is not just the simple sum of millions of little climates because they interact strongly. One region’s evaporation is another’s monsoon rain. Jet streams move air and heat around. Where is the variation between direct radiation on one side and radiation into the cooler night sky? A single global model equation for radiation may be not realistic let alone complete.
However as I said, such simplistic global calculations are what the IPCC push out as absolute truth in an allegedly proven model and so deserve to be debunked. The fact that as Dr. Murry Selby pointed out, that there is absolutely no correlation between CO2 and temperature seems to be ignored by people who say the science is ‘in’. Enjoy poking holes in their models.
160
Yes the basic model is simplistic. Everything is averaged to the nth degree, and it only applies on time scales of a decade or more. Nonetheless, the basic model is believed to be roughly accurate (it estimates the same sensitivity to CO2 as the GCMs). Maybe think of it as slightly better than a back-of-the-envelope calculation, a rough first pass to get an idea of what is going on, a scoping study.
As noted in the “establishment case” in post 3, the result of the conventional basic model does indeed make the CO2 increase appear worrisome.
31
This logic of the unilateral increase in aerial CO2 and coming wholly from car exhausts is the problem and is implied in the link you reference. Without physical chemistry , it would seem reasonable, as if the atmosphere is a bucket to be filled. Please look up Henry’s law.
So the doubling and tripling referenced is fantasy or if it happens, nothing to do with cars and power plants.
The seas which cover 2/3 of the planet to an average depth of say 3.4km are in continuous gaseous equilibrium which is how fish breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2, just like every other carbon life form built almost solely with CO2 captured by photosynthesis. There is far more air in the oceans than in the thin atmosphere above. For CO2, 50x as much. This is straight forward physical chemistry without complex explanations. Vapour pressures. Henry’s law.
So you can predict a 50% increase in CO2 from only a 1C increase only in surface temperature. The IPCC refuses to admit this and argue that gases behave like liquids, that the CO2 below say 200 metres does not surface for thousands until the deep currents mix. Clearly no one in the IPCC has opened a bottle of Coke. Geologists has written on this blog to say they see plumes of CO2 from the ocean floor when exploring for hydrocarbon plumes.
Without this illogical fantasy that man and man alone determines CO2 level changes, the IPCC would have to admit man has no ability to control CO2. It is controlled in a simple linear fashion by the ocean surface temperature, not the other way around. You cannot turn this off!
Yes, so the radiation modeling by the IPCC is worth examining closely but for AGW the prior and essential argument is that the aerial CO2 level can be unilaterally changed by man for a substantial period. You cannot just skip over this. The IPCC do not even justify their logic, relying on ignorance because few people know any physical chemistry but physical equilibrium in solutions is as important as chemical and CO2 and warming is simply confusing cause and effect.
After twenty years we know CO2 produces less than 1/10th as much warming as predicted. So the IPCC is completely wrong. The world is not warming. Plus CO2 and temperature are not correlated at all. You love the current fashion to propose an equal and opposite unknown effect which started at exactly the right time and exactly balanced the predicted effect. No, the model was wrong.
Everyone contributes their own expertise to the debunking of the IPCC science fantasy. My particular contribution is that the oceans are the source of all the air and all the life on the planet and secondly that we can accurately measure the amount of industrial CO2 in the air with C14 and there is almost none. Remember to stay hydrated in summer, like a fish out of water. Only the arrogance of the 20th century would allow a far fetched idea like AGW to prosper to the monster it is today.
Also remember Prof Murry Selby’s discovery (before he was fired) that CO2 correlates very well with the integral of temperature. The incident energy impulse is the integral of incident radiation which hits the oceans and 2/3 does and this correlates well with surface surface heating and temperature. This is the proof, as if any was needed. After all, the law of gaseous equilibrium applies no matter what the IPCC says. Ask the fish.
70
Yore really firing today TdeF
30
Typo
…in that it forces the climate to change a[n]d creates a radiation imbalance….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
THE MODELS LEFT OUT ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY TOO:
There is no way incoming high energy sunlight is equal to the low energy OLR radiation ‘bounced’ back to earth from CO2. (carbon dioxide absorption bands occur around 1400, 1600 and 2000 nm)
The big difference is sunlight in the UV/EUV can cause chemical bonds to break and form in Oxygen and NOx among others.
For example:
Sunlight + oxygen (O2) ===> O + O were wavelength is less than 240nm
O + O2 ===> O3
Sunlight + ozone (O3) ===> O + O2 were wavelength is less than 320nm
So why is the sun’s affect on ozone important?
OZONE CIRCULATION
GRAPH:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200402_tango/ozone_temperature_graph.gif
30
gai,
Those issues have been covered here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
113
Thanks Stephen,
I have been following your information for a while.
As a chemist, the idea that the returned low energy IR from CO2 is equivalent to energy from the sun, just plain makes me want to scream, pound my head against a wall and tear out my hair.
How any scientist could nod and agree with that, ESPECIALLY the American Chemical Society, leaves me completely dumbfounded.
73
gai October 5, 2015 at 10:36 am
“Thanks Stephen, I have been following your information for a while.”
You still have your choice.
1. accept!
2. Reload like hell, again sharpen pitchfork, hide then peer out from bushes, (look carefully), that also have berries to eat!
16
OT for this article, but not for the whole series of articles, yet to arrive, I believe.
Correlation between solar activity and temperature in Antarctica:
“Based on the reconstructed data of solar sunspot number (SSN), the local temperature in Vostok (T), and the atmospheric CO2 concentration data of Dome Concordia, we investigate the periodicities of solar activity, the atmospheric CO2 and local temperature in the inland Antarctica as well as their correlations during the past 11,000 years before AD 1895. We find that the variations of SSN and T have some common periodicities, such as the 208 year (yr), 521 yr, and ~1000 yr cycles. The correlations between SSN and T are strong for some intermittent periodicities. However, the wavelet analysis demonstrates that the relative phase relations between them usually do not hold stable except for the millennium-cycle component. The millennial variation of SSN leads that ofT by 30–40 years, and the anti-phase relation between them keeps stable nearly over the whole 11,000 years of the past. As a contrast, the correlations between CO2 and T are neither strong nor stable.”
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/xhao-feng-correlation-between-solar-activity-and-the-local-temperature-of-antarctica-during-the-past-11000-years/
20
Well… …I can see I should have studied engineering instead of computer science along with a lot more math. But after reading through all this I can at least understand the basis for this question and the following sentence, even though at this point I couldn’t repeat it all back to you and make it understandable.
I’ll be studying this a lot more before I fully understand your argument. But you’ve already made the basis for your question seem sound and reasonable.
40
Simply said, emission at 15 microns trapped by CO2 need not warm the ground.
20
Thank you. That’s exactly the simple statement of it that I need.
00
David,
I believe that I understand most of your concepts and eagerly await the rest of your series, however there is a heat source that I have never heard mentioned in any of the documentation I have read.
What of the heat generated by radioactive decay within the earth. This is generating new heat all the time and is always contributing energy to the atmosphere.
Is this energy accounted for in the calculations of radiation imbalance or is it insignificant compared to ASR and OLR?
Ken
00
Ken,
It is insignificant compared to ASR and OLR.
20
Why?
00
Because it’s only about 1W per square metre, the earths crust is a good insulator. This is one forcing that models do account for IIRC.
00
Good point Ken.
I recently tried finding an energy equivalent per square meter for this factor at the earth’s surface.
All I could find was a total energy loss on Terrawatts or some figure like that.
I didn’t bother trying to convert.
I seem to remember hearing in a physics class many decades ago of a figure possibly about 4 watts/sq m but Stephen Wilde may be able to give an indication.
KK
11
Finally found it:
Estimates of the total heat flow from Earth’s interior to surface show that the respective mean heat flows
of continental and oceanic crust are 0.0709 and 0.1054 W/m2 giving an average crust heat flow of 0.0916 W/m2
Not much given that the average human disposes of about 75 watts.
KK
10
Each and every human spread out over one square meter seems quite inviting to roaches!
10
As I have said before Will, your comments are often very cryptic.
KK
10
So much is unknown about climate history.
The future climate is unknown.
Mr. Evans presents himself as an expert, with much greater knowledge of math and science than I will ever have.
My specialty is common sense and skepticism.
I credit Mr. Evans with finding fault with current climate models, although we already knew 97% of their simulations overstate actual global warming.
However, It appears this series of articles is leading to a “better” climate model developed by Mr. Evans, or at least an overview of a better climate model that needs to be developed by someone — I think going there would be a mistake.
In time, perhaps even decades, much of what any scientist writes about climate change today, will be found to be wrong — that’s the nature of scientific knowledge — science is never settled.
Accuracy of current climate science “knowledge” is especially doubtful when so much politics, and government grant dollars, are involved.
Climate models are not data, and with no data there is no science.
Climate models are not science.
Climate models are just the opinions of the scientists who write the assumptions.
Complex math and science, included in complex report, makes the models appear to be more than that, BUT THEY ARE ONLY UNPROVEN OPINIONS.
Based on past climate models, which have been inaccurate, it’s a safe bet to assume future models will once again be no better than flipping a coin.
Actually, when “experts” predict the future, there are studies showing they do worse than the average person (who is not an expert in the subject.)
Mr. Evans seems so bogged down in the minutia of science, math and climate models that he does not appear to realize one basic fact, that does not require a high IQ of his level to know:
— The primary problem with the coming climate change catastrophe cult is they use computer models to make inaccurate predictions of the FUTURE climate … even when they do not understand what caused the changes of the PAST climate on Earth.
The last thing we need is an allegedly “better” climate model, from Mr. Evans, or from anyone else.
Based on Earth’s past climate, at least from what we think we know about it:
(1) There is no indication that climate change can be predicted,
(2) There is no proof CO2 is the “climate controller”, or even an important climate change variable, and
(3) The average climate in 2015 is better than it was in 1850 (slightly warmer, which humans like, and more CO2 in the air, which plants like).
PLEASE don’t give us another climate model.
Taxpayers have already wasted a fortune on the current climate models.
The people in charge of the models are going to get the same “predictions” from the new models as we have been hearing since the war on DDT in the 1960’s:
“Life on Earth will end as we know it, unless you do as we say without question”.
The coming climate change catastrophe cult is 99% politics and 1% science.
Climate models are 0% science when Earth’s climate history is mainly a lot of questions with no answers.
93
Richard,
This research may take us back to the null hypothesis.
That way resources will return to that which maintains progress and not that which maintains political agenda.
140
Richard
You are probably right in saying
“The coming climate change catastrophe cult is 99% politics and 1% science.”
But in the meantime everyone who believes that has to work on ways to stop the waste of money ( tax payers money) that is occurring all around the world. Also the deep political games that are being played have to be stopped.
The work David and Jo are doing is critical in achieving this. The cult religiously believes in the results of the models, so showing the basic architecture of those models is wrong is a huge step in the right direction.
60
Brilliant.
And I agree: “I think going there would be a mistake.”
Far better to begin identifying all of the most important factors and showing that Human Origin CO2 CANNOT have any measurable effect
BECAUSE THE EARTHS ATMOSPHERE IS A SELF LIMITING SYSTEM.
kk
60
Richard, this is more appropriate to the intro in post 1, where we discussed why the basic model is so important to the debate.
60
Richard,
A simple conceptual ‘model’ describing how the system deals with radiative imbalances would be helpful, would it not ?
It doesn’t have to predict, merely show how the system works at the most fundamental level.
That is where this is going.
100
Richard Green:
We always need better data, better models, better theories.
David is a true genius. His past work on signal processing is notable. His notch theory is very good, with a short time to now to disprove it.
I expect that his error correction to the core GCM model equations will give startling results.
I can’t wait.
80
Steve Richards, thank you for that comment. What David is doing is trying to analyze the problems with current climate science models and then suggest improvements. That is good and a lot better than just complaining.
I too expect surprise results will be forthcoming.
00
You said:
“We always need better data, better models, better theories.”
I disagree.
You make the assumption average temperature is useful to know.
I disagree.
You make the assumption the time and money spent developing better data, models and theories could be valuable.
I disagree.
The current data are being manipulated, the current models have no predictive ability, and the current dominant theory must be wrong because there is no CO2 – average temperature correlation, and it it leads to grossly inaccurate predictions.
Do we need more of this bad science?
The science won’t get better if taxpayers throw more money at it.
”
Since scientists are so often on government payrolls, I believe past performance of “climate scientists”is proof that much less money should be spent on “climate science” in the future.
Lot’s of things are nice to have, or nice to know.
They also cost money, that could be put to better uses to improve life on Earth.
02
Why would it be a mistake to go there?
Science makes use of modeling for numerous purposes. I’ve used modeling myself to determine the right parameters for controlling programmable timers. The model was set up to figure out how to efficiently find the optimum combination of 3 independent parameters to get as close as possible to the timing I needed, where the timing was dependent on user selections over a very wide range and the clock frequency was fixed by hardware and not under my control. It was so successful that with a few changes it got incorporated in the final version of the program to actually set up the 3 timer parameters. Finding the right combination of 3 independent parameters for the job, much less doing it fast, would have been impossible without exploring the problem with a model of the timer’s behavior.
The fault with climate science lies not in using models but in failing to validate them against reality. In fact, as David points out, they haven’t even questioned their model’s assumptions. Instead, they keep insisting their models are correct and try to bend and twist reality to fit the model that doesn’t predict correctly.
Science progresses by putting forth new theories to replace old ones that become questionable and then watching to see how the new theories work. If they don’t work they should be discarded but if they do, you should adopt them until they become questionable. This is the scientific method at work.
By the way, David’s efforts are 100% self funded and augmented by voluntary donations. He has no access to public funds.
True. And I wonder what their response will be myself. But being confronted by the errors in their thinking and then by a model that may work much better, just might turn the thing around. I know it looks like a forlorn hope. But if they’re confronted by success where they fail, their house of cards just might blow away in the wind.
We desperately need new ideas in place of old ones that don’t solve any problem we have.
100
Climate models are a waste of money.
The climate is BETTER than it has been in at least 500 years:
Slightly warmer (we like that)
More CO2 (plants like that)
So just what is the problem we have (none) that might be solved by a new (maybe better, maybe worse) climate model?
The politics would just lead to an attack on a better model that did not lead to the same conclusion, and it would be “buried” along with the satellite temperature data and the 150 years of CO2 data (90,000 measurements from 1812 until 1961 by the Pettenkofer method) .
We already know satellite temperature data are ignored by the politicians in favor of non-global, less accurate, mainly guesses not real data, “adjusted” at random, surface temperature data, even when NASA owns the satellites they are not even mentioned in the NASA ‘2014 was the hottest year on record’ press releases.
Why would politicians want to fund a “better” climate model when this is all politics — not science?
90
Richard,
I will certainly allow you your opinion. But the problem here is that unworkable climate models are wrecking havoc on the world and to stop that we need some ammunition in the form of a better model of climate behavior, one that actually predicts accurately. Presently it may be 99% political and 1% science but it’s a big problem. And a better explanation of what influences our climate and how it works will, in the end, go a long way toward stopping the harm.
The current situation is intractable by protest alone. Climate change has become a part of modern culture with a life of it’s own. We can wait for that to wear itself out or we can come up with a better solution to the climate modeling problem and show that it works.
There are good reasons for wanting to know how our climate works, good honest ones. And the present theory is broken.
By the way, you missed the fact that David Evans work is not spending taxpayer’s money.
100
Roy
Your comment just wreaks of common sense.
A better way, maybe, than a new models would be to identify and examine ALL of the factors involved in the mass, heat
and momentum transfer that goes on in the biosphere and atmosphere.
Only then would we be equipped to build a model.
But really, even with the best intentions, I think that modeling human origin CO2 variations against world atmospheric Temperature is
impossible. Some things can’t be modeled.
🙂 KK
20
See what happens when you try to be subtle.
Used a “sound alike’ but wrong.
Should have been reeks.
KK
10
And even then the correction has the wrong connotation
Sorry Roy
KK
00
Aren’t spelling checkers a thrill a minute? I get crossed up with sound alike words myself and spell checkers don’t know my intention (really dumb things in spite of their abilities with spelling). So if I don’t proofread thoroughly I end up embarrassing myself only too often.
Fortunately the audience is forgiving. So no need to be sorry.
10
I think you’re much more qualified than I am to give that kind of opinion. Being an engineer as I believe you’ve said you are and having a lot more contact with the math and physics than I have, I can only bow to your experience and say I don’t know for sure if such modeling is really possible. All I know is that too much accumulated evidence says the current model is broken.
I’m holding my breath in anticipation of the details that are to follow.
10
Climate models are just personal opinions
Studies of Earth’s atmosphere tell us almost nothing about the future climate.
No “climate scientist” today knows whether the next 20 years will have warming, cooling, or a flat trend of the average temperature.
It’s easy for climate modelers to produce whatever outcomes they want.
Models are not evidence.
Models are not data.
Model simulations / projections / predictions prove nothing.
Models are nothing more than the personal opinion of the modeler.
They are grossly simplified views of a reality not well understood.
Climate models are not real climate science.
Real climate science requires observations, data collection, measurements and experiments.
Real climate science studies, and tries to understand, the past and present climate — the future climate is unknown, and unknowable.
Playing computer games in air conditioned offices with models (either climate models, or tall women who strut on runways), and predicting the future climate, is not science.
The current state of climate science:
– No “climate scientist” today knows whether the next 20 years will have warming, cooling, or a flat trend of the average temperature.
– 20 years from today, the average temperature may be so close to where it is today, that scientists using honest margins of error still won’t know if the prior 20-years had warming, cooling or a flat trend!
02
I see the climate modelers and their models as props in a play.
It would be tough for politicians to scare people about something they can not see or feel, that will be a catastrophe many decades future, without those props.
The climate gamers are on government payrolls and they get grants as long as they make scary predictions.
This has been going on since the DDT scare in the 1960s (acid rain, hole in the ozone layer, global cooling, etc.)
We have to discredit the modelers, not suggest ways to “improve” their models.
This will not happen as long as the politicians want their help in scaremongering.
The only thing that will discredit the climate gamers is a few decades of cool weather.
Some scientists think that may have already started.
I sure hope so.
02
It is the whole concept that numeric computational models can increase human understanding that is false. Very rapid evaluation of concept is nice. It is however equivalent to very rapid agreement/proof of fantasy.
Experimental evidence within this physical is demanded for any human understanding. Self deception seems so rampant. What would Grandma do with hugs, kisses, and wonderful Cookies?
All the best! -will-
49
Of course Will.
Only a full analysis of the system can be the start point.
Computations are not of much use if the system is not adequately described.
KK
20
My main comment in regard to this post(excellent work, David and Jo, by the way) revolves around the observation that the earth’s ability to remove heat is greater than what is brought in by way of Solar radiation. The earth’s core is molten and its temperature is reported to be around that of the sun’s “surface”. (Call it 6000 deg C.)
Yes,the sun can heat the surface, atmosphere and the oceans, but with the temperature of the earth core being what it is, no amount of solar radiance can ever replace it. (Get the surface hot enough to re-melt the core, for example, and there will be no life anyway.)
If (a big IF admittedly) the earth core is cooling, all this AGW dogfight is for nothing. We do not know enough, near as I can tell, about the earth core to even begin to say one way or another.
However, if the core is cooling and thus the amount of heat reaching the surface is reduced, the earth’s atmosphere can still remove any excess heat from whatever source because it has been dealing all the sun can provide plus what comes from the core heat escaping to the surface, plus any other sources that are overlooked. (Tidal friction heating?)
Is the earth core temperature constant, or does it vary? Has it cooled some in the recent past (i.e. ice ages) and then warmed up some? Is there a connection between the Sun and the other planets which can modulate how much heat leaves the core of the earth?
As an Electrical Engineer, David is surely aware of eddy currents. Is it possible that eddy current heating within the mantle can alter the rate at which heat passes to the surface? Or where that heat is more concentrated nearer the surface? When you have gigawatts of electrical energy flowing through various places in the core and possibly in the mantle (i.e. the source of Earth’s magnetic field) you are going to have eddy currents. Eddy currents heat things up. They can move depending on how the magnetic field interacts. (PDO? NAO? EL Nino / La Nina?) Can the condition of the Sun’s magnetic field / solar wind interact with the Earth’s mag field to alter where and how strong the eddy currents are?
I realize this is somewhat off topic as for how modeling is in error, but in addition to what is described so far, if the models do not take in all possible sources of heat, they will consistently fail. Now I know it is said that earth core heating is too small to affect the overall climate. Yet that remains an assumption which has never been proven. At the absolute minimum, the models are in error since they do not take into account that the earth has MORE capability to remove heat than just what comes in from solar. At this point in time, there is no way to really, truly say exactly how much this difference is. There is only guesstimates as to what that might be. There is no way of knowing how much that has been over the last few millennia. No way to know if it has gone up, gone down, or remained constant. It is assumed to be constant, but then again all the affects of CO2 are assumed. The models are supposed to “prove” them out.
31
wyosceptic,
Outgoing radiation matches incoming radiation over time so energy from the core cannot be significant otherwise outgoing would constantly exceed incoming without system cooling would it not ?
30
@ Stephen
Point. A valid point.
However, how much of incoming radiation is converted by way of biological action and retained? (i.e. plant growth?) If we are burning all the fossil fuels which were created over the millennia, why again is outgoing not greater than incoming? We are releasing a lot of potential energy in all that fossil fuel being burnt, if indeed the production was biological rather than abiotic as some theories suggest.
Regardless, it is a fact not in dispute that there is heat raising to the earth’s surface from the molten core. There is heat released by Geo-thermal activity. It is a good question why this is not showing up in the outgoing radiation. It is assumed that because it is not seen in the outgoing radiation, it is not a factor. My question remains, is this a valid assumption?
The other question is how long would the oceans remain liquid without the heat from the core. The sun can warm the surface, but how deep can it penetrate? The core warms from the bottom. How much of ocean currents come from core heating? Does the core heating (even if it apparently does not escape) keep things warm enough for solar radiation to do the rest?
Again, and I have been looking, I an find no source to answer these questions with any degree of certainty. But (and I grant you this is only my opinion) it is something that is overlooked and contributes more than is currently allowed for.
60
wyoskeptic, both the heat from the Earth’s interior and the heat released by human burning of fossil fuels are truly insignificant compared to incoming sunlight.
Never one to leave something potentially so pertinent to global warming unchecked, Christopher Monckton diligently investigated both of these a few years ago, as I recall, as many have done before him. Same answer — too small to matter.
It seems that climate is almost entirely about regulating the inflow of sunlight (via reflection, or albedo) and regulating the temperature differences between the emission layers that radiate the energy back to to space and the surface where we live.
50
Everyone says this, so I guess I must accept it.
I can only say that, as an admittedly poor analogy, the gate current of some power transistors is insignificant when compared to the output current that is regulated.
For the present, I will say nothing further so as not to disrupt any further discussion here on your work.
Thank you for your reply, David.
10
Speculation, A=R is dogma, a mere assertion. Before you can do science based on it you need to prove, not just assert the relationship. A=R could just be a happy coincidence, for (a totally non realistic) example, if all incoming solar energy went into say bio growth, and all the OLR came from say the earths core, then A=R would still be true but nothing in the climate model would hold because A=R is a mere coincidence, not a causal relationship. I noted with interest that A=R doesn’t hold for venus for example.
Gravitational energies on earth are 800 billion times annual total insolation for the planet, rotational momentum is 100 thousand times more powerful. In rotating and orbiting gravity grinds and flexes the planet, it’s oceans, ice masses and atmosphere like flexing a wire, try this, get a wire coat hanger, bend it back and forth in the same place for a while then feel the bend… it gets hot!
Bending a wire by hand makes it hot, but gravity bending and flexing the planet adds no heat at all?
40
Good one!
20
“CO2 – I am just a patsy”
From the CAGW scientist’s perspective this is very reasonable thing to do, because it allows the shifting of burden of where the energy has gone to CO2. I do not think that Hansen anticipated that more detailed accounting of TSI, ASR and OLR would reveal a discrepancy in the CAGW theory.
I also liked the way Jo phrased it
This is turning into a very exciting and thoroughly remarkable piece of research 😀
As an engineer who studied EE I really do like the electrical circuit analogies, however in the early part of our course we were required to study some Mechanics and Hydraulics, it seems to me that this would also lend itself well to Hydraulics Systems analogies.
I suppose life is just not fair ! tee hee hee 😮
80
This is the real complaint rather than the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. If the upper atmosphere heats up, why is the transfer of energy to the lower and hotter atmosphere equal to the heat loss to the much colder outer space?
10
I have always hated the term “forcing”, as it is planned to imply something totally irresistible in the Climate. It is good to see David’s arguments putting so many dents in it. It should be retired, like “Denier”. What is interesting too is the low level number of Alarmists’ comments. It may all be beyond them, or just too alarming, or too worrying for them.
Dr. David Evans’ arguments are comprehensive, thorough and understandable to most normal people.
70
It is a Holiday week-end Nicholas.
maybe too much footy to cope with.
KK 🙂
20
Jo,
There is no ‘greenhouse effect’ under clouds, because cloud temperature is set by the lapse rate, making the T**4 temperature difference with the Earth’s surface tiny, compared to radiation to space.
There is no ‘greenhouse effect’ over the ocean because long wave radiation is absorbed in the top few microns of water, where the heat is lost via evaporation.
Clouds cover 70% of the Earth, ocean covers 70%, leaving a mere 10% for ‘greenhouse’.
Where is this considered in models?
42
Tony, the “greenhouse effect” is simply due to the displacement of the layers that emit to space off the surface of the Earth to colder realms where they emit less (and note that most of that OLR is emitted by greenhouse gases). Please see the figures in post 6. Clouds make almost no difference on, say, the wavelengths at which CO2 absorbs and emits. Oceans make no direct difference to OLR — the greenhouse effect works over oceans just fine, and just as well or we’d be a lot colder.
40
David, this isn’t at all true, if a CO2 molecule recieves a appropriate photon the bond energy will change, shortly afterward that CO2 molecule will emit at exactly the same wavelength as a co2 molecule at the surface. So says energy conservation.
The only thing that will change for colder CO2 is that it wont be able to convert kinetic energies with less than a critical energy (velocity) from translational velocity to a elevated bond energy in a collision. But colder emission has less doppler shift and so has narrower stopband, more energy in the wings passes from below lowering the effective height again.
If all we are talking about is EMR and not converting heat to IR then I dont see that temperature can change the throughput of photons to space, energy conservation would disallow that, what goes in must come out. Besides an EL is an abstract quantity, it’s not an actual surface, it’s an average, a distribution, it doesn’t have a height.
10
bobl, the average height of an emission layer is the average hieght at which molecules of a particular type emit OLR, at a given wavelength. Very concrete. For most wavelengths the width of the distribution is relatively narrow, which is why it makes sense to speak of an emission “layer” and to speak of the temperature of the layer. A hotter layer emits more OLR.
20
“Where is this considered in models?”
It aint.
50
Is it really ok to treat the different forcing mechanisms and feedbacks as independent events (so they can just be summed up). Isn’t is likely that there are significant interactions between some of them that have to be taken into account? I guess such interactions could change the model outcome a lot.
00
See post 2, not partial derivative are not OK
00
Fredrik, It’s almost certainly ok, to first order, so long as we pick drivers that are relatively independent of one another and feedbacks that are relatively independent of one another. If there is a significant interaction, then the drivers or feedbacks involved have to be combined or reformulated or something — for instance, the lapse rate and water vapor feedbacks are often combined into one because they are closely linked. A basic model is pretty rough, so it ignores minor, second order interactions. A large part of modeling is guessing what can be left out or ignored, in the interests of simplicity, then testing to see if the model works.
It takes decades to test a climate model, but it is abundantly clear by now that the conventional basic climate model does not work — probably because of the architectural problems: heavy reliance on unverifiable partial derivatives, omission of feedbacks that respond to climate drivers directly rather than to surface warming, and applying the solar response to non-solar climate influences.
50
Ok thanks for a good answer and also for the very interesting series about climate models!
10
I know I’m going to regret this, but you seem a bit sad that no-one is paying attention; and I did blog this at http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2015/10/04/force-f-from-outer-space/, so I’ll make an effort, doomed though I know it to be.
You’ve confused the big atmosphere-ocean GCMs with the little ones used for interpolation. I don’t think you’ve got a clue how the big models work. Here’s a helpful link: http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/publikationen/Reports/WEB_BzE_135.pdf. Notice the total absence of all the stuff you’re talking about.
1922
Oh Really William.
Or should that be O’Riley.
Or maybe O’Reeley
Or O’Golly.
Golly gee I don’t know.
Now I got it!
Of course.
Billy.
How could I have missed that famous name hiding an inability to express scientific concepts.
Billy if you understand something you have a scientific obligation to explain it to us in words.
Just write it out. Pointing to “helpful” links is an admission of incompetence.
1114
Billy Billy Billy
I looked at your blog post.
Very impressive piece of Social Science material.
The highlight was seeing you refer to David as a “F***wit”.
Well done Billy.
Whatever the arguments about “Models” there is one important thing:
THEY DON’T WORK IN THE REAL WORLD.
They do however work in the tiny minds of politicians who need a “just and noble cause” to tilt at and in the even tinier mynds of most
newspaper reoorters who are unable to provide discriminating comment on the farce.
Go Billy Go.
Go somewhere else.
Modeling human origin CO2 variations against world atmospheric Temperature is impossible.
Some things can’t be modeled and this can’t be modeled because Human Origin CO2 has NO identifiable effect.
KK
1513
There I was idly perusing the web, when I came across you comment, and now I am mightily curious.
How does the CO2 molecule know what it’s origin is?
11
Dr Connolley, quote:
> “I don’t think you’ve got a clue how the big models work.
Here’s a helpful link: http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/publikationen/Reports/WEB_BzE_135.pdf.
Notice the total absence of all the stuff you’re talking about.”
~ ~ ~
Well that must mean you do know what you’re talking about.
What I notice missing from your link is this:
A fourth source of Antarctic bottom water lying off Cape Darnley.
ABC, February 2013: Seals help solve deep water mystery
Antarctic bottom water – cold, dense water that sits in the abyssal zone between 4000 metres and 6000 metres below the ocean’s surface – plays a plays a key role in global water circulation and the transport of carbon dioxide to the deepest layers of the ocean.
The discovery of a fourth source of deep water is critical to our understanding of Antarctica’s contribution to global ocean circulation, and will improve modelling of its response to climate change, says study co-author Dr Guy Williams, of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystem Co-operative Research Centre.
Williams says the Cape Darnley deep water contributes about 10 per cent of volume to the Antarctic bottom water.
The discovery of a fourth source is like “finding a new component in the engine,” he says.
. . .
Now, I ain’t saying a seal is smarter than a stoat, nor does a ‘farting cat’ have “squillions of degrees from Really Prestigious universities”, nor any letters after my name.
Heck I don’t even have “Dr.” in front of my name, so maybe I ain’t qualified’n’all to ask the question, but …
Can you highlight the paragraph from your “Big Models” link where they talk about this new source of Antarctic bottom water.
Thanks in advance.
125
Apologies if my comment was taking post off-topic.
Here is something that might be relevant from the Australian Government:
“Australian Climate Futures is a flexible, multi-purpose decision-support tool to assist understanding and application of climate change projections for impact assessment and adaptation planning.
Built on CSIRO’s Representative Climate Futures Framework (Clarke et al. 2011; Whetton et al. 2012), it includes projections from global and regional climate models as well as statistically downscaled results.
Importantly, this tool is underpinned by the most extensive, independently peer-reviewed climate model evaluation ever undertaken in Australia (Chapter 5, Technical Report ).”
00
See comment 27.6 please.
32
When the Wiki CON-MAN appears.. you KNOW you are hurting them.
You know they have to reach to the very bowels to try to get an argument.
Well done David. 🙂
711
ECHAM6 – yet another version
Ah yes this is the Max Plank Institutes climate model ECHAM6 (or at least a part of the “big” model MPI-ESM to which you think every skeptical Scientist is oblivious) and touted to be one of the more accurate climate models , despite its need to be overhauled yet again in areas such as radiative transfer, surface albedo , aerosol, middle atmosphere , carbon cycle etc.
Incidentally the link points to a doc titled ECHAM6 model description which apart from its appalling english, introduces itself as a description of ECHAM6 (hardly useful if MPI-ESM is what you were really trying to enlighten us with).
It is in fact a only a formulation document and one has to be concerned as to what standards of document review it has been put through, considering the obvious chaotic nature of this one.
It is also interesting in that this particular model (MPI-ESM) has a land vegetation (terrestrial biosphere, incorporating canopy radiation components ) model JSBACH, and yet we are informed that a recent scientific paper has discovered that this has been grossly underestimated. (something you missed perhaps).
surely after decades of research and effort, in which many of the original authors of ECHAM are now retiring , one has to ask just how much further funding is required for you to create something that actually works.
This is why Dr. Evans’ paper is critical, we may actually get some answers.
56
> its appalling english
They’re a bunch of Krauts, what do you expect? And you don’t even know how to capitalise properly, so can hardly complain. Colonials.
> ECHAM6 (hardly useful if MPI-ESM is what you were really trying to enlighten us with)
You brought up MPI-ESM, not me. I was trying to show you ECHAM. Actually I was trying to show you the documentation for any GCM; that one will do.
> considering the obvious chaotic nature of this one.
Its a decent document. It will take you a lot of work to read, because its complex; it will require you to brush up on lots of basic math and intervening theory. I very much doubt you have the required dedication.
1320
“I very much doubt you have the required dedication.”
Who is paying you this time, WC?
That’s the only dedication you have.
711
Just another Twatter sockpuppet…
512
They’re a bunch of Krauts,
Do we need this?
41
Everyone needs a Stoat! 😉
30
William Connolley is quite correct.
You are starting from an erroneous conception of climate models, and your claim “The very architecture of all the mainstream climate models assumes that the Earth’s climate responds to all radiation imbalances or “forcings” as if they were all like extra sunlight” is, in fact, wrong.
The efficacy of various forcings differ, as do their structural responses, which is what Hansen was referring to when discussing how CO2 forcings in his research caused stratospheric cooling, whereas other forcings did not – that one Hansen statement alone invalidates this entire opening post and thread, revealing the misconceptions present. Note that differing efficacies are _results_ of modeling, not inputs or structural assumptions. What Hansen stated was not an assumption built into the models, but rather a result.
I strongly suggest that you look at IPCC AR5 Chapter 8, where efficacy and the derived “effective radiative forcing” are discussed.
Should we trust the models, which use gridded finite element analysis to compute how different forcings may affect the climate? Only if they indeed reproduce what we observe, and in fact, that is largely the case. Take a quick look at this, and see if (without looking at the legends) you can tell which is tthe model and which is the observation.
GCMs do not assume that forcings are nearly equivalent, rather that is a result of modeling, and your conflation of simplistic explanatory models with full featured GCMs is (intentional or otherwise) a Strawman Fallacy.
1831
Nonetheless, 95% of the GCM’s agree with Trenberth that the empirical observations, the actual data, are wrong
2311
Then why did the BoM and their international equivalents change so much of the values of the raw data? Homogenisation was the word used, I think, even when there was no need to.
Perhaps the data would agree with the models if the BoM had left the raw data alone?
1812
“your conflation of simplistic explanatory models with full featured GCMs is (intentional or otherwise) a Strawman Fallacy.”
This attempt to discredit David’s work itself seems like a “strawman fallacy.” Indeed, David in another post in this series explicitly stated that his exposition had little to do with GCMs.
David, instead, seems to be examining the basic theory and included assumptions that lead to the conclusion that CO2 is the main driver of global warming. Following this examination, he not only appears to develop the basic theory, he will then propound his own. Basic Feynman science: theory, prediction, verification.
Not clear to me whether GMCs can be considered basic science. How much of GMCs reflect a hit-or-miss approach incorporating multiple tunable “parameters” until they arrive at some interesting result?
Understanding followed by theory always needs to come first and this seems to be David’s approach.
136
Utterly stunning KR.The GCMs reproduce the large scale features of the atmosphere. Truly amazing!
They’ve been doing that for over 45 years. Tell us something new. Any model that didn’t do that would clearly be wrong. Long ago the models used to go unstable, then that got fixed.
Now, in the short term, it is known that the models will produce weather patterns that look like real ones… for a few days, after which they bear no relationship.
You then make the assumption that the averages of those will be close to the averages of the real weather and if you wait long enough, the climate. Why?
The person who posted the article on your link is clearly new to the business and clueless.
117
Efficacy, is a fudge factor which attempts to statically compensate for the differing warming effects of different climate factors, that is, efficacy is a mechanism attempting to compensate for the improper architecture of the model.
75
KR and William Connelly: This series of blog posts is about the basic climate models, the application of “basic physics”. The importance of this is described in post 1, and the conventional basic climate model is fully described, as per the leading textbook and papers, in posts 2 and 3.
The conventional basic model obviously does have the problems described — in this post the flaw discussed is applying the solar response to non-solar climate influences. I notice you didn’t deny it.
This series is not about GCMs, but we note in passing that they have some of the same architectural flaws — such as the omission of feedbacks that respond to climate drivers directly rather than to surface warming, and applying (essentially) the solar response to non-solar climate influences. We will demonstrate that in passing in a future post.
GCMs are opaque and the establishment plays the game of using whichever of the large number of GCMs might have a particular property to say “GCMs do this or that” when many may not. Any statement about GCMs thus has to be heavily qualified, and people will still dispute it because the GCMs are so varied and opaque. This series does not play that game; we are tackling the applications of “basic physics” that are the basic climate models.
249
> described in post 1
Post 1 says “we are going to explain the architecture of the inner core of the climate models, the small model at the center that the big GCM’s are built around”. But the simple models you’re talking about are *not* what the GCMs are built around. If GCMs have a core its the dynamical core – you’ll find that described in the ECHAM6 document I pointed you at.
> GCMs, but we note in passing that they have some of the same architectural flaws — such as the omission of feedbacks that respond to climate drivers directly rather than to surface warming
This is wrong. The GCMs really have almost nothing in common with the simple models. In particular, all the “architectural flaws” you’ve asserted are not flaws in the AOGCMs.
> GCMs are opaque
No, they aren’t. They are heavily documented; some even have their source code available. They are no more opaque than general relativity or quantum mechanics. Both of which are hard to understand if you don’t have the required background, and the time to read into the subject. I’ve provided you with a link to the ECHAM6 doc; which you didn’t need, because its easily findable anyway.
Most importantly, you’re missing the point that its from the large AOGCMs that we get (model based) estimates of climate sensitivity. Not from the simple models.
2223
Ahh the Wiki CON-MAN returns.
Go back to selling lemon used car, doof !!
617
William, when Joanne wrote “the small model at the center that the big GCM’s are built around” she was talking in a much broader, philosophical, more general sense, to put the basic model into context for general readers, as she does in the introduction. Note in the actual post, it does not make any claim that can be construed as such. The rest of your answer is the usual bluster and semantic twistiness. As for the importance of the basic model, post 1 makes it pretty clear how important it is.
1713
David, you really should take note of the comments from WC and KR, they are correct.
The “missing physics” that you write about is covered (at least in principle) in the standard climate science approach, in things called tropospheric and stratospheric adjustments.
“Feedbacks” that occur in the atmosphere are relatively “fast”, and are taken account of in the radiative forcing estimates, leaving the relatively slow surface-mediated feedbacks being covered as you have described.
1112
No Mikky, they are way off beam. They and you really should read the posts, rather than erecting straw men and attacking them. See comment 27.6 please.
No, said “adjustments” do not even begin to cover it, as we will soon see. The feedback figures I use come from AR5; see post 2.
1310
This is a very readable recent paper about analysis of GCM “experiments” in terms of both surface and non-surface feedbacks. Its specific focus is direct effects on clouds from CO2 increases, but it provides a nice non-equation overview of current climate modeling:
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/83148/1/art%253A10.1007%252Fs10712-011-9152-0.pdf
73
Thanks Mikky. I notice the paper says in its intro, “Here, feedback is defined as the part of the change that evolves with global mean surface temperature.”. They then talk about short term (days to weeks) feedbacks other than to surface temperature, but then go back to the climate-relevant time scales with “Cloud feedbacks, as defined here, operate on a multi-annual to decadal timescale associated with changes in global mean surface temperature”. Most of the paper seems to be about “rapid non-feedback cloud adjustments to radiative forcing”. A step in the right direction, IMHO.
120
Would you be so kind as to explain your source of funding for the multiple trolling that you engage in ,on a daily basis?
Do you think your activities could stand up to a congressional hearing? Do you believe that you are adding anything of any worth to any question whatsoever? Do you seriously think that you have a long term career in climate denial , because quite apparently ,you are not only talking rubbish but willing to attack and obfuscate each and every thread that lays your religionist beliefs threadbare.
People like you Connolley are going to be held to account at some stage,your hubris fills me with the need to vomit… I think that is called an ad hominem .
25
I’ve also written about this, in case you’re interested.
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/not-even-partially-correct/
You say:
The conventional basic model obviously does have the problems described
William has already pointed some of the issues out, but I’ll add my two cents worth. As far as I’m aware, there is no climate model that solves partial differential equations of the form that you describe in your earlier post. Also, a typical basic climate model does not even solve partial differential equations, it simply solves for the time evolution of temperature using some forcing time series and some assumption about the feedback response. See Isaac Held’s post, for example.
What I think you’re describing is how one might represent something like the feedback response mathematically (or how one might estimate it given the output from a model). You’re not describing the equations that are actually solved in a climate model (basic or otherwise).
1611
ATTP: Your post is directed to post 4 about partial derivatives. In it you claim that the basic model “doesn’t use partial differential equations at all”. The conventional basic climate model is fully described, as per the leading textbook and papers, in posts 2 and 3. It is derived using partial derivatives, and its parameters, such as the Planck feedback/sensitivity are partial derivatives. You feel you are expert in matters climate yet you don’t know even the most elementary things about how the basic physics is applied?
“As far as I’m aware, there is no climate model that solves partial differential equations of the form that you describe in your earlier post.” Post 2 and post 3. Go look up the leading textbook and leading papers referenced by those posts, then you will be aware.
Oh, at the end of you r comment we find out its semantics. “represent” versus “solving”. You injected the straw man of “solving pdes” into the conversation, it wasn’t here before. Time wasting. Please read the posts in future.
129
The conventional basic climate model is fully described, as per the leading textbook and papers, in posts 2 and 3. It is derived using partial derivatives, and its parameters, such as the Planck feedback/sensitivity are partial derivatives. You feel you are expert in matters climate yet you don’t know even the most elementary things about how the basic physics is applied?
That you can describe feedback responses and climate sensitivities using partial derivatives is utterly irrelevant. A basic climate model does not use those partial derivatives and nor does a GCM. Your entire argument not only appears to be changing with time, but appears to be based on a complete misunderstanding of how climate models actually work. I have also looked at those papers. They do not say what you seem to think that they’re saying.
1515
ATTP: The Planck feedback in AR5 (the 3.2 W/m2 per K) is a partial derivative, as is the decrease in OLR from CO2 molecules when CO2 increases (the 3.7 W/m2 per doubling). Both hold everything else constant. Go look ’em up — eg Soden and Held 2006, p. 3356, for the Planck constant.
No, that the basic model are derived with partial derivatives is utterly relevant — to the fact that there are partial derivatives in the basic model.
“Your entire argument not only appears to be changing with time”. No, it was laid out in the posts, before you even turned up. The only thing changing with time is your understanding, as you gradually learn about climate models. Go read the posts.
176
“…in this post the flaw discussed is applying the solar response to non-solar climate influences…”
As I stated in my previous post, this is simply not true. The core of GCMs is a finite element model (FEM) that examines the result of changing forcings, and there is _no_ inbuilt structural assumption that different forcings give the same response.
When Hansen said, as you quoted, that “…increased C02 causes substantial stratospheric cooling…” he was discussing how different forcings act in different manners, and that statement alone invalidates your claim that all forcings are treated equivalently.
1112
KR, this series of blog posts is about basic climate models, the application of “basic physics”. The importance of this is described in post 1, and the conventional basic climate model is fully described, as per the leading textbook and papers, in posts 2 and 3. The conventional basic model obviously does have the flaws described.
GCMs are a strawman. Not talking about GCMs here. Get over it. If you feel you must defend the conventional basic climate model, and its application of “basic physics” to the climate, do so without reference to the GCMs.
As it happens, GCMs do suffer from some of the same architectural flaws — and they do treat forcings almost the same (e.g. as per the Hansen quoted). But this blog post series is about the basic climate models.
1410
If you are not speaking of GCMs, then you should avoid sweeping and erroneous statements such as the following from your opening post:
“Following the conventional architecture, the GCMs apply the solar response to all radiation balances to first order”
That is simply not true.
1112
KR: Of course they do. That’s why the concept of forcing is important. What, you saying Hansen doesn’t know what he is talking about? Note that “solar response” is the response of the model to a forcing, such as produced by extra ASR. It is defined as the response of the model to extra ASR. Yes, incoming sunlight interacts with ozone, but it is the forcing component that is of interest here.
106
And I’m going to have to disagree. Completely – you seem to be redefining terms, and in doing so are losing some critical points.
GCMs, whether using finite differencing or spectral approaches, bring in the forcings and see what happens over time [not incidentally, invalidating your apparent encompassing claim that models are all steady state, rather than covering transitions]. There is no, repeat, no assumed equivalence between solar forcing and other inputs, and in fact explicit acknowledgement that they are not equivalent. Different forcings have been estimated to have different efficacies, i.e. different effects depending on source, and definitions such as the effective radiative forcing (ERF) are extensively used incorporating those differences so that different influences can be compared.
I will also note that ERFs are generally defined relative to CO2 doubling, _not_ insolation. That’s a _very_ basic concept in the literature.
67
Sorry KR, I thought everyone knew. It’s come up in blogworld several times before (that’s why it is just said in passing). The response of a GCM to a forcing is roughly the same regardless of the source of the forcing. People always find it a bit surprising at first, for good reason.
That’s why the concept of “forcing” is useful — otherwise why bother? And it’s why Hansen said it like he did. Maybe we’ll write a post on the topic.
133
David, what you’re describing is a problem in the allocation of climate response between a “bare” (e.g. Planck) response and “feedbacks”. You are right that this is somewhat arbitrary: Andy Dessler has argued much the same thing in his Ringberg talk and elsewhere – see the link and discussion here: http://rabett.blogspot.com/2015/03/ringberg-2015-andy-dessler-ecs-2k.html
As Dessler points out, instead of the traditional breakdown, a better framework for understanding the no-feedbacks (Planck) response is to treat RELATIVE humidity as the thing you are keeping constant, rather than ABSOLUTE humidity – logically it makes a lot more sense because temperature and humidity always co-vary, but relative humidity not so much, and if you reduce temperatures in a place that has 100% relative humidity you end up with an unphysical supersaturated atmosphere (and the response to a temperature decrease should have the same factors involved as a response to an increase).If you change the way one estimates the no-feedbacks response by using relative humidity instead of absolute humidity as one of the “other things being kept constant” pieces the result is a significantly larger no-feedbacks value, and considerably smaller (but still almost certainly positive) remaining feedbacks.
The great thing about Dessler’s argument which I don’t see here is that he has given an explicit example of how one could do this calculation differently and shown what the results are. Of course nothing changes about the actual sensitivity a model produces, only the allocation among “no-feedback” and “feedback” terms. But there is a real scientific point in here that it is good to think about.
30
Arthur: Is this a response to the error of using partial derivatives, the inability to “hold everything constant”, in post 4? It leads to arbitrary decisions about what is constant and what varies when holding everything else constant, and I gave as an example as whether to hold relative or specific humidity constant.
Why care which you hold constant (relative or specific), when the greater problem is whether to hold everything constant at all? As pointed out in post 4, partial derivatives of dependent variables introduce unknowable errors, so a means of reducing reliance on them would be preferable.
32
David: Have you heard of the chain rule?
47
David A: Have you read post 2 or post 3?
32
Yes. Your application of the chain rule there shows there’s nothing at all controversial about using partial derivatives in climate science, or in any other science, as long as one uses the chain rule to account for dependent variables.
You’re trying to cook up a controversy where none exists.
67
Nonsense David A. There is everything controversial about using partial derivatives of dependent variables; see the MIT reference given. The CO2 scare is based on the conventional basic climate model, which relies heavily on partial derivatives of dependent variables. Not a good way to do things.
75
The nonsense is coming from you, David. That MIT example simply shows that one must use the chain rule if there are dependent variables. Everyone already knows that.
Every physical theory in existence — classical mechanics, electromagnetism, general relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory — uses partial derivatives in the same way climate science does, and all would be subject to your criticism if there was anything to your criticism about partial derivatives. But there isn’t, and all of those theories give predictions that are in excellent agreement with observations when the physics is done correctly.
A basic climate model is only a first-order approximation to the situation, and it’s only going to get you so far, which isn’t that far, actually. Your calculations with the S-B equation are just toy models, meant to give a sense of some of the physics involved, but by no means all. (Even Arrhenius didn’t use a zero-dimensional model.) If you want to treat climate change scientifically, you have to consider some subleties — particularly the facts that the atmosphere itself absorbs and radiates, that pressure isn’t constant, that water vapor and melting ice are signficant feedbacks, that real gases aren’t gray. And to go even further you have to consider ocean dynamics, scattering in the atmosphere, and more.
You are merely taking toy models taught in the first day of Climate Science 101 and then complaining that they don’t give the right answers. Well, of course they don’t — they only capture a relatively small subset of the physics. That hardly merits ridiculous press writeups or a series of blog posts pointing out how this is all so shocking and climate scientists can’t do basic math and this means the death of climate models. Frankly, it’s all quite silly.
66
David A: Those examples of partial derivatives from other fields use them on independent variables, or in a few cases, numerical situations where they have independent means of judging and correcting errors as they develop.
The chain rule has nothing to do with the criticisms in the post.
Yes the GCMs do not use these partial derivatives, but this post and this series of posts are not about GCMs. The relevance and importance of the basic model is discussed in post 1.
64
“Those examples of partial derivatives from other fields use them on independent variables….”
That’s wrong. Consider the solar system. Its geometry is described by the Einstein equations, 10 coupled nonlinear partial differential equations. The spacetime metric is the solution.
The spacetime coordinates, whose partial derivatives make up the Einstein equations, aren’t all independent. There exists only a certain spacetime configuration — only a certain metric — that solves the Einstein equation. Yet the Einstein equation is expressed in terms of the partial derivatives of all the spacetime coordinates.
That is, there is a relationship between these spacetime coordinates — their metric and their Riemann tensor must satisfy the Einstein equations.
This is true for any physical system described by partial derivatives — a quantum state specified by Schrodinger’s equation, and electromagnetic wave described by Maxwell’s equations, a classical planetary system described by a Lagrangian. And more.
All these are handled by the chain rule, when necessary.
And, yes, GCMs *do* use partial derivatives to describe their physics.
The chain rule has nothing to do with the criticisms in the post.
And yes, GCMs do use partial derivatives.
But they use equations that describe the real physics, not toy models that everyone understands are just that — a first cut at constructing a model, full of inaccuracies. Pedantically and endlessly turning the toy models inside-out is pointless, because their physics is only an approximation!
66
David A: You keep dragging this conversation further and further off topic into obscure and irrelevant details. Argument by tedious irrelevancy and borrowed authority.
It is plain in the post (because I wrote it for people without a background), that the two partial derivatives in question (the Planck feedback, and the change in OLR when the CO2 doubles) both hold all else constant — as is obvious from their derivations in posts 2 and 3. It is also plain that such partial derivatives do not technically exist, and while they can be estimated they cannot be empirically verified.
75
David, I wasn’t particularly referring to post 4 – in every post of yours on this that I’ve looked through, the only explicit example of a term you seem to have issue with seems to be the “no-feedbacks” Planck response. If you have a problem with something else specific I haven’t seen it stated here. You state above, for example,
“The conventional model expresses the Stefan-Boltzmann law through the Planck feedback, which is the increase in OLR per unit of surface warming under the Planck conditions — namely that all else besides tropospheric temperature and OLR are held constant, […]
Let us instead explore the solar response and the Stefan-Boltzmann law without partial derivatives and the Planck conditions, […] The SBS applies to the Earth under all circumstances — unlike the Planck sensitivity, which is only applicable under the hypothetical Planck conditions.”
The purpose of calculation of a Planck response from (hypothetical) constrained model calculations is to try to break down the response seen in models (and hopefully corresponding factors in the real world) into pieces that make some sort of physical sense. We know that when something warms it radiates more; that response limits the temperature of something that is being heated. For the earth there are other factors than a pure temperature response – water vapor changes, clouds change, ice and plant ground cover change. Some of those things combine, but at least in the limit of small changes one expects somewhat separable linear responses (as you show above, the T^4 SB response is pretty well approximated by a straight line over a wide range). And linearizing means finding the slope, i.e. derivatives. Partial necessarily because we have a number of different variables of concern. One of your critiques is that the variables are “dependent” – yes in a real climate model they would be, but in a constrained calculation to get something like the Planck response the temperature is forced – it’s artificially made into an independent variable just for the purpose of that analysis (to see what the energy change is).
What you are doing above with the SB calculation is no different. Your radiating temperature is also a dependent variable – you derive it from the outgoing flux and an estimate of emissivity. And you’re trying to linearize the model, so you’re taking a derivative. And you have other variables (like emissivity) so even if you don’t write it as a partial derivative it still really is one.
Also it is not a real temperature as you state yourself. At least with the Planck calculation, the temperatures involved are the real actual temperatures of the ground and parcels of air in the troposphere (by the way, the reason it’s called a “Planck” rather than a “Stefan-Boltzmann” response is because there is a strong spectrum-dependence of the emitted and absorbed radiation in different atmospheric layers – only at the ground level (and to some extent with clouds) are the two essentially the same as emissivity of solid materials is not so wavelength-dependent).
So what you calculate above is essentially the same problem as what is looked at in the Planck case: what is the change in outgoing radiation when the derived radiating temperature (your SB calculation) or all temperatures (from ground through troposphere) are changed by a constant small amount, with other things (emissivity in your case, all the other state variables in the Planck case) held constant? Is one better than the other? Well I think using real temperatures rather than a derived radiating temperature is a benefit – I don’t know what the meaning is of a change in TR? It could mean a lot of different things. What does a change in surface temperature and lower troposphere temperatures imply for TR? What does a lapse rate change imply for TR? It doesn’t seem to add much clarification to the problem; you’ve just gone around a mathematical circle as far as I can tell.
In contrast, explicitly choosing different things to keep constant in the “Planck” calculation is a quite informative process – here’s a peer-reviewed paper on the matter:
Held, I., and K. M. Shell (2012), Using relative humidity as a state variable in climate feedback analysis, J. Climate, 25, 2578-2582, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00721.1
30
Arthur, you raise some good points.
Yes, of the conventional basic model’s two main partial derivatives identified in post 2, the Planck sensitivity (lambda-sub-0) is the one I focus on. I don’t see any alternative to using the other partial derivative, the decrease in OLR from CO2 molecules when CO2 doubles D-sub-R,2X. However I argue that the “holding all else constant” problem with the Planck sensitivity can be ameliorated, though not eliminated, by switching to the SB sensitivity.
Emissivity is always between 0.99 and 1.0 and does not changes significantly with small temperature perturbations, because the majority of OLR is coming off the top of gas layers that are completely absorbing. Perhaps there is some variation at some wavelengths near at the edges of their effects. But I expect the change in emissivity is negligible. Do you have any solid info on emissivity variation (the emissivity as useed in the SB equation)?
If emissivity is near constant over the range of conditions expected, then OLR and the radiating temperature are equivalent (or isomorphic — if you know one you know the other). So radiating temperature is a specific and meaningful quantity – it is a (near) surrogate for OLR. But yes, it is not a temperature that one can easily relate to tropospheric temperatures and is not one you can measure with a thermometer.
One of the few islands of relative certainty in applying the basic physics to climate is the SB equation, so let’s use it. The radiating temperature is the only method of applying the SB equation rigorously to the Earth, AFAIK. It gets us into the ballpark temperature-wise, producing the radiating temperature — which is some sort of complicated mix of the surface temperature, the temperature of the cloud tops, the temperatures of the CO2 and water vapor emission layers, etc. The use of radiating temperature, which is a surrogate for OLR, is in keeping with the focus of basic models on OLR.
A major advantage of the radiating temperature is that is applies in all conditions, not just in a “hold everything constant” scenario like the Planck conditions. So the radiating temperature is not a creation of a hypothetical or artificial situation.
(The “Planck conditions” are that all else besides tropospheric temperatures and OLR are held constant, so there are no feed-backs, all tropospheric temperatures (including the surface temperature) change in unison, and stratospheric temperatures are unchanged (e.g. Soden & Held, 2006, pp. 3355-56). There are some arbitrary choices to be made, such as whether it is the specific or the relative humidities that remain unchanged as the troposphere warms, or what happens at the tropopause.)
The Planck sensitivity only applies in the Planck conditions. Yes, it involves the surface temperature, which is relatively concrete and meaningful, but at the cost of holding all the tropospheric temperatures to change uniformly, and so on. It only exists in a hypothetical situation.
The Planck sensitivity can be used instead of the SB sensitivity in the alternative model that follows — it is a trivial matter to convert between them numerically, using the eta conversion factor in figure 2 of post 9. Of course the eta factor relies upon the GCM’s estimate of the Planck sensitivity and thus the Planck conditions.
Yes, as you point out, to some extent this is mathematically shuffling a difficult, ugly mess around, sweeping it under a different carpet perhaps. Using the Planck sensitivity, the mess is in the Planck conditions. Using the SB sensitivity, the mess is the semantic distance between the radiating temperature and the surface temperature. I argue that at least the route to the radiating temperature is relatively pure, and a good platform upon which to build.
Yes, the Stefan-Boltzmann sensitivity is a slope and thus a derivative, but it is not a partial derivative that holds all climate variables constant (neglecting the small variation in emissivity – even if this is included, the reliance on holding everything else constant is much reduced over the Planck sensitivity).
40
David: thanks for being clearer on what you’re doing there – at least I think I understand a bit better. Two points I think bear some further thought or discussion:
(1) You have essentially transformed OLR into TR. As you put it “OLR and the radiating temperature are equivalent (or isomorphic — if you know one you know the other)” . Under your assumption that emissivity is constant (and very close to 1 – you can assert that rather than assume it if you like since TR isn’t otherwise constrained) you are quite right there are no other variables involved. Though that’s pretty much what partial differentiation means – taking everything else as constant while you vary one thing. But anyway, what does the mathematical transformation of OLR into TR buy? We have “a” temperature but it’s not the temperature of any particular portion of the planet. When it changes OLR changes. When OLR changes TR changes. Is there any physical insight we can take away from this?
In particular the change in TR includes ALL feedbacks already – there is no breakdown between temperature response and other responses – all the response is in there.
That is – suppose something causes the energy balance of the planet to change: either a decrease in OLR, or an increase in incoming solar energy due to an albedo change or solar change or whatever. That means a change delta R in energy balance. Then to return to balance TR just changes by the amount you indicate to achieve that change delta R in OLR, and we’re done. No further changes needed.
But it does not inform us about physical processes elsewhere – for example at the surface. What does the change in TR imply for surface temperatures? How would you figure that out? Earth’s surface and the various atmospheric layers are not at one single temperature anyway; that statistical distribution of temperatures is related in some complicated fashion to your single TR value. I don’t see how turning OLR into TR here is buying you anything. In order to break things up into feedback terms you need some way to separate out different kinds of variation – that’s the purpose of the partial-derivative-based analysis.
(2) You state “Emissivity is always between 0.99 and 1.0 and does not changes significantly with small temperature perturbations, because the majority of OLR is coming off the top of gas layers that are completely absorbing. Perhaps there is some variation at some wavelengths near at the edges of their effects.” This is wildly incorrect. If emissivity was constant across the thermal spectral range (from 1 micron to 100 microns wavelength, say) then the outgoing spectrum would be a smooth curve following the Planck spectrum associated with the radiating temperature. The Stefan-Boltzmann relationship is derived from that smooth distribution – and is ONLY valid (for summing the radiation emitted from a body at a given temperature) when emissivity is constant across the thermal spectral range. But that is not the case for Earth’s atmosphere.
Here’s a post at WUWT that shows examples of the OLR spectrum being very far from smooth: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/10/visualizing-the-greenhouse-effect-emission-spectra/ You can see in those graphs, along with the observed emission spectrum, the smooth Planck curves for 240K, 260K, 300K, etc. Emissivity from the atmosphere is strongly wavelength-dependent.
10
Arthur:
(1) You are restating the advantages of Planck. Consider the advantages of TR above to be restated too. Yes there are pros and cons to both; one does not dominate the other. The link between TR and surface temperature is shown in Fig. 2 above — the GCMs already have an estimate for us, and it necessarily involves the feedbacks. TR or OLR tells us a fair bit about physical processes, as the next few posts in the series will show. Yes what we really want to know is surface temeperaure, but I think there are better ways of getting there than via the hypothetical Planck conditions.
(2) Not sure we are talking about the same thing here. The “emissivity” in question is the Earth’s total emissivity, across all wavelengths, as used in the SB equation — and thus involved in the link between TR and OLR. Yes the emissions spectrum (see for instance the ones taken from Nimbus, e.g. here) does not follow a Planck blackbody spectrum — because of the presence of GHGs. Most of the OLR comes from these GHGs. The GHGs do not reflect IR, and at almost all wavelengths where they have a significant effect they are optically thick enough to be completely absorbing, so their emissivity is one. While incrementing surface or radiating temperature will change emissions, it changes emissivity at relatively few wavelengths (those where the absorptivity is less than complete), and the effect on the overall emissivity used in the SB equation is small — exactly how small, I do not know. Note that for most purposes climate scientists don’t even use an emissivity value, they just round it off to one — even after incrementing temperature, it’s still going to be be about one.
40
David, once again thanks for responding. Continuing the discussion on the two separate tracks here:
(1) It’s hard to argue with what “the next few posts in the series will show” until one can actually read them. So far it seems all you have done is change variables from OLR to T_R (somehow the “sub” tags don’t work in comments?) and you are still relying (in posts to this point) for any further conclusions on what GCM’s tell us about the breakdown between different kinds of response, while implicitly criticizing them in some way I don’t understand. How can you rely on their results to criticize their methods? I also don’t see how it is possible to assess the quantitative effects of different forms of response without doing some sort of “controlled experiment” (impossible for Earth’s actual climate system of course, but very possible with computer simulations) where the response you are interested in is varied while others are held fixed – which is of course where the partial-derivative analyses come in. Maybe you will address this in coming posts; I would expect to see something more if there is actually any substance to your argument.
(2) The Stefan-Boltzmann equation derives from the Planck black-body spectrum: integrate the bb spectrum for a given temperature T over all frequencies f and you get S-B for that T. Multiply by an emissivity if it’s not a black-body – but that only works if the emissivity is the same for all frequencies f. For Earth observationally emissivity is different for different wavelengths or frequencies. As you note “the emissions spectrum […] does not follow a Planck blackbody spectrum — because of the presence of GHGs. Most of the OLR comes from these GHGs.” So that variation of emissivity with wavelength is strong, and S-B does not apply in any physical sense (why your T_R is not a physical temperature) because effectively you have outgoing emissions coming from sources at a wide variety of different temperatures across the planet from surface to the top of the troposphere depending on physical and spectral location. As wikipedia puts it the SB law gives the “power radiated from a black body in terms of its temperature.” So S-B does not naturally follow from the physical situation because we don’t have a black or gray body: your application of it is artificial. It may be helpful, but keep in mind it is not physically motivated.
However, you are also arguing about the effect of changing temperature: “While incrementing […] temperature will change emissions, it changes emissivity at relatively few wavelengths (those where the absorptivity is less than complete), and the effect on the overall emissivity used in the SB equation is small ” This is incorrect as far as general responses go; one can always assert the emissivity is fixed and fold all changes into T_R as you have effectively done, but in real life there are real changes in OLR emissions all across the spectrum and not just from changing temperatures. The effects of responses to a radiative imbalance include: * changing temperatures throughout the atmosphere and surface; * changing concentrations of GHG’s including short-lived GHG’s like water vapor; * changes in cloud behavior; * changes in surface albedo features such as ice and vegetation. If after the change we have a cloud where before we did not, that is a significant change in emissivity for that layer of the atmosphere. If after the change we have more water vapor in a certain region, that pushes the effective emitting level for the water-vapor-absorbing region to higher in the atmosphere, which can be treated either as a change in emissivity for that region at that level, or a change in temperature of the emitting level. Since your radiating temperature is an artificial construct you can always fold everything into it, but in real live there are significant emissivity changes associated with, for example, surface temperature changes including water vapor changes, which need to be accounted for.
11
Arthur:
(1) This series is about the basic model, the application of basic physics to the climate, for reasons explained in post 1. The conventional basic model has three parameters — Planck sensitivity, reduction in OLR from CO2 when CO2 doubles, and the total feedbacks f. Critics until now have focused almost entirely on the values of those parameters, mainly the total feedback f. The criticism here of the basic model is that it has the wrong architecture, so, for argument’s sake, we accept the current values of the parameters according to the climate establishment. Those parameter values are most authoritatively expressed in AR5, where, as it happens, the Planck sensitivity and f are calculated from the CMIP5 models.
Criticism of the architecture of the conventional basic model have been made in posts 4, 5 and 9 (“Error X”, X = 1,2,3). While this series is not about GCMs, people keep asking. In passing, it is noted that Error 1 (partial derivatives) does not apply to GCMs, Error2 (omits feedbacks other than to surface warming) applies to all GCMs with minor exceptions, while Error 3 (treating all forcings the same, regardless of origin, thus applying the solar response to all climate influences) is true to first order for all GCMs. GCMs are a diverse bunch and maybe there exist exceptions, but I doubt it. We’ll do a post later on this, but for now we are talking basic models.
This will become clearer as the alternative architecture is developed and its implications explored.
(2) I am discussing the emissivity for the whole spectrum combined, the single emissivity number that ones uses in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation — see post 8. You are talking about a wavelength-dependent emissivity. (Hence we might have been talking past each other somewhat.) The single-parameter emissivity and the Stefan-Boltzmann equation are useful in estimating the change in TR when the ASR increases, and the increase in TR is linked to the surface warming – see fig 2 above.
40
Ok, so basically (1) nothing new has been shown yet, and (2) you insist on a circular definition that doesn’t seem to add anything as far as I can tell. I see you have posted a new article on externally driven albedo changes – which sounds like another word for different kinds of forcing, but anyway, if you have anything real to add to the discussion I guess it’s coming, not here yet. I will await some real substance before any further comment.
11
Arthur, some of the posts so far (like posts 2 and 3 on the conventional basic model, and post 8 applying the SB equation to Earth) are just foundational posts. Some have pointed to major flaws in the conventional climate model architecture (e.g. post 5, post 7, and post 9). Post 10 on EDA points out that conventional climate models have entirely omitted a major influence. We are building up to the alternative model.
No, there are no circular definitions here. A single emissivity parameter as used in the SB equation reflects the values of all the wavelength-dependent emissivity function, and is approximately constant.
10
David,
You are building your whole argument on a fallacy, as usual.
The CO2 mechanism is not about “extra sunlight”, or any parallel, it is entirely to do with energy retention of surface emitted infrared radiation near the surface where CO2 concentrations are significantly higher than the general atmosphere due to both air density and surface emitted CO2. The specific energy of the air at ground level is far greater than that at elevation and it is at the surface where global warming takes place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#/media/File:Comparison_US_standard_atmosphere_1962.svg
The absorption of surface emitted radiation is either re-emitted or transferred to other air molecules causing increased evaporation of water from the land surface. This increased atmospheric moisture causes increased air movement (the effect that turns windmills) as moist air is lighter than dry air. This increased air movement is where a large proportion of the atmospheric energy is stored, energy that is not accounted for with the simplistic single metric of average surface temperature.
The effects of climate change are ALL about the very near surface temperature and its effect of drying out land (high pressure systems), the energy of the atmospheric air movements, the rate of moisture release from vertical air movements (low pressure systems), and the interplay of ocean energy absorption and energy release (via moisture). It is not that hard to observe and understand.
I’m sorry, David, but I think that your energy pipes analogy is the kind of confusion that will occupy the mind when one ignores reality. I’m not saying that it is not a worthwhile thought process as it is important to analyse all possibilities, but the kind of process you are using is more related to design innovation rather scientific observation of the natural world.
922
Bill, read David’s post. You’ve missed the whole point of it. And your contention that CO2 only changes things at the surface is bizarre. Didn’t you used to say that CO2 causes warming in the troposphere, and cools the stratosphere? As usual, your condescending tone is a complete bluff. Boring Bill.
177
Jo, you are confusing someone else’s comments with mine. I’ve not made comment about upper atmospheric temperature variations. What I have said is that I believe that upper atmospheric mass air movements are increasing, and this by way of attempting to explain how and why the Arctic climate is destabalising.
Condescension was Richard Toll’s take on David’s last “publication” of the filter thingy theory. If I were to attempt condescension I would possibly suggest that this time around it is taking on the form of a cross between Mormon founder Joseph Smith’s “wandering through the woods and tripped over entirely new physical principles for the universe to follow etched into a stone” and L Ron Hubbard’s space alien climate rescue theme. Scientology is perhaps the best approach as there are Tom Cruises millions to sustain through the donation box until the space ship comes down to whisk you away from all of this.
As you can see however I am no good at condescension, so just take my comments as being plain old feedback. Perhaps you are hoping for another WA stomach bacteria success story out of this, if so just be aware that research improved medicine in a very specific area, it did not mean a “back to the drawing board” for medicine in the way poor deluded Miranda Divine is claiming David Evans will cause for Global Climate Science, and physics in general. So. Is it science? or religion. Well it clearly is not science, it therefore has to be about religion.
716
So clearly you have no reply to my point, but as usual, can fill up 3 paragraphs with unrelated content hoping no one notice? Your comment claimed a “fallacy”, and said “entirely” and “near the surface”. Timewasting. Why don’t you read David’s post?
117
I didn’t realise that you made a point, Jo. Are you questioning that a high density of CO2 will absorb more IR radiation? I don’t have to try hard to verify that this is true. The most common effect that people feel is the Urban Heat Island Effect where CO2 concentrations as high as 950 ppm trap heat radiating from concrete and bitumen surfaces. Temperature accumulation is rapid. To put some science to it here is a study on CO2 absorption as affected by gas composition and pressure.
http://www.licor.com/env/pdf/photosynthesis/co2_abs.pdf
Remember that the key impact of CO2 is not that it heats the air principally, but that it dries out the ground. The heat impact else where is in that it melts mountain ice, reducing fresh slow delivery water storage.
But that brings up the fact that David appears to have moved the coming ice age out from right now, to some time in the future. I would have thought that “superior science” brings more accurate predictability. That is how it works for the BOM at least.
713
Bilb, you are still claiming CO2 has no effect above the surface? That there are no feedbacks at all to CO2 in the lower, mid or upper T or stratosphere?
106
Of course it has effects elsewhere, Jo, just in different ways and to a different degree, and all of the energy eventually escapes to space though for some of that energy it might take thousands of years (energy absorbed into the ocean and carried to abyssal depths). But the greenhouse effect is as I understand it near the surface, this is where the infrared energy interacts with CO2 to the highest degree. I am no expert on this so for a more detailed round up, talk to people for whom this is a primary interest
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1210&p=2
There is lot of information in the comments.
512
More than a little disconnected there BilB.
77
“Are you questioning that a high density of CO2 will absorb more IR radiation?”
I will certainly question that!! Have you anything besides the HiTran data base that even suggests that atmospheric CO2 at any level absorbs IR flux from below or that there is any atmospheric temperature change whatsoever from surface radiative flux? That HiTran data base is in no way related to surface flux absorption. Where is any physical evidence of what you claim?. All you have are computations that have never once been verified!
35
Dimbulb,
If what you now say is true then the CO2 atmosphere of Mars should make it a tropical paradise.
108
That would require a few billion V8’s doing wheelies in the martian dust for about 50 years to cause any climate change on Mars, some more atmosphere and a ocean or two. I don’t think that few solar powered rovers equate to that.
316
Oh no, you’ve advocated polluting an atmosphere with ozone, just like Tesla.
108
Say Dimbulb,
How many of you sock puppets does Twatter run anyway?
88
Ah Mr Bratley, you’ve got a smudge on your face there, you should go wipe it off.
314
Wow, you actually advocate for electric cars that produce ozone – let me calculate a bit – American EPA says CO2 is a pollutant and it is toxic at about 50,000ppm, and the EPA also says that ozone is toxic at 70ppb – which would mean that your electric cars produce a substance 714,000 times more toxic than CO2.
Way to kill the planet Dimbulb, knock out the coal industry and build electric cars.
128
It is electric arcing that produces ozone, Bratley. Brushless motors, all ac motors and electronically controlled brushless dc motors, as used in almost everything, including electric cars, do not produce ozone. “Ozone is produced at ground level through a reaction between sunlight and, e.g., gases emitted from cars.” Wiki.
So what was your point again?, other than to make yourself look arrogant and stupid?
76
My point?
Same as yours it would appear – never mind the facts just feel the propaganda.
You might like to catch up on electric cars – apparently they do emit ozone – and it is 714,000 times as toxic as CO2 and you want that stuff in the atmosphere – think of the children and the futures market, Dimbulb!
55
“apparently they do emit ozone” ?
prove it!
50
I’d say 12 finger puppets as excessive inbreeding would override any randomly occurring Polydactyly.
66
“I’m sorry, David, but I think ”
no… you don’t.
38
BilB says “…The CO2 mechanism is not about “extra sunlight”, or any parallel, it is entirely to do with energy retention of surface emitted infrared radiation near the surface where CO2 concentrations are significantly higher than the general atmosphere due to both air density and surface emitted CO2….”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well if that is the case, the physical evidence proves the models are wrong so we can all go home.
Co2 near the earth does not radiate LWR back to earth. Instead CO2 near the earth is handing off the LWR energy to non-greenhouse gases via collusion, they become warmer and thus rise caring the energy away from earth.
Paraphrasing Dr. Brown, physicist at Duke University:
Dr Happer in his lecture for physics grad students at NCU agreed and further stated that the time to radiate is about ten times slower than the time to the next collision in the troposphere. Dr Happer in his lecture also answered my question about where CO2 energy is radiated instead of being handed off via collision. Experimental data shows barely any radiation at 11 KM and that radiating is in the stratosphere ~ 47 KM above the surface.
An illustration put up by the State University of New York shows CO2 radiates strongly at about 47 KM above the surface.
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/images/stratospheric_cooling.jpg
The legend with the illustration:
65
There is no contradiction there, gai. Energy in the form of moisture and warm air seeks to find a path to the upper atmosphere, eventually breaking through the air layers above in the form of an up rush of air forming a low pressure system. As the air rises it expands and cools to the extent that the moisture condences giving up its latent heat to surrounding air and forms ice particles which become rain hail or snow, eventually. The air mass continues upwards taking energy directly from the surface to the low pressure upper atmosphere where it can be more easily radiated to space. because air has ascended other air must fall from altitude and this becomes the high pressure system of dry air that compresses as it descends. No pipes necessary, it is all done with air movements.
97
Bil, The “pipes” go to space. Not to many air movements do. (Read the post).
135
You are quite wrong about that, Jo.
36
Still havent read the post eh? Bil, don’t bother to comment until you do, OK?
92
One reason for the appeal of a simplistic model treating the ground and the whole atmosphere as one uniform body is the very pervasive “Greenhouse” metaphor. This began with Arrhenius (I guess), and in the sixties was being promoted by writers such as Garrett Hardin; I recall his The Science of Life as our textbook in 1st year biology at Melbourne. A diagram showed the sun’s heat being ‘trapped’ behind the glass panes. This metaphor is plausible, especially if you’ve ever left a Wardian case or bottle garden in a sunny window: it can overheat catasrophically.
But if Arrhenius had ever worked in greenhouses, he would have realised that they work primarily by preventing heat loss through convection and other air movement. This is why it’s so easy to control temperatures in a greenhouse by opening ventilators. Such heat losses are irrelevant to a planet with an atmosphere surrounded by the vacuum of space.
Another effect in a greenhouse is the opaque metal, timber etc in its structure absorbing heat and re-radiating it directly onto plants. And yes, there is the glass that allows light to enter but restricts the movement of long-wave radiation in the opposite direction. But the greenhouse is far too simple an image to help in understanding the heat balance of the atmosphere.
151
for the record – The Australian has picked up the article on David:
Miranda Devine: Perth electrical engineer’s discovery will change climate …
The Australian – Oct 3, 2015
it’s on Devine’s blog, where some might like to comment:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/climate_cracks/
News.com.au is carrying it:
http://www.news.com.au/national/western-australia/miranda-devine-perth-electrical-engineers-discovery-will-change-climate-change-debate/story-fnj4anv2-1227555674611
61
Good tip ,Pat, the comments are well worth the read.
47
Yes, the comments were interesting BilB. Most showed signs of absolute panic !
40
SW reflection is quite considerable and should not be altered by LW. downward LW is unlikely to be reflected. as a feedback called albedo, i suppose LW can create conditions for SW reflection through clouds, but i thought that would be a higher figure?
00
One has to be grateful for the excellent quality submissions about the global warming hypothesis which refute the current hyperbole and political agenda, but as many commentators have said will this reach the light of day? I sincerely hope it does in view of the extraordinary effort to provide accurate informatiom.
On a another subject I have written a discussion paper on the feasibility of the various renewable targets proposed by our politicians. The larger one suggests 500,000 ha. of windfarm by 2030. If you could provide me with an Email address I could send it to you for consideration to be put on your site; it follows the same line of comment by Tony the electrical engineer, and perhaps you could ask him to have a look at it as well. It puts some interesting figures to the politics.
70
Robert O
say, thanks for the promotion, but sorry, just a slight correction here. I’m not a full Electrical Engineer. All I have is a puny Associate Diploma in Electrical Engineering.
I suppose I should really change that link attached to my screen name here, so it reflects the Bio at my home site.
My umm, (perceived) knowledge on electrical power generation stems from my trade training, but has more to do with the last (now almost) 8 years of research. The site owner asked me to give some background on what complying with Kyoto might mean, and the more I looked, the more the hairs on the back of my neck prickled up. He gave me the license to write what I wanted. At first, I couldn’t actually believe the scale of what was required. It was so huge, even I was a little reticent to write it, because it all sounded so unbelievable. It was almost heart in the mouth stuff at the start because I still couldn’t believe it all myself, and once written down, it’ s always going to be there, and that’s what made me a little reticent.
I go back now and look at those early Posts from that original Series, and there are some minor errors, but it turned out to be actually worse than what I originally expected. Perhaps the most difficult thing for me to write was that the two favoured renewables (wind and solar) were nothing more than expensive duds, because as much as I looked, I might have been the only one saying that, when everyone was being told that they were the coming saviour. That was hard, being the only one running them down. Everything I have done since has borne out those original things I said, and in fact, at the start, I went softly softly on them. Now I don’t care. I KNOW they cannot do what is claimed.
The more people who see that, and then go and check for themselves, then that is what pleases me. Don’t believe me verbatim. Go and look for yourself.
Tony.
Link to my Bio
91
You might not be a full EE but I am , and if anything Anton, you sugar coat renewables by using an annualised capacity factor that no EE in his right mind would use to parameterise a working solar power system. This inappropriate use of annualised generation capacity makes Solar and wind seem about 20 times better than they actually are.
Other than that though your trade training serves you well.
70
TonyfromOz October 5, 2015 at 1:39 pm
“Robert O say, thanks for the promotion, but sorry, just a slight correction here. I’m not a full Electrical Engineer. All I have is a puny Associate Diploma in Electrical Engineering.
Good GOD. To be an engineer takes not any amount of abstract formal institutional BS.
To be an engineer is experience in fixing and operating some machine, like a train locomotive or ship!
No peer reviewed plagiarism, with attribution is required. Survival is required. Much learning comes from own, fixable mistakes from doing! Such survivors, also learn from other survivors, precisely what “not to do” as evidenced by those that survive.
All the best! -will-
78
Hey Tony,
Don’t sell yourself short. I only have a humble Diploma of Applied Chemistry from RMIT (1964) but some one recently commented that it is probably equivalent to today’s Master based on contact hours (40 per week), the number of subjects and subject content.
R-COO- K+
60
Oh, please. Can we stop with the academic credentials already?
I’m not saying that they mean nothing, but my experience as a consumer of expert work product is that most graduates who actually go into practicing a given discipline eventually learn more in that way than they did in school. The philosophy major who knows more about compiler design than most computer-science graduates, the electrical engineer who knows more thermodynamics than most mechanicals, the musician who knows more about the relativity implications of electromagnetic induction than most physics graduates, the English-major judge who seems to comprehend brushless-DC-motor control more readily than most engineers: these are far less the exception, in my experience, than most people probably think.
Even more common is the PhD who bases his work on misapprehending principles learned every year by hundreds of thousands of undergraduates. And large sums have been squandered as a result.
I’m no scientist; I don’t even play one in the blogosphere. But in real life I’ve seen all of that in my clients’ enterprises. So I put little stock in academic credentials–or lack of them.
11
God-damn sun…I’m sure the people of Kiribati will be delighted to know that the climatic changes happening in their region are the sun’s fault. Imagine how much worse it could have been if we hadn’t cleared all that forested land over the last few thousand years and increased albedo….if anything i’m glad this article will probably rail-road the Paris agreement of a 2 degree increase….no way of agreeing on how to measure that anyway.. Wonder how we’ll deal with the increasing permafrost melt and methane releases….and increased coral bleaching…and observed disruptions to the basis of the marine food web in southern oceans due to warmer waters…. I’m all for best quality modelling but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter who’s maths or modelling is correct or incorrect as much as it matters that we do all we can to correct the imbalances that have come about. Or we can just sit back and let the good times roll…which is probably what we’ll do cos its easiest and we’re humans..
48
Specifically ?
[I recognise a low-doc greenie “fear of the walking dead” when I see it, and mostly it’s not worth the aggravation of putting it to the question. Sometimes, the jumbled fear is so fuzzy, such as here, that it begs for the question]
51
CO2ppm increase since 1750, CH4ppb increase since 1750, increasing oceanic acidity due to increased absorption of CO2 due to increased atmospheric rates, increased instances of mass coral bleaching events, reduced strength of calcium carbonate structures in coral skeletons and shells of marine organisms due to increased carbonic acid formation, greater variance in arctic sea ice coverage, zooplankton feeding on phytoplankton in southern oceans earlier than usual due to warmer waters. all of these are in the public domain – but the most serious is the methane releases from permafrosts and hydrates. only so many hydroxyl radicals available to break CH4 down into CO2. There weren’t enough to hold back on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or the Permian-Triassic event…if you’re gonna have a pot-shot from your keyboard bud then back it up.
312
Oh dear – low-doc greenie talking points. That’s why it’s generally not worth the time to skewer them
1) CO2 at 400ppm now, 10,000ppm in the Cretaceous. The globe didn’t catch fire then either. What is the “perfect” level ? Just answer the question
2) increasing ocean acidity – even if measurable, a pH change from 8.4 to 8.3 someplace we cannot determine is NOT acidification
3) increased coral bleaching episodes compared to WHEN ? Just answer the question, oh and note ENSO’s have hard geological evidence for about 11,000 years now
4) reduction of carbonate skeletal/shell strength – where exactly and compared to WHEN ?
5) variance in arctic sea ice – compared with WHEN ? Just answer the question
6) plankton feeding habits changing from WHEN, exactly ? Justa nswer the question
7) the Paleocene-Eocene Max and Permo-Triassic extinction caused by CO2 ? Low-doc fool
Ok, BUD, speak up
52
Dunno what you mean by low-doc…or medium doc or high doc….answers below
Oh dear – low-doc greenie talking points. That’s why it’s generally not worth the time to skewer them
1) CO2 at 400ppm now, 10,000ppm in the Cretaceous. The globe didn’t catch fire then either. What is the “perfect” level ? Just answer the question
The rate of increase is the issue.
2) increasing ocean acidity – even if measurable, a pH change from 8.4 to 8.3 someplace we cannot determine is NOT acidification
Its a trend, a process referred to as ocean acidification, even if the pH is still above 7. Check out some studies. (Source: Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education.)
3) increased coral bleaching episodes compared to WHEN ? Just answer the question, oh and note ENSO’s have hard geological evidence for about 11,000 years now
According to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, between 1980 and 1993 there were 60 bleaching events recorded. In 2002 there were more than 400. This is an interview I did with Dr. Clive Wilkinson in 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCHovRBPBA0 It could well be argued that there were more monitoring resources available, but in this case the qualitative information is just as important as the quantitative
4) reduction of carbonate skeletal/shell strength – where exactly and compared to WHEN ?
http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/65/3/414.full
5) variance in arctic sea ice – compared with WHEN ? Just answer the question
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/
6) plankton feeding habits changing from WHEN, exactly ? Justa nswer the question
http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/65/3/279.full
7) the Paleocene-Eocene Max and Permo-Triassic extinction caused by CO2 ? Low-doc fool
Caused by volcanic/tectonic activity, enhanced by the released of methane from hydrates
Ok, BUD, speak up
210
“The rate of increase is the issue.”
The rate of increase is totally beneficial and almost totally natural. (97% atmospheric CO2 is natural)
35
The North West Passage was navigated in 1903 in a small wooden ship.
It now requires a big nuclear powered ice breaker.
30
“5) variance in arctic sea ice – compared with WHEN ? Just answer the question
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/
”
There you go again..
starting EXACTLY at the low point in the AMO..
Look at these glacier extent plots from Mt Baker
(its nice to have good solid USGS data, rather than fabricated BS !! 😉 )
Then try to understand why the alarmista HAVE to start around the late 1970’s.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/13/mt-baker-glaciers-disappearing-a-response-to-the-seattle-times/
Are you willing to learn, Bryn.. or is the brain-washing to hard to overcome?
42
interesting article.
02
“5) variance in arctic sea ice – compared with WHEN ?”
Dr. Elisha Kent Kane (February 28, 1820 – February 16, 1857) was an American explorer and surgeon for the US Navy. Kane organized and headed the Second Grinnell expedition which sailed from New York on May 31, 1853, and wintered in Rensselaer Bay.
NOAA map of the Arctic sea.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/islands_oceans_poles/arctic_ref802647_1999.jpg
Note that the inner most circle is the 80th parallel so they were finding open water inside that area in the 1850s.
51
Its worse than we thought Jim ! The zombies have learned how to communicate!
Soooooorrrrry! I am just becoming fed up of ill informed sock puppetry gleaned from the Guardian or other such bastions of the swivel eyed loony left ,liberal ,yoghurt knitting children of aquarius ,venting their spleens ,not exactly riding on the shoulders of giants ,but squatting in the feces of pygmies.
62
Kiribati has actually INCREASED in land are over the last 30 or so years.. and the sea level rise in minimal at most.
But don’t let these facts get in the way of a good myth. 🙂
As for arctic sea ice cover greater variations.. NOPE.
Biomarkers from Fram Strait clearly show that the Arctic was ice free in summer for a large percentage of the first 3/4 of the Holocene.
Your whole post so is full of brain-washed propaganda that I’ll let other rip the rest of it apart.
Arctic sea ice is strongly linked to the AMO, which was at a low in 1979, but has just started to turn down again. That is why the alarmista always like to start their trends in 1979, the downward leg of the natural Arctic sea ice cycle.
97
main issue with Kiribati is rising sea levels (which are only being observed in a few places at the moment – Torres Strait is another where higher tides have been significant). Obviously coastal erosion is an issue, as it would be after any significant weather event, but the flow-on effect of this has been the increasing salinity of the freshwater tables underlying the islands. I’m still in regular contact with friends in Kiribati and was fortunate enough (or unfortunate enough) to see these impacts first-hand in 2007. Whole areas of INLAND vegetation dead due to increased salinity of underground freshwater. Measured, quantified. Its a reality that the people there live with everyday. But its not just the quantitative data – talking with the older generation about the changes in fish migrations, turtle mating seasons etc (similar stories in Torres Strait) and you start to see things as they are from the perspective of the people living it. This has been their livelihood, and when the ‘laws of nature’ passed down through the generations (usually by song and dance) are disrupted to such a degree that the older folks are confused and in fear, its not really an option to tell them that their traditional history is wrong or a myth. We can debate about data til the cows come home – and so we should if it brings us closer to the truth – but listen carefully to what the elders have to say as well.
37
I give up Bryn
You seem to have a bad case of warmerism.
Kiribati, rampant sea level rise, CO2 on the increase etc.
Come on man.
Most of us have reasonable scientific background; this blog is not parliament; we know Global warming is a scam.
If Kiribati is sinking it has NOTHING whatsoever to do with anything I have done.
I’m not going to get a case of the guilts just because some poor Kiribatian has been led to believe that if he cries out “they did it” he will start rolling in compensation money.
Rubbish.
The TRUTH about sea levels is that since about the time of Jesus the oceans have DROPPED 1.2 metres.
If Island communities want to build heavy airstrips and new hotels and heavy roads all over; guess what.
Their fragile coral home will be overloaded and start to collapse.
That is their doing.
Greed sux.
KK
63
keith your alarmism and lack of knowledge is a concern. you obviously have no idea about the island communities being affected by recent observed changes and have no intention of finding out about them. Kiribati has 2 main roads, one for south tarawa, one for north tarawa. they have one hotel and a relatively low number of brick or block buildings. the highest building in the nation of 33 islands is 3 stories. the highest land point on south tarawa, where 60,000 people live, is 4m. I’ve stood on it, and they’re very lucky that no cyclone-induced storm surges have hit there yet. nobody has cars, taxi vans run up and down the main islands. ignorance may be bliss but its still ignorance. ^&*% you for insulting my friends and colleagues with this diatribe.
25
And you my special friend are a real scammer.
You have no real interest in the truth just in manipulating it and people and the tax money they produce.
All you are trying to do here is easily seen.
David and Jo have unleashed a dangerous bit of publicity which you have been sent to neutralise.
Appalling morals, hand-wringing and manipulation of the highest order..
KK
41
As I said to David earlier, I applaud his challenging of the maths. I’ll be delighted if it is found that CO2 is not the climate driver that it has so far been shown to be – how much easier that will make life – but that does not take away from the other aspects of its impacts, particularly with regards to the marine environment. Mate I’ve been sent by nobody to do anything, but when you make comments of a nasty personal nature, whether it be towards me or towards the people I care for who live the existence I’ve outlined, I wont cop that. You’ve done it a number of times now.
05
Bryn The Warmer
Says:
“main issue with Kiribati is rising sea levels”
Explain to me how 1 millimetre a year rise, if that is going to cause any problems on poor old Kiribati.
ps. I will not succumb to the strategy of un inspired emotional guilt.
The rest of tjhe world owes me far more that I owe it.
I am NOT a slave and not going to be.
as I said before, you are manipulative.
Not a very scientific approach at all .
KK
Note the lower case for united nations.
It has just been demoted.
41
Kiribati is NOT experiencing sea level rise,
http://www.marklynas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/tarawa-SLR1.jpg
The inland salinity is because they have pumped out the fresh water and let the sea water in.
Seriously..
FIND OUT THE FACTS BEFORE POSTING !!
Otherwise you will continue to look like a brain-washed fool.
71
And a more precise version
https://eyesonbrowne.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/kiribati-sea-level-2000-to-2012.jpg
21
And another
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/image27.png
21
Hint, child-mind..
The problem with Kiribati is a population density problems.
There are more people than the tiny set of islands can sustain.
But please, don’t let that fact get in the way of your empty alarmist AGW rhetoric. 😉
52
nobody said the islands were sinking or that the sea level rise is massive. betio has one of the highest density populations of anywhere in the world. but the rest of south tarawa and north tarawa are mostly small villages, shelters made from coconut palms and woven palm leaves etc. go and see. go and see the vegetation. drink from the bores that people have drunk from for hundreds of years. they cant drink from many of those now as a result of saltwater seepage into the aquifers. many people now await the daily truck run with bottled water to drink and to cook with. go see. go listen to the elders. if it wasn’t an issue the government wouldn’t be making plans for the re-location of its people in the medium to long term. andy you graphs support the observable evidence – its not a constant rise, its when the fluctuations are high the damage is done. same with torres strait. same with parts of Arnhem land. go see.
17
ScareMongers
“”nobody said the islands were sinking or that the sea level rise is massive.””
Yes you did.
You have used this type of come-back too much.
You are a blatant TROLL
whatever that means.
31
islands sinking? Atlantis maybe but not Kiribati. I said the sea level rise is significant, which it is in fluctuations, as shown in andy’s graphs, and shown in the increased salinity of aquifers there. go and see guys. go and see.
16
“go and see guys. go and see.”
Unlike you, the no doubt government sponsored bleeding heart, most of us here are too busy trying to survive the inane politics in our own land and can’t afford to go to sinking Kiribati.
If you go down , down , deep in the oceans you will find DEAD CORAL at various levels.
This poor coral was killed, not by man but by nature.
That’s what nature does.
73
Excellent argument KK. You won the battle with that comment. An unsupported slur, a distraction, an irrelevant comparison and then another. Finished it off with a glib irrelevance.
27
Gee Aye October 7, 2015 at 11:44 am
“Excellent argument KK. You won the battle with that comment. An unsupported slur, a distraction, an irrelevant comparison and then another. Finished it off with a glib irrelevance.”
KK is an apprentice that learns quickly, Gee Aye claims to be Master. What do you observe?
72
I observe that if you made a point I might make a comment.
27
Will
The only reason I am engaging with the likes of Bryn is because there may be many new people attracted to the site after last weeks publicity.
If they find some reasonable sounding person creating doubt about David they may be caught by the next post which contains basic lies.
Very good at being manipulative. See also Billy Connelley.
In the end it comes down to the man made CO2 which is in excess and the seas are gonna swamp us and so on.
They evoke false sympathy for people that we don’t know but who he claims to have an organic relationship with in Kiribati.
Eco Angels.
With their hands in your pockets.
Every donation is a winner for the Compassion Industry where the old 80:20 rule applies , if the targets of the donations are lucky.
80% goes to “admin”.
20% goes to the target of compassion.
KK
51
“donations are lucky.”.”
Hardly!
“80% goes to “admin”.”
Indeed!
“20% goes to the target of compassion.”
Hardly!
16% go to COPS!
4% go to PIMPS!
How whoa are we!
30
So, at least these new people wont be trapped to reading your second post.
Your “reasonable” sounding explanation of your recent posts does not excuse previous rude behavior.
07
KinkyKeith October 7, 2015 at 2:30 pm
“Will
The only reason I am engaging with the likes of Bryn is because there may be many new people attracted to the site after last weeks publicity.”
OK!
Your 80/20 = 4 or 1/4 is an exponential or power series! This never stops after once! This must be continued all the way down to zero. Or all the way up to infinity! We and they fastly remain on opposite sides of “one” or unity! GOD loves this, he owns the Casino! You think I are weird, I are gear with 10 PI teeth and lovin it! I often get upset with those (e) folk. My kitten is firmly on the side of GOD! Good Kitty! 😉
21
Will, RUOK?
13
Motive.
What better way to publicise your new book on climate justice and sustainability than to gain notoriety on the Jonova site.
No price yet.
20
Gee Aye
October 7, 2015 at 4:06 pm
“Will, RUOK
Indeed I are! How many teeth per circumference have you? Have you counted lately? Have you ever counted? Seems like a warmist fountain that continually spouts nonsence.
21
“Your “reasonable” sounding explanation of your recent posts does not excuse previous rude behavior.”
Why would anyone be un-rude to you? You seem to attract only vicious attack! 🙁
21
Bryn you must be an alien. Here’s the most damning evidence that destroys the notion that our industrially produced CO2 that ends up in the atmosphere has anything to do with warming the planet in any significant way.
Look at the CO2 Atmospheric Concentration data below:
1958 – 314.93
1959 – 314.8
1960 – 315.91
1961 – 316.79
1962 – 317.4
1963 – 317.77
1964 – 318.7
1965 – 318.81
1966 – 320.37
1967 – 320.92
1968 – 322.03
1969 – 323.67
1970 – 324.69
1971 – 325.46
1972 – 326.32
1973 – 329.31
1974 – 329.17
1975 – 329.88
1976 – 330.64
1977 – 332.53
1978 – 334.37
1979 – 335.56
1980 – 337.45
1981 – 338.49
1982 – 340.11
1983 – 342.25
1984 – 343.2
1985 – 344.85
1986 – 346.09
1987 – 347.84
1988 – 350.66
1989 – 351.53
1990 – 352.89
1991 – 353.89
1992 – 354.91
1993 – 355.46
1994 – 357.42
1995 – 359.11
1996 – 361.38
1997 – 362.2
1998 – 365.79
1999 – 366.86
2000 – 368.2
2001 – 369.63
2002 – 371.83
2003 – 374.31
2004 – 376.15
2005 – 378.73
2006 – 380.45
2007 – 382
2008 – 384.15
2009 – 385.92
2010 – 388.26
2011 – 390.19
2012 – 392.41
2013 – 395.15
2014 – 397.01
2015 – 398.82
Table data source: Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL
In the first 20 years the increase was about 19 parts per million. In the last 20 years to 2015 that increase is about 40 ppm. As the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now about 400 ppm and it was about 280 ppm at the start of the IR that 40 ppm is one third of all the increase, in over 200 years, and has occurred in the last 20 years.
Now uniformed alarmists like you and others here and including alarmist scientist would be expected to scratch their heads and say, “shit why is the end of the world not already upon us”?
Oh I forgot your religious (closest to Pagan) view of a fragile Earth Climate is not about observation or any sort of science. More about “By faith we believe Earth’s climate consists of all sorts of weather gods who have told us that that vital to all organic life on the planet CO2 is in fact a very wicked human produced pollutant when it is emitted to the atmosphere.”
Silly me I forgot to whom I was talking. So let me make it simple. In the last couple of decades the satellite temperature (don’t trust much of the land based stuff because it is rigged in accordance with the religion) data clearly indicates there has been no significant warming. Get it? No? Well that is the reason Dr. Evans is trying to find out where the alarmists predictive modeling has been so wrong these last almost 20 years.
Also you Bryn may from this little observation of CO2 v global temperature data be able to move on from the unadulterated bullshit you are spouting here about those poor Islanders sinking under the weight of our post IR CO2 emissions and move from a climate religion to genuine climate science.
10
LLew: Are you aware that satellites don’t actually measure temperatures?
The temperatures come from a model — rather complicated models. Models that require monthly adjustments for decaying satellites, instrument drift, and more.
Here’s a statement from the leader of one of the satellite groups, Carl Mears of RSS:
“Does this slow-down in the warming mean that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is no longer valid? The short answer is ‘no’. The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation. This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.
The truth is that there are lots of causes besides errors in the fundamental model physics that could lead to the model/observation discrepancy. I summarize a number of these possible causes below. Without convincing evidence of model physics flaws (and I haven’t seen any), I would say that the possible causes described below need to be investigated and ruled out before we can pin the blame on fundamental modelling errors.”
— Carl Mears, September 2014
http://www.remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures
15
bobl,
it’s not the main topic here, and I feel guilty sometimes moving in a different direction to the main Post.
However, I need to explain things so that the average person with no electrical training whatsoever can actually understand what it is about these favoured renewables that is so bad.
Tony.
60
Tis OK,
You do a great service and I have not found anything mathematically wrong with what you write, but lay people do need to come to terms with reliability as it relates to power supplies and how 25% part-time electricity with possible days at a time down time is not the same as the 8 hours downtime in a year electricity that they get delivered each day.
When you bring the renewables to grid equivalent reliability you get to the true economics of renewable energy which is 10 times worse than annualised figures would have you believe.
I think you make a mistake by not dimensioning the renewables on the same reliability basis as coal when you do comparisons, because any real full-time renewable system with no grid backup wouldn’t ever be designed based on annualised capacity. It is dimensioned based on reliability, IE. the probability of failure.
Your methods are correct only while renewables are supplimental, but the aim is to make renewables primary, so grid level reliability is the camparison basis that should be used.
60
Hi David,
If you are serious about having climate scientists take your point of view seriously, why have you decided to post your findings on a blog which has an obvious political agenda and not in a scientific journal? The media you have chosen will only serve to sensationalise your findings without actually having them come under proper scrutiny by scientific minds as qualified as yours. You have thrown your ideas out into the political domain before allowing a scientific debate to occur, and all you have done is given fuel to the fire of skeptics, who will now use your work to further their agenda without it actually having undergone any assessment, and without any backing to ever be used in climate science. If your motivation was to improve climate models, this is not the medium to do so, and as someone with the qualifications you have, you would know that. So why did you choose this medium, and this particular blog, for your announcements?
Mark
311
Mark, as discussed in post 1, the introduction,
This is a science blog as well as a political blog — just look through past topics. The science informs the politics, btw. Both Joanne and I used to be alarmists (I worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office, Joanne used to talk about anthropogenic global warming on the ABC).
Realistically, anything differing from the establishment “science” position is automatically political. Anything to do with climate is heavily politicized, due to the large amounts of power and money at stake.
I choose this blog because it’s my wife’s :). It’s also one of the biggest climate sites in the world.
252
Hi David,
I applaud your challenge to the foundation maths. A challenge is always good if it will help us find the truth. How do you propose we deal with the observed impacts of excess CO2 emissions (particularly with regards to oceanic acidity and its impacts on coral structures), and what will be the best way to prevent increased methane releases from permafrosts and hydrates (in areas where local average temperature increases are much larger than the global average)?
Cheers,
Bryn.
215
Hello Bryn
If you had some scientific training you would know that the divide point between acids and bases is 7.
The ocean is currently about 8.
It is a BASIC solution.
As far as I am aware nothing will change this and especially Man Made CO2 WILL NOT CHANGE IT.
Maybe there is a solution.
You and your mates could arrange to go to the mouth of every river in the world.
When you get there you need to stop, and I mean STOP all of the mud going into the ocean.
Once you have put all of this mud aside then your dream of an acidic ocean may come true. Maybe.
The mud contains lots of decomposed rocks containing Calcium.
The calcium normally combines with CO2 in the water to form solid CaCO3 which is the backbone (pardon the pun) of fish life in the oceans.
Without this mud the oceans WOULD BE acidic.
You and your mates could do this and help the politicians an United Nation by showing that the oceans had turned acidic.
A big job, I know, but I’m sure you can do it.
Good luck and god bless.
KK
103
http://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/show/Ocean+acidification
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCHovRBPBA0
don’t pull your patronising tone with me
219
“representing an increase of some 30% in “acidity” ”
roflmao… without stating that it then requires a further 1800% – 2000% change to even become non-alkaline.
its propaganda, Bryn !! A partial truth to catch people like you, well done 😉
The oceans can never become acidic, the enormous buffering from millions of years of calcite and carbonate deposits ensures that.
River are mostly slightly acidic to quite acidic (even around 5.5pH), and have been pouring into the oceans for millions and millions and millions of years, but the oceans remain stubbornly around pH8.
134
…….. not to mention the absolutely massive amount of limestone and basalt that surrounds and is in the ocean basins.
93
I never said they were acidic or would ever become acidic – sorry if I used the wrong words. what I was referring to was the trend – as CO2 absorption increases, pH level drops – by a minimal amount. that’s the PROCESS of ocean acidification. what i’m more interested in is the solutions to preventing increased methane releases from warming permafrosts. regardless of the source of warming the issue still exists. it was a question for the author.
311
Bryn
If you are really interested in knowing what can be done to stop the permafrost from melting then I am afraid all I can suggest is WAIT.
We are currently in one of the very well known orbital curiosities of our planet called the “inter-glacial period”.
That means: Between glaciers.
The reason it means between glaciers is that we have regularly had glaciers lasting about 20,000 years every 110,000 years or so.
The current “inter-glacial” is due to end soon.
This means that when it arrives the permafrost will stop melting and you will be OK.
Unfortunately people in Russia will NOT.
Two years ago some areas in Northern Russia suffered a devastating blow when 10,000 of their animals, part of their food reserve, were frozen to death.
Maybe we are already in the next deep freeze and can look forward to another 80,000 years of GLOBAL COOLING.
I’m sure you would be happy with that?
Don’t worry about the CO2 thing.
It’s all a big scam to get our tax money allocated tom politicians and the new elite like Julie Bish, Big Kev and Big Mal.
They certainly know how to control Global Warming.
Yeah.
Through the media.
KK
ps.
The very fact that there IS plant material under the permafrost means one very imporatnt thing.
It was hot many tens of thousand sof years ago, long before man started to produce large amounts of CO2.
Incidentally; our LARGE is considered to be a joke by mother nature.
She’s 24 times bigger but still has no control over climate.
She understands it’s THE SUN.
KK
112
Actually KK, we are currently on top of a rather small bump at the end of what is called the “Neoglaciation” which started about 3000 years ago.
The smallest bump in a series of 3 bumps (RWP and MWP were the first 2) in a long term cooling trend.
Hopefully we will stay somewhere near the top of that small bump for a while… but it looks like Sol may have other ideas.
104
Yeah Bryn, don’t worry about the CO2 thing,
There will be Plenty of CO2
CO2 India ! https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/indias-climate-plan-will-triple-emissions-by-2030/
CO2 Holland https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/netherlands-massively-increasing-their-coal-capacity/
CO2 Germany (continuing to grow their lignite burning)
CO2 Japan (43 new coal fired plants planned or being built)
CO2 Turkey…. http://www.euractiv.com/sections/energy/turkey-double-coal-capacity-four-years-314706
CO2 China (massive increase for at least another 15 years ,, with Obama approval, of course)
CO2 Indonesia (just over taken Australia in coal production in 2013)
CO2 Vietnam http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=22332
CO2 Kazakhstan http://www.inform.kz/eng/article/2787951
“”Kazakhstan is currently seventh in the world in terms of coal reserves. This means that there is enough coal to last us around 300 years at current rates of production,”
CO2 Global http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2014/december/global-coal-demand-to-reach-9-billion-tonnes-per-year-by-2019.html
and many others…. so….
PLENTY OF CO2 FOR ALL THE WORLD’S PLANT LIFE FOR MANY, MANY YEARS TO COME . 🙂
And assuming that you are in Australia.. be assured that recent measurements show that Australia is a NET CARBON SINK. 🙂
95
Andy
My wife has a sister in north America.
They do not look foreword to winter and have spent a lot of the past few winters looking out the windows at the piles of snow all over their area.
KK
71
KK,
I lived near Buffalo NY and also just north of Boston MA. I am very happy I escaped to south of the snow line years ago.
50
Hello Gai
We visited Falls Church Va 2 years ago and it was not cold then, thankfully.
No gum trees but squirrels and lots of new things to see and do.
As I said in another post we love NY City.
Has a good feel about it.
Saw The Jersey boys when we were there in 2009 or so.
KK
20
Hi Bryn,
What is the impact of CO2 enrichment of the oceans on phytoplankton – and the subsequent impact on oceanic food chains.
Given that phytoplankton consume CO2 during photosynthesis.
50
there’s several effects that have been observed – maybe research it. probably the key one of concern at this stage is the effect on zooplankton breeding and feeding. there’s been somewhat of a disruption to this observed in a number of ocean areas where zooplankton are feeding on phytoplankton earlier. phytoplankton breed and flourish in response to increasing sunlight as winter moves into spring – zooplankton have traditionally bred and fed in response to the warming of waters just after this period, giving phytoplankton time to establish sustainable populations. but with the warmer waters in some parts the zooplankton have started their feeding and breeding earlier, impacting upon the phytoplankton numbers. that’s in a nutshell – maybe have a look at it further. the impacts of acidification on algae with calcium carbonate structures is not a reality yet as far as i’m aware, even though studies would indicate that it may not be far off. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best 🙂
16
Bryn. Thanks for the considered answer.
00
OH WOW
The Teacher is irritated with us children because we will not be schooled by him.
And here is THE MONEY QUOTE
One might say that Bryn Devaney has a vested interest in keeping the CAGW grant train steaming ahead.
20
Thanks Bryn. The basic model doesn’t address ocean acidity, and it doesn’t include feedbacks for possible future methane releases from permafrost or hydrates.
120
Thank you David.
10
What warming permafrost?
The warmest temps in UAH NoPol were in 1980.
Its been cooling since 2005 and will continue to cool for at least a couple of decades now that the AMO has switched.
It was also much warmer in the Arctic in the first 3/4 of the Holocene….
….and look… no runaway methane warming.
The world COOLED instead.
We are actually only just above the coldest period in the last 10,000..
so…… Don’t PANIC !!
62
I’m out guys – pleasure debating with you. My sincerest hope is that we find a way to UTILISE the inevitable increases in CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants in developing economies/countries for the enhanced production of food and biofuels in hydroponic, possibly ‘vertical agriculture’ environments (ie. buildings, where water and nutrients can be used with maximal efficiency and where the impacts of pests, disease and severe weather events can be minimised). Plants have a wonderful capacity for utilising CO2 at levels far higher than what currently exists in the atmosphere, so long as they are provided with a similarly increased rate of key nutrients. Coal burned in oxygen-rich environments produces little pollution from by-products. Sequester those emissions for food and fuel production in hydroponic facilities and its a win-win. There’s never been a better time to implement new, sustainable technologies and infrastructure for developing economies to prosper. Its all about a dollar.
43
Best place to sequester CO2 is in the atmosphere where ALL plants can access it.
Any forced sequestration is generally a waste of time, energy, CO2 and money.
And yes, AGW is all about the dollar… straight to the UN and the banksters. !!
126
Oh dear, seems some weak and illiterate red thumbers don’t like the truth. 🙂
102
And if the extra CO2 does by some mythical process actually cause a small amount of warming… I have a distinct feeling we will need that warmth over the coming decades as the very quiet sun starts to take affect.
85
Bryn
It does sound as though you have a sensible appreciation of what most of us here would view as real sustainability.
Unfortunately your first post sent out warning signals of the usual topics hit by the Warmer Brigade who have no real understanding of what they are writing ( or more likely copying).
The emerging nations are in a bad place in terms of pollution since many of those in change just want the dollar at any cost and local pollution around industrial areas can be disgusting.
Pollution in Western economies is usually a function of corruption within government eg extension of operating period for Fukushima was the “cause” of that pollution and no doubt 3 mile Island and Chernobyl were the same. nuclear power is safe when the safeguards are rigorously applied.
KK
70
But please.
Don’t mention Carbon sequestration.
What an appallingly political, ridiculous conception.
KK
41
keith if we didn’t care we wouldn’t be on here debating.. I’ve learned a lot from this experience – never been on a blog before.. emerging nations re: pollution – true. developed/western nations – true. carbon sequestration…………..probably not the best term to use (sequestration)…”utilisation” might be a better term. sure we could let emissions go unabated but – even if increased CO2 doesn’t end up leading to adverse impacts on ecosystems – why not make best use of it in vertical agriculture settings, with maximal efficiency of water and nutrients, maximal protection from crop threats (obviously cant be applied to all crops), and maximal yield per unit. This would allow economies to develop, existing energy infrastructures to remain in place, easier access to urban markets, easier harvesting, lower energy use in production and transport, better biosecurity, etc etc etc. Maybe then we’ll be able to give some land back to nature..
03
I think also its a bit of a no-brainer that there are/will be effects from increased CO2 on ecosystems. When you remove half of the surface carbon cycle’s absorption capacity through land clearing and soil tillage etc over a few thousand years – and then in a very short period (geologically) throw hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere – carbon which hasn’t been a part of the surface cycle for 300-400 million years – then of course there is going to be extra stresses felt somewhere. One study I’ve seen from the Mediterranean showed that the rate of oceanic CO2 absorption had fallen by 50% in a 20-year period. A sign of short-term saturation? It could get worse or it could get better, who knows. We might not agree with things on here, and debate is a healthy and productive thing, but the commonality would appear to be caring. Even if we don’t agree at least it seems we’re fuelled by a similar passion.
24
Bryn
Agree with the first post.
All sound.
The second post starts off with some alarmist numbers which are just that, alarmist.
I don’t know what to think.
The Mediterranean will be OK wrt CO2. there is no need to worry. Studies show that natural sequestration takes out new CO2 within 7 years max.
The Meds big problem is that it is surrounded by the EEU which is heading for more financial and social disruption.
The dumping of poisonous waste in Asia and India and other emerging countries is a scandal that needs fixing.
KK
21
Byrn, just remember..
the very best way to provide CO2 for plant life is from fossilised vegetation.
There is a massive added benefit if you it can also provide cheap electricity.
40
The plants, LOVE CO2.
Don’t worry the residence time is only about 5 years for CO2 and if CO2 gets anywhere near a plant it is a lot less than that.
…I observed a 50 ppm drop within a tomato plant canopy just a few minutes after direct sunlight at dawn…
30
The observed variations in CO2 content of air in farm fields over 24 hours is amazing.
nature heh.
60
Yep, it sure is KK.
Those plants suck that CO2 down pretty darn quick.. until there is none available for use (around 200-250ppm).
Then they stop growing for the day.
When there is a breeze to replenish the CO2, they get a longer growing period each day.
51
I am relatively new here and just realized Ms. Nova was your wife.
Had I known that before, I would have been less critical in my posts and not risked getting banned from here.
That would explain why she is “riding shotgun” and taking shots at people who criticize you.
I think that behavior i slightly unbecoming (although romantic) — you should defend yourself.
I wonder how your theories will be received at places that are not safe havens.
My best guesses:
– You will be ignored. Just like satellite temperature data and real time Petenkofer chemical CO2 measurements are ignored.
– or You will be character attacked as a non-climate scientist who thinks he is smarter than thousands of climate modelers.
– or Your suggestions will be incorporated in the climate models and the predictions will be the same:
“Life on Earth will end as we know it unless everyone does what the environmentalists say without question”
Here’s what I think about models of processes far from fully understood:
Climate models are just personal opinions
It’s easy for climate modelers to produce whatever outcomes they want.
Models are not evidence.
Models are not data.
Model simulations / projections / predictions prove nothing.
Models are nothing more than the personal opinion of the modeler.
They are grossly simplified views of a reality not well understood.
Climate models are not real climate science.
Real climate science requires observations, data collection, measurements and experiments.
Real climate science studies, and tries to understand, the past and present climate — the future climate is unknown, and unknowable.
Playing computer games in air conditioned offices with models and predicting the future climate, is not science.
08
Just in case you haven’t noticed, Mark, this is a “scientific debate.” It probably qualifies more as being “peer-reviewed” than most “pal-reviewed” warmist papers. And in this matter there is no domain that is not primarily political (not that it’s different from any other human enterprise in that respect). Talk about agendas – the warmist agenda is the most pernicious of all. Whether or not David wants to improve climate models is moot, for before climate models can be of genuine value they must be properly understood as purely hypothetical instead of predictive, and political Positivism instead of rigorously scientific. Even beyond that, it must be understood that they are inherently incapable of delivering what they are claimed to provide in covert support for a political agenda. In case you haven’t figured all this out yet, please allow me to repeat: in the human enterprise, everything is political.
153
Hi Mark
If you have been a regular visitor to this site you would have seen numerous postings from Jo about the peer review system being totally broke. Also, the Climategate e-mails have shown the skulduggery that the Climsyndicate have gone to, to prevent sceptical scientists like David from publishing in main stream journals. Use the search button above. Happy reading.
113
Mark, as discussed in post 1, the introduction,
This is a science blog as well as a political blog — just look through past topics. The science informs the politics, btw. Both Joanne and I used to be alarmists (I worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office, Joanne used to talk about anthropogenic global warming on the ABC).
Realistically, anything differing from the establishment “science” position is automatically political. Anything to do with climate is heavily politicized, due to the large amounts of power and money at stake.
I choose this blog because it’s my wife’s. 🙂 It’s also one of the biggest climate sites in the world.
20
Thanks again for your work David. Most of the math that supports your arguments is over my head. But it did always seem to me that the exit routes for heat/radiation were either understated or misunderstood in the conventional models. This comes from no particular understanding of the details of the models, more as Jo said a sense that it was obvious the “infinite” cold of space must be able to draw more eat from the planet than was being accounted for. It always appeared to me that the default state of the planet must be closer to cooling. Thanks again for putting into a cogent argument what sort of seems obvious when you think about it. Your work is required because as usual, the claim cannot just be made, it must be argued.
64
Good comment.
All that stands between us and a temperature cold enough to wipe most life off the planet is
TOMORROWS SUN.
The biggest issue we face is how to keep hold of any energy we are lucky enough to get from space.
KK
31
And we might need to buy some chocolate to get us to the end of this series
KK
🙂
21
A LOT of chocolate plus several mugs of your favorite type of caffeine!
20
http://joannenova.com.au/about/donations/prefer-a-different-option/
00
Interesting how everyone, especially ClimAstrologists forget we are still in the middle of an ICE AGE.
30
Hi Gai
Maybe we have different standards.
My wife and I spent 9 fantastic days in the centre of New York back in about 2009.
Visited Central park.
I could not help imagining what it must have been like there when there was ice over the park to a depth of 1 mile ie about 1600 metres.
Of course that was 25,000 years ago but the same will happen again when the Sun and the Earth get into a similar orbital configuration.
Are we really in the middle of an ice age?
KK
20
“Are we really in the middle of an ice age?”
Yes we are. The Holocene is just a temporary warm spike within the Pleistocene Epoch. The Pleistocene is an ice age that began 2.6 million years ago. Because the Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice sheets all still exist we are considered to still be within an ice age.
This graph shows the last 2.6 million compared to the 2.4 before that. Note the freezing point line for Vostok.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/Five_Myr_Climate_Change_Rev.jpg
The Warmists are now trying to say that the Pleistocene Epoch ice age has ended and the Holocene Epoch has begun. They have to say this or the whole CAGW manta will look crazy against geologic time scales and graphs like the one above.
The problem is the Holocene is a rather cool interglacial and is cooling even more.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
Jo puts it all in perspective with some nice graps from David Lappi, a geologist from Alaska, here article The big picture: 65 million years of temperature swings
40
Hello gai
we are just looking at it from different perspectives..
I am thinking of the last 2 million years or so when man’s first progenitor appeared and we went through several 110,000 year cycles.
From your graphs the 65 million years of our history when everything went back to ground zero and we started again is too long to comprehend.
But yes, it means we are still in a cooler period, but as a scientist I think this is just a function of a continually cooling Earth.
I don’t think we will ever get back to what it was 65 mill years ago.
🙂
KK
30
Because the Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice sheets all still exist we are considered to still be within an ice age.
That is the definition…. Unless the Progressives decide to change it.
40
Smart people at Jo Nova: I’m a new reader and commenter. I’m doing a lot of catch up on everything. I was an EE (retired two years ago). To honest, I’m not very good at math (at least compared to people who are) and my knowledge of quantum mechanics is elemental (at best). Per my usual response to encountering stuff I just don’t understand is to ask people who I trust to explain stuff in terms I can understand. Please help me with the following:
Photons.
1. A photon is a “blip” of EM radiation that moves in straight line (ignoring curved space-time) at the speed of light.
2. The energy of a photon depends solely on the frequency of the “blip”
3. Photons are massless.
4. Photons don’t really have a location, or center of mass. The best you can say is that is at the point where the EM field is the strongest.
5. Photons have “momentum” but not in the way we usually think of it; that is mass x velocity. But a photon is moving and has energy – so a kind of “momentum”, just a different kind that you typically think of.
6. The frequency of the photon depends on what is emitting the photon.
7. The earth (water, rocks, roofs, streets, trees, grass, etc.) emit photons in the LW range.
8. There are other emitting phenomena (e.g. lightning bolts, lava flows, forest fires, etc.) that exist, but they are so small they can be ignored.
The interaction of photons and atmospheric gases.
1. Long wave and light wave radiation do not affect (gaseous) O2 or N2.
2. H20 and CO2 are affected by Long Wave photons – but only at certain frequencies.
3. H2O and CO2 are not affected by Light Wave photons.
4. The energy absorbed by a H20 or CO2 molecule will be manifest itself as “vibrational energy” or the instantaneous emission of a photon of a certain frequency.
5. The “vibrational energy” (kinetic energy) can be transferred to O2 and N2 via collision.
6. There is some threshold energy for the emission of a photon by O2 and N2. That is, an “excited molecule” and pick up kinetic energy from a collision to exceed its threshold.
50
?
00
??
Hmmm I do not know how to play poker ,anyone willing to teach me?
10
Is he waiting for a move?
00
Sure! If we are using your money! 1st law,
Do not bet, do not even ante up against your money!!! 😉
11
“6. There is some threshold energy for the emission of a photon by O2 and N2. That is, an “excited molecule” and pick up kinetic energy from a collision to exceed its threshold.”
Yes, About 5ev. Temperature for spontaneous thermal emission 4200 Kelvin. 🙂
01
“4. Photons don’t really have a location, or center of mass. The best you can say is that is at the point where the EM field is the strongest.”
This is much closer than most even dream about.
EMR flux always has zero proper time, so no location, except within some fourspace volume between an emitter and absorber!
“5. Photons have “momentum” but not in the way we usually think of it; that is mass x velocity. But a photon is moving and has energy – so a kind of “momentum”, just a different kind that you typically think of.”
Good question! With the USNavy’s new 50KW weapon, we may somehow measure the recoil from a 5 second shot! Will still be very iffy on what is what! How many liters of water to absorb the waste heat from that 8% efficient 250 kJ shot?
All the best! -will-
05
Ridiculous; physicists measure photon counts all the time, with instruments like this:
http://www.thorlabs.us/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=5255
69
David AppellOctober 7, 2015 at 11:13 am ·
“Ridiculous; physicists measure photon counts all the time, with instruments like this:
http://www.thorlabs.us/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=5255”
Stupid rotten apple!! Engineers often measure action event rate from EMR irradiation at particular intensities and frequencies. None of this confirms nor denies the possible existence of your elusive Snow Photon 😉
45
The existence of photons was proven by Einstein’s explanation of the observed photoelectric effect.
Meanwhile, light also has wavelike properties. Quantum physics 101.
58
“Einstein’s explanation of the observed photoelectric effect.”
Einstein never expressed anything in photons when he discovered the photoelectric effect. At that time the misused term ‘photon’ did not exist. Later Einstein himself denounced any use of the term! 🙁
34
“Einstein never expressed anything in photons when he discovered the photoelectric effect.”
From Einstein’s 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect:
“In accordance with the assumption to be considered here, the energy of a light ray spreading out from a point source is not continuously distributed over an increasing space, but consists of a finite number of energy quanta which are localized at points in space, which move without dividing, and which can only be produced and absorbed as complete units.”
http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys314/lectures/photoe/photoe.html
“At that time the misused term ‘photon’ did not exist. Later Einstein himself denounced any use of the term!”
Einstein used the term “light quanta” — “photon” came into use in 1926, according to the link above. Same thing.
Where did Einstein denounce this? He won a Nobel Prize for it.
66
(“At that time the misused term ‘photon’ did not exist. Later Einstein himself denounced any use of the term!”)
“Einstein used the term “light quanta” — “photon” came into use in 1926, according to the link above. Same thing.’
Only to someone like you. The quanta are but Planck units of action (h).
How many of these units in what spacetime interval were needed to achieve the electron emission from the metal nickel? What is it that you call “a” photon?
Are you claiming that a Planck unit is a photon? Einstien did not denounce the photoelectric effect, he denounced the use of the term ‘Photon’ for that effect.
23
There is no such thing as a “Planck unit.” There are photons, period.
You keep saying that Einstein denounced the word “photon.” You still haven’t shown that.
I’m really not interested in getting involved in a discussion with someone who thinks photons don’t exist. I prefer to be serious about science.
34
“There is no such thing as a “Planck unit.” There are photons, period.”
Really! The h in (hv) is Planck’s constant 6.62607004 × 10^-34 (m2 kg)/s.
One unit of “action” joule-second. It is the energy in one cycle of electromagnetic flux! Everone except a rotten apple knows this. In QED the photon is a conceptual gauge boson (a mediator of power transfer) they are not transmitted or received. They appear as needed! no other definition exists!
I also will not do any of what you demand!!! Do your own work!
33
“It is the energy in one cycle of electromagnetic flux!”
Completely wrong. The energy in electromagnetic radiation isn’t h, and it isn’t fixed, since it depends on the E and B fields.
“In QED the photon is a conceptual gauge boson (a mediator of power transfer) they are not transmitted or received.”
Completely wrong. Photons are a gauge boson, but they transfer energy (not “power”) and are represented by propagators. Photons are real and there isn’t the slightest doubt about that. Your eyeballs are receiving them right now.
Will, your understanding of physics is easily the worst on this forum. You’re also repeatedly rude and juvenile. I don’t see any point in engaging you further.
11
“2. H20 and CO2 are affected by Long Wave photons – but only at certain frequencies.
3. H2O and CO2 are not affected by Light Wave photons.”
Yes and No to both: See:
Number 6
34
Jo
Maybe some application to this series?
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2015/10/5/puffed-rice.html
10
Yes, Rice Bubbles’ rant is very strange (creepy)
10
William the Stoat is setting up a strawman. (The GCMs)
Simple Models of Climate Change has the key phrase: “…it was only around this time that satellite instruments began to measure with any precision the greenhouse effect feedback between surface temperature and water vapor…”
And the other key point used to make CO2 the ‘Control Knob’
“…By contrast CO2 lingers in the atmosphere for centuries. So the gas acts as a “control knob…” For Centuries? Several scientists (with peer-reviewed papers) show it is more like FIVE to SIXTEEN YEARS. OOPS!
………..
The article gives the history of the models. This is where I found the two key points:
43
I’ve never understood the argument that because water vapor has residence time of a few days it matters less then CO2 which stays for years(around 40 I think on average). Surely the “greenhouse effect” depends on the average concentration, not the residence time.
Also AFAIK the conjecture that increasing CO2 will increase water vapor is wrong by observation.
42
Because water vapor is, as they say, “a feedback, not a forcing.” Its atmospheric concentation only changes if the temperature of the atmosphere first changes. See the Clausius-Claperyon equation, which specifies how the saturation vapor pressure changes with temperature (it’s usually exponentially).
410
And so David, if WV concentration is only a feedback to temperature that means wind speeds don’t affect evaporation, and nor does the number of nucleation sites for clouds affect WV either.
Seems like a very simplistic “feedback diagram”.
94
No, it doesn’t. Any water vapor picked up by evaporation will be rained out somewhere else, assuming the atmosphere is at constant temperature. Even if it globally isn’t, it is locally, and that added moisture propagates through the atmosphere and will be rained out.
It’s a basic and broadly applicable thermodynamic fact: the saturation vapor pressure of a gas depends on its temperature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausius%E2%80%93Clapeyron_relation#Derivation_from_state_postulate
This is why water vapor is considered a feedback to manmade warming, and not a direct forcing (like CO2).
510
How much of the 2.8 cm average atmospheric column water is not water vapor? Why is this part of the atmosphere?
53
Jo
More notice
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/10/the-sound-of-se-495.html#comments
10
A suggestion for David:
Just a thought on the application of your corrected climate model.
Will you be releasing a ‘global climate model’ consisting of one cell for the whole world that we will all be able to run?
As I see it, it appears pointless to use a gridded model such as those selected to report for the IPCC outputs for this reason:
Unless the model used model is perfect, with perfect starting points, then the output is less than useless after a few days worth of run.
Why?
How can a GCM ‘predict’ the number, timing, strength of hurricanes, the results of these hurricanes (change in land use/devastation).
How can a GCM ‘predict’ the number, timing, duration of floods, droughts and the subsequent change in bio output due to devastation etc.
The only sensible use of a climate model (fixed and improved as much a possible) is to be run purely as a global average.
Similar to your previous ‘notch’ model.
All of these thousands of hours wasted running gridded models to no avail is shameful given the poor state of understanding atmospheric physics and the interactions that may exist.
I wish you both well.
SR.
PS: it would be really nice if it did not mandate the use of Microsoft products to run 🙂
00
Steve – The alternative model is a basic model, comparable to the conventional basic model in post 3. It is just a couple of equations. However, I’ve stuck it in a spreadsheet (Excel, but no programming) so people can play with it. It’s a 0-D model — treating the Earth as a single point, with a single, average, surface temperature.
In principle GCMs should one day be able to model climate details all over the planet, but they first have to get the architecture right and they have to get the true causes of climate change into the models — at the moment they don’t have either, which is why, even after being tuned to past data, they perform so badly.
74
David wrote: “Extra sunlight adds heat directly to the Earth’s surface, and maybe the climate models have correctly estimated the feedbacks from clouds and evaporation and what-not to surface warming. But it is obvious, in a way even a child could comprehend, that this is not the same as blocking outgoing radiation in the upper atmosphere, which is the effect of increasing CO2. Why would the Earth’s climate respond to this in an identical way? Why would we think that evaporation, humidity, winds and clouds would all change in the same direction and by the same magnitude, whether the warming occurred by adding heat to the ground or by blocking heat from escaping to space from the upper atmosphere.
Consensus climate scientists (including Jim Hansen) have confronted this issue and invented the concept of effective radiative forcing to deal with it. Traditional radiative forcing is measured for GHGs and aerosols in laboratory experiments (though the heterogeneity of aerosols creates problems). Effective radiative forcing is obtained from the change in OLR produced when amount of a single GHG or aerosol is changed in a model.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-8-5.html
In theory, AOGCMs should handle re-routing feedback correctly (as well as the more complicated feedbacks in this post that I haven’t mastered) correctly. The inputs for AOGCMs are the amounts of radiative forcing agents (including any change in incoming SWR), not their radiative forcing in (W/m2) determined by the Schwarzschild equation. When 2XCO2 has made the upper atmosphere warmer, the model knows how 2XCO2 will have altered radiative flux through wavelengths absorbed and not absorbed by CO2 and how those changes will impact flux through the water vapor pipe.
If problems exist, they occur when the S&H try to interpret model output in terms of Planck response and other feedbacks. There are lots of dubious steps in the methodology section of S&H(2006). Their work characterizes how models differ from each other in the relative importance of various feedbacks, but the overall climate feedback parameter is not the sum of the individual feedback parameters for temperature, water vapor, lapse rate albedo and clouds. The overall climate feedback parameter is an output of the model, the first four feedbacks are determined by S&H and cloud feedback is calculated by difference!
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/bjs0601.pdf
IMO: Models are imperfect because their parameterization is imperfect and their grid cell size is too large to represent important phenomena. Therefore they afford an overall climate feedback parameter that is wrong. Decomposing the overall climate feedback parameter into temperature, water vapor, cloud, lapse rate and albedo components isn’t conceptually problematic, but there is no reason to believe those feedbacks are quantitatively accurate.
[Frank: Effective radiative forcing reply at Comment 47.1. GCMs could retrofit feedbacks such as the rerouting feedbacks, but haven’t yet (this is a big topic ahead). Yes, S&H are grappling with several problems — I believe the alternative architecture ahead helps solve some of them. That’s Jo’s intro you quoted, not me. – David Evans]
00
I’ve never heard anyone claim that climate models are perfect.
In fact, the opposite. But they do seem to do a good job of reproducing broad features of climate — see Gavin Schmidt’s talk at TEDx-Vancouver.
Which parametrizations do you think are most problematic?
How would you improve them?
613
The Climate models are ALL too hot even when compared to highly adjusted temperature data. The IPCC is saying they have 95% confidence in the results of these models and the politicians in the UN are saying we are all going to DIE if we don’t fork over money and evasculate our civilization IMMEDIATELY!.
And now David, you finally let the cat out of the bag and say the Climate Models aren’t perfect?
Then why in heck are we going to radically transform western civilization?
42
> The Climate models are ALL too hot…
https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/642024749569298432/photo/1
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2015/07/gistemp-only-004c-behind-models.html
> even when compared to highly adjusted temperature data.
Adjustments are corrections for known biases. How would you prefer to correct for those biases?
> And now David, you finally let the cat out of the bag and say the Climate Models aren’t perfect?
The cat was never in the bag. No one thinks climate models are perfect, except people who don’t understand climate models.
> Then why in heck are we going to radically transform western civilization?
Climate models are never going to be perfect — and they can’t predict anyway, they can only project. So we will all have to make decisions about what to do in the fact of uncertainties. But we do that all the time.
411
David Appell October 9, 2015 at 2:04 am · Reply
“Adjustments are corrections for known biases. How would you prefer to correct for those biases?”
They are only applied because the results have no meaning! Flush everything, including folk!
“The cat was never in the bag. No one thinks climate models are perfect, except people who don’t understand climate models.”
like you do I suppose !
“Climate models are never going to be perfect — and they can’t predict anyway, they can only project. So we will all have to make decisions about what to do in the fact of uncertainties. But we do that all the time.”
Complete boondoggle! When will you support flushing everything! including all folk that support monster boondoggle GCMssssssss!
85
“They are only applied because the results have no meaning! Flush everything, including folk!”
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, and the rest of your comment doesn’t address my points.
It’s a serious question: temperature records have biases due to station changes, breakdowns, replacements, etc. To build a long-term temperature record, some way of handling these biases must be devised. Climatologists often use pairwise comparisons to homogenize the data. What method would others use, if they don’t like this one?
411
1. Actually LOOKING at the station data instead of using a computer program to find “breaks”
2. Actually LOOKING at how the temperature data was gathered and recorded instead of declaring observers idiots who can’t take a temperature reading or calibrate a thermometer.
3. Actually using rural temperature data instead of tossing it in the wastepaper basket so you can use city and airport data contaminated by UHI instead.
I have looked at Tobs and a lot of the other ‘reasons’ for ‘corrections’ to the temperature recorded and NONE stand up to scrutiny when investigated.
Here is just ONE EXAMPLE:
From the Ria Novosti agency,
The same thing was done to the Canadian temperature record and many others as shown in multiple blogs and primary source data.
Despite the ugly rumours put out by the warmists it is CRU and their buddies who are funded by the likes of BP, Shell Oil and Standard Oil money. Skeptics like Jo and David are working on a shoe string using their own money and whatever donations from other skeptics come their way. They and other skeptics are as close as you are going to come to honest scientists these days.
So please save me from the rant about skeptic blogs being tainted by ‘tobacco money’
41
Re #1: How do you think this is done without ACTUALLY LOOKING?
Re #2: How do you think this is done without ACTUALLY LOOKING?
Re #3: What is your evidence that rural temperature data is “instead of tossing it in the wastepaper basket?”
Who did this tossing? Name? Which station? When and where?
It is foolish to believe what the Ria Novosti agency wrote, without question, whoever they are. (You didn’t provide a link.) Lots of people say lots of things. What has the Hadley Center to say about this? Did you even ask them? Did anyone? Why not?
A temperature station network is a complicated thing. So cutting-and-pasting some news article (press release?) isn’t very convincing. It’s not a substitute for scientific analysis. There are scientists who spend their entire careers trying to get good, accurate results from the worldwide network. It is serious, tedious, and necessary work. I’d like to know what they say about this. I’d like the claim you pasted to be written up in a real, peer reviewed scientific paper, so everyone can look at it and everyone can examine the scientific evidence for and against the claim.
The question is, why are you willing to believe whatever you read someone on the Internet?
I mean, we all know everything posted to the Internet is the absolute and complete truth, right?
You need to up your standards.
49
The Russians said their data got tossed.
How about Canadian data? link
How about Bolivia
Jo Nova has plenty of examples for Australia.
People in New Zealand Sued (Look up the Goat ate my homework)
And in the USA close to 50% of the final USHCN data is made-up.
If I did to the data coming out of my lab what is done to the temperature data I would be fired AND in jail.
The clincher for me was having NOAA report temperatures several degrees above freezing and rain from a state of the art weather station near my home when I have several inches of snow and freezing temperatures that froze water solid enough to skate on. Seems NOAA & Co. are now to the point they are ‘adjusting’ the freezing point of water near sea level.
54
Do you have anything that isn’t from a blog, a state controlled news agency, or whoever is in favor with the current Russian strongman?
In other words, do you have any real science to offer? Something that cites the sources used, that explain their methodology, that has been reviewed by experts, that has appeared in the scientific literature where everyone can access it and it will be read and thoroughly vetted.
Because blog posts aren’t science. They discuss science (sometimes), they play around the edges of science, they make toy models of this or that, but they aren’t publishing science and they form no basis on which to make judgements about the scientific accuracy of, in this case, the accuracy of the global temperature network.
Actually I’ve heard a scientist say you only need 50-100 stations around the world to accurately track the global mean surface temperature, as long as you have their long-term records and correct for their known biases.
38
David, I didn’t realize the laws of physics wouldn’t be science if they had been discussed on a blog first. Lucky there were no blogs in those days.
82
Show me any blog post, ever, that has published a new law of physics.
Blog posts aren’t science. They lack the rigor and careful thinking that goes into real science, the attention to past work, the detailed studies necessary to confirm or refute the new finding.
Blogs are a great place to discuss science, play around with the data, and play with toy models. But real science isn’t done in a basement over the weekend using a spreadsheet. Anyone who has written and published scientific papers knows this.
[Do some research yourself – David has published before. And if you had taken the time to read all of this series carefully, you would have learnt that a “proper” sceintific paper is about to be published. David is using this medium to discuss science, and gather some informal feedback. It is called leveraging technology] Fly
37
Do you remember Richard Muller and his BEST project?
Why was it started?
Because he doubted the accuracy of the existing temperature record. He even had a Nobel Laureate on his team.
What did they find after all their work, including something like 40,000 stations?
The same results as everyone else.
What did Muller conclude?
It’s the CO2.
39
Muller may say he “doubted” the accuracy, but then he pretended to be a skeptic.
PS: Long before BEST, Muller “knew” CO2 was quote the greatest pollutant of human history. (2003)
Exactly which attribution studies did Muller do? Or are you mixing up his religious faith with his research?
75
How do you think this is done without ACTUALLY LOOKING?
Zeke Hausefeather point blank said they use a computer program to locate ‘breaks’ and assume those ‘breaks’ are cause by something they have to make’adjustments’ for. They do not actually go LOOK at the original hand written data plus notes because they are too darn LAZY!
61
The hand-written data was transcribed into digital form for analysis. It’s what scientists do.
27
Try finding that {Institue of Economic Analysis in Moscow}
Another of the random russians. Seems to have some relation to the Cato Institute
59
crap
Dec 8, 2009 – 1. Institute of Economic Analysis. How warming is made. The case of Russia. Author: N.A. Pivovarova. Editor: A.N. Illarionov. Moscow.
80
Excuse me, but that paper is seriously lacking in scholarly standards. It doesn’t even have a bibliography, or cite its sources of information.
And I always wonder why stuff like this never gets submitted to a real scholarly journal for review by experts. Can you answer that in this case?
Maybe you will believe anything and everything some “think tank” puts out. I will not.
412
The Institute of Economic Analysis was founded by Andrei Illarionov, the chief economic adviser of Putin (2000 to 2005) and Putin’s rep to the G-8. Not exactly a light weight like the talking head of the Sierra Club that Cruz demolished.
It is really sad when I have to read the Russian and Chinese papers to get the news isn’t it?
71
Aha:
“RIA Novosti (Russian: РИА Новости), sometimes shortly RIA (Russian: РИА) was Russia’s international news agency until 2013 and continues to be the name of a state-operated domestic Russian-language news agency.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIA_Novosti)
Because we all know of the undisputed truth and high quality journalism that comes from state-operated Russian agencies. Don’t we gai?
[Exactly right! like ABC and PBS] ED
412
A large part of western Siberia is from just one station (sorry, forgot its name). I looked it up and Berkely Earth couldn’t find a blatant increase in temperatures when it shifted to the airport 10 years ago but corrects for smaller discontinuities in earlier years.
30
David Appell October 9, 2015 at 11:22 am
“Excuse me, but that paper is seriously lacking in scholarly standards. It doesn’t even have a bibliography, or cite its sources of information.”
Just who pays any attention (GAS) of your disgraced “scholarly standards”?
“And I always wonder why stuff like this never gets submitted to a real scholarly journal for review by experts. Can you answer that in this case?”
Disgraced scholarly journal for review by disgraced experts. 30 years of total BS! Any learning worthwhile must now strictly avoid anything academic or scholarly! Your ‘journals’ only print “plagiarism with attribution”!
“Maybe you will believe anything and everything some “think tank” puts out. I will not.”
David believes only in his BS, the rest ‘try to understand somehow’!! The Russian ‘think tanks’ now express a true ability to think, the complete opposite of your disgraced academic or scholarly!
23
I guess from your post that you think they are twisted Will.
Well said.
KK
42
How about insane!
David is very correct in that an Earth model cannot take a partial derivative of anything with respect to average surface temperature! Such math is unlikely to converge ever. He is very incorrect in insistence that average surface temperature has some influence on either the atmosphere or the composite radiative exitance from atmosphere to space.
This may be done to avoid scorn, and destruction, by the very powerful. This is the SCAM.
This very active atmosphere with its water content in all 5 phases, does everything!! Atmospheric CO2 is no more an irritant to this atmosphere than are earthlings that do everything wrong!
Fixing things by earthling leaders is always much more wrong!
Time will tell. Ice ages seem to eliminate irritants! Bet on the roaches!! Please remember that GOD owns the Casino, hence never looses! GOD cannot be all knowledgeable, such is forbidden by GOD. Why not join in, with him and celebrate ‘what the hell next’! 😉
All the best! -will-
32
“He is very incorrect in insistence that average surface temperature has some influence on either the atmosphere or the composite radiative exitance from atmosphere to space.”
For this to be true, either
1) CO2 does not absorb infrared radiation, or
2) the Earth does not emit infared radiation.
Which of these two do you claim are true?
310
# 52 was supposed to be here!!!
[Will, at some point a comment was deleted that destroyed the nesting. I’ve fished out comments and restored it — though bizarrely I can’t figure which duplicate or other caused this problem. When this happens, please email support AT joannenova.com.au to reach myself and the mods. — Jo]
20
[snip about nesting]
00
[snip about nesting]
13
[Snip about nesting. Thanks for the feedback. The bug is a wordpress thing – Jo]
13
David AppellOctober 9, 2015 at 10:38 am
WJ: (“He is very incorrect in insistence that average surface temperature has some influence on either the atmosphere or the composite radiative exitance from atmosphere to space.”)
“For this to be true, either
1) CO2 does not absorb infrared radiation, or
2) the Earth does not emit infared radiation.
Which of these two do you claim are true?”
Actually if you would phrase them correctly both are true!
1) CO2 can absorb infrared radiation, but only when not at or above the temperature for radiative equilibrium.
In this atmosphere, do to a lower lapse rate all tropospheric temperatures are above such radiative equilibrium temperature, hence the atmosphere never can absorb any surface radiative exitance(in the sense of increasing temperature or sensible heat).
As Maxwell’s equations clearly state, the opposing atmospheric radiance does indeed strictly limit surface exitance as it always has. Increasing atmospheric CO2 Has not changed that whatsoever.
2) The Earth can and does not emit infared radiation, but only in the 8-13 micron band mostly to cloud bottoms. Even if Earth’s surface had no radiative exitance whatsoever, the atmosphere would quickly react to restore whatever equilibrium is required by some method not yet discovered by Clueless Climate Clowns (CCC).
10
2) The Earth can and does
notemit infared radiation, SORRY!10
Will J wrote:
“CO2 can absorb infrared radiation, but only when not at or above the temperature for radiative equilibrium.”
Present experimenal data proving this. You can’t.
01
I cant call you a man so here goes:
STRAWPERSON.
32
To continue what Arthur Smith said in # 27.6.4 when David Evans says
““The conventional model expresses the Stefan-Boltzmann law through the Planck feedback, which is the increase in OLR per unit of surface warming under the Planck conditions — namely that all else besides tropospheric temperature and OLR are held constant, […]
Let us instead explore the solar response and the Stefan-Boltzmann law without partial derivatives and the Planck conditions, […] The SBS applies to the Earth under all circumstances — unlike the Planck sensitivity, which is only applicable under the hypothetical Planck conditions.”
He makes a number of errors. The SB equation is the result of integrating the Planck Radiation Law over all wavelengths assuming uniform emissivity at all wavelengths. Given greenhouse gases, different emissivity of surface areas (snow/sea/desert) it obviously does not apply to the Earth under any circumstances. That means the emissivity is a complex function of wavelength, temperature pressure and what not. Since emission will vary as emissivity, they too will be functions of wavelength, temperature pressure and what not. GCMs do not make this error.
Simplified models shove all the details into an “average emissivity” for the purpose of rough approximation.
712
The usual FUD from Eli. Read post 8. The radiating temperature is defined as the temperature that would make the S-B equation true if the SB equation was applied to a solid surface emitting into space with the same OLR and (presumed) emissivity as the Earth and whose solid surface was isothermal (same temperature all over) at all times. It applies at all times. The SBS is the slope of the curve between radiating temperature and OLR.
This series of blog posts is about basic climate models, the application of “basic physics”. The importance of this is described in post 1, and the conventional basic climate model is fully described, as per the leading textbook and papers, in posts 2 and 3. Not talking about GCMs.
114
In other words, all of the averaging is shoved into the effective uniform emissivity.
Detailed line by line calculations calculate wavelength dependent emissivities and use this to integrate the total emission. GCMs approximate this by using vibrational band models to calculate the total emission to space.
For a really simplified model, you can either estimate an effective temperature at which the earth emits to space and calculate an average emissivity or assume an emissivity and calculate the temperature at which the earth emits getting 255 K.
What you
can’tshouldn’t do, well you do do it, is assume that the Earth radiates to space as a Plank black body. It clearly does not because of greenhouse gases, a non uniform albedo and more.For a picture shown SB curves and Earth emission mid latitude (MODTRAN results, close enough) together
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0HiXKAFhRJ4/SxsZggMXGsI/AAAAAAAABFI/xCtTfYo3nqA/s1600/10km.JPG
411
“Detailed line by line calculations calculate wavelength dependent emissivities and use this to integrate the total emission. GCMs approximate this by using vibrational band models to calculate the total emission to space.”
While the HiTran database can be used to simulate radiative exitance to space!
Including the large CO2 notch indicating emission from the tropopause in that band that your jpg shows. That emission spectra will not change whatsoever as atmospheric CO2 changes from 100 to 800 ppmv! Try it yourself. That same database cannot be used in any way to determine any atmospheric absorption of surface radiative exitance! This also has been demonstrated!
72
“That emission spectra will not change whatsoever as atmospheric CO2 changes from 100 to 800 ppmv!”
Such change has already been observed:
“Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997,” J.E. Harries et al, Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001).
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
“Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present,” J.A. Griggs et al, Proc SPIE 164, 5543 (2004). http://spiedigitallibrary.org/proceedings/resource/2/psisdg/5543/1/164_1
though not, of course, from 100-800 ppmv, since the atmosphere has only changed from 280-400 ppmv.
310
because in a line by line calculation the temperature of the surface the water vapor concentration profile and many other things are fixed parameters. Of course in a gcm and reality these are emergent properties
410
More FUD Eli. Read the last reply: the radiating temperature is defined that way.
You haven’t been reading these posts have you Eli? We’ve been talking about GHGs and albedo, and given links to emissions spectra. Why you think we are assuming Planck blackbody radiation, when plainly we are not?
111
David,
You are swamped by BS. Please pass on to others that are eager to handle such BS. I can do the electromagnetic! Konrad can well do the hydrodynamic, Pointman and Cheifio can do the social/political! The economics/economical truly needs one that can speak from both sides of mouth continually!
All the best! -will-
107
The radiating temperature is DEFINED that way because the emissivity is taken to be CONSTANT with respect to surface temperature and atmospheric composition. However, as Eli discusses above, this is both a convenient parameterization and a fiction.
In the usual kindergarden (you do have your certificate of graduation, do you not David?) calculation of the radiating temperature the emissivity is taken as the SB constant times (1-albedo). However, as a simple example, if snow/ice cover decreases, as it is doing, then the average albedo will decrease, and the average radiating temperature will increase. This is because the amount of radiation into the system will have to increase which means that the total emission at equilibrium will also have to increase to maintain balance.
Changing the composition of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will change the average emissivity, again, as discussed above. These simplified models are well described and caveated in atmospheric science texts and notes. You are simply tilting at your own strawmen
57
Eli Rabett: Emissivity roughly constant; see discussion with Arthur at Comment 28.6.4.1.2 (where you might learn how grown-ups discuss science, Eli.)
60
David, Arthur was talking about an AVERAGED emissivity. Eli is talking about the ACTUAL emissivity which varies with frequency/wavelength for everything except Blackbodies. In the case of the atmosphere, the emissivity is a function of composition, pressure and temperature.
You are pretending that the emission spectrum of everything follows the SB curve. It does not. In honor of the late Geoffrey Howe, Eli will not further describe the weakness of your ill tempered reposts.
33
Nonsense Eli. Read the discussion. No one here is pretending the “emission spectrum follows the SB curve”.
10
Then emissivity is not a constant, because it is only defined via the SB equation
21
As discussed with Arthur Smith, above at 28.6.4.1.2.
10
Eli Rabett October 14, 2015 at 3:15 am
“Then emissivity is not a constant, because it is only defined via the SB equation”
The S-B equation only has an emissivity term to remind others that there is no such thing as a black-body surface, let alone two of them, at different temperatures. The conceptual S-B equation can only be used as a theoretical maximum of thermal radiant flux in the single direction of lower temperature. Never falsified, never even challenged, always successfully measured!
David Evans October 13, 2015 at 12:47 pm
“Nonsense Eli. Read the discussion. No one here is pretending the “emission spectrum follows the SB curve”.”
Good God David,
You be more patient than mommy, who would not put up with stupid kids, else I would have many more siblings!
Planck’s function had, at that time, ‘specific intensity’ a function of frequency, now known as ‘spectral radiance’ a function of frequency.
Such is only an upper limit of spectral flux. Never any actual flux, which is always limited by everything else.
This has nothing to do with the S-B equation that has no ‘curve’ whatsoever. Perhaps Joanne keeps you sane!
All the best! -will-
11
Sensitivities are defined with respect to inputs, not outputs.
In the zero-dimensional model
S(1-albedo)/4 = epsilon*sigma*T^4
the input is S, the solar irradiance, not the variable you called “R” in your previous post. R doesn’t vary — it is completely determined by T, given the material (viz. the emissivity) — that’s what blackbody radiation is all about.
What’s of interest is the climate sensitivity to changes in solar irradiance, dT/dS, which = T/4S for constant albedo and emissivity. And that’s quite small: 0.05 K/W/m2 for S measured at the TOA.
412
Pretty irrelevant David A. R is the OLR, and it does vary. See the model fully described, as per the leading textbook and papers, in posts 2 and 3. Be careful with your T: if its not the radiating temperature, you might not be applying the SB equation correctly, given the radiating surfaces involved (see post 8).
104
R does not vary, David. It is completely determined by temperature, given emissivity, in this little tiny toy model.
For some reason you continue to try to denigrate models based on baby toy models that everyone knows are simplifications designed simply to demonstrate a simple point about the SB Law.
It’s time to turn to page 2 of Chapter 1, David.
27
David A: You might need to read some of the prior posts carefully, to come up to speed in this conversation.
The OLR R varies when ASR A increases: more ASR results in more OLR.
50
Wrong still, David.
Given an emissivity, R is completely determined by T.
There is no “sensitivity” dT/dR. R can’t vary unless T varies, and then the amount by which is varies is strictly determined. Sensitivities are with respect to inputs, like solar radiation or CO2 concentration, not outputs. There isn’t the slightest thing interesting or useful about dT/dR.
Come on, this is Physics 101.
39
David A: Read the prior posts perhaps?
The ASR A determines the OLR R which determines the radiating temperature TR (assuming the emissivity parameter in the SB equation is relatively constant) which is linked to the surface temperature as above in fig. 2. The SB sensitivity tells you roughly how much the radiating temperature rises with increased OLR, and the radiating temperature and surface temperature are linked as shown in fig 2.
71
David E: TR is completely determined by R. R is completely determined by TR.
One cannot vary without the other varying.
They are completely equivalent parameters. You can describe the physics in terms of either, and that physics will be utterly equivalent.
Neither can vary independently of the other.
Thus talking about their “sensitivity” makes no sense whatsoever.
Sensitivities are with respect to parameters that can change independently, like solar insolation or CO2 atmospheric content.
04
See fig 2 above. The SB sensitivity converts the change in OLR to a temperature that reflects a bunch of temperatures in the atmosphere, so now it is in the ballpark. From there, one requires feedbacks etc to estimate its effect on surface temperature.
The conventional approach is to use the Planck sensitivity, which involves the unrealistic and artificial Planck conditions on top of Stefan-Boltzmann (the Planck sensitivity is mainly just the SB sensitivity plus an allowance for the fact that emissions from ozone and CO2 are mainly from the stratosphere, which is held at a constant temperature in the Planck conditions). So skip the Planck conditions altogether.
20
“The SB sensitivity converts the change in OLR to a temperature….”
Exactly — CONVERTS.
R and TR are isomorphic. One cannot vary independenttly of the other.
Perhaps you are finally starting to understand this.
There is no “ballpark.” There is simply a proportionality constant between R and T^4.
It makes zero sense to talk about the “sensitivity” of R to TR, anymore than it makes sense to talk of the “sensitivity” of y to x when y=2x^2.
Because x and y cannot vary independently.
03
David Appell October 12, 2015 at 10:16 am
(“The SB sensitivity converts the change in OLR to a temperature….”)
“Exactly — CONVERTS. R and TR are isomorphic. One cannot vary independently of the other.
Rotten Apple again opens mouth inserts foot, and sketches what appears in toilet, with no understanding!! 🙁
21
David Appell October 9, 2015 at 2:59 am · Reply
“Sensitivities are defined with respect to inputs, not outputs.
In the zero-dimensional model
S(1-albedo)/4 = epsilon*sigma*T^4
the input is S, the solar irradiance, not the variable you called “R” in your previous post. R doesn’t vary — it is completely determined by T, given the material (viz. the emissivity) — that’s what blackbody radiation is all about.”
Your S the solar irrational irradiance, has absolutely nothing to do with atmospheric absorbed insolation power about this Earth and its atmosphere. Nor does it have anything to do with the temperature of the Sun. Nothing is ever determined by some T temperature. Thermometric temperature is but the expression of particular mass expansion due to accumulation of thermal power by that mass. It can be nothing else. it can be never be an input to any physical process. Temperature can only be a result, never a cause! So much for vast intentional deliberate fffiraud! Grin Joanne 😉
All the best! -will-
What’s of interest is the climate sensitivity to changes in solar irradiance, dT/dS, which = T/4S for constant albedo and emissivity. And that’s quite small: 0.05 K/W/m2 for S measured at the TOA.
63
The Sun is a blackbody. Its irradiance is specified by the temperature of its emitting layer. Physics 101.
110
“The Sun is a blackbody. Its irradiance is specified by the temperature of its emitting layer. Physics 101.”
The Sun like the Earth has no one emitting layer! It is nowhere near a black-body, having a Planck emission (radiance) spectrum. The Sun has a corrected radiant emissivity of 0.63, just like that of the Earth. The Sun’s photosphere has an effective (corrected to that of a black-body) radiant temperature of 5,777 Kelvin. This was only done ‘only’ so that Solar intensity and radiance is independent of distance from the Sun! David, has your Mother never allowed you to go to school?
22
Having a Planck emission spectrum means the Sun is a blackbody.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#/media/File:Solar_spectrum_en.svg
Like all blackbodies, the Sun absorbs all radiation incident upon it. Its Planck radation comes from the photosphere, which has a temperature of 5777 K.
05
Report this
David Appell October 12, 2015 at 9:46 am
The rotten apple says: “Having a Planck emission spectrum means the Sun is a blackbody.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#/media/File:Solar_spectrum_en.svg
After displaying someones chart that does not have a blackbody spectrum H prattles:
Like all blackbodies, the Sun absorbs all radiation incident upon it. Its Planck radiation comes from the photosphere, which has a temperature of 5777 K.
Just what do you think is radiating upon it?
It is most difficult to comments on that copied from Davids Scriptures!
12
“Just what do you think is radiating upon it?”
Irrelevant. A blackbody absorbs all radiation incident upon it. The source of that radiation is irrelevant.
11
even if the increased CO2 emissions levels/rate have nothing to do with recent climatic changes, there is still the issue of the impacts on marine organisms and ecosystems. the answer is relatively simple – capture and utilise emissions for enhanced food and fuel production in hydroponic environments. that way we can still allow economies to develop and not have to re-invent the wheel with regards to electricity production, distribution and use. coal has a big part to play in our energy future but the risks for marine ecosystems are too high to let emissions continue unabated. the challenge will be in finding the capital investment necessary to get these new/modified systems operating.
110
Corals etc are animals that are perfectly capable of controlling their own pH.
They are NOT brainless twits like most alarmist followers.
51
all this alarmist stuff…..I don’t get it….cautious perhaps, based on research etc…plenty of studies done objectively showing similar trends..and based on care as well…as concerned people are about any potential hazard. sure there’s other stuff out there that’s subjective, on both sides of the fence – only gotta see who funds them to know what the angle is… man you guys jump like a jack in the box any time your ideas/beliefs are questioned or not agreed with. and all this resorting to nasty, twitchy, bitchy nonsense…yet you call others alarmists….good on David for challenging the maths…if Einstein didn’t challenge Newton we would never have the technologies and the knowledge of the universe we have today.
18
AndyG55 wrote:
“Corals etc are animals that are perfectly capable of controlling their own pH.
They are NOT brainless twits like most alarmist followers.”
Corals are stressed by warm water. Shelled organisms are threatened by acidification.
“Caribbean Coral Die-Off Could Be Worst Ever,” Eli Kintisch, Science 10/14/10
http://news.sciencemag.org/2010/10/caribbean-coral-die-could-be-worst-ever
114
corals are animals yes – coral rocks are the CaCO3 structures/skeletons left behind from previous generations of corals as they die – so obviously it takes a long time for those coral rocks and reefs to build-up. In an earlier post I left a link to a study from Norway which shows the impacts of ocean acidification on the CaCO3 structures of a species phytoplankton. Might be worth a look. As for the bleaching event in the Caribbean in 2010, I refer you to this interview with the Director of the GCRMN around that time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCHovRBPBA0
27
Andy I do believe that corals have more brains than alrmist twits.
The two on here are classic examples of the new “apparently reasonable’ infiltrator trying to put down real science.
KK
21
“The planet’s coral reefs are experiencing a mass global bleaching, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Thursday. The bleaching, only the third event of its type in recorded history, is another troubling sign of the damaging effects of climate change on the planet’s health.”
— Huffington Post, 10/8/2015
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/coral-bleaching-climate-change_561568d9e4b021e856d33d0f
114
Hmm, I wonder what caused the other two events of its type in recorded history? It couldn’t have been caused by the effects of climate change on the plant’s health, because climate change didn’t exist in those previous times. So the simplest explaination is that this third event would have been caused by the same phenomena as the first two. But, of course, that does not suit the alarmist narrative.
David Appell’s lack of rational, logical thinking, is truly amazing.
10
Nietzsche: “Every true faith is infallible. It performs what the believing person hopes to find in it – but it does not offer the least in support of an objective truth. If you want to achieve peace of mind and happiness, have faith. If you want to be a disciple of truth, then search.” Don’t worry, I wont be ‘infiltrating’ anymore. All the best.
17
David: In this post, you complain that all forcing is treated equivalently. Climate science has dealt with this issue by creating the concept of “effective radiative forcing”. AR5 Box 8.1 says:
“The two most commonly used measures of radiative forcing in this chapter are the radiative forcing (RF) and the effective radiative forcing (ERF). RF is defined, as it was in AR4, as the change in net downward radiative flux at the tropopause after allowing for strato- spheric temperatures to readjust to radiative equilibrium, while holding surface and tropospheric temperatures and state variables such as water vapor and cloud cover fixed at the unperturbed values.
ERF is the change in net TOA downward radiative flux after allowing for atmospheric temperatures, water vapour and clouds to adjust, but with surface temperature or a portion of surface conditions unchanged. Although there are multiple methods to calculate ERF, we take ERF to mean the method in which sea surface temperatures and sea ice cover are fixed at climatological values unless otherwise specified. Land surface properties (temperature, snow and ice cover and vegetation) are allowed to adjust in this method. Hence ERF includes both the effects of the forcing agent itself and the rapid adjustments to that agent (as does RF, though stratospheric tem- perature is the only adjustment for the latter). In the case of aerosols, the rapid adjustments of clouds encompass effects that have been referred to as indirect or semi-direct forcings (see Figure 7.3 and Section 7.5), with some of these same cloud responses also taking place for other forcing agents (see Section 7.2). Calculation of ERF requires longer simulations with more complex models than calculation of RF, but the inclusion of the additional rapid adjustments makes ERF a better indicator of the eventual global mean tem- perature response, especially for aerosols. When forcing is attributed to emissions or used for calculation of emission metrics, additional responses including atmospheric chemistry and the carbon cycle are also included in both RF and ERF (see Section 8.1.2). The general term forcing is used to refer to both RF and ERF.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf
Figure 8.1 is summarizes the degrees of sophistication with which various forms of radiative forcing can be calculated. However, they and you should wonder what is accomplished by adding all of this sophistication to the forcing-feedback paradigm. Projections from climate models are don’t NEED to be explained in terms of forcing and feedback – forcing and feedback merely provide an explanation for the results. ECS and TCR are the output parameters we really need to know. It doesn’t make any difference if they are high due to strong cloud albedo feedback or low due compensating SWR and LWR cloud feedbacks. The reality of re-routing feedback is of little important, since AOGCMs can reproduce this phenomena and account for it in their output.
For me, the key questions are: 1) whether the AOGCMs are appropriately parameterized, 2) whether confidence ranges include uncertainty in parameterization (they never do) and 3) whether current grid cell size seriously limits performance. Understanding model output in terms of forcing and feedback – especially by using model output to do the analysis – adds little value. Analysis of a bad AOGCM will provide bad values for feedbacks. GIGO.
Thanks for all of your responses. Respectfully, Frank
00
Frank: The most relevant form of forcing to the basic models seems to be the “instantaneous radiative forcing”, as flagged back in post 3 (quoting, like you, from AR5 section 8.1.1.1). So no stratospheric or tropospheric readjustments, as in ERF.
Again, we are a little off topic straying into GCMs, but as the Hansen quote indicates, to first order the forcings from increasing CO2 has the same effect in a GCM as extra sunlight – doubling CO2 has pretty much the same effect as an extra 2% of ASR. A forcing is a forcing, basically. Yes the GCMs treat extra radiation a little differently because of interaction with ozone and some CO2 bands as it comes in as SW. The ERF adjustments are minor: the sameness we are talking about is first order.
This post argues that that extra sunlight and increasing CO2 are fundamentally different – for example, the former increases OLR while the latter does not (excepting minor effects of surface albedo feedbacks). They should be treated quite differently, not merely as two instances of a generic radiative imbalance that needs to be remedied, plus a few minor adjustments on the side.
I am arguing that the architecture is wrong – that appropriately parameterization and adding specific feedbacks such as a rerouting feedback are insufficient to fix them. This argument will become more fully developed as the alternative model is built up.
100
David Evans wrote:
“….to first order the forcings from increasing CO2 has the same effect in a GCM as extra sunlight – doubling CO2 has pretty much the same effect as an extra 2% of ASR.”
That is totally wrong.
It baffles me how you think you can write about climate models when you don’t know the first thing about them.
Have you ever looked at a mathematical description of a model?
Have you ever read a textbook?
CO2’s forcing is absolutely NOT treated as short-wave radiation. If you don’t understand that you really don’t understand the first thing about climate models.
The radiation physics of the atmosphere is described by the two-stream equations. They are derived from applying conservation of energy to the radiational properties of an atmosphere.
Solar radiation is not, because almost none of it absorbed by the atmosphere.
Infrared radiation, however, is very much absorbed by the atmosphere. The atmosphere also radiates infrared radiation. The two-stream equations describe this absorption and emission process at each vertical point in the atmosphere. Solving these equations is the essence of a climate model.
David, you are seriously wrong here, and out of your league here. Your comments show you don’t know the first thing about how climate models work, and about how the physics of GHGs are treated.
Seriously: have you ever read a textbook about climate science? And/or a description of a model’s physics? You badly need to.
28
David A: So what was Hansen going on about in the quote and paper above? Maybe take it up with him…
Why is the concept of “forcing” useful? (If the same forcing didn’t results in approximately the same surface warming, why bother with the notion?)
This has come up in blogworld a few times before; usually surprises some people.
Seriously, go and check it out David A.
Notice that in the conventional basic model the responses to extra ASR and extra CO2 are precisely the same. Since you are apparently revolted by this silly notion, perhaps, when you find out that GCMs do roughly the same thing, you will agree that there is an architectural problem with the GCMs?
72
David Evans wrote:
“David A: So what was Hansen going on about in the quote and paper above? Maybe take it up with him…”
David: You are talking about a paper that is over 30 years old.
Do you realize how antiquated that is?
It’s like talking about the Bohr model of the atom (1913) far after quantum mechanics was developed, after Heisenbert, after the Schrodinger equation, after spin, after the Dirac equation, and at the time of the construction of the atomic bomb, shortly before the development of quantum electrodynamics.
Why are you stuck in the past instead of looking at contemporary science?
15
“Antiquated”? James Hansen is over 70 years old. But this is physics, which does not date. And remember, the science is settled.
Seriously though, where this has come up in blogworld before, bloggers have run off to some practicing climate scientists who inform them that, basically, to first order, any forcing causes a similar response in the GCMs. This series is about the basic models, so for now I’ll let you do it.
Notice how in all modern climate literature the focus is on how much forcing an influence on climate has? If forcings didn’t have much the same effect, regardless of source, they wouldn’t do that, would they?
40
Wrong David. Physics is not mathematics.
You are arguing that Los Alamos physicists should have used the Bohr model of the atom. That’s just comical.
Your error is elementary: you think that because Model A, developed 31 years ago, gives something like the same result as Model B, developed yesterday, Model A is equivalent to Model B and deserves the same status.
That’s wrong, for the same reason that Oppenheimer’s boys didn’t give the Bohr model the same status to the latest theories they used on nuclear physics.
Time and time again you show a weak intuition for the physics. So your attempts at purely mathematical reasoning, like the drivel on partial derivatives, look clunky and awkward to anyone with physics training, who DO know the physics.
Want some credence? Disprove TODAY’s climate science, not the approximations made 31 years ago for the sake of calculational expediency (see: Moore’s Law).
And you even get Hansen’s 1984 paper wrong, as I’ve already shown here with earlier comments.
15
David Evans wrote:
“Seriously though, where this has come up in blogworld before, bloggers have run off to some practicing climate scientists who inform them that, basically, to first order, any forcing causes a similar response.”
I couldn’t care less what bloggers say — they aren’t doing science.
Hansen’s own 1984 paper, which you’ve cited here, says he’s not treating CO2 as sunlight. Are you going to believe Hansen, or the blogger boys?
05
David A: You say of me: “You are arguing that Los Alamos physicists should have used the Bohr model of the atom.” I didn’t even mention them.
Go on, find out for yourself about GCMs. Stop the bluster and go and find out.
50
David A: What is about you and straw men?
You say “Hansen’s own 1984 paper, which you’ve cited here, says he’s not treating CO2 as sunlight.”
I never said they were identical, only (as you quoted in Comment 47.1.1): “….to first order the forcings from increasing CO2 has the same effect in a GCM as extra sunlight – doubling CO2 has pretty much the same effect as an extra 2% of ASR.”
40
I have been “finding out” for myself, David Evans, and I’ve been quoting what I’m finding, which you choose to ignore.
You are essentially saying that Los Alamos physicists should have used the Bohr model for their research, because it gives the same ground state for the hydrogen atom — kinda, sort of — as quantum electrodynamics.
I don’t even see evidence that you know enough physics to understand what this means.
04
So David Appell,
Your strategy, in response to new ideas, is to cling firmly to the older science, that is being questioned, put your fingers in your ears, and scream “Nah nah nah, I can’t hear you!” That is hardly the rational act of a real scientist, is it?
Back in the day, when I used to be bothered with such things, the “standard” process, was to assume that all new ideas had some validity, and then explore how those ideas might change the existing “standard model”. In doing that, we sometimes found that the new ideas were valid, in some circumstances. More often we found real flaws in the new ideas, which sometimes led to further ideas, and sometimes not. That is how science progressed.
Just arguing from a concensus model, and refusing to accept any possibility of variance, is not science at all. It is politics, and that is what you are indulging in, when you rely on an appeal to authority.
I doubt that you even understand what David Evans is talking about, except that, in your mind, he is committing a grave heresy against the standard dogma.
10
Dissecting 31 year old cliimate science would be like the Los Alamos physicists saying, of course we can’t build a nuclear bomb — Bohr says the nucleus is just a point electric charge.
15
The age of a scientific principle is immaterial to its validity and worth.
10
David Evans wrote:
“Notice that in the conventional basic model the responses to extra ASR and extra CO2 are precisely the same.”
David, you have no read Hansen’s paper carefully.
Because he, in fact, says the exact opposite of what you claim.
Look at page 134 of the paper you’re writing about, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1984/1984_Hansen_etal_1.pdf
“The global mean heat flux into the planetary surface and surface air temperature are shown in Fig. 3 for the So and CO2 experiments.”
Look at Figure 3. It clearly shows that the heat fluxes into the surface for the Sun and for CO2 are *NOT* the same.
You are wrong.
There are many other statements in the paper that make this clear as well. But this part of the paper clearly shows the difference.
After all, they are using a THREE-dimensional model. That’s because the atmosphere’s response to CO2 is NOT the same as for solar irradiation — in particular, the stratosphere cools with greenhouse warming, which it does not do with solar warming.
You are wrong, David Evans.
25
You seem to be confused David A.. The “conventional basic (climate) model” is recited in posts 2 and 3, and its relevance is discussed in post 1. It is the model being dissected in the post above. In this post it was proved that its response to extra ASR and extra CO2 are precisely the same. You disagree with any of that?
But then you then start talking about Hansen’s computer model in his 1984 paper. Ok then, switching topics. Yes, Fig 3 of Hansen’s paper — shows the response to an 2% of extra ASR (“+2% S0”) and “Doubled CO2” are roughly the same in his computer models — “when the computer was hit by a cosmic ray or some other disturbance which caused improper numbers to be stored i the ground temperature array”. Not exactly the same, of course, but the same to first order. This is your evidence? You’ll have to do better than that.
“Many other statements”…”as well”? Impressive, but as Joanne quoted from the abstract, which I suppose would sum up the general thrust of this seminal and oft quoted paper by one of the giants of climate modeling, “Our 3-D global climate model yields a warming of 4°C for either a 2 percent increase of [total solar irradiance] or doubled C02.”
You are attacking a straw man David A. I said about GCMs in Comment 47.1 (which you quoted in your reply to that comment): “….to first order the forcings from increasing CO2 has the same effect in a GCM as extra sunlight – doubling CO2 has pretty much the same effect as an extra 2% of ASR.” and “Yes the GCMs treat extra radiation a little differently because of interaction with ozone and some CO2 bands as it comes in as SW.”. The ozone is in the stratosphere, so of course the stratospheric response if different. So yes, the GCM’s treatment of extra ASR and extra CO2 is not identical — just the same to first order, especially its effect on surface temperature.
You seem to be denial about the GCMs. Go and ask someone you trust and knows about this David A. I’m interested to see, when you find out they do as I describe, if you agree with me that they have an architectural problem.
50
“In this post it was proved that its response to extra ASR and extra CO2 are precisely the same. You disagree with any of that?”
I do, and I already said why.
Why are you ignoring my previous comments explaining why?
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/new-science-9-error-3-all-radiation-imbalances-treated-the-same-the-ground-is-not-the-sky/#comment-1753037
Explain Figure 3.
04
David E: “Roughly the same” isn’t the same, David, and all along now you’ve been saying their equivalent.
So this is already a major retreat on your part.
You continue to ignore the several statements in the paper stating the the response to CO2 and solar insolation ARE NOT the same.
In particular, there is stratospheric cooling from the former, not the latter.
Want to address that?
“The 2 percent So change corresponds to a forcing of 4.8 W/m2. The initial radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere due to doubling C02 is only ~2.5 W m-2, but after C02 cools the stratosphere (within a few months) the global mean radiative forcing is about 4 W m-2 (Fig. 4, Hansen et al.,
1981).”
“The temperature changes in the So and C02 experiments
are shown in Fig. 4 for the annual mean
surface air temperature as a function of latitude
and longitude, the zonal mean surface air temperature
as a function of latitude and month, and
the annual and zonal mean temperature as a function
of altitude and latitude.”
“The patterns of temperature change are remarkably
similar in the So and C02 experiments,
suggesting that the climate response is to first
order a function of the magnitude of the radiative
forcing. The only major difference is in the temperature
change as a function of altitude; increased
C02 causes substantial stratospheric
cooling. This similarity suggests that, to first
order, the climate effect due to several forcings
including various tropospheric trace gases may be
a simple function of the total forcing.”
04
Really, you do disagree with that in the conventional basic climate model? The proof is up above in the post.
Stop talking about GCMs and vague generalities and be specific. You may not like the dissection of the conventional basic climate model, but if you disagree you ought to be able to pinpoint where and quote a specific part you disagree with.
I didn’t ignore you previous comment. I replied to it at 47.1.1.1.1, which mentions Fig 3 of Hansen’s 1984.
40
David Evans wrote:
“Stop talking about GCMs and vague generalities and be specific. You may not like the dissection of the conventional basic climate model, but if you disagree you ought to be able to pinpoint where and quote a specific part you disagree with.”
I have already given you specifics — you completely ignore them.
You don’t want to talk about specifics.
You want instead to insist that you are right, regardless.
You repeat that time and time again, always ignoring specifics.
Maybe that gets you donations here, I don’t know. But it certainly isn’t convincing.
Everone who has had real training in physics can see right through you and through the weakness of your arguments, how you routinely ignore what you would rather not respond to.
Your ridiculous notch theories aren’t convincing in the least — everyone who knows anything sees them as laughable. Your arguments about 31-year old climate models aren’t in any way convincing to anyone who follows the science and knows what it says TODAY, not a third of a century ago.
There’s a reason why, as some commenter asked, no “alarmists” (quote-unquote) comment here.
What is the point? You’re already convinced of your own genius. You don’t want criticism, you want accolades only.
(You are like this everywhere you post,why can’t you stop being obnoxious?) CTS
25
David A, you are being clueless. Please read carefully:
1. The conventional basic climate model treats forcings due to different influences (e.g. sunlight, CO2) precisely the same. This is proved in the post above.
2. The GCMs, which follow the same architecture in this regard, treat them roughly the same (“to first order” as Hensen says).
Your comments above are worthless because you haven’t made this simple distinction, and have conflated the basic model and the GCMs.
You have not addressed the conventional basic model at all. I wish you would. If you can find any errors in the post above I would be very interested. You might need to read post 3 as well.
31
David Appell October 12, 2015 at 12:05 pm
David Evans wrote:
“Stop talking about GCMs and vague generalities and be specific. You may not like the dissection of the conventional basic climate model, but if you disagree you ought to be able to pinpoint where and quote a specific part you disagree with.”
I have already given you specifics — you completely ignore them.
——————————————-
Cannot you stop being so obnoxious? Did your mommy step on your head?
22
David, you take a teaching model and proclaim it the “basic model” then you require it to perform perfectly. This is known as building a strawman. Then you insult people who point this out to you.
45
Eli Rabett October 13, 2015 at 10:11 am
“David, you take a teaching model and proclaim it the “basic model” then you require it to perform perfectly.”
Do you actually know what your teaching model is trying to teach? Anything except how to deceive others?
“This is known as building a strawman.”
You Clueless Climate Clowns (CCC) certainly know how to do that!!
“Then you insult people who point this out to you.”
Your CCC have already insulted themselves. Do you have anything about “all-radiation-imbalances-treated-the-same-the-ground-is-not-the-sky”?
b>What is wrong with insulting trolls?
23
“teaching model?”
No where has anyone used the words “teaching model” before this October 13, 2015 at 10:11 am comment.
Seems now that Dr. Evans has successfully defended his position against the David Appell and Nick Stokes frontal attacks and Lucia’s strawman GCMs ambush from behind, another strawman attack has now been launched.
MORE POPCORN!!!
21
David Evans wrote:
“The conventional basic climate model treats forcings due to different influences (e.g. sunlight, CO2) precisely the same.”
You’re the one who is clueless. THINK! Since Hansen’s model finds stratospheric cooling for CO2 increases but NOT for solar increases, his model can’t POSSIBLY be treating CO2 and solar as “precisely the same.”
02
gai wrote:
“No where has anyone used the words “teaching model” before this October 13, 2015 at 10:11 am comment.”
Do you know what a model is?
Do you know why some models are taught in the first week of class and some aren’t taught until semesters later?
Eli is right.
01
David A., there you go again. Please read Comment 47.1.1.1.5. Come on, we are looking for useful criticism but while you haven’t got straight what is actually being said you are just producing nonsense. Hansen’s model is a GCM; it is not the conventional basic climate model, which does not even have the concept of stratospheric ozone. 🙂
10
David E: This ISN’T about “stratospheric ozone,” it’s about stratospheric cooling. Big difference.
Since Hansen’s model leads to stratospheric cooling with increasing CO2 forcing, and increasing solar irradiance does not, they can’t POSSIBLY be treated the same in the models, as you claim.
How about addressing THIS POINT, instead of deflecting as you always do?
11
David A: I’ve already addressed this twice above, in Comment 47.1 and in Comment 47.1.1.1.1. You are still conflating the basic model with the GCMs, and constructing strawmen because you cannot or will not address their difference — see Comment 47.1.1.1.5.
21
David Appell October 15, 2015 at 3:30 pm
“How about addressing THIS POINT, instead of deflecting as you always do?”
Your only POINT is the one at the top of rotten apple!
02
Rotten Apple:
On and on and on! Only counting and reciting floaters and sinkers. Next time it will be different.
42
“Seriously: have you ever read a textbook about climate science? And/or a description of a model’s physics? You badly need to.”
Have you ever read anything except your Catechism? Can you read? Has your Mother allowed you to learn anything else? Perhaps Naomi will have pity, and rescue you! Don’t count on it!
84
Will: I’m sure I’ve read and studied far more physics than you have. And even done some. Enough said.
28
Rotten Apple: You have never ever studied anything or done anything except be an obnoxious irritant!
81
You might have read it.. but you obviously did not comprehend one tiny bit of it.
that’s because you totally lack even the most basic of physics or scientific understanding.
20
Ag55 don’t you think that Will is a bit too cooky?
02
David wrote: “Again, we are a little off topic straying into GCMs, but as the Hansen quote indicates, to first order the forcings from increasing CO2 has the same effect in a GCM as extra sunlight – doubling CO2 has pretty much the same effect as an extra 2% of ASR. A forcing is a forcing, basically. Yes the GCMs treat extra radiation a little differently because of interaction with ozone and some CO2 bands as it comes in as SW. The ERF adjustments are minor: the sameness we are talking about is first order.
This post argues that that extra sunlight and increasing CO2 are fundamentally different – for example, the former increases OLR while the latter does not (excepting minor effects of surface albedo feedbacks). They should be treated quite differently, not merely as two instances of a generic radiative imbalance that needs to be remedied, plus a few minor adjustments on the side.
I am arguing that the architecture is wrong – that appropriately parameterization and adding specific feedbacks such as a rerouting feedback are insufficient to fix them. This argument will become more fully developed as the alternative model is built up.”
CO2 and sunlight are different – until they have produced a temperature change. Once CO2 has absorbed OLR, OR water vapor and clouds in the atmosphere have absorbed about 1/3 of post-albedo SWR and the surface has absorbed the rest, both have been converted to heat and no information about the source of heat is retained. The location of that heat differs for sunlight and CO2, but convection moves heat from one location to another until a stable lapse rate is restored. Given the constant turbulent mixing of the troposphere, one might argue that there is no difference between a solar forcing and a CO2 forcing – to a first approximation. That is the basic idea behind forcing: All W/m2 are created equal through turbulent mixing.
Every calculation of radiative forcing involves a model of the atmosphere. For any radiation transfer calculation by numerical integration (say for OLR), you need to specify: 1) The radiation (at all wavelengths) coming from the layer below or the surface (temperature, emissivity, % clear) or cloud tops (temperature/altitude, emissivity, % cloudy) and 2) the atmospheric layer the radiation passes through (composition, temperature, density). You can sub-divide the earth into as many separate geographic locations and cloud covers as you want. For each layer, there will be a change in intensity at a given wavelength, and difference (dI) will be retained or lost as heat.
1) The simplest method ignores the heat (dI) retained by any layer and reports the instantaneous change in radiation after an instantaneous forcing. Nothing in the model is changed by the forcing. This isn’t common.
2) The next simplest model recognizes that vertical convection from below doesn’t reach into the stratosphere and that its temperature is controlled by equilibrium with incoming and outgoing radiation. When a forcing changes the amount of radiation flowing through the stratosphere, one can easily calculate (by repeated approximation) the new equilibrium temperature for each layer of the stratosphere. (It would take several months for the stratosphere to equilibrate after a instantaneous forcing.) Since both radiation and convection control temperature in the troposphere, tropospheric temperatures in the model remains unchanged and dI in the troposphere is ignored. This is the IPCC’s traditional definition of forcing and what MODTRAN calculates.
3) If you want to understand how the heat (dI) retained by each layer in the troposphere (and at the surface) effects the local temperature, you need a model capable of handling convection – an AOGCM. AOGCMs calculate “effective radiative forcing”. The problem is that AOGCMs create both forcing and feedback. If you want to separate effective radiative forcing from water vapor feedback, for example, the model can be constrained to keep water vapor constant while allowing both convection and radiation to calculate the new temperature in each grid cell. However, if you keep water vapor, clouds, surface albedo and lapse rate unchanged, how accurately are you calculating convection? If you allow any of these to vary (if grid cells are warming, won’t lapse rate change?), your output will reflect a combination of forcing and feedback. This approach appears to be problematic.
As best I can tell, the cleanest approach is to take the standard definition of radiative forcing (in W/m2) and add in feedbacks – despite the limitations of this approach (that you have been discussing).
However, one can COMPLETELY IGNORE forcing and feedbacks and simply rely upon the output of AOGCMs. The inputs to AOGCMs are QUANTITIES of forcing agents and laboratory parameters characterizing their interactions with radiation – reliable for GHGs, dubious for aerosols, really dubious for aerosol effects on clouds. Forcing measured in (W/m2) is not an input for an AOGCM (except perhaps for indirect aerosol effect). The models also don’t input any values or parameters for feedbacks; feedback is a phenomena that emerges from the model. The more heavily we rely on AOGCMs (rather than simple models) to accurately calculate forcing and feedback, the stronger the argument for completely discarding the forcing/feedback paradigm altogether. If you want to distinguish between 2 W/m2 of CO2 forcing and 2 W/m2 of solar forcing, it may be time to discard the forcing/feedback paradigm and simply rely on AOGCMs. You want the forcing/feedback approach to be PERFECTED, an impossibility. I want to use relatively simple forcing/feedback models as a common-sense check on the output from unvalidated AOGCMs and an aid in comparing their output to observations from space. Skeptics need to “discredit” the AOGCMs, not forcing/feedback.
10
Frank, you say “CO2 and sunlight are different – until they have produced a temperature change.”
Nonetheless, an increase in absorbed sunlight increases OLR, while an increase in CO2 does not (ignoring minor surface albedo feedbacks). The extra sunlight increases OLR directly; extra CO2 merely redistributes the OLR between the pipes (i.e. changes the shape of but not the area underneath the emission spectrum).
Thus some forcings are not the same as some others: a forcing of 1 W/m2 due to increased absorbed sunlight creates an extra 1 W/m2 of OLR when steady state is re-established, but a forcing of 1 W/m2 due to increased CO2 does not increase the OLR.
You say “That is the basic idea behind forcing: All W/m2 are created equal through turbulent mixing.” OLR is different, which is pretty fundamental, so there has to be more to it — I think the basic idea behind forcing, a radiation imbalance, is insufficient (see post 11, going up soon).
I take your points about the forcing/feedback paradigm breaking down in GCMs as they try to be realistic. I reckon that is a consequence of their faulty architecture. The forcing/feedback paradigm will always be useful in basic models AFAIK. It could still be useful in GCMs, if:
(1) forcings in response to changes other than surface temperature are allowed (e.g. the rerouting feedback, post 7, post 5), and
(2) radiation imbalances of the same magnitude by different influences can change the surface temperature by substantially different amounts (post 9).
This second point might effectively be implemented in GCMs simply by implementing the first, i.e. allowing non-surface-temperature feedbacks. For instance, if the rerouting feedback was retrofitted to a GCM, then it would emerge from the GCM that a pre-feedback forcing of 1 W/m2 of radiation imbalance due to CO2 becomes only say 0.4 W/m2 of radiation imbalance after the rerouting feedback, which produces a similar surface warming as an extra 0.4 W.m2 of extra absorbed sunlight.
10
“This second point might effectively be implemented in GCMs simply by implementing the first, i.e. allowing non-surface-temperature feedbacks. For instance, if the rerouting feedback was retrofitted to a GCM, then it would emerge from the GCM that a pre-feedback forcing of 1 W/m2 of radiation imbalance due to CO2 becomes only say 0.4 W/m2 of radiation imbalance after the rerouting feedback, which produces a similar surface warming as an extra 0.4 W.m2 of extra absorbed sunlight”
Welcome to the world of trying to measure any of the thermal radiative flux transfer in this atmosphere.
I am not the Carlos Montoya of, “you killed my father, prepare to die”. However do prepare to be crucified by those whose income, and political power, you are stomping upon!! Can us-ins/other help prevent that?
All the best! -will-
04
Franktoo
I agree with you that there seems to be little point in trying to come up with a better “basic” model. I cannot imagine circumstances where it will give a light bulb moment to climate modellers or alarmists. On the merit side this series is thought provoking with lots of comments and that is a good aspect.
You may find some recent work from Manabe of interest:
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/19/7568.full.pdf
Here he looks at a wide range of climate models with respect to their so-called cloud gain factors using actual data compared with model outputs. It is apparent that there is wide variation across the models. Some give a reasonable result. Others are way off the mark.
It is apparent climate models are so far from perfect that their output is useless. Manabe comes to a similar conclusion in a recent interview:
“”As the models get ever more complicated – or, as some people say, sophisticated – no one person can appreciate what’s going on inside them. One modeller can be an expert in one component of the model, but doesn’t know the other parts. But now it is impossible to do so. If you make a prediction based on the model and you don’t understand it very well then it is no better than a fortune-teller’s prediction.”
Models have enough parameters that they can be tuned to virtually any historical trend with regard to one aspect such as surface temperature but unless all the other variables match the historical data they are of no value predicting future trends. At this stage I do not believe they include a number of significant variables both terrestrial and extraterrestrial . The CO2 sensitivity is falling in more recent model runs because the parameters are calibrated against level or falling temperature trends in this century rather than the rising trend at the end of the last century.
71
Rick, the rest of this series may surprise you.
10
Rick: I often cite Manabe (2013) as proof that models are flawed, because they can’t properly reproduce the changes in OLR and reflected SWR associated with seasonal warming. Equally importantly, Manabe shows that models seriously disagree with each other about the feedbacks that produce the changes in OLR and reflected SWR. Most models must be wrong because they seriously disagree with each other (and observations) about feedbacks.
A doubling of CO2 over a century is forcing of about 0.4 W/m2/decade and a warming of a few tenths of a degC/decade depending on TCR. Both of these changes are extremely difficult to measure accurately over decades. Seasonal warming in MGST is 3.5 degC – a whole century or more worth of GHG-mediated warming and the changes in OLR and reflected SWR observed from space are about 10 W/m2, and nature provides replicate experiments every year. These are changes we can easily and reproducibly measure. Skeptics should spend more time focusing on this subject (and less time worrying about a flawed surface temperature record that is in rough overall agreement with UAH’s troposphere temperature record).
The increase in OLR from clear skies is less than expected for Planck feedback because of only water vapor plus lapse rate feedbacks. AOGCMs reproduce that reasonable well, possibly because they have been tuned to do so. The increase in reflected SWR through clear skies arises from the huge difference in seasonal snow cover between the two hemispheres and the models due a poor and inconsistent job of reproducing that type of ice-albedo feedbacks. Cloud feedback can be observed in both the SWR and OLR channels and no model gets both right. Climate models make similar predictions about the sum of feedbacks, but very different predictions about individual feedbacks (especially when cloud feedbacks are broken down into SWR and OLR channels).
50
Franktoo (Frank) October 13, 2015 at 3:24 am
“Rick: I often cite Manabe (2013) as proof that models are flawed, because they can’t properly reproduce the changes in OLR and reflected SWR associated with seasonal warming.”
Frank,
Consider that all insolation reflection is but part of total radiative exitance power from this planet to space. If total Earth exitance power is not equal to total Earth insolation power. Earth + atmosphere (temperature) must correct to “make it so” Capt’n Picard! (thermodynamics)
There is absolutely no way to distinguish reflection of insolation from all of the sw (visible) exitance from streetlamps. I know this is nitpicking. But how to decide that ‘that is significant’, from that ‘that is insignificant’ The Climate Clowns mightily promote the insignificant.
All the best! -will-
15
Will J: The earth reflects a global average of about 100 W/m2 of SWR back to space. Its surface area is about 5*10^8 km2, giving a total power reflected of 5*10^16 W. Electricity consumption is about 20,000 TW-/year or an average of 2*10^12 W. Perhaps 10% of electricity is used for lighting. Incandescent bulbs convert only about 2% of power to visible light and fluorescents and LED about 5-10X as much. Most of those light bulbs are inside where their light doesn’t reach space. So anthropogenic SWR is at least a MILLION fold weaker than reflected SWR.
Keep the nonsense coming.
30
Frank, notice how we are in the habit of saying things, like in your comment, as “A doubling of CO2 over a century is forcing of about 0.4 W/m2/decade…”.
This judging the impact (on surface temperature) of an influence by its forcing only makes sense if all forcings of a given size have (roughly) the same impact on surface temperature. That is, if 0.4 W/m2 due to extra CO2 has roughly the same effect as 0.4 W/m2 due to extra ASR.
This post challenges that architecture.
20
David: You post does challenge that architecture. However, Rick Will and I were discussing Manabe (2013) when I mentioned 0.4 W/m2/decade as the rate of increase in forcing due to increasing CO2. The rate of change in OLR during seasonal warming is about 2 W/m2/MONTH. My point was that seasonal warming of GMST of 3.5 degK and the associated change in OLR and reflected SWR observed from space are much easier to observe from space that the slow changes associated with increasing GHGs.
This paper contains the best evidence available concerning the flaws of AOGCMs – and published by a founder of the GFDL model. Worth reading.
40
David Appell….
Mod says (You are like this everywhere you post, why can’t you stop being obnoxious?) CTS
David twists and turns just like a lawyer in his defense of the indefensible.
31
Some folk would actually like to get along! 😉
10
At #47.1.1, David Appell says: The radiation physics of the atmosphere is described by the two-stream equations. They are derived from applying conservation of energy to the radiational properties of an atmosphere. Solar radiation is not, because almost none of it [is] absorbed by the atmosphere.
Almost none of it is absorbed by the atmosphere?
According to Trenberth et. al (2009), the atmosphere directly absorbs nearly 40% of the Sun’s absorbed energy (i.e. ignoring the fractions reflected to space and emitted via the surface through the atmospheric window).
See my detailed analysis at #2.2.1.1.2 in response to Stephen Wilde who made the same outrageous claim.
60
I was talking about OLR.
00
Konrad,
I am astonished at the content of your reply at #2.1.2.2.8 to my criticisms of your style and approach to blog commentary at #2.1.2.2.7. It is a parody of all I was complaining about.
I rest my case.
David C
21
I would like to tell you of my latest book and documentary.
‘The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science’.
My latest documentary and video of my presentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzpPXuASY8
My website is
Thank you.
Tim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzpPXuASY8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO08Hhjes_0
http://www.drtimball.com
Debate between Dr Tim Ball and Elizabeth May
Scroll down to Ian Jessop part 1
http://www.cfax1070.com/Podcasts
11