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Unthreaded #34
This entry was written by Stephen McIntyre, posted on May 1, 2008 at 8:57 AM, filed under General, Unthreaded. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.
Posted May 1, 2008 at 9:11 AM | Permalink
Unthreaded 33, #579, DeWitt:
the heat capacity of moist air depends primarily on the partial pressure of water vapor.
Yes, but isn't the effect minimal? If the air mass is 1200 g/m^3 and you have 20 g/m^3 water vapor (pretty high humidity), the heat capacity of the water present is only 40/1200 = 3.3% of the total heat capacity.
Unthreaded 33, cba, 575:
Hence the atmosphere must radiate back the difference, about 170 W/m^2 among other balance acts.
Why? Say I put a pan of water under a heat lamp. The water warms until heat loss equals heat gain (equilibrium). Say it gets to 40 C, and I turn the lamp off. The water has stored a lot of heat. It now starts losing heat, but it stays above ambient for a long time, without the atmosphere radiating anything back. If I turn the heat lamp back on before it loses sufficient heat, the water will always be above ambient. IOW, to keep the temperature above, say, 285 C, the atmosphere, water and surface must STORE only so much heat to maintain the higher temperature. It isn't necessary to invoke "back-radiation" to explain all of the observed delta T.
Re #387
Again it's baffling that such elementary points should be a matter of debate.
Indeed, it's baffling that in a site that claims to be an 'Audit' site on the subject of climate science that it's only papers which take a certain position that are audited, any attempt to audit papers that take the contrary position are attacked! Wegman's plea for 'jobs for the boys' is applauded by you yet when beaker criticizes Douglass et al. on statistical grounds it's a different matter.
This is bias in the non-statistical sense, Loehle tries to imply that beaker is inventing terms by such phrases as "beaker's term" and "as beaker prefers" and many on here adopt Steve's favorite approach when challenged of changing the target, e.g. "I guess this is the new mantra from the AGW side of the argument. I believe that "fatally flawed" was also used several times over Craig Loehle's paper. Did they use it on the Mosberg, Mann, Jones, etc papers — I don't recall that……."
To paraphrase Juvenal:
quis custodiet ipsos auditores?
Steve: Puh-leeze. I view beaker's analysis of Douglass et al as quite within mandate of this site. I've made an effort to understand his argument and delat directly with it.
It's insulting that you accuse me of "when challenged, changing the target". I try to deal in specifics and understand points that are made. I acknowledge that I am interested in establishing agreed standards that all parties agree to so that these can be applied to other studies. For example, I don't think that the standards for Loehle should be different than the standard for Moberg. Is that changing the topic? I don't think so.
Does that explain my viewpoint any better?
It doesn't explain your myopia insisting we compare means within years instead of trend statistics across years.
Point: Christy – like the rest of us – was told the tropical troposphere is expected to exhibit the max warming trend. When the trend fails to materialize in observed data – whoops – the expected AGW fingerprint has been changed. Out come the error bars and the hand-waving about uncertain parameters in vertical convection. Where was this argument in TAR? AR4? Kinda smells funny. Uncertainty that materializes only when it suits the agenda. Isn't that called "special pleading"?
Q: What is the AGW fingerprint? We need to know in order to calibrate a just and deterrent carbon tax.
it seems that we can say that the models have a higher level of error than I thought they did based on how the whole AGW argument is presented in the popular press
Exactly. It became a convenient truth once Douglass et al published their paper.
#402 A pedantic auditor robotically scans and corrects all errors. An intelligent auditor focuses strategically on the most egregious and pertinent cases. Does the choice of statistic make a substantive difference in this case? RC didn't seem to think so when they reviewed the paper. Maybe they were blinded by their bias?
Posted May 1, 2008 at 10:20 AM | Permalink
402 (Phil.): Am I the only one who pays attention to the things Steve says well enough to notice things like, that he has repeatedly said he is interested in auditing papers etc. that form the basis of IPCC reports (and policy?). Or, you know, that he believes in AGW (I've gathered?). Well, search for devils and you're sure to find them…
Sam Urbinto
jae: The water pan analogy is a good one, I think it also explains LTE; if I don't keep turning on the heat lamp the water stays in LTE at a given point at a given time. If not it will reach GTE, equilibrium with the surroundings over sufficiently short time scales.
One issue though is that if we don't keep replacing the water, eventually it will all evaporate away. 🙂 Again, the problem is how you define the system. Which is both in time and space.
Care to model it for me? If so, make sure you use SD or SEM correctly.
It seems like the Greenland Ice sheet Is not goingt to melt into the sea like an ice cream on the fourth of July. Remember when RC was busting on AR4 for being too conservative on the matter of ice dynamics? I know I was beat about the head by a bunch of ill-informed pedants for suggesting that the evidence for this was sort of thin. I have no idea why these findings for Greenland wouldn't also apply to Antarctica. In other words, go ahead and buy that ocean front property, especially if a warmer will sell it to you cheap.
One model with the oceans, the other model without. Observations fall in between Conclusion?
That both models are crap. Notice how the trend line for the model using ocean data catches up to the other model by the end of the chart? Such and outcome is extremely improbable and is a sign that the ocean model was tuned to produce the desired result. On the whole it is looks like a propaganda exercise designed to explain the short term cooling trend without having to admit that CO2 sensitivity has been over estimated by the modellers.
The sad thing is many people will actual believe them.
Posted May 1, 2008 at 12:21 PM | Permalink
Re the current cooling PDO, I guess we have to postpone Hansen Tipping Points until 2016?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/illwesleyan_20080219.pdf
MarkW
The thing I find interesting is this view that while the cool phase of the PDO can completely over power global warming, the warm phase of the PDO has no affect whatsoever on it.
Bender:
Out come the error bars and the hand-waving about uncertain parameters in vertical convection. Where was this argument in TAR? AR4? Kinda smells funny. Uncertainty that materializes only when it suits the agenda. Isn't that called "special pleading"?
Yep. I think this is one of the major issues. The uncertainty is admitted only after data comparisons show something is incorrect. In some cases, after the fact, patient explanations emerge revealing that most of the uncertainty is due to things not admitted when projections were made.
And yet, these uncertainties were known to exist. Moreover, methods to incorporate them into the projections exist. But, the IPCC decided to publish narrow uncertainty bands, and/or segregate any admissions of uncertainty in chapters far, far from the projections (with no note indicating one should pay special attention to a 1 sentence snippet in the literature survey in chapter 8 when interpreting the beautiful color graphic, showing smooth lines and narrow uncertainty intervals in the Technical summary. Heck, no note in chapter 10 where the projections are made.)
The IPCC documents convey a false sense of certainty. That individual climate scientists including those who blog, may understand the true uncertainty in their estimates is much larger than suggested by the words and figures in things like the AR4 or TAR does not excuse the unrealistically small uncertainty intervals. In fact, if anything, it suggests something much worse. It suggests climatologists know the uncertainties discussed in those document are of no practical value to the audience of readers (which would be voters and policy makers). Yet, for some reasons, they insert the unrealistically small uncertainty intervals.
cba,
My understanding is that radiation occurs at the 4th power of the temperature difference.
Now the earth is currently (using very round numbers) about 300K.
If the background temperature has decreased by 2 or 3K in the last 4 billion years.
That's a drop of around 1%. Which raised to the 4th power, is still small, but big enough to make a difference.
W F Lenihan
If the weather for the past two years in the SH is a precursor to NH weather, we need to calculate an AGW footprint so that we can subsidize massive increases in CO2 emissions to mitigate the crop failures that will threaten global food production. Perhaps the worlds major carbon emitters can burn lots of dirty coal to lessen climate cooling. We need to pray that is no major volcanic activity too.
Posted May 1, 2008 at 1:12 PM | Permalink
And don't stick your neck out and declare a lack of falsifiability either.
Jeez, look at how they go after him over semantics!
Francois Ouellette
#13 Lucia,
The uncertainty is all there in plain sight, but not in the IPCC reports. Just go to the primary literature. There is a type of language that scientists use when they write papers, and once you become familiar with it, you can easily sense when they are quite certain, when they're not so sure, and when they have no idea what's going on.
Take this paragraph, for example, taken from a paper by Pohlmann and Keenlyside (2004), the same group who have just predicted cooling until 2015. The paper is a review of climate multidecadal predictability. I have emphasized the important words:
In contrast to seasonal forecasting, decadal to multidecadal climate predictions are at an infant stage. None the less, there are many things that can be learned from seasonal forecasting experience. Paramount among these is the recognition that better understanding of the physical mechanisms involved and better monitoring systems are needed for advances to be made. In terms of understanding decadal variability, we are handicapped much more significantly by a lack of adequate data, and we will have to wait much longer to get it. Thus, in decadal variability studies there has been a heavy reliance on models. But models do not always agree with each other or with observations, and thus while models have been helpful in identifying possible mechanisms, the true mechanisms for decadal variability are still not known. However in this respect, observations can play a crucial role: They can be used to reduce model uncertainties, through improvements in model physics, especially those aspects believed important to decadal and multidecadal timescales, and on which models disagree.
Translation: we would like to be able to predict climate on a decadal or multi-decadal time scale, but so far, we don't have enough good observational data, and all the models contradict each other, so we can't really predict anything right now that makes any sense. Hint to fundiing agencies: can we have some budget for observations, please?
The IPCC is a different beast. It has a clear agenda of "proving" something, so it must hide all that uncertainty.
Francis #17
Indeed. It's always appeared as you move farther from the papers towards the SPM/scenarios et al, the more the uncertainty vanishes from it all.
matt vooro
If any one has access to the Canadian paper, the National Post, May1,2008., [page AL12] there is a very interesting article about the results of a German scientist's study claiming that natural causes may temporarly offset human caused global warming. They say that " Our results show we might not have as much change in climate over the next ten years" . The study appeared in the journal NATURE
Slowly but surely the claim that manmade greenhouse gases are the prime cause of global warming is being exposed as not true.
19 (matt vooro): The study in question is here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/pdf/nature06921.pdf
I don't know about the National Post article though. It's getting lots of coverage everywhere.
Re #3
Yes, but it's just a coincidence that you don't initiate criticism of such papers. I'm surprised that an experienced statistician finds beaker's point hard to follow.
If you're insulted I'm sorry, but then perhaps you should stop doing it! I've no problem with the same standards being applied to Loehle and Moberg, but I do have a problem when we're discussing Loehle being told 'but you didn't say this about Moberg'. First it's irrelevant and just a diversionary tactic, just like a little kid in the school yard complaining when being punished that little Billy didn't get the same treatment last week! Here are a couple of previous examples of your use of the same tactic with me previously:
Before getting too excited about the Courtillot gaffes, keep in mind that such gaffes are widespread in Team climate science.
What does that retort add to the discussion?
At least Courtillot has provided references; show me a reference to MAnn's calculation of MBH99 confidence intervals or even the reconstruction for the AD1400 step. If people are worried about correct temperature versions, Mann also gave a false version in MBH98 and gave the same false reference in the Corrigendum. If you want to take the position that Courtillot's disclosure amounts to a serious defect, that's OK with me – all I ask is that. if similar defects in other studies are presented, that the same opprobrium be applied to those other studies and you know where that's going.
Again just a diversion from the discussion, I was criticizing Courtillot, what Mann did was irrelevant.
Also you have a habit of encouraging your 'attack dogs' e.g. bender, in their shots from the peanut gallery a lot of which are content free, here's an example.
I have been following this blog quite closely the last few weeks, and find most of it both very interesting and educating. However, most threads seems to be polluted by a user with the nick bender. Most of his/hers postings doesn't have anything to do with the subject, but all to do with other peoples postings and in a very agitated manner.
#67 Apologies. It's temporary. But you're right: I am agitated. I intend to go back to lurking
#68. bender, your presence here is very welcome. I enjoy your company. Please disregard the complainer in #67
Finally while I'm on a roll, your habit of covering up your mistakes without acknowledgment, like you did in the Tropical Troposphere thread for example, the caption to the figure was wrong and you changed it without comment and deleted the post that pointed it out. That was a trivial example others aren't quite so. You've likened it before to responding to a review, however that comparison isn't appropriate since drafts of papers and reviewers comments aren't usually in the public domain.
Steve: Please stop making up untrue stories. The caption wasn't "wrong". It's very common, even standard, in paleoclimate to express data in anomaly deg C. with the anomaly presumed in the caption. You pedantically objected to this captioning in the comment http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3048#comment-241494 . In deference to your pedantry, I inserted the term "anomaly" marking the insertion as [anomaly]. Contrary to your allegation, I did not delete the comment that pointed it out, but added a inline comment deferring yo your pedantry. If people point out errors, it is my practice to acknowledge the point in the comments and edit the post. The suggestion that I have a practice of deleting such points is sheer fabrication on your part.
I did not write Courtillot's paper nor any responsibility for it. Why on earth do you think that I should be "punished" for this paper?
In my comments on this paper, I agreed with key criticisms of the paper. I welcome climate scientists agreeing on standards for disclosure. I've urged this for a long time.
I also agreed with some criticisms of the Loehle paper and took steps to improve the disclosure and replicability of this paper. One big difference between Loehle and the Team is that Loehle willingly co-operated in replication efforts and there was no need to get involved in quasi-litigation to find out what he did.
I discourage people, including bender, from venting and making strident comments. I'm quicker now than last summer to delete exchanges that add little and precipitate food fights. bender has made many useful comments here and I welcome his participation, preferably with somewhat less stridency.
2 (Jae):
I'm not sure what you're trying to say or point you're trying to make. Your example assumes there is not back radiation right in your 'lab'. At 288, mean T for earth, there is 390 W/m^2 (in round numbers).
At 40 C, 313 K, there is 544 W/m^2. That is to say, 544 Joules per second. There's 3600 seconds in an hour which is 1.9E+6 Joules of lost energy every hour. That's about 195 Joules per cm^2. Specific ht of h2o is 4.186 j/g which comes out to about 46.8 degree drop assuming 1 cm thickness of of water. Other assumptions for this simplified example are that we just have 1cm thickness before conduction and convection rates reduce out of the picture, that there is no back radiation, and that the power loss rate stays the same – which it obviously doesn't as T drops but it's intended to be a simple example.
Something else here might be a bit more instructive. The average amount of solar insolation being absorbed on earth's surface is going to be around 239 W/m^2 (assuming the sun, 0.3 albedo etc). Remember the 288 K is going to the avg T and the radiation output avg is going to be about 390 W/m^2. You'll note that 390-239 is going to come up around 150 W/m^2. Also, you'll note that there is some incoming absorption in the atmosphere (probably around 20W/^2) which will increase the 150 up to around 170 W/m^2 as mentioned previously. Without something providing back the 170 W/m^2 (or 150 for our simplified example), the surface could no longer maintain its 288 K temperature and would very quickly freeze over at around 255K, just above -20 C below.
14 (Markw):
I don't have my textbook here, but as I recall, T dropped to around 3K back within the first billion years of the universe – many billions of years before the sun/earth formed. Now it's around 2.735K or so. 288K is the avg surface T which radiates about390 w/m^2. 4.5E-6 W/m^2 is the radiation for 3K. That's 8 orders of magnitude less.
Um…..
#21 Hi Phil. You're so sweet.
Andrew #16
Between the Tropical Troposphere thread on CA, the Prometheus thread you cite, and Andrew Revkin's thread, it seems to me that there's a whole lot of parsin' goin' on.
Not to mention a lot of complaining that Revkin is allowing (gasp!) "deniers" a right to free speech.
I've no problem with the same standards being applied to Loehle and Moberg, but I do have a problem when we're discussing Loehle being told 'but you didn't say this about Moberg'.
Confirmation bias is pernicious and persistent problem in all science. Papers that nominally support a reader's view are given less critical attention than papers than papers that oppose it. Pointing out the confirmation bias when a warmer criticizes a skeptical paper or vis versa is quite appropriate because it is the only way to bring the issue into the open.
Philip_B
Australia April 2008 mean temperature anomaly, -0.44C
http://www.bom.gov.au/web01/ncc/www/cli_chg/timeseries/tmean/04/aus/latest.txt
conard
Any interest in opening a thread on Pat Frank's article in Skeptic?
cba:
Uh, cba, this thought experiment was not intended to be in vaccuo. This world does not function through radiation, alone. Do you really think that a pan of water at 40 C will lose 50 C in an hour? Are you completely ignoring all the kinetic energy in the air molecules that impinge on that water and heat it? Do you really believe in a purely radiative world, where there is no convection, conduction, thermalization, heat storage?
Re #24
29 (Jae):
Of course not, but I recognize conduction in air and in ground as being conduction in insulators which is rather small when compared to that of the radiative component.
That is why the interior of the earth can remain about as hot as the photosphere of the sun and provide only small fractions of 1W/m^2 of thermal power flow at the surface. This makes the thermal mass and heat content of the earth or ocean far less meaningful than it would seem to be in your thoughts.
What's more, over the long run, it's all about conservation of energy and power flow. There's about 11 tonnes of atmosphere per m^2, even a discrepancy or change of 1 W/m^2 in power absorption will essentially adjust in under half a year.
I tend to ignore convection as that doesn't happen with dirt or rock and when it happens in the atmosphere, it tends to enhance the radiative effects – making alarmist's malarky even more foolish.
That pan of water in your thought experiment doesn't drop by 50 deg. precisely because of the added heat flow of 150-170 W/m^2 and whatever miniscule contribution derrives from conduction. Remember, this is joules per second of energy transport we're talking about in 1 meter^2. Also, that air in real life close enough to conduct heat is merely using convection to move the recently heated or cooled air somewhere else in order to maintain the T difference and the actual transfer from surface to air is only conduction (and that radiative you seem to have trouble with).
It's pretty much about knowing what you can ignore and what you cannot ignore without losing significant accuracy. Or, in other words, it's a matter of understanding the 'context' of the situation.
cba: you should join the discussions on the bulletin board.
what board?
Pat Keating
31 cba
You are a good physicist, so I'm surprised that you blow off convection so readily. A good case can be made, I think, that radiative effects are not too important in the lower troposphere, because of the presence of natural convection and the water-vapor latent-heat cycle.
Your cup of coffee cools more by convection than by radiation, so why not the Earth's surface?
34 (Pat):
probably because I don't drink coffee.
As mentioned, convection only maintains the presence of a fairly low specific heat air at an ambient T. Air makes for a great insulator when not moving. I'd also suggest that some of this apparent conduction/convection is ultra short range radiative as there is a significant amount of absorption in very short distances where h2o and co2 are concerned.
convection becomes important (read predominant here) only when opacity increases to the point of seriously limiting the total radiative flow of energy. Of course in the troposphere convection plays a very important, but by no means, the predominant part in conveying energy upwards. Compare which transfers the most power.
if you want to convince me otherwise – show me the numbers for that pan of hot water for conduction with and without convection and compare them to the numbers already provided for radiative. Then we'll see who is most correct in their conceptual viewpoint. My recollections of the numbers for the atmosphere are going to be that radiative dominants with over 70% if not over 90% but those values could easily be wrong as it's been a while.
Richard Sharpe
Seems that despite a record skiing season, the snowpack in the Sierras is 67% of normal for May 1, or so the Mercury News tells us. It seems that March and April were the driest on record since records were first kept in 1922.
Global warming at work, I guess.
China surpasses the US in emissions (and US Emissions haven't increased under Bush, apparently!):
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/05/02/china-is-1/#more-322
I don't either….
In lieu of numbers, which are not easy to get, for the moment I offer the following:
Wood, in his famous (1903?) Proc. Roy. Soc. paper on the Greenhouse Effect, showed that there was little difference in temperature between a glass window and a NaCl window, but removing either window had a marked effect because it allowed natural convection.
the real greenhouse effect blocks convection. the purported greenhouse gas effect does not. Just because nacl is not as opaque to IR as common glass, doesn't mean it has no effect radiatively, especially at longer wavelengths.
John Lang
May 1st, Sea Surface Temperatures are very interesting.
Cold southern oceans, cold Indian ocean, extreme PDO off western North America, cold Carribean, La Nina still going strong but warmer waters starting to take over the area.
DeWitt Payne
jae,
The contribution of water vapor to heat capacity, for the purpose of calculating adiabats has to include the latent heat of vaporization of water vapor as well as the sensible kinetic, rotational and vibrational contribution. The heat of vaporization of water vapor is enormous. The question is how much heat must be removed from a kg of moist air to cool it by some number of degrees when the final temperature will be below the dew point of said moist air? Or conversely, how much will a kg of moist air cool when elevated adiabatically one kilometer compared to a kg of dry air. The answer will, of course, be different if you allow the condensed moisture to fall to the ground. But then you have a pseudo-adiabat. Lots of simple formulae here. For more detail on adiabats, you need a Physical Meteorology text.
The point we were addressing was whether natural convection is a more effective heat-transfer process than radiation at 288K. The Wood experiment strongly suggests that it is.
NaCl is good out to about 18u, past the 15u critical band, so the fact that
(a) the temperature was little different when it was used instead of glass while (b) the temperature changed significantly when the convective barrier was removed indicates that convection is more important than radiation at earthly temperatures.
Not quite QED, perhaps, but you need more than just arm-waving to argue against it.
try to figure out conductive ht flow amounts. Convection merely lets you assume there's a reservoir of ambiant T air.
As for 18um, visible light peaks around 550nm yet there's more of the energy in wavelengths greater than 1000nm than in the visible area.
conductivity examples are:
air 0.025 W/mK
ice 2 W/mK
soil 1.5 W/mK
wood .04-.4 W/mK
aluminum 237 W/mK
that is W/m^2 going through 1 meter for a differential of 1 deg K
much like ohms law for electricity.
you'll note air is a superb insulator.
convection has a large effect but still, there has to be serious airflow for it to help a lot and there is little to really help quantify it in terms of natural heat flow -versus forced convection like in a specialized oven.
with 0.025 for air, even just 1 mm of thickness and a difference of 1 deg K would limit one to 250W/m^2 and this is joules per second. 1 cm of thickness not convecting would limit it to 25W/m^2 and the convective flows would need to be cycling new air all over the place every second.
pat #34, #38, #42
It's all a matter of scale, which is why coffee-cups and greenhouses have little relation to the atmosphere. Convection is driven by the temperature gradient. Your cup could easily have a gradient of 1C/mm, or 1000 C/m. A greenhouse might well have 5C/m. In the atmosphere, .01C/m would be quite high as an average, although of course it can be much higher with local effects near the surface.
How convection varies with temperature gradient is another story, but it does, and you need to take that into account.
43 44 cba
No-one but you is talking about air conductivity. Why do you bring a red herring into this?
Your comment about the spectral content is another ruddy fish, if you think about it. The fact is that NaCl may not be perfectly transparent, but it passes a great deal more IR around the peak in the 300K black-body radiation curve than glass, so by your argument it ought to produce a lower temperature in Wood's experiment. It didn't, but allowing convection did.
Your last paragraph in 45 is far from clear, but seems to be bogged down again in air conductivity, which is irrelevant. Natural convection is a buoyancy/fluid-dynamics issue.
A volume of air warmed up by the earth's surface will zoom upwards until it has either reached a lapse-reversal or cooled to the local temperature. A tall column of air weighs about 7.5 tons/m^2, so there is plenty of thermal mass.
I will also point out that forced convection from 'electrostatic cooling' is probably comparable in fluid-velocity magnitude with natural convection, and provides a very noticeable cooling effect.
The air above a cup of tea(?) feels a lot warmer than the temperature an equal distance to the side of the cup. (This is also true of an incandescent light bulb, and that is radiating from a 3000K filament, much higher than a measly 300K, which would radiate a great deal less).
Convinced yet?
45 pliny
Your argument has merit, except that it misses one very important point:
The low temperature gradient does indeed reduce the natural-convection energy-transfer rate, but it also likewise reduces the radiative thermal-energy transfer rate, and we are comparing convection with radiation.
Don't forget that the air above the layer in question is radiating back downwards to the latter, at almost the same rate as the radiation upward from the latter. As a result, the net rate of energy-transfer is proportional to dT/dx for BOTH mechanisms for small values of the gradient [since d(T^4)/dx = 4 (T^3) dT/dx].
Your final sentence is correct, but you should have added "and also take into account its effect on radiative transfer".
47 Andrew,
No, the majority of IR nett heat transfer is by direct radiation through the atmospheric window, which is direct to space and independent of air temperature. There is little back-radiation in that frequency range (I'm currently discussing that on the physics BB here ).
Based on Trenberth surface radiation is 350 W/m^2, convection 24 W/m^2 & evapo-transpiration 78 W/m^2
Andrey Levin
Phil:
DIRECT convection is 24 W/m2 (heating of air by contact with solid/liquid surface). SW radiation from Earth surface is adsorbed in quite shallow air layers (meters) by GHGs, and is immediately thermalized among bulk of N2 and O2 atmosphere gases. Heated by SW radiation air transfers adsorbed heat to upper layers of troposphere by same old-fashioned convection.
M-m-m, sorry, it would be LW radiation.
K&T 97 states 78, 24 and 390. Of that 390, about 230 makes it into space from the surface (clear sky).
What is missing here is the realization that what is captured by absorption is also reradiated for the most part, depending upon the T of where it is absorbed.
If the atmosphere were to be the same T as the surface, there would be neither line absorption nor line emission going on that would appear imposed on the continuum emission. That cannot happen because on one side there's 288K earth and on the other side, there's 2.73K space and every delta z height shell is radiating in both directions and absorbing energy from only one. That means that this shell cannot absorb enough energy to maintain its temperature without being somewhat less the T of the earth. It also means that if the emissivity increases (as in increased ghg concentration) that the absorbion increases linearly and the radiative output does too – both up and down – and that means there has to be a drop in T there for balance to occur.
as for the 'red herring', the ht transfer happens either by conduction or radiation. Convection actually just transports the heat away – providing a higher differential T to maximize the rather limited conduction.
as for that nacl glass plate, it's nice to know it's at 0K with no emissions.
Well, I tried. But you have your preconceptions, and I leave you with them.
the majority of IR nett heat transfer is by direct radiation through the atmospheric window, which is direct to space and independent of air temperature
If that were true, there would be no greenhouse gas effect to worry about.
Inspired by bender's post here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3048#comment-243310
I've decided to find every member of bender's "mass delusion". The rules are that you have to have suggested that PDO is an independent source of climatic variability that is unrelated to GHG's etc. On your mark, get set, go…
Roy Spencer:
http://climatesci.org/2008/04/22/internal-radiative-forcing-and-the-illusion-of-a-sensitive-climate-system-by-roy-spencer/
Lubos Motl:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/04/nasa-cool-pdo-regime-begins.html
Joe D'Aleo:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Supplement_Oceans_and_Sun_and_temps_US,_Greenland,_arctic.pdf
George Taylor:
http://www.heartland.org/newyork08/PowerPoint/Monday/GeorgeTaylor.ppt
Don Easterbrook:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/la-nina-and-pacific-decadal-oscillation-cool-the-pacific.pdf
I could go on, and on, and on. And I will as I find more. If bender has really had a revelation on this issue, I suggest he do a RC post on it-and put this pervasive myth to rest at last. Look at all the "deniers" who he could completely destroy in one fell swoop!
Oh, how could I forget! Anastasios Tsonis et al.!
Tsonis et al. end their article noting that while "The standard explanation for the post 1970s warming is that the radiative effect of greenhouse gases overcame shortwave reflection effects due to aerosols," their result "suggests an alternative hypothesis, namely that the climate shifted after the 1970s event to a different state of a warmer climate, which may be superimposed on an anthropogenic warming trend."
And now Warren Meyer:
http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/05/multi-decade-cl.html
The list, she grows large señor!
Warwick Hughes:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=165
This is getting fun. Bender must be very frustrated that so many people have not seen the light on this…
Wood's experiment is so full of holes that in the end, even Wood didn't think it was relevant. Just some of the many: we don't know the R value for the box walls or the glass and NaCl windows. We also don't know if the two boxes were identical as to R. More important, the box was closer to being a black body, high internal surface area and small exit area, than a true greenhouse. So most of the radiation from the internal surfaces is absorbed by another internal surface. Wood should have run a cool-down experiment.
If you actually understood how the atmospheric 'greenhouse' effect worked, you wouldn't make that statement. Note he said majority, not all. That means if some of the rest that doesn't escape through the relatively non-absorbed window is blocked, the surface temperature must rise to allow that energy to escape through the window.
Philip Mulholland
From Volcano News
CHILE – Chaiten volcano
Following a short seismic crisis, the Chaiten volcano started an eruption. The Chaiten volcano ejected gas and ash on Thursday night, causing more than 60 small tremors in the Los Lagos region, 750 miles south of the capital, Santiago.Chile's government declared a state of emergency, evacuating as many as 1,500 people from nearby villages and the town of Chaiten, just over 6 miles from the volcano considered dormant for thousands of years erupted. The blast sent minor earthquakes rippling through the region. The amount of ash falling in Chaiten had dropped considerably by Friday afternoon, and the wind was moving it southeast. Ash from the eruption was polluting water supplies and prompting officials to hand out more than 10,000 protective masks. Winds also carried ash over the Andes mountains to neighboring Argentina, where the Education Ministry suspended classes in several towns, including Esquel and Trevelin – two popular Patagonian tourist. Authorities also declared a state of alert on two major highways as falling ash reduced visibility. On Friday evening a Volcanic Ash Advisory stated that ash rose to altitudes in the range of 13.7-16.7 km. Chaiten lies slightly to the W of Minchinmavida. Chaiten volcano lacks any known modern eruptions but a radiocarbon date on its tephra (CHA1) yields a date of 7,430 BC (plus or minus 75 years). Chaitén is a small, glacier-free late-Pleistocene caldera with a Holocene lava dome located 10 km NE of the town of Chaitén on the Gulf of Corcovado. The north side of the rhyolitic, 962-m-high obsidian lava dome occupying the 3.5-km-wide caldera is unvegetated. Obsidian cobbles from this dome found in the Blanco River are the source of prehistorical artifacts from archaeological sites along the Pacific coast as far as 400 km away from the volcano to the north and south. The caldera is breached on the SW side by a river that drains to the bay of Chaitén, and the high point on its southern rim reaches 1,122 m. Two small lakes occupy the caldera floor on the west and north sides of the lava dome.Informations : ONEMI, GVN/GVP
Just in time for winter.
44,cba:
I don't have time now to read all of this discussion, but the number you gave is for STILL air, and is not relevant to anything except good insulation materials that trap air in very tiny spaces. Do an experiment with that hot coffee. Let one cup stand in a room with no ventilation, and put another one under a fan. Which one cools faster? And remember that in still air, the air molecules are traveling about 600 mph, on average.
60 De Witt
You and pliny can't have it both ways.
If, as pliny claims,
the majority of IR nett heat transfer is by direct radiation through the atmospheric window, which is direct to space and independent of air temperature. There is little back-radiation in that frequency range,
then there is little need for concern re GHG effects, because the GHG warming effect is due to the absorption of IR photons before they can reach the stratosphere. If there is a significant GHG effect, then there is a significant amount of radiation back downwards upon re-radiation, since re-radiated photons are emitted isotropically.
Which is your choice: little absorption (say 10% or less), or a lot (say, 60% or more)?
I understand how the atmospheric 'greenhouse' effect works quite well, thank you, and it is totally untrue that the majority of the radiation passes through the troposphere without absorption.
If you do not know this then you don't understand radiative effects in the atmosphere and need to look at the absorption spectrum of water-vapor and CO2 between 100 and 2000 cm-1.
If Wood's experiment was full of holes, then there will certainly be a paper, or papers, to show that.
Please give me your reference(s) for that statement.
Well, that volcano equals a "get out of dutch free" card for the warmies. Now any cooling can be attributed to it.
Pat, Jae,
note the numbers are are 150-170 blocked or absorbed while about 235 or so makes it out while the total (avg is 390) Anything over 185 getting through qualifies as the majority. Considering that stefan's law is assuming radiating from a surface – which is half isotropic but emission from a partially opaque gas is going to be isotropic so twice as much.
go back and try reading my posts here to understand better what I am attempting to explain.
cba: first, admit for the folks here that the number you gave for air conductivity is WRONG for the atmosphere. Then come over to the BB, where we clowns can "have it out" on these issues (Steve Mc doesn't want it here).
Co2 is a heavy molecule relative to other atmospheric components. You can even find the story of an Africa village wiped out by CO2 due to a lake belching a large quantity
of Co2 suddenly. As the Co2 hugged the ground, people in low-lying areas near the lake suffocated.
It raises a question: Is the concentration of CO2 variable in he atmosphere as you get to higher altitudes?
If so, what is the trend, how does that get accounted for by the models, and at what height in the atmosphere is 'important' wrt CO2's impact on climate?
To put it another way: If we double CO2 at the surface, is CO2 doubled at 6km above sea level? what is the ppm of CO2 at 6km above sea level?
Patrick: It is assumed that CO2 is evenly distributed in the atmosphere, and I have no reason to doubt this, except the lack of data proving it. :}
#55 "suggested that PDO is an independent source of climatic variability that is unrelated to GHG's etc. On your mark, get set, go… .."
PDO is the warmer's escape hatch for the 'time-out' that warming will have in the next decade. Even they will get on board,
since the alternative is even more inconvenient.
Travis Monitor – "Global Warming on Ice"
Patrick, 68, you might add that mines and caves are full of CO2, which is why I always take a canary with me when I go there. 🙂
It is assumed that CO2 is evenly distributed in the atmosphere, and I have no reason to doubt this, except the lack of data proving it.
Plenty of data, as I recall the mixing time for the atmosphere is ~5yrs which is consistent with this for instance.
Phil: Hate to extend this and be pedantic, but that is not data, that is modeling (of course, many AGW extremists don't know the difference). Just how many places do they actually MEASURE CO2 in the atmosphere?
Hmmm, Phil, if what you show IS data, then the CO2 is concentrated at the wrong places for the AGW theory to work, no? There's so little at higher latitudes! So often, grandiose hypotheses don't pan out because so many details just don't converge.
"Up to three million underwater volcanoes may dot the ocean floor. That's a rough estimate by British geophysicists John Hillier of Cambridge University and Tony Watts of Oxford. Hillier says they sifted through decades of sonar data from research ships, and directly counted over two hundred thousand volcanic peaks at least 100 meters high."
http://www.scienceupdate.com/show.php?date=20070906
Some or all of those volcanoes give off Co2.
70 (Patrick): I'm specifically leaving out people who pick and chose, that is, who are on board for the cool phase but jump of when the PDO gets to hot handle. They speak of ridiculous twaddle like PDO "masking" AGW or "attenuating" it. I mean really, how daft is that? Either PDO can cuase cooling/lack of warming and thus warming, or it can cuase nothing (note to bender: that last statement is independent of whether PDO is effected by GHG warming or not) there is no wiggle room.
72 (Phil): I don't mean anything by this but, well, doesn't that graphic show just the opposite of what you say it does?
jae, #72, #73, you really should check things a bit more carefully before engaging on this litany of how ignorant AGW people are:
but that is not data, that is modeling (of course, many AGW extremists don't know the difference)
It is satellite data, and has been cross-verified with aircraft measurements, which are numerous.
Phil, if what you show IS data, then the CO2 is concentrated at the wrong places for the AGW theory to work, no? There's so little at higher latitudes! So often, grandiose hypotheses don't pan out because so many details just don't converge.
Do you actually look at scales and things? "So little at higher latitudes"? The total range is from 365 to 380 ppm.
63 Pat K
If there is a significant GHG effect, then there is a significant amount of radiation back downwards upon re-radiation, since re-radiated photons are emitted isotropically.
If you go to the physics BB, there is active discussion of these issues. Here I've displayed those absorption spectra. I've also put up two measured spectra, originally put on a website by DeWitt. One is at the surface looking up, one at 20km looking down. At 20 km, you see from 8-13 µ radiation from the surface at almost full blackbody radiance, ie with little attenuation. And at the ground you see little back radiation in this range. Elsewhere in the spectrum, there is back radiation, and attenuation at 20 km. This is still a significant part of exiting radiation, and one that can be diminished by extra CO2.
Just noting that the negative PDO did not suddenly appear recently.
The northern Pacific sea surface temperatures along the North American coast have been well below average since November 2006. That makes 17 months now according to my math.
You need to provide a reference for your numbers, because I came up with a different result.
There is a great deal of absorption by WV in the 100-400 cm-1 region, and again in the range 1200-2000 cm-1, plus of course the heavy absorption by CO2 over 600-800 cm-1.
You can't assume that photons are captured only once on their trip to the stratosphere, either. Note that the high-absorption bands are the high-(re)emission bands, also.
See post 81 regarding the heavy absorption bands.
The fact is that there are a lot of photons which do not make it from the earth's surface to the stratosphere (and thus cause the 33K warming of the earth's surface via the GHG effect). These provide the back emission which you wrongly claimed is absent.
I don't assume that. You'll find my posts somewhere around describing shells or radiative slabs and references to re radiation being related to absorption via the planck (temperature) distribution and given the same T as the radiating surface, would produce neither absorption lines nor emission lines. Given a lower T, there's absorption lines, given a higher T there's emission lines.
pliny: it would be interesting to see a spectral diagram for 5 km, looking up.
The point I was making is that photons emitted from the atmosphere are preferentially emitted at wavelengths where they have a much higher probability of capture than the average over all IR wavelengths.
By the way, there is about 30% cloud cover, which also prevents IR photons from reaching the stratosphere, and is not counted in purely CAVU calculations.
Not only are you pedantic but you're also wrong, those are measurements! Apparently anti-AGW extremists such as yourself don't know the difference.
Regarding the number of locations that data is from a satellite which gives daily, global coverage.
Jonathan Schafer
#39, that Answer above was from Al Gore himself, during a Q and A session for An Inconvenient Truth.
Calm down? Check out #34.
bender's comment is on the explicit side
Please explain yourself.
No, as I said there's a mixing time of ~5yrs and there's an annual growth rate of ~2ppm/year so a variation over the planet of ~10ppm is to be expected (especially given the predominant consumption of fossil fuels in the northern hemisphere).
Phil, if what you show IS data, then the CO2 is concentrated at the wrong places for the AGW theory to work, no? There's so little at higher latitudes!
By which I assume you mean the South polar regions? Firstly the measurements over the Antarctic are no longer mid-troposphere but stratosphere, secondly 370 ppm is hardly 'so little' (about the value observed at Mauna Loa in 2000)!
Phil. jae asked you a question in #72. Why did you dodge it? How were those surfaces generated? Based on point data? How many points? Was a model used to do the interpolation?
You accused Schmidt of mis-characterizing science in order to advance a policy-driven "agenda". It doesn't get any more explicit than that.
BTW- Were you happy with my response to Raven that you predicted I'd dodge?
Steve: CAn you please advise me where this particular allegation is made?
1. Schmidt gave a specious and inadequeately terse reply to a very important question. This is not an accusation. It is a fact.
2. Indeed, I was not happy with your answer. The question was: what are the trends forecast by those models. Dodge. As predicted.
3. There were some other questions for you that have also dodged. Shall I repeat them? They had to do with the answer that Schmidt should have given in reply to the Dougalss analysis. You know, trivial stuff like: "what is the AGW fingerprint, if not tropical tropospheric warming?", "In your opinion, how well are the models doing at predicting observations?".
Answered in #86 . If you want to know how the NASA AIRS program plots its data I suggest you do your own homework!
That would be #363 in the Tropical Troposphere thread as he said previously.
"Our GCMs are embarrassingly crappy, but we can't admit as much because then the common skeptic will figure out that we don't know what the AGW fingerprint would look like. And we can't have that because we have to keep the consensus in order to maintain forward momentum on the agenda. No fingerprint = no 'smoking gun'."
See what happens when scientists focus away from facts and uncertainties, in favor of advocacy in pursuit of policy?
So far as clear sky goes, the absorption curve is based upon the preferences of molecules for absorption. Consider this to be an emissivity curve as a function of wavelength as well whereever there is unique defined temperature (LTE). Emissivity = absorption in this case. To obtain emissions, one multiplies this emissivity curve by the Planck distribution based on temperature which defines the amount of energy available to be emitted (by the filling of states etc). This product will be equal to the outbound emissions and the outbound absorption when the T values are the same. Note too that the isotropy of emissions of the air will emit the same downward as well but unless space warms to the T of the earth, there will be no downward absorption from the top to create a conservation of energy and so the T in the atmosphere has to drop compared to that of Earth's surface.
Think of that as a boundary value problem of a delta r shell of gas between two concentric BB radiating spheres. If inner and outer spheres have the same T, so must the gas between and in this case as in all cases, radiation depends upon absolute T and on composition. Since it's a delta r shell, there's in and there's out and there's radiation downward and radiation upward and there is absorption for both directions – and it's all equal in equilibrium. Now, drop the T for the outer shell down to 0 (or close enough). This second case has absorption happening in our delta r shell of gas which is half the original example. The radiative nature of that delta r depends upon its own T and composition and assuming neither have changed, you've got twice the radiation leaving that you have coming in – a situation that holds for essentially zero time as the stored heat capacity in that shell depletes rather rapidly and the T has to drop such that the total absorbed power has to balance with the total emitted power. Now, change the composition of the gas so that the absorption changes – that means the emissivity changes and the amount of radiated power outward and the amount of radiated power downward both have to increase without the need for an increase in T. It would seem that the radiative efficiency outward has now increased without the need for additional T increases in the atm. It also shows that there must be a shift in T to rebalance the energy flow rate.
Combine this with the notion that strong peaks of absorption take place over centimeters while transparent wavelengths have little absorption traveling completely through the atmosphere and there are transitional areas all over the place between these two extremes and consider that the radiative transfer modeling makes tremendous assuptions and approximations which are not necessarily valid for both cases and you have a royal mess. And this is before you ever get to the fact that conduction and convection also have effects that come into play more as opacity increases and that the atmosphere behaves as an ideal gas and h2o only in less limited conditions behaves as such. That means from the ideal gas law pV = nRT allows T to change the volume or the pressure or both as well as both can change without T changing and effects on molecular line widths are somewhat dependent upon T and upon p.
Clouds throw in even more fun. Net result appears to be massive negative feedback regulating the temperature quite well as long as there's not too much snow on the surface to 'short circuit' the effect. They also vary by quite a few percent and indicate direct and immediate consequences on T. Variations over the last 20 years in cloud (albedo) indicate changes on par with 5 times the supposed co2 forcing increase since 1750 – and these are multiyear time frame variations not seasonal differences which tend to also be of the same magnitude but shorter lived (and due to orbital eccentricity).
OK, bender's 363 is tabled. It's not an "explicit" accusation of fraud but I'm inclined to snip it as outside blog rules. Any more on the "countless" list?
For the record, Phil, who complains here, is the only person to recently make an explicit accusation of fraud on this blog (one which I've deleted.)
For the record I did not 'complain here', I answered your question Steve.
Also I'm unaware of the post you're referring to, who did I accuse of fraud and when (which post was I replying to)?
Steve: About d'Aleo. You used the f-word.
It's not an "explicit" accusation of fraud
There was nothing vague about his comment. If we're down to quibbling over the difference between explicit and literal, I think the point has been made clearly enough.
And no, I am not going to list more examples. I gave several recent examples that fit the criteria plainly enough.
It' a fraud to accuse bender of making accusations of fraud.
ZAMBONI time. clear the ice. get back to the data adjustments Jon doesnt want
anybody to look at
SteveMc If you dont understand what jon is doing it is a tactic suggested to him by
folks like Eli at other blogs. So a word to the wise. It's an old ploy from the good old
days. Like bashing obama for what the good reverand wright says. Get the puck up the ice,
and dont let them forecheck you.
Jon complains about my remark but then fails to clarify what he thinks the fingerprint is if it ain't tropical tropospheric warming. The same negligence exhibited by Schmidt. Simple quetion, yet again, Jon. What's your precious fingerprint?
#94 Paste it around some more. It may be against blog rules to say as much. It may be impossible to prove. That doesn't mean it's not true.
#101. OK, Steve Mosh. But the exaggeration is a bit annoying. We've been down this road before and people can't back up their claims. To accuse me of leaving fraud claims "untouched" is a bit much. I've stgated that fraud allegations are against blog rules; I ask people not to make them and when such a claim is occasionally made, I try to delete such claims. I also delete many remarks that are merely inflammatory, though the line there is fuzzier. An inflammatory remark by bender, a remark about "elixirs" and a quote from 1984 hardly constitute "countless" examples and the accusers as usual fail to back up their claims of "countless" "explicit" allegations of fraud nor will they stand up and defend the behavior of Mann and Ammann.
My "inflammatory remark" had context. Shall I quote it, as well? No, I shall not. The constext is this. beaker provided his "translation" of what Schmidt said. I took exception to his ridiculous spin and counter-spun it. Of course my remark was over the top. It was a direct response to beaker's absurd defence of Schmidt. beaker can not claim to be able to mind-read any more than I can infer Schmidt's "agenda". Where is Jon's quivalent criticism of beaker?
Jon needs to get a grip. What Schmidt was saying was incorrect, whatever his reasons.
theduke
Steve Mc and Anthony Watts get mentioned in an article in today's Daily Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/05/04/do0405.xml
Jon quoting my use of the word "agenda" seems to suggest he has a problem with that. It is no secret that RC and Schmidt endorse policy movement on the basis of a "precautionary principle". I never said the agenda was bad. I only said there was an agenda. It ain't hidden, folks.
For the record: I don't know anyone who has committed any crime. Although I DO know of cases where half-truths have been told. Happy now, Jon?
Why these half-truths have been told I will not speculate, as it is against blog rules. Happy now, Steve?
re 104. I know, I'm just letting you know that Jon's received his instructions
on how to disrupt a discussion and he's executing a well known tactic. Do what you think's
best, and snip me if go overboard. I'll try to keep that workload to a minimum.
For those who think that radiation is absorbed near the surface and is then carried to high altitude by convection, here's some numbers: Assume a hot surface temperature of 288 K and a cold surface temperature of 213 K and an energy input to the hot surface of 235 W/m2. With dry air, a velocity of 50 km/hour is required to move the heat from source to sink. Of course, the temperature difference between the tropopause and the surface includes the transfer of energy from kinetic to gravitational potential energy, so the potential (defined as the temperature if the packet of air at a given altitude is returned to the surface adaibatically) temperature difference is closer to zero. The air velocity required is inversely proportional to the temperature difference so if the actual temperature difference is halved, the velocity is doubled.
Convection occurs mainly in the boundary layer where the interaction of surface roughness and horizontal winds causes vertical mixing. Thermals associated with thunderstorms and hurricanes can be quite violent and attain great altitude, but only affect a small portion of the surface at any given time. Radiation dominates gross heat transfer from the surface to the atmosphere (390/492 W/m2) and is a close second to latent heat transfer for net heat transfer (65 compared to 78 W/m2).
A cloud top is effectively a black body in the thermal IR. Clouds radiate a lot of thermal energy upward. They also radiate downward which is why the surface doesn't cool as quickly on a cloudy night compared to a clear night.
110 De Witt
They also radiate downward
Of course, and that was my point, against pliny's claim that there is little radiation downwards.
Photon emission from the atmosphere is also downwards, as well as upwards.
Pat K #111, you've been misreading what I wrote, which was:
At 20 km, you see from 8-13 µ radiation from the surface at almost full blackbody radiance, ie with little attenuation. And at the ground you see little back radiation in this range. Elsewhere in the spectrum, there is back radiation, and attenuation at 20 km.
And I was pointing at the spectrum which shows it. Of course there is lots of back radiation – this has been my argument on the physics BB. It just isn't in the 8-13 µ range.
DeWitt, 110:
Yeah, maybe, but there are other explanations. Please go to the BB. Why are you and cba so reluctant to go there?
109. DeWitt:
For those who think that radiation is absorbed near the surface and is then carried to high altitude by convection, here's some numbers: Assume a hot surface temperature of 288 K and a cold surface temperature of 213 K and an energy input to the hot surface of 235 W/m2. With dry air, a velocity of 50 km/hour is required to move the heat from source to sink.
OK, since you won't go to the BB, here are some other concepts that are being considered there. The atmosphere is not a purely radiative beast. ALL the air has to be heated each day. This requires energy. Since N2 and O2 do not absorb IR from the surface, it must obtain that energy through collisions with GHGs and each other. That is required for LTE. That energy SUBTRACTS from the energy available for radiation. In fact, if you calculate the amount of energy that it takes to heat the air column by 8-12 degrees C each day, it amounts to about exactly what is irradiated by the Sun each day. That has to be considered, IMHO. Get over to the BB, por favor.
pliny,
There is less back radiation in the 8-13 micrometer band in clear sky conditions than in other regions of the thermal IR from about 5 to 50 micrometers, but it varies considerably by latitude (humidity). See for example the spectra measured at Barrow, AK and Nauru in the Tropical Western Pacific. This isn't true, though, when clouds are present. However, it is very likely that low clouds at least radiate far more to space than they radiate back to the ground. In one example in Grant Petty's textbook, there is net warming of the cloud base of 16 W/m2 assuming the bottom of the cloud layer is slightly cooler than the ground, but 75 W/m2 cooling at the cloud top from radiation to the atmosphere above it. Hence, a net radiative cooling of 59 W/m2 for the cloud layer itself. This will, of course, eventually cause turbulent convection inside the cloud layer.
112 pliny
I see there was a mis-communication by ambiguity.
But I was never talking about that small 8-13u part of the IR spectrum of 300K emission, so why did you bring that up and focus on it? It is obvious that it is those parts where there is significant absorption where one gets back-radiation, and it is plain that that is what I was talking about in #47.
We still disagree elsewhere: Less than half of the photons reaching the stratosphere originate directly from the earth's surface (see #81), so there is plenty of back-radiation.
Actually, the whole column of air doesn't cool at night and warm in the day, AFAIK. Only the boundary layer changes significantly. Radiative heating from sunlight is mostly due to water vapor and peaks at about 1.7 C/day at about 4 km in a cloud free tropical atmosphere with a solar zenith angle of 15 degrees. Longwave radiative cooling is on the order of 2 to 2.5 C/day in the range from 0 to 10 km. 8 to 12 degrees is completely out of the ballpark for the air column as a whole. As far as participating on the BB, I give you Mark Twain. My minimal participation here is dangerous enough.
Actually, the whole column of air doesn't cool at night and warm in the day, AFAIK. Only the boundary layer changes significantly.
You need to provide a reference for that statement!
When the lowest part of the troposphere warms, this warm air moves upward by virtue of its buoyancy, and replaces the cooler air aloft (absent a low-level inversion, of course). The cooler air comes down in a different, nearby location from the rising air, thus forming alternating "streets" of rising and falling air. The cooler air warms, and the cycle continues.
We're talking about convection and 'thermals'.
Phil #72 presents a NASA CO2 chart that uses the equal-area Mollweide projection, rather than NASA's customary pole-enlarging equirectangular projection. Has NASA turned over a new cartographic leaf??
See prior discussion here of Equal Area Projections.
DeWitt 115, Yes, I expected that for other than clear dry skies, there will be more back-radiation in 8-13 µ. I was citing a particular spectrum from the Arctic, which you had originally posted from Grant Petty's book, for the purpose of showing that IR through the atmospheric window could be observed to be leaving without absorption. The context (teacups, greenhouses, convection) is back at #48.
And Pat, that is where this 8-13 µ band entered the discussion.
Re#109, DeWitt Payne:
Radiation dominates gross heat transfer from the surface to the atmosphere…
According to canonic (IPCC seal of approval) Trenberth Earth energy balance, from averaged 166 W/m2 of solar radiation adsorbed by Earth surface, 76W/m2 is transferred to atmosphere by latent heat of vaporization (which is plausible number), and 16 W/m2 by convection (which is not). In sum, it is 92 from 166, or 55% already.
Moreover, 40 W/m2 Earth surface emits directly into space through "atmospheric window", which leaves something 34 W/m2 to full around with GHG effects.
How this 34 W/m2 produces 323 W/m2 backradiation flow is beyond my imagination, sorry.
#121 Andrey
This arithmetic is specious. Trenberth's diagram clearly gives a surface IR emission of 390 W/m2, this, plus the 92 W/m2 in other flows, plus the 67 W/m2 insolation intercepted directly in the atmosphere, provide the energy for the 323 W/m2 radiation back from the atmosphere. Trenberth's heat budget is the subject of the first AR4 FAQ topic.
121 (Andrey):
The back radiation has to exist and it doesn't depend directly upon the power going in. It depends upon the T. In turn, the T will drop or rise if there is insufficient incoming energy to prevent it or too much energy coming in to radiate at that value.
390 W/m^2 is higher than the average solar insolation at the TOA (340). If there were no back radiation, the earth would experience a loss of 50 W/m^2 x 88,400 seconds/day = 4.4E+6 joules per day of heat loss per m^2. That's 1 million calories / m^2 or 100 calories / cm^2. For water, 1 cal is about enough to drop 1 cm^3 by 1 deg. C.
However, for the time that the object is at a certain T, it will continue to radiate at the rate for T.
Also, one should take care in distinguishing between clear sky, cloudy sky, and the mixed or weighted average of both.
that is where this 8-13 µ band entered the discussion
Ok, but I think we are now agreed that it was a red herring…
What to look for is a daytime and night time sounding at the same location within 24 hours. I'll see if I can find the one I remember. OTOH, since you're the one challenging the orthodox position, you should probably be the one to provide a reference proving that it is wrong.
The logic is that night time radiative cooling of the surface does produce a temperature inversion so that the cool surface air does not mix with the air above it. Radiative cooling of the air depends on both the temperature and the concentration of IR emitting species. The most important of these is water vapor, which is concentrated in the lower atmosphere. The scale height of water vapor is about 2 km, which means that its concentration drops by 1/e at 2 km. Again if the lower atmosphere cools faster than the upper, you don't get convection. Based on the charts in Grant Petty, A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation, the radiative cooling rate is not sufficient to produce a temperature drop of more than 2 C and even that happens only in the lower part of the air column.
All this would be much easier if everyone participating had a better knowledge of Physical Meteorology. I'm going to have to actually buy a textbook instead of relying on the somewhat cryptic but free lecture notes that I have been using.
That chart has been around for a while, it originated at JPL.
since you're the one challenging the orthodox position,
No, you are the one challenging the orthodox position, and you need to get that book on Meteorology before making more unsupported assertions. Your reliance on a text on radiative effects has caused you to miss out on the non-radiative processes.
The natural-convective action I described is well-known orthodoxy, and has long been used by large birds and glider pilots. The former tend to find a rising street and do tight circles in it. Glider pilots often fly across the streets, speeding up while in the down-draft streets and slowing down in the updrafts, thus maintaining altitude without thrust. The convection streets are made often visible by the rows of cumulus clouds which often tend to mark the updraft streets.
You claim that only the lowest level of the troposphere warms, which clearly excludes an inversion, and then start trying to introduce inversion. While it is true that inversions can develop at night, that's a red herring since you were talking only about solar warming (and of course daylight is when most of the heat-removal occurs, anyway).
Global Warming Scam – Vincent Gray – 5 May 2008
In order to establish a relationship between human emissions of greenhouse gases and any influence on the climate, it is necessary to solve three problems
To determine the average temperature of the earth and show that it is increasing.
To measure the concentrations of greenhouse gases everywhere in the atmosphere.
To reliably predict changes in future climate.
None of these problems has been solved
Solar energy up/down cartoon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Breakdown_of_the_incoming_solar_energy.svg
129 Sam
What's a PW?
There is a large difference between localized thermals and general heating and cooling of the entire atmospheric column. Hydrostatic equilibrium is a fact of life. Any updraft must be balanced by a downdraft somewhere near by. The question is not what happens just when the sun is up, but what happens during the entire day over the entire column of air. jae's statement that the entire column of air changes temperature over 24 hours with a range of 10 C is unsupported and unsupportable. Convection does not move sufficient energy to significantly affect the total column temperature by that much over a 24 hour span.
Now let's look at radiative cooling. Restricting the temperature change to the atmosphere with pressure greater than 200 hPa, that gives 8,000kg/m2. So with the heat capacity for dry air of 1,000 J/K kg to lower the temperature by 1 degree over the whole column in 12 hours, the power loss required is 185 W/m2. That is in the ballpark for atmospheric lw radiation at the TOA. Does this mean anything for enhanced greenhouse? Not really. It's basically the same argument as for atmospheric CO2 concentration. Just because the cyclical flow into and out of the bucket is large, doesn't mean that a much smaller continuous flow into the bucket won't make the bucket overflow.
PW would be petawatts. Now let's see if my guess is correct. 1366 w/m2 solar constant, 6,373 km radius. That gives 174.3 x 10^15 or 174 PW.
I in no way wish to defend jae's statement (I don't accept it), but instead I am trying to correct your assertion in response to it.
Your first three sentences in 171 are fluffy, but erroneous guff in the case of "hydrostatic equilibrium". The earth's atmosphere is dynamic and not in hydrostatic equilibrium. Natural convection is a critical part of the troposphere (look up the meaning of the word tropos), as you will find when you get and read your book on Meteorology. Without it, there would be no such thing as "weather".
Convection is responsible for cloud formation, for wind, and for the most severe weather processes there are, including thunderstorms, hurricanes, and tornadoes. These are not produced by radiative effects, other than the sun's SW insolation driving convection. By burying yourself in your book on radiative effects, you are missing more-important, non-radiative processes.
The cyclical flow of natural convection does not balance out. First, the movement of warm air upwards and cold air downwards moves significant energy upwards toward the tropopause. Secondly, that occurs on a larger scale (heard of Hadley Cells?), transferring thermal energy from the tropics to higher latitudes.
If natural convection can transfer large amounts of thermal energy from the tropics to the poles, which includes a horizontal path over thousands of miles as well as vertical movement, it is difficult to ignore its capability for moving large quantities of tropical heat upwards only a few miles to the stratosphere.
Thanks for the PW explanation in the other post.
Paul Maynard
RE MODEL AND MEASUREMENT ACCURACY
What I find curious about the microscopic statistical analysis of the output of different models is that they must be based upon a belief that the models work. It seems clear to me that as we still do not have a clear undertstanding of how all of the components that make up weather and climate and their variation work, how can we build models that have any skill whatsover? Can someone point me to an example of where the models have been really tested against observations?
Here's another possibly stupid question.
David Smith said in 8
"It's important to note that radiosondes are meteorological instruments historically built to gather meteorological-quality data, which is generally coarser than what climatologists need. The attempts to refine the upper-air data are in a sense like trying to pretty up a pig."
So what degree of accuracy do climatoligists need and will it ever be obtainable now that we know that even Radiosonde and MSUs have to be "adjusted"?
Convection is responsible for cloud formation, for wind, and for the most severe weather processes there are, including thunderstorms, hurricanes, and tornadoes. These are not produced by radiative effects, other than the sun's SW insolation driving convection.
Pat I would suggest that LW radiational heating of the lower atmosphere initiates rather a lot of convection.
134 Phil
Some, of course, at the earth/air interface, along with convection and conduction, but no significant direct role in those phenomena. I was making the point that convection cannot be ignored, and hydrostatic equilibrium is not "a fact of life" in the troposphere.
My Phys Met notes beg to differ ( I said I need to buy a book, not that I was ignorant of Physical Meteorology):
Hydrostatic equilibrium: Chapter 2 page 21
Horizontal velocity changes of ∼ 10 m s−1 over distances of ∼ 1 km are sometimes observed in the vicinity of surface fronts, and in these regions hydrostatic balance will not be a good approximation. But on scales greater than 10 km the atmosphere is hydrostatic to a very good approximation.
Another way of generating vertical acceleration is static instability, which occurs when denser fluid lies over lighter fluid. Since the atmosphere is mostly heated from the surface, static instability occurs very often, and leads to overturning motion with areas of strong rising and sinking. Within these areas, the atmosphere is not in hydrostatic equilibrium. However, the size of these patches is small, with typical horizontal scale less than ∼ 10 km. Averaging over a horizontal area of, say, 100 km2, the up and down motions cancel out. Once again, on scales greater than ∼ 10 km, the atmosphere remains in hydrostatic equilibrium. Overall, it can safely be stated that atmospheric motions with horizontal scales > 10 km are always in hydrostatic equilibrium.
Horizontal heat flow or advection is allowed under hydrostatic equilibrium conditions. It's the incoming vs outgoing radiation imbalance between the equator and the poles that drives said advection. Although it's possible I have cause and effect reversed, the imbalance could just as easily be caused by the advection.
Will that do for chapter and verse?
To avoid misunderstanding, I should note that "those phenomena" related to wind and storms in my earlier post, not the heat transfer processes in 135.
Since the atmosphere is mostly heated from the surface, static instability occurs very often, and leads to overturning motion with areas of strong rising and sinking. Within these areas, the atmosphere is not in hydrostatic equilibrium.
There we are, Chapter and Verse from your notes.
Your notes go on to claim that the motion cancels out over 100km^2 areas. Two comments on that:
1. The thermal-energy transfer does not cancel out, because warm air is going up and cool air coming down. And that's where we started this discussion.
2. From a Met (i.e., local weather) point of view, it may be acceptable to say that about the motion, but from a global-climate point of view it is totally unacceptable (I remind you again of Hadley Cells, et al):
Between 30°N and 30°S latitude, this energy transport is accomplished by a relatively simple overturning circulation, with rising motion near the equator, poleward motion near the tropopause, sinking motion in the subtropics, and an equatorward return flow near the surface….The tropical overturning cell is referred to as the Hadley cell.
Lots of convective thermal-energy transfer, over thousands of miles (From Wikipedia, chapter and verse?).
Yes, PetaWatt.
Since the sun creates the wind and runs the water cycle et al, all weather is basically sunlight and water.
If you accept the concept of a global temperature and accept the trend as a proxy for that,
and the temperature as a good indicator of energy levels, then the question becomes one of what has more of an effect upon energy levels.
It seems it would be obvious covering a large percentage of the NH with concrete and the like, generating waste heat and increasing the population from 1 to 7 billion would make far more of a difference than the equivalent of less than .002 of something in the air.
Could be, although the % of area covered by concrete is miniscule. Those of us who live in urban/suburban environments cannot begin to vizualize how much of this globe is empty of such stuff.
I have looked skeptically at the radiative effect of WV and CO2, and their warming effect is undeniable, However, it is less than half the magnitude assumed by most of the GCMs. Of course, WV positive feedback is then invoked but there is zero evidence of this outside of the polar regions, and it is more likely to be negative FB in my opinion.
But you've heard all this before…..
Right, I have. 🙂 But yes, the area is "tiny" compared to water, but you have to remember; it's still a lot of land, a lot of wind patterns and UHI and UHI rain etc
How much lower is the albedo available to absorb energy, coupled with billions of people, animals, cars, air conditioners. How much of the pollution creates what type of clouds, or alters the chemical makeup involved in ozone et al, or the chemical makeup of the seas and ice when it washes out of the air?
Plus, I'm not just talking about the cities, there's roads, freeways, train tracks, farms, stockyards, etc.
What about the effects shipping has in and over the oceans?
But there's no doubt we have an impact on a whole bunch of things. The question is when all is said and done, is it a net impact and how do we quantify that? Or even measure it?
Show me where I questioned the energy balance that requires sensible and latent heat transfer from the surface to the atmosphere of about 100 W/m2 on average over the planet. Convection, defined as vertical heat transport both sensible and latent, is indeed important. It's just not as important as radiation. It is, however, quite possible that changes in convection could overwhelm the small change caused by increased ghg concentrations. That's the importance of the tropical deep convection parameterizations in the GCM's and why the apparent disagreement in modeled versus observed trends in the tropical atmospheric temperature profile is so important.
Hadley cell transport, which is primarily horizontal is not the only form of meridional heat transport, you have to account for the heat carried by the oceans from the equator to the poles. So something on the order of 25 W/m2 on average between 40 degrees N and S latitude is transported and radiated at latitudes further North and South. How much of that is carried by the air and how much is carried by the oceans? What is the average linear vertical air velocity in the tropics that feed the Hadley cells? Be sure to account for the higher heat content of moist tropical air.
I'll definitely give you farms for Land Use/Land Cover changes. Cities and roads don't amount to a hill of beans by comparison. Then there's the increase in methane production caused by rice cultivation. Ruddiman thinks that alone accounts for why we're not already on the downslope of a new glaciation. I'm not entirely convinced, but it's possible the models are correct but that the natural underlying temperature trend is downward, not flat. You also left out contrails from air travel.
In case it hasn't been posted, the April global anomaly from RSS is +0.08C, which is unchanged from March.
Cooling in the tropics in the LT seems to have bottomed out, -.346 compared to -.402 in March. Strong warming in the NH extra-tropics continues but slightly lower, 0.763 April compared to 0.877 in March. The Arctic anomaly was larger in April then March, but still well off the highs recorded in late 2005. The Exponentially Weighted Moving Average for the Arctic is still declining.
Yeah, I didn't think about the contrails, but then again I wasn't really trying to be exhaustive. Sure. As far as farms, sure. But look at those metro area heat signatures and the rain miles away and the like. How much extra heat comes out of Chicagoland for example? I don't know, but it seems it would add up (take a look at the anomaly over land only for example) It goes someplace and it's certainly not there on its own from the sun in the case of vehicles and electric motors. Buildings altering wind and weather patterns have what effect on what else (besides the metal roofs, cars, concrete on the ground, other materials in buildings, some of which go up far and have a lot of surface area.
Anyway, just things to think about.
142 DeWitt
We were arguing over two assertions, which are now seen to be myths:
Natural convection, which is the norm during the hours of insolation, moves thermal energy upwards and warms the whole column. (However, I think it is fair to say that the lowest part of the troposphere can often cool more than the upper levels on clear nights, when a low-level inversion can form. The first 2-3 hours of daylight are then taken up with removal of the inversion by low-level warming).
Hydrostatic equilibrium is a fact of life.
We see that dynamic convective cells exist in many different sizes, from 4 km to 4000 km. BTW, the horizontal flow in the Hadley cell is the result of the upward natural convection. The warm air is pushed out horizontally because it has nowhere else to go when it reaches the tropopause, and it is being driven by the strong vertical convection flow.
Good discussing these issues with you.
147 Pat K DeWitt's assertion 1, at least, isn't a myth. This paper in Science describes the process thus:
The diurnal temperature variation in Earth's atmosphere is a tide arising from its direct solar heating and from diurnal variations of convective heating driven by the diurnal variation of surface temperature. Atmospheric heating, which occurs primarily in the stratosphere via ozone absorption, drives migrating resonant oscillations that cause temperature fluctuations of several °C in the upper stratosphere. In the troposphere, weaker solar heating occurs due mainly to near-infrared absorption by water with a contribution from dark aerosols. These influences produce diurnal temperature fluctuations of 1°C or less in the free troposphere (17).
I don't think you've debunked the second assertion either.
How on earth does your snippet support DeWitt's contention that the mid and upper troposphere doesn't warm significantly during the day? If anything, it seems to support my view that the troposphere does warm up. Please explain your logic.
If you don't believe in convection, your view on #2 does not surprise me. Perhaps you should also read up on Hadley cells and convection streets.
jae's statement that the entire column of air changes temperature over 24 hours with a range of 10 C is unsupported and unsupportable.
For the record, jae can't support that statement, either, and he must have mispoke somewhere. There is not nearly enough energy from the Sun to do that. That is the change at the surface; the average for the whole air column is probably more like 3 C.
I think the bottom line is that the Sun supplies only so much energy each day. That energy has to heat the surface (including the water), and ALL the molecules in the atmosphere, EACH DAY. Since the vast majority of the atmosphere (N2,O2) can't absorb IR, it MUST get it's kinetic energy (temperature) via collisions with IR-absorbing molecues. That "robs" the GHGs of much of the energy that would be re-irradiated, if the planet had nothing but GHGs in the atmosphere. My position is simply that not enough attention is being paid to just how this works. And not enough is known about this. And THEN, you start considering convection, which very quickly moves the energy toward space. It just ain't a purely radiative world, as pictured by the K&T cartoons. And that doesn't even touch the stupid concept of averaging all the parameters.
#149 Pat K The statement "These influences produce diurnal temperature fluctuations of 1°C or less in the free troposphere (17)." relates very directly to DeWitt's assertion. You could perhaps argue that "1°C or less" is significant warming. But that is about it. If you can find some ambiguity there, then the ref (17) is even more explicit:
The amplitude of the diurnal cycle (half the diurnal temperature range) is largest (1 to 4 K) at the surface. At 850 hPa and above, the regional-average amplitudes are
I know plenty about convection. In my 30 years as a research scientist in fluid mechanics, I have studied it, numerically modelled it – I even spent two years seconded to an atmospheric physics research division. So I also know that Hadley cells don't have much to do with diurnal heating.
#152 The end of quote seems to have got messed up – it looked OK in the preview. Anyway, here again is the last part:
#152 Ah, there's the trap. A < sign passes the previewer, but messes up on screen. So, trying again:
The amplitude of the diurnal cycle (half the diurnal temperature range) is largest (1 to 4 K) at the surface. At 850 hPa and above, the regional-average amplitudes are < 1 K throughout the troposphere and stratosphere.
The 2nd para of the mangled quote was my comment.
My comments were directed at specific posts for a reason. How can you find my post objectionable while countless comments implicitly or explicitly accusing scientists of outright fraud go untouched? Interesting choice of moderation.
Steve: I've made it clear that such accusations of "fraud" are against blog rules and, far from leaving such posts "untouched", I make a practice of deleting such posts. In the earlier days of the blog, I made a point of not deleting anything, but I changed that policy and will enforce these rules. You say that there are "countless" posts "explicitly" accusing scientists of "outright fraud". Such accusations are against the policies here. I would appreciate it if you would identify even a few of the posts or comments in question so that I can attend to them. If there are "countless" such posts, it should be easy to find a few of them.
Since you ask Steve try the following:
Southern Hemisphere sea ice…..
The NSIDC will just change the data again (like they did in January 2007 with no explanation.)
I love that animated chart! I love it when a historical value suddenly changes by (in the case of 2001) a HALF A MILLION SQUARE KM !
Shades of UHI, just adjust history to get the "correct" slope.
Steve: I've been out all day. The blog is not moderated in advance so I obviously can't guarantee that all comments at any given time are compliant with rules. The allegation was that I leave such posts "untouched" which is untrue and you know well to be untrue. I've snipped back these comments somewhat to remove the unnecessary editorializing. Given the policy to snip such comments, this will extend tomorrow to this particular post as well. Rather than clutter the board with these sorts of exchanges, I prefer an email pointing out offending comments that I may have missed.
Phil, from your quotes it seems that perhaps you are not familiar with the definition of "fraud". Fraud is like a lie. A lie is different than an error. The common thread is not doing something unusual or wrong or incorrect. The common thread is the intent to deceive for your own advantage. From the dictionary:
• wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain : he was convicted of fraud | prosecutions for social security frauds.
• a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities : mediums exposed as tricksters and frauds.
Note that while fraud involves deception, fraud is not just simple deception. It is deception for personal gain.
Thus, saying that the NSIDC "will just change the data again" is by no means an accusation of fraud. The NSIDC has their own reasons for changing the data, which may (or may not) be valid. In addition, they are doing it without trying to hide it. While I might disagree with them making the change, them doing so is by no means fraud.
Nor is "adjust[ing] history to get the 'correct' slope" necessarily fraud. If they did it secretly, and they did it for underhanded reasons of personal gain, without any scientific justification, that might be fraud … but that's not what the poster is saying.
Exactly where Michael Mann putting unfavorable results in the CENSORED file fits in this continuum is another question … but the citations you gave are nowhere near an accusation of scientific fraud.
#50. I agree 100% with the need to be precise in these matters. I believe that it is legitimate and useful to confront institutions and authors with their actions. As I've said on many occasions, I don't believe that it serves any useful purpose to editorialize on their motives, which is why I discourage accusations of fraud. The facts can speak for themselves without editorializing. For example, one is entitled to report Michael MAnn's statement, "I did not calculate the verification r2 statistic – that would be a foolish and incorrect thing to do" and compare that with the illustration in MBH98 and his source code.
As noted before, the only person to recently level an explicit allegation of fraud on this blog is Phil himself (one which I deleted).
Phil, from your quotes it seems that perhaps you are not familiar with the definition of "fraud". Fraud is like a lie. A lie is different than an error. The common thread is not doing something unusual or wrong or incorrect. The common thread is the intent to deceive for your own advantage.
You should be aware Willis that a different definition applies here, apparently I'm the only one who has ever had had a post removed for explicitly accusing someone of fraud. Actually I stated that D'Aleo had made some fraudulent statements in his blog which as your dictionary will tell you is not the same thing as fraud.
Steve: Again, Phil, you're intentionally making up stories. I've removed a number of posts for using the f-word. I said that yours was the most "recent" such post. I see no material difference between the accusation of "making fraudulent statements" and "fraud". I did not save your comment. but I have a distinct recollection that you used the word "fraud" in a 5-letter form.
Re: Pliny, CBA, DeWitt, Sam Urbinto:
Aside from well-discussed deficiencies of Trenberth-like energy balance cartoons (dubious spatial and temporal averaging, etc.), there is 700 pound gorilla in the room which makes such cartoons and even direct measurements of outgoing radiation spectra useless for accessing surface radiative balance.
All such cartoons depict incoming solar radiation energy as being only SW of visible light. However, about 60% of incoming solar flux is in IR and UV regions, which are mostly adsorbed and happily re-emitted back into space by upper and middle layers of atmosphere.
As I said before, only direct measurements of outgoing IR spectra on top of troposphere and stratosphere, along with measurements of incoming IR at Earth surface AT NIGHT could give us an idea of what is going on with surface radiative transfer.
#155 Andrey,
The cartoon in the AR4 FAQ doesn't say anything about the wavelength of the incoming solar. The magnitude of 342 W/m2 indicates that it is the total amount. And of that it shows 77 W/m2 reflected in the atmosphere (and 30 from the surface), 67 W/m2 absorbed in the atmosphere, and only 168 W/m2 absorbed by the surface. That seems consistent with what you are saying.
The IR component of solar incoming in the thermal IR (say, over 2 micron) is very small. Even the value for the black-body envelope is small. That said, plenty of incoming and outgoing IR spectra have been measured. We've been discussing some at the BB.
I will have to read the whole quote (later today), but it seemed to me to be talking about direct heating of the atmosphere by absorption of sunlight.
With your experience, how can you reconcile Hadley cells and other major convective effects with DeWitt's assertion 2?
#157 Pat K
I don't think Hadley Cells impact much on hydrostatic equilibrium, which is a statement about vertical force balance. Hadley cells, as DeWitt says in #142, primarily involve horizontal motion, without convergence, , and this is quite consistent with hydrostatic equilibrium. The cell runs <15 km vertically and thousands of kilometres horizontally. The area of non-convergence, where there is significant vertical flow, is either quite small, corresponding to the narrow cross-section of the cell, or is larger, but with lower velocities. This plot of vertical velocities suggests that the area of rising flow, which drives the cell, is small. It also shows how small other regions with significant vertical velocities are, and how the main rising flows are orographic.
The allegation was that I leave such posts "untouched" which is untrue and you know well to be untrue.
I'll heartily amend that to "Implicit or explicit accusations of fraud/scientific misconduct go largely untouched until complained about by other posters".
How many have you had to whack in the past week due to prodding by Phil or myself? 5?
Also, you seemingly have no problem with posters such as Mosher accusing me of posting under some sort of ulterior motive at the behest of another blogger.
Does that mean I should feel free to make claims about where I think posters' "instructions" coming from?
Steve: Your allegation is again simply untrue. I'm not online 24/7. There are hundreds of comments. If a post breaches blog rules, I appreciate it if people notify me of it.
There's plenty of inaccuracy in K&T 97 but it is a survey and essentially a first attempt to find the overall balance. As such, it's better than what transpired before. They also try to rely on some measured data as well. Keep in mind it's good to better than an order of magnitude and covers pretty much all the basis.
The problems with the whole mess derive from gross over estimates of sensitivity of T to W/m^2, not that there is so much absorption from this or that. The real value would appear to be 0.18 K / W/m^2 for the next few W/m^2 and a bit less for the ones following puts things in better context. The BS of 3 to 5 K per W/m^2 is from the video games.
Re the NASA Mollweide chart he presents in #72, Phil #126 writes, in reply to #119,
While JPL is a NASA entity, it is run by Caltech rather than GISS, which would account for the fact that it knowledgeably uses an equal-area projection rather than the area-distorting Hansen-GISS equirectangular projection.
See earlier CA thread on Equal Area Projections for several additional equal-area alternatives to the GISS equirectangular and polar orthographic projections, which tend to sensationalize polar anomalies. As it happens, these anomalies are only sparsely measured to begin with, which makes exaggerating them doubly misleading.
— Hu McCulloch
BS Caltech 1967
Hu,
1967? I was 1965, Page House. Small world.
Steve I'm not making up stories, I hadn't noticed 'recently' in your earlier comment (#97), it doesn't change the point of my remark.
Willis gave a dictionary definition of 'fraud' I pointed out that you don't go by dictionary definitions, a fact that you've just confirmed. Regarding the wording used I did use 'fraudulent', what adjective will you allow to describe the action of deliberately making false statements?
Per your request I'll email you such complaints in future, by the way why did you just snip the offending lines from the posts I mentioned and left the rest whereas in the case of my post regarding D'Aleo delete the whole post?
Steve: Phil, please stop putting words in my mouth. It's very annoying. IF I'm going to "confirm" something, I'll do so explicitly. I did not "confirm" that I did not go by dictionary definitions; I use dictionaries although, for specialist terms, I would not necessarily rely on the definition in an online dictionary. As in all matters, one needs to use a little judgement.
As to your question, I'd suggest that you stick to the facts and don't editorialize on motives or intent. In most cases, all you can know is that someone made a false statement. As to whether they did so "deliberately" is usually beyond your knowledge. In the present case, you say that you did not "intentionally" make up the story; you didn't "notice" a relevant point in my earlier comment. I'm prepared to accept your explanation and I withdraw my statement that you "intentionally" made up this story since you say that you did so unintentionally. Nonetheless, your rendering of my comment was untrue. I urge you to lay off the editorializing and simply observe that statements are untrue, if they are.
As to the snips: it's hard to deal with these sorts of things once they are in a food fight. IF something should be snipped, then there's little point having an extended discussion perpetuating the offending phraseology. That's why I much prefer to deal with offending posts offline.
When people use words that are off-limits for this blog (including religious terms), I have a red letter deletion, hopefully to ensure some self-discipline on posters. So when you accused someone of "fraud", I deleted the post – no snipping. I'm a bit more lenient with posts that do not use language that I've explicitly asked not to use. I find over-editorializing tiresome and it's faster for me to delete than to snip. It depends a bit on my mood how much snipping I'm prepared to do. In the cases at hand, your characterization of the posts seemed a bit hysterical to me as the posts fell well short of alleging fraud.
"deliberately making false statements" Has it been proven both that the statements were false and that it was deliberate? How about instead things along the lines of: That statement does not appear to be true. Perhaps you mis-spoke. I do not believe that statement to be accurate. It appears from your actions you may have an ulterior motive.
As far as this sun thing, the graph I put up deals with Petawatts and how they're moved around at a simplified overview.
Let's see if I can summarize it properly. The sun heats the atmosphere not so much down (ozone and water vapor, kinetic afterwards with oxygen and nitrogen) but heats the ground. The reradiation from the ground above 2 um is what all the GHG then react to In the day (which is replaced by sunlight) and at night (which of course is not). Clouds moderate sun in or reradiation trying to get out. The sun powers the wind and the water cycle. The quarter globe pointing at the sun in the day where the sun is directly pointing gets the most of it, which tapers off as you move away from the area.
Weather is sun and water. Climate is how this operates over time and space. Long enough timeframes should give the same basic results, short periods of time are highly variable, with many complex interactions.
Or maybe just something like .25 um to 2.5 um (approx) comes down, mostly heating the surface, 2.5 um to 70 um is what goes up, around and back up and down, mostly warming the atmosphere. Together, this is the basic story of atmospheric transmission.
No Sam, the statements I objected to were demonstrably false and I assumed that D'Aleo was sufficiently intelligent to know so, I notice that one of the comments I objected to referring to a particular person no longer appear in the blog from which you can draw your own conclusions.
What 'actions'? I called a spade a spade, someone on here took D'Aleo's blog at face value and I responded, eventually Steve removed my post.
Phil and others, we've had enough of this discussion.
The UAH satellite data has been posted and there is a small decline. April lower troposphere temperatures are +0.015C anomaly down from the March numbers of +0.089C.
Tropics and SH below average. NH slightly above average.
http://www.atmos.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
The decrease in the tropics continues. Now one of the lowest since 1979.
But steve, aren't you just cherry picking results that confirm your skepticism?
#!75. Tropical tropopause trends were identified ex ante as a key fingerprint by Ross McKitrick in his T3 tax concept. So I'm interested in following this fingerprint data. I;m not as "skeptical" as many readers. I enjoy testing the data and seeing where it goes. I have no firm views on what sensitivity to expect – this is one of the reasons why I'd like to see a clear derivation of sensitivity without conflating the sensitivty issue with all the complications of a GCM. Quite frankly I'm a bit surprised by the present cold snap; it doesn't "confirm" anything in my mind; but it's intriguing.
And you know how much we'd be hearing about the opposite and I enjoy irony.
I'd like to see a clear derivation of sensitivity without conflating the sensitivty issue with all the complications of a GCM.
What about Tung and Camp 2007?
#174, #176
"I enjoy testing the data and seeing where it goes."
Here's what you get testing the data for the tropics with a Hodrick-Prescott filter:
Where is it going? Like Steve said, the "decrease continues." In terms of both absolute value, and smoothed value, it is below where it started out nearly 30 years ago.
177 (Jon): If we are going to drag up Camp and Tung, we will be in no better a position than ever. For one thing, there are all sorts of effects that different people say the sun has, so C&T, which is just TSI and UV Ozone, won't satisfy anyone who believes in, say, CRF->LACC.
179 (Me): as a follow up to that, it is worth noting that not all researchers would agree that the solar cycle sensitivity can be extended to CO2 as C&T do. Obviously if Douglass and Calder can simultaneously claim negative feedback to volcanic eruptions and positive to solar cylces, C&T won't settle this issue.
Andrey,
…only direct measurements of outgoing IR spectra on top of troposphere and stratosphere, along with measurements of incoming IR at Earth surface AT NIGHT could give us an idea of what is going on with surface radiative transfer.
And that's precisely what is being done. The ARM home page is a valuable resource. The AERI instrument
, for example, is an FTIR spectrophotometer
that measures the absolute infrared spectral radiance (watts per square meter per steradian per wavenumber) of the sky directly above the instrument. The spectral measurement range of the instrument is 3300 to 520 wavenumbers (cm-1) or 3-19.2 microns for the normal-range instruments and 3300 to 400 cm-1 or 3-25 microns for the extended-range polar instruments. Spectral resolution is 1.0 cm-1. Instrument field-of-view is 1.3 degrees.
Satellite and airplane versions do similar things. The major limitation right now is the restricted range on the long wavelength side due to lack of a suitable detector for a reasonable price and operating cost (it needs to be cryogenically cooled among other things). The instrument manual available on the page goes into more detail about the calibration, etc. Suffice it to say, if there were a major discrepancy between calculated and observed spectra, you would have heard about it by now.
Ok, I give up — you guys are too stubborn, misguided, and incorrigible for me to deal with any more.
My last word: the reason that convection in a Hadley cell only goes upward for 15 km is because it runs into the tropopause and stratosphere, where vertical convection ceases, by definition. The vertical impetus then drives the warm air for thousands of miles horizontally because there is nowhere else for the warm air to go.
If you can't see that, then I leave you to your misconceptions.
For the record, my illustrations of more nuetral phrases earlier were not directed at anyone, they were examples. Don't take things personally if I don't name you!
Pat K, pliny, others discussing atmospheric weather motions (I think that's the subject). I'm confused a bit. We know that once we hit the tropopause at X height (which varies) things change, and there's some overlap. Seems rather pointless to bicker about what happens where in a changing atmosphere with gradients and various time/space locations and amounts of sun and wind patterns and….. Difficult to discuss overviews and details at the same time. Maybe we just need a model. 🙂
Yeah, I've quit. The issue was whether the atmosphere is in hydrostatic equilibrium. I have given up trying to convince them that it isn't.
Pat, of course it's not in hydrostatic equilibrum. There's an infinite amount of "water and ice" available, since either can become either through the atmosphere. That's why I say you have to take the hydrosphere et al into account in this. Water can go in and out of the lithosphere, right?
That's the way I think of it, anyway, on a macro scale without getting into the details of why, when, where and how.
But then again, I just recently figured out that .25 micron to 2.5 micron in versus 2.5 micron to 70 micron "out" thing.
I don't know why this did not get through the censor at Tammy's.
The pine beetle outbreