There’s a paper out which has created some excitement, On Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects, by Gerlich & Tscheuschner (2009). It was published in International Journal of Modern Physics B. I don’t know what the B stands for.
Usually I would try and read a paper all the way through to understand it, then reread it.. but I got as far as page 55 out of 115 – even the seminal Climate Modeling through Radiative Convective Methods by Ramanathan & Coakley (1978) paper only had 25 pages.
Quite a few points have already jumped out at me that made me not want to read the whole thing:
First, a lot of time was spent showing that greenhouses and bodies surrounded by glass (or anything that stops air movement) retain heat not because of absorption and reradiation of longwave energy but because convection is reduced.
Why spend so long on it when everyone agrees. Sadly the “so-called greenhouse effect” became that because it passed into common language to describe this effect even though it’s not the right description.
Even in CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas? Part Six – Visualization I said:
I tried to think of a good analogy, something to bring it to life..
But didn’t mention greenhouses, because the greenhouse isn’t a good analogy..
This is a concern if it’s a serious paper, because attacking arguments that no one agrees with is the strawman fallacy, a refuge of people with no strong argument.
Here is a nice example, commenting on a paper by Lee, who says that the “greenhouse” term is a misnomer:
Lee continues his analysis with a calculation based on radiative balance equations, which are physically questionable.. Nevertheless, Lee’s paper is a milestone marking the day after which every serious scientist or science educator is no longer allowed to compare the greenhouse with the atmosphere, even in the classroom, which Lee explicitly refers to.
The authors of this paper don’t actually explain where Lee’s equations are questionable, instead draw attention to a day that should be marked down in history.. and use that to show that anyone mentioning “greenhouses” have got it wrong.
None of the papers that discuss the radiative-convective method actually argue from the greenhouse. So why are the authors of this paper spending so much time on it?
Second, attacking poor presentations with a mixture of correct (but really irrelevant) and incorrect arguments.
They cite, not a paper, but an Encyclopedia..
In the 1974 edition of Meyer’s Enzyklopadischem Lexikon one finds under “glass house effect”:
Name for the influence of the Earth’s atmosphere on the radiation and heat budget of the Earth, which compares to the effect of a glass house: Water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere let short wave solar radiation go through down to the Earth’s surface with a relative weak attenuation and, however, reflect the portion of long wave (heat) radiation which is emitted from the Earth’s surface
(atmospheric backradiation).Disproof: Firstly, the main part of the solar radiation lies outside the visible light. Secondly, reflection is confused with emission.
Nice. They have brought this up a few times. Yes, technically we call infrared that part of the radiation that is longer wavelength than visible light. So anything >700nm is infrared. Any yet, in common terminology, often cited to a point of pain, we use “longwave” to mean that radiation over 4μm because 99% of it is radiated from the earth, and we use “shortwave” to mean that radiation under 4μm which is solar radiation.
So their first “disproof” isn’t a disproof. And their second one is simply picking a terminology mistake in an encyclopedia. Yes, the encyclopedia has mixed up the phenomenon.
Why are they citing from this source?
Third, another example of “destroying” the opponent’s argument..
They quote another source:
The infrared radiation that is emitted downwards from the atmosphere (the so-called back-radiation) raises the energy supply of the Earth’s surface.
And comment:
The assumption that if gases emit heat radiation, then they will emit it only downwards, is rather obscure.
It wasn’t what their source actually said. Their source didn’t say, or imply, that radiation was emitted only downward.
Fourth, and most importantly, the paper gives the appearance of discussing prior work by discussing a real mix of very old work and lots of more recent comments by people in their “introduction” to something quite different. That is they are citing from papers which are introducing another subject while not attempting to demonstrate any formal proof of the inappropriately named “greenhouse effect”. They don’t discuss the relevant modern work that attempts to prove the relevance and solution of the radiative transfer equations.
They do reference one key paper but never discuss it to point out any problems.
The paper in question is S. Manabe and R.F. Strickler, Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with Convective Adjustment, J. Atmosph. Sciences 21, 361-385 (1964)
It is referenced through this quote:
The influence of CO2 on the climate was also discussed thoroughly in a number of publications that appeared between 1909 and 1980, mainly in Germany. The most influential authors were Moller, who also wrote a textbook on meteorology, and Manabe (the citation). It seems, that the joint work of Moller and Manabe has had a significant influence on the formulation of the modern atmospheric CO2 greenhouse conjectures and hypotheses, respectively.
The work that most recent papers on the solution to the radiative transfer equations discuss or cite is Ramanathan and Coakley (1978) – often along with a citation of M&S – and of course Ramanathan and Coakley cite and discuss Manabe and Strickler (1964). That is, anyone calculating the effect of CO2 and other trace gases on the surface temperatures.
Why not open up these two great papers and show the flaws? Ramanathan and Coakley are never even cited. Manabe and Strickler aren’t discussed.
R&C is 25 pages long and works through a lot of thermodynamics in their paper. If Gerlich & Tscheuschner want to get a result, show their flaws. It should be a breeze for them..
This doesn’t instill any confidence in the paper. I starting writing this post a few weeks ago and at the time wrote:
One day I may find the energy to read and reread all 115 pages and do them justice. Perhaps there is some revelation inside. More likely, they are having a laugh. Otherwise why is half the paper nothing to do with disproving the theory that modern atmospheric physicists believe?
I’m sure they would say otherwise.. And I’m certain we would get on great over a few drinks. If we drank enough I’m sure they would admit they did it for a bet..
Non-Conclusion
If Gerlich & Tscheuschner want to be taken seriously maybe they can write a paper which is 20-30 pages long – it should be enough – and they can ignore greenhouses and encyclopedia references and what people say in introductions to less relevant works.
Their paper could reference and discuss recent work which from first principles demonstrate and solve the radiative transfer equations. And they should show the flaw in these papers. Use Ramanathan and Coakley (1978) – everyone else references it.
On that paper: Climate Modeling through Radiative Convective Methods – R&C are into the maths by page 2 and don’t mention greenhouses. I would recommend this excellent paper (you should be able to find it online without paying) to anyone who wants to learn more about the approach to solving this difficult but well-understood problem. Even if you don’t want to follow their maths there is lots to learn.
Gerlich & Tscheuschner waste 50 pages with irrelevance and poorly directed criticism.. if they have produced a great insight it will be lost on many.
In New Theory Proves AGW Wrong! I commented that many ideas come along which are widely celebrated.
Some “disprove” the “greenhouse effect” or modify it to the extent that if their ideas are correct our ideas about the (inappropriately named) greenhouse effect are quite wrong.
Some disprove AGW (anthropogenic global warming). There is a world of difference between the two.
This paper falls into the first category. I also commented that the papers in the first category usually disprove each other as well, so it’s not “one more nail in the greenhouse effect” – it’s “one more nail in the last theory” and the theories that will inevitably follow.
Interestingly (for me), since I wrote that article: New Theory Proves AGW Wrong! someone produced a list of a few papers that I should “disprove”. One was this paper by Gerlich and Tschueschner, another was by Miskolczi. Yet they disprove each other and both disprove what this person promoted as their own theory.
This doesn’t prove anyone wrong – just they can’t all be right. One or zero..
And I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t proven Gerlich and Tschueschner wrong in their central theory. I have pointed out a few “areas for improvement” in their paper but these are all distractions from the main event. More interesting stuff to do.
Update – new post: On the Miseducation of the Uninformed by Gerlich and Tscheuschner (2009)
Don’t bother wasting your time on this paper:
Eli Rabbett and many others have ripped this paper several new ones.
A much briefer rebuttal getting down to the main “argument” of G&T can be found in this paper.
I’ll also say that I did waste my time on this paper when it was first posted on the preprint arXiv. It was a surreal experience.
The big payload of a heat pump is in the phase change.
CO2 has none at our temperatures, so it’s insignificant compared to water.
Water vapor, coincidentally, is the lightest atmospheric gas too, which makes it pretty good for moving surface heat uP to where it radiates away.
If it radiated back down, it would just keep rain from happening below. If it rains, it’s radiating heat to space.
So global warming is expressed as global wetting which restores equilibrium with its vast impersonal negative feedback which can be little affected by the odd CO2 molecule even if it talks like Edward G. Robinson.
Science of doom, please have a look and maybe comment on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OfcWhL5KA4
(I was suffering from crisis fatigue of the climate kind and needed something to do.)
Dave McK:
How do you explain the downward longwave radiation spectrum shown in CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas? Part Six – Visualization.
If CO2 is insignificant, why is there so much downward longwave energy in the CO2 band?
How much is much and can I even feel it?
Anything that’s got heat radiates it every which way it can.
Measure your heat. Do it on a cloudy night. Do it on a clear night. If the clouds were made of CO2, I’d be convinced.
The ocean radiates, the earth radiates, you and the greenhouse insurgents on FLIR radiate, if briefly. Of all those greenhouse gasses and liquids and solids, the gasses do not reflect very well.
Even using a blanket depends on stopping convection, so as an insulator or a hot pack, CO2 is a non-starter with no enthalpy, much less with partial pressure that doesn’t even register.
I use aluminum foil under tiles of floors because virtually all the heat lost through a floor is by radiation and the reflective surface returns 99% of that. So clients tell me suddenly the bathroom floor is the warmest floor in the house. Convection only works uP. Conduction downward is very poor. Radiation goes everywhere. I feel a song coming on…
It’s a mean free path for radiation.
And convection goes up.
It works both ways with insulation.
For every mother’s pup.
Our conduction’s been declining-
we were once a molten ball.
So count on another ice age
after all.
Stellar fusion bakes a planet orbitting a star.
On a wobbly rotisserie, we’re nicely done so far.
The hot spot mainly hits it on the rotating equator.
Vapor rises, radiates, condenses elsewhere, later.
The ocean sloshes heat around, and swaps with cooler areas.
Water, in 3 phases plays a thermal stradivarius.
The poles get hardly any sun, so it gets cold, I’m sorry.
But snow helps the albedo show out to Alpha Centauri.
Oh there is no global warming.
You can stop blaming me.
Oh there is no global warming.
Cuz there;s no free energy.
We can laugh at those witchdoctors
as they cry ‘catastrophe’.
Because the universe will die a heat death-
from ENTROPY.
With apologies for that, may I offer the constructive suggestion that –snip for etiquette–.
Anyway, I got the idea to do the map animations from here, or inspired by studying here, so thanks.
If you ever did low pressure distillation, you know what weather is, that’s for sure.
Your radiation chart is very nice, but I don’t see H2O on it. I know H2O is not a cloud, so it might fit on that chart without doubling the Y axis to fit it. But if you tried to include a cloud, fugedabowdit.
On this planet, there is no time when there is not a cloud.
Dave McK:
The second chart (fig3) has water vapor on it.
Ah, Fig. 3 shows water vapor overlaid to reveal that it absorbs and radiates over the broad spectrum, not simply on specific narrow wavelengths, is that it? As in it shows that H2O does all by itself what everybody else together can wish for on a good day?
If you superimposed a cloud’s radiance on top of that graph, where do you suppose it should lie?
If you propose that a reading from a blank sky is from latent atmospheric heat and not from reflectance of other radiant sources such as the asphalt the reptiles have come out in the evening to bask on, then how do you distinguish one gas from another? You are not necessarily measuring an atomic spectrum when you are measuring heat, are you?
(or vice versa)
Here’s a very objective test that will show something.
Check the temperature on your CPU that’s cooled with water.
Now change it to perrier and check the temp.
What do you think the addition of a few molecules of fizz will do?
The heat is not in the CO2. It may look all c12 and massive and robust but it has no phase change.
Water does it all and nobody else really has much say. It kicks out the megajoules when it rains and again if it snows. The other stuff just blows where the water carries it – to wherever it’s too warm to be vapor any more- way up to give it back to space or near the poles where it doesn’t run off.
Try to get any serious heat flow with a dry gas. If you can’t compress it, it’s just too thin to do the kind of work water vapor does. Live steam will cook you quicker than a hair dryer will.
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be tricky or set a trap-
we know that whatever heat you measure by pointing your IR thermometer at the sky at night, every molecule will have the same temperature. So it’s easy to calculate that the heat content of any co2 is bigger than o2, n2 or h2o because
CO2 12+2(16) = 44
O2 2(16) = 32
N2 2(14) = 28
H20 2(1) + 16 = 18
So far, so impressive.
Then you do the content of the atmosphere
02 20.95%
N2 78.08%
CO2 0.0360%
H20 0 to 4% Except when foggy, cloudy or precipitating, it may then be much more locally.
So let’s change the temperature of these gases from +1 to -1 C. You know what happens, of course.
Because that change involves 539.423 calories for water but only 2 calorie per gram to change the temperature of the gas by 2 degrees. (For CO2 it would be around 8 calories.)
So water may look like a wimp at 4% but that 4 % is actually doing all the work and if CO2 wants to say it helped, fine to humor it but no paycheck.
That is because the change involves 539.423 calories for water but only 2 calorie per gram to change the temperature of the gas by 2 degrees. (For CO2 it would be around 8 calories.)
If the water vapor that has just radiated 537 calories in the change to rain (way up there with a great view of space) further changes to snow, it flings another 2,825 calories at the moon while CO2 presses its nose against the glass and wishes to be allowed into the greenhouse.
I would do a pie slice to show what part of the heat is held by the CO2, but you know there’d be no point as there is no way to draw a slice that thin.
But a cloud is a huge flaming ball of heat energy moving around like a floating ember, glowing and radiating heat til it’s all condensed and fizzles out. As you know, clouds effectively radiate from the top where the condensation happens. Condensation can’t happen til the heat is radiated. So clouds are heat removers but also insulators.
Insulation works both ways.
Water vapor moves heat around. Clouds govern heat balance. No other gasses have either a liquid phase, aerosol phase (reflective) or solid phase (more enthalpy)
Underneath a cloud, you get reflected heat that’s sensible.
And I hope I passed the audition. 🙂
Dave McK:
I’m not sure I understand the point or question here. Longwave radiation comes down from the sky. The only sensible conclusion is that it is radiated from various atmospheric gases. Various gases absorb and radiate at different wavelengths so we can see how much energy there is from each gas in that particular situation. (And the measurement of outgoing longwave radiation at TOA also has a similar “notch” to match).
In the case of the measurements I pointed you towards, the mathematical solution to the RTE (radiative transfer equations) was very close to the measured values. Which backs up the theory. The theory says that water vapor provides about 2.5x as much downward longwave radiation as CO2.
And the measurements were done with Fourier-transform infrared spectrometers.
It’s not “latent atmospheric heat”. It’s radiation.
Latent heat transfer takes place when water at the surface evaporates (absorption of energy) and then condenses higher up (release of energy).
Except this is different from the atmosphere.
My recommendation is that you need to try to put your analogy to the test by studying the energy balance between surface and atmosphere.
Otherwise you will be convinced your analogy proves something. It’s a nice illustration of how much energy is absorbed by evaporating water. But tells us nothing about how much energy moves by radiation. Or what proportion moves energy around between surface and atmosphere.
In fact we can measure radiation. So this is more useful than an illustration.
Downwards solar radiation absorbed by the surface AND atmosphere = 239 W/m^2 (average annually and globally).
Upwards longwave radiation = 396 W/m^2 (average annually and globally)
Downwards longwave radiation = 280 W/m^2 under a clear sky averaged globally, and
=320 W/m^2 under a cloudy sky averaged globally.
Latent heat transfer by comparison is ESTIMATED at 78W/m^2 annually globally.
How does this number get estimated? By the amount of rainfall which tells us how much water gets cycled through evaporation and condensation.
But there is no way it can come close to 300W/m^2 of energy.
And what’s more interesting is that latent heat moves energy UP from the surface.
And longwave radiation moves energy UP and also DOWN in a large amount.
Apart from latent heat these are all measurable values. Latent heat won’t be so accurate but there is no way that it can dominate except in some local situations. And the more latent heat moves UP the more longwave radiation DOWN is required for energy balance.
Dave McK:
On your comment:
So perhaps this is the source of the confusion.
Each gas radiates out energy according to its temperature not according to its heat capacity.
j=emissivity x 5.67×10^-8 x T^4
When we look at radiation the only factor is temperature (well emissivity plays a part but this is constant for each gas).
In one layer of the troposphere (lower atmosphere) the gases will all be at a similar temperature because they are well-mixed, ignoring large scale convection, of course.
It takes a certain amount of energy to increase the temperature of this layer by 1’C. How much energy depends on the heat capacity of this layer of gas, and if water vapor has the most heat capacity then it will be the dominant factor in slowing down any heat increase or decrease.
A “blackbody” at some altitude say around 2-3km and temperature of say 270K (-3’C) radiates out energy at 301W/m^2 and the peak energy at a wavelength of 10.7um.
The difference between the radiation of CO2 and water vapor at these temperatures is their emissivity (which is dependent on the wavelength of emission which in turn matches their absorptivity at these wavelengths).
Radiation does not depend on heat capacity.
—–
PS I think you passed the audition on artistic grounds, not on scientific grounds. I’m assuming you have a wonderful singing voice of course.
A “blackbody” at some altitude say around 2-3km and temperature of say 270K (-3′C) radiates out energy at 301W/m^2 and the peak energy at a wavelength of 10.7um.
That’s how you can get a nice ‘totalised’ figure for global radiance, for instance, right?
Every single gas, liquid and solid, right? So says my IR thermometer. Proportional to temperature. Every minute and every second, right? And sometimes absorbing what hits it, too, but has to be net radiator in all directions.
The average kinetic energy is measured as temperature and the contents of a well mixed flask is equal throughout.
Therefore the calculation of heat content of a mixed gas does determine the heat content of the average molecule of each species, right? (whether it’s done by radiation or other method)
In other words, do you find fault with my calculations on what species actually has the heat and by what amazingly large percentage?
This is the crux of it, for me, so if I need correction, this is the precise spot that needs attention.
When you are talking about equilibria, there must be at least 2 opposing mechanisms and the input ones are only half of the equation. The heat balance equation must give due respect to the dissipation mechanism which determines the balance.
The wholesale mover is water, absorbing the jiggawatts like a fat sponge that little thimbles of evergas can not do, and squeezing it off into space- all the while reflecting a rather good portion of anything incoming – and also reflecting back a good portion of any outgoing from the thin skin that doesn’t go very deep.
The clouds are the part of the ocean that is part way insulating and always radiating to space.
Between my windows is condensed water vapor, mostly from my breath. There is no CO2 condensed there. it just floats around mixed with whatever else is gaseous and carries around a credit card instead of a 50 car freight train load of joules. It never changes volume from like 22.7 l/m @ stp to a tablespoon full, so it doesn’t really have a carnot number worth foxtrot. In other words, it’s just useless.
” And the more latent heat moves UP the more longwave radiation DOWN is required for energy balance.”
I don’t think this adequately addresses the mechanics of the process as it happens. The process of cloud formation happens top down, doesn’t it?
(for the obvious reason that it went up from down there where it was heated as water and became gas, which is super light and floated up to where it loses heat by radiation in all directions- convection alone would make it so, but water vapor is only about half the density of the other atmospheric gasses so it needs no help to get straight to the top of the atmosphere- convection just makes sure the heat within the cell is pumped to the top and radiated there as it is, on average, retained within the column otherwise it wouldn’t be rising, right?)
Clouds radiate a heck of a lot more up than down. As a side job, they reflect. They are white, like the sun is white. They reflect full spectrum. (Yeah- did you ever notice the sun is white? It was never yellow in human history. Funny idea.)
Any obvious errors in reasoning there?
Dave McK:
Now that we’ve been around the block once..
I don’t fully understand your theory. (Honestly I think it’s a mix of scientific truths inappropriately combined but that’s just my opinion which might be because I am trapped in a paradigm and can’t understand the obvious facts of science).
The best way (the only way) to present it is to crystallize it in a form that can be critically examined.
I don’t think it’s a consistent theory that can withstand critical examination. But that’s just my opinion. Here’s your opportunity.
First, define what mechanisms move energy under what conditions and by how much.
You don’t necessarily have to write an exact number on it, you can do % or “this is 10x that”.
E.g.
Latent heat moves this much energy ______ in this direction _____
Upwards Longwave Radiation from the surface ______
Downwards Longwave Radiation to the surface _________
% Downwards Longwave Radiation via water vapor radiation ______
% via CO2 ______________
and so on.
Pick your parameters as you see appropriate to demonstrate your theory.
Second, define the conditions. For example, you could say – “this is under a cloudy sky” or “under a cloudless sky” or “Wednesday afternoons in June in the tropics”
This allows others – me in the first instance – to attempt to find flaws in it.
Otherwise we will keep circling around with conceptual ideas that can’t be critically examined. Like “latent heat moves more energy than CO2” – not a claim that can be falsified without some specifics – like the conditions and how much “more” actually means.
What do you think?
Maybe an apt name for this post (paraphrasing your other recent one) could be “Strawmen on the catwalk”. Phew!
Yes, please do vanish all the garbage. Feel free to bash me for sloppy presentation, and thanks for allowing me to channel my steinbeckian stream into a proper one. Without more blather, here it is:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/spesific-heat-capacity-gases-d_159.html
Gas or Vapor kJ/kg
Air 0.287
Carbon dioxide 0.189
Water Vapor 0.462
Steam 1 psia.
120 – 600 oF
That’s what it takes to change the temperature 1 degree K.
As you see, my guess was way off – in favor of C02. So let’s do the numbers right this time-
When CO2 changes from 1 to -1 C, a change of 2 degrees C, it radiates 2(0.189 kJ/kg) = 0.378 kJ/kg.
OK?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy_of_vaporization
When water vapor changes from 1 to -1 (and condenses) it radiates 2257 kj/kg + 2(0.462 kJ/kg) = 2257.853776 kJ/kg.
It does this every single time you see a cloud.
But CO2 has no phase change so it carries no heat – the numbers:
All gases at the same temperature have the same number of molecules per unit volume.
Water, being light, masses 18g/mole and CO2 masses 44 g/mole
Using 1 mole of air, just to make math easy:
We lowball the water in the atmosphere at 1% of the molecules
So, in a mole of atmosphere, we have 0.01 moles of water = 0.18g
now we highball the CO2 at 500ppm which is 0.0005, or 1/2000 of a mole of CO2.
1/2000 * 44g/mole = 0.000484 moles of CO2 = 0.021296g
Still OK?
So in our mole of air with but 1% H2O and a generous 500ppm CO2-
the water condensing radiates 0.18g * 2257.853776 kJ/kg = 406.41367968 J
while the CO2 radiates 0.021296g * 0.378 kJ/kg = 0.008049888 J
the ratio of 0.008049888/406.41367968 = .00001980712855516645290496438242332
or as much to say that water vapor in the example carries 50486.873814890343815963650674393 times more heat than the CO2 does.
And that’s just rain. If it turns to snow- multiply by 5-6.
Conclusion – the CO2 is insignificant retainer of heat in our atmosphere. Water vapor does 50,000 times more work.
(And that was even done with shorting the estimate on water while boosting the estimate on CO2)
@Dave McK:
Question 1: where does the water vapor in the atmosphere come from?
Hint 1: evaporation
Question 2: how would this affect your analysis?
Hint 2: evaporation requires energy.
I am reminded of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Tamino’s reply to a particular commenter is spot on.
Yes, Marco. That’s why it evaporated from the ocean- because the ocean got heated. When it evaporates, that heat leaves the ocean and goes with it. 50,000 times the heat that a molecule of CO2 needs to be gas at our temperatures. It’s the lightest gas in the atmosphere so it rises until it can’t rise any more. It can’t rise any more because it has sent the ocean’s heat into space. Whatever it’s sending back downward it’s getting the same back up from its neighbors below and it wasn’t enough, so becomes an aerosol of little droplets which have specular reflectance across the spectrum and shade things below them.
And when it can’t rise any more because it’s cooled and condensed and sent the ocean’s heat into space, it falls as rain. If it isn’t heated by air, it radiates more and might dump an additional 550% of the energy it just did into space. How do we know it didn’t just hang around and heat the local atmosphere? Because it’s snowing. No matter what may be said, it does not snow from getting warmer- it snows from water getting colder and it gets colder on the globe by one functional mechanism, as we are in a giant thermos.
Question 3: what happens to the ocean when all that heat leaves it?
Hint 3: brrrrr….it cools.
I won’t even go into your water cycle.
And I hope you win the Miss America Pageant. Your scholarship is outstanding but you could polish up the etiquette.
Dave McK, March 15, 2010 at 4:10 pm:
You need to continue “setting the table” with your analysis before we can dissect it.
You need some quantification on the values below, even if it’s %.
Upward energy
How much upward longwave energy from the surface by radiation?
How much upward longwave energy at TOA by radiation?
How much upward longwave energy from the surface by latent heat?
Downward energy
How much downward longwave energy to the surface by radiation?
What proportion by CO2?
What proportion by water vapor?
How much downward longwave energy to the surface by latent heat?
scienceofdoom
Dave McK, March 15, 2010 at 4:10 pm:
You need to continue “setting the table” with your analysis before we can dissect it.
You need some quantification on the values below, even if it’s %.
Upward energy
How much upward longwave energy from the surface by radiation?
How much upward longwave energy at TOA by radiation?
How much upward longwave energy from the surface by latent heat?
Downward energy
How much downward longwave energy to the surface by radiation?
What proportion by CO2?
What proportion by water vapor?
How much downward longwave energy to the surface by latent heat?
————————————————————————–
I should wait for actual measurements that are determinative whenever that may be possible. Right now I could only spout poorly informed speculation – but do you really want to encourage the spread of athlete’s mouth?
Those are certainly the crucial questions and accurate answers could prove something. I can wait for the fat lady. I can’t sing.
I’ll revisit the topic when it’s ripe, no doubt. It isn’t yet- it’s still green…lol
Dave McK,
I htink yo uare on to something, but I am almost certain clouds in general form from bottom up.
have you ever seen a s. cumulus forming? It shoots up at many feet per second.
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8e.html
What I think, at this point, is that the models as presently used, are claimed to be pointing towards a climate catastrophe over the past 20 eyars that does not exist. And that when the claims of exception or extreme evnts are studied, they are found to be over statements, mis-statments or misleading.
So whether your particular critique as presented in this thread is picked apart or not, has nothing to do with the fundamental problem of what we can call AGW theory; the crisis is not happening, and is not even acting like one is going to happen.
@McK:
A suggestion —
For starters, read Trenberth et al. (2009), then read it at least once more, and then think a bit about what it has to say about the Earth’s energy budget. You should then be able to answer your own questions.
Then read carefully the several articles posted here on models and physics of Earth’s climate by this blog’s author.
Then, I don’t know, go and find out a bit what is known about the thermodynamics of Earth’s climate, maybe here, for a starting place. Then throw in your first undergraduate textbook on the topic, and then move onto Raymond T. Pierrehumbert’s text (due out at the end of this year) — Principles of Planetary Climate: Thermodynamics, Radiation and Simple Models, or maybe this one if you cannot wait.
Just a suggestion…
Spaceman Spiff:
Sorry your excellent comments got held up. The spam filter has gone out of control in the last 24 hours..
Gerlich and Tscheuschner seem to be indulging in what I call Yah-Boo dialectics. But the AGW party do themselves no justice by perpetuating the Greenhouse fallacy – and I refer to John Houghton’s book “Global Warming” 4th edn. page 22 on which you will find a beautiful illustration of a greenhouse, by way of introduction. So one side may be knocking down straw men, but the other is putting them right back up again.
In fact there model produced on the AGW side which predicted a “hot spot” in the upper troposphere, which would act a bit like a greenhouse layer…. this was disproven in 2006, for details see http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/greenhouse_warming_what_greenhouse_warming_.html
Dave McK:
1. The atmosphere gets colder as you go up. Go climb a mountain. This is called the lapse rate, and would be about 10C per km in dry air (no water vapour at all). In moist air it slows down a bit. This has nothing at all to do with any form of heat transfer, i.e. radiation, conduction or convection, which is why it is sometimes called the adiabatic lapse rate, but arises from gas thermodynamics. See Wikipaedia, “Adiabatic Process” and “Lapse Rate”.
The lapse rate is a prime source of confusion in discussions of atmospheric heat transfer. Anyway, it is the reason why clouds form from BELOW (ask a glider pilot) and generally have flat bottoms.
2. Just because a gas has a lower molecular weight does not mean it flies up to the top of the atmosphere, or we would all be stifled with carbon dioxide, which is about the heaviest one present. All these gas molecules are bashing each other about a very high speeds, so they keep very well mixed up, mostly. This constant activity we call heat.
Cheers.
No hot spot?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/tropical-tropopshere-ii/
Gasp! A hot spot!
Gasp!
Sherwood uses wind shear to “find” the hotspot.
I don’t think so
/Mango
Wrong, MangoChutney,
Sherwood et al use the wind shear as a consistency check. And then there are several other papers cited in the Realclimate blogpost. You’ll have to do better than that!
Marco
We both know these papers do not find the missing hotspot, because if they did the pro-AGW climate scientists would be shouting very loudly about the discovery. If the unique signature of AGW as predicted by AR4 was found, the game would be over for the sceptics, because it would prove the models are correct.
As it stands, the missing signature shows either CO2 didn’t do it or the models are incorrect – it can’t be both.
/Mango
MangoChutney:
There you go again, calling it “missing”. It isn’t missing. At best there is some ambiguity on its measurement.
Of course, if it would be “missing” it *is not warming*. The tropical tropospheric hotspot is *independent* on the source of the warming! If the sun would cause the warming, there also should be a tropical tropospheric hotspot.
Marco,
The IPCC AR4, Chapter 9, P675 shows several diagrams. Each diagram shows a signature of warming / cooling that cab be attributed to different causes. The IPCC stated AGW would be identified by it’s unique signature or fingerprint in the form of a hotspot over the tropics. This signature would be different from the signature of sun warming or ozone cooling etc.
Sherwood used wind shear to claim he had found the missing hotspot and Santer simply widened the error bars. Either way what they “found” wasn’t the unique signature of global warming.
This signature is still clearly missing despite over 20 years of searching. Please correct me if i am wrong by pointing to the paper that clearly identifies the missing hotspot
/Mango
MangoChutney:
The most important fingerprint of an enhanced greenhouse effect is a cooling stratosphere. Lo’ and behold, that is seen, nobody doubts it.
Now, GHG forcings do result in a more intense tropospheric hotspot around 10 km height. This is *solely* not seen in the *tropical* regions, and according to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program most likely due to data errors.
There are plenty of papers that show this, but I’m sure you’ll just dismiss them. Santer08? You already did some handwaving there. Sherwood08? Handwaving. Haimberger08? I’m expecting the same handwaving.
Marco,
AR4 clearly shows 6 diagrams:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-2-2.html
these diagrams show the predicted hotspot above the tropics at an altitude of approx 10km (c & f), they also show cooling in the stratosphere caused by changes in ozone (d)
diagram f shows the combined efforts of greenhouse gases, solar, ozone etc.
the clear message is if CO2 induced global warming was real, there would be a hotspot above the tropics. I think you would agree with the above so far.
You then talk about “hand waving”, but I’m not sure how pointing out that Sherwood used wind shear and Santer simply widened the error bars to “find” the hotspot is hand waving. I simply point out where Sherwood and Santer are wrong.
WRT Haimberger, they again simply adjust the error bars to “find” the hotspot.
Call that hand waving if you wish, but at the end of the day, the hotspot is still missing in inaction, which means either the models are incorrect or CO2 is not the culprit
/Mango
Handwaving is your claim that using wind shear as an *added* control is wrong. Handwaving is claiming Santer and Haimberger “simply adjust the error bars” and therefore are wrong.
If you are so certain that what they do is wrong, where’s your comment on these papers? Or your own paper that shows it is wrong?
And once again, the tropical hotspot should be there for ANY forcing, just more prominent for GHGs. Moreover, the models propose a cooling stratosphere, which *is* seen. However much it may be possible that the models are wrong on some accounts, to just claim the data is without any flaw is beyond stupid. It’s malicious.
Marco,
I have already said why I think Santer, Sherwood and Haimberger were wrong, but I will repeat:
Santer and Haimberger used exactly the same data that has been used by many others to “find” the hotspot. They achieved this feat by widening the error bars, so of course they found it. To do otherwise would have been a serious error on their part.
Sherwood used an inappropriate measure, wind shear, to “find” the hotspot.
This is not malicious, it’s looking at the paper and finding fault.
If you think I am wrong, could you please explain why I am wrong? By all means point to web sites, but try to use your own words.
/Mango
DaveMcK,
Sucking even more energy out of the process, the water vapor is actually often turns to ice, and then falls back to turn into rain.
So the H2O in a typical cycle can go from liquid to vapor to tiny droplets of liquid then to ice then back back to liquid, and in many areas, turns into a chimera of rain that re-evaporates before it can hit the surface.
Minor correction: The Ramanathan and Coakley paper is Climate Modeling Through Radiative-Convective Models, not Methods. Just downloaded a copy, now off to have a read.
James McC – yes, at Reno or you can float above mountains using a propane burner and a bubble of hot air/water vapor. That’s done by trapping locally generated heat in a bag which then flies right up in the sky. You go right up with it and nobody calls it adiabatic. Clouds are skinless balloons.
If you go to Indianola you can frolic among the low cumulus laid out in neat rank and file due to marangoni cells over a huge plain. Those have the flat bottoms you describe and look like cookies laid out on a tin from here to the horizon.
Those clouds stopped where they did- all of them at the same elevation- because the transparent water vapor that formed them got cold at that particular lapse – top first.
If you are gliding or ballooning, it most likely will not be at night which would be the condition of half of planet at any given time…a planet covered 59% by clouds (nasa says that’s the mean) at any given moment.
I can’t find the lovely document on the physics of cloud formation and precipitation that I had the other day, sorry. I’d be happy to share it with you.
Anyway, my thesis was that CO2 is insignificant because it carries no significant portion of the heat in any volume of the atmosphere.
That was the crux of the matter for me, despite my easy sliding into discursions about cloud formation, heat flow, convection or anything else.
The numbers support the thesis by showing that in any volume of atmosphere, the H2O vapor carries 50 thousand times more heat than the CO2. QED.
I think I’ve had my fun with this stuff now.
What I see in the climaturgical hieroscope are not divine – just regular chicken guts – good for what you can get out of them, I guess.
DaveMcK,
Well summed up.
Thanks. It’s just Chem 101.
I guess nobody finds any fault in the math or conclusion? Can we kick this greenhouse goblin out the door yet?
Is it time for the trials?
Did you know the creationists are using AWG hoax as poster child to defame all of science? Could more be done to reduce the once merited prestige of science to an object of mockery?
Next thing you know, NORAD and NASA will be posting Santa Claus Tracking Reports. How far they can descend is anybody’s guess. More funding can only help.
Dave McK:
Your theory doesn’t identify the radiative effects upwards or downwards which is why I encouraged you to write a more complete theory – this makes it easier to show where the flaws are.
Fair enough if you don’t know.
I have already laid out (earlier in the comments) the main energy components from the surface to atmosphere and atmosphere to surface.
Are they wrong?
If energy is moved mainly by radiation does this affect your theory?
The flaw in your theory is assuming that because water vapor releases a lot of energy during condensation this dominates the earth’s energy balance.
I’ve produced numbers that quantify the size of this latent heat effect.
It’s smaller than radiation.
Ah, no need to glamorise one question off an old chem exam- it’s not my theory, it’s just a chem calc.
“The flaw in your theory is assuming that because water vapor releases a lot of energy during condensation this dominates the earth’s energy balance.”
Not exactly. My explicit statement is that CO2 is insignificant retainer of heat in our atmosphere because water does 50,000 times more work. Now, when CO2 can change phase and reflect 80% of ALL incoming, have his people talk to my people about maybe picking up some trash around H2O’s job site.
When the figures don’t match the reality- the reality is never wrong. Never ever. It is what it is.
We aren’t roasting now, or for a hella yesterdays and the long term trend is entropic. It ain’t what it ain’t.
And we also – all of us- know that this discussion would not be happening if some trick or treaters weren’t claiming that CO2 was monstrous and 50 times more powerful with green bleaching xtals, etc., which has yet to be shown.
Do you own an IR thermometer?
If so, you know full well that everything absorbs and radiates long wave IR. Except, of course, things that reflect don’t absorb anything they reflect. (and cubic crystals, for some reason, that are used as lenses for IR lasers)
CO2 can’t even make a rainbow, so why chase it?
Geothermal input to the ocean seems to be missing from Trenbreth’s budget.
a scientific statistic question:
Did you ever notice how in winter, the NH stations can fluctuate wildly but not in summer?
That’s because cold fronts are quite coherent and can easily shift by miles on a daily basis. Higher elevations don’t always experience the huge variability of sea level ones near mountains, either. Being on a sea coast is a great stabilizer of daily temps.
It shows in the animations. Winter blinks wildly; visible waves of cold ebb and flow. Summer just glows. But warm air doesn’t make puddles on the surface and flow around.
I can’t imagine averaging any heap of those numbers to get a meaninful value, but any individual station tells its story quite clearly. You can take any day of the year and show that day from all the years in series to get the yearly trend – and if you averaged those trends –
Do you think an average trend would have a real world referent that it matches more closely than the idea of an average temperature (under conditions where the temperatures come from different climes) which then gets anomalized?
After writing it, I think this reduces to:
is it logical to anomalize averages, and why?
is it logical to average anomalies, and why?
Here’s are some specific examples of Sweden stations-
one is near sea level next to a mountain and one is on the mountain. Geographically, they definitely fit in the same grid square. The one on the beach doesn’t fluctuate so much but the one on the mountain flickers every time the wind blows a new mass of air by and it can hit extemes.
There is another one right in the middle between 2 runways. It tracks just the same as the others in the regions- all at similar elevation.
To make an average temperature grid that spans any major climate variation has got to confuse any simulation because nature is doing the opposite at that spot.
I think I’ve seen enough of Sweden’s weather now.
On Marco and MangoChutney
on the fascinating subject of CO2 hot spots and other things..
I think the famous CO2 hot spot will be an interesting subject to post on and discuss further, not sure how much time it will take among three other half-finished posts. Watch out for it.
Also the cooling of the stratosphere that no one can “conceptually” explain, but is predicted by models from global warming closer to where we all live. I will win a prize if I can explain it (unlikely).
That’s the curse of writing about the operatic duo, Gerlich and Tscheuschner, everyone is really kicking their heels waiting for a proper subject..
Sorry, Steve, didn’t see your post before I reacted to MangoChutney. I’ll wait until you post something up.
Marco:
Well, it might take a little while – more research needed on these hot topics – you guys can battle it out in the meantime if you like.
Keep it nice, no rough stuff, no gouging..
I’d be really interested in your take on this subject
everything i’ve read so far, seems to indicate that the hotspot is still missing in inaction, but then again, i’m sure i haven’t read everything
/Mango
[…] 5, 2010 by scienceofdoom In On Having a Laugh – by Gerlich and Tscheuschner (2009) I commented that I had only got to page 50 and there were 115 pages in […]
i would have thought the simple answer for the effect of moisture was the desert, during the day heats up very quickly, little moisture to help keep cool.
at night freezing, very little moisture to help keep warm,
not sure what the co2 does.
Ramanathan & Coakley (1978): http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/publications/Ramanathan%20and%20Coakley%20RevGSP%201978.pdf
Gerlich & Tscheuschner (2009): http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161
Lapse rate, humidity, release of latent heat, and vertical and horizontal convection vary significantly with location. These variations can’t be take into account in 1-D models. When emission varies with the 4th power of temperature, averages can be very misleading
Frank:
Correct. The radiative forcing on the “average atmosphere” – or standard atmosphere – is different from the average of radiative forcing on all different atmospheres.
However, studies have since been done which have investigated how many calculations from around the world you need to make.
For example, Greenhouse gas radiative forcing: Effects of averaging and inhomogeneities in trace gas distribution, Shine et al, QJR Meteorol. Soc. (1998)
What they showed was that for general purposes, averaging the results from the tropics and the northern and southern extratropics will give an accurate result – no better than one which takes the result from every 2.5′ in latitude.
[…] like G&T, they point out that a greenhouse works differently from the atmosphere without noting that […]
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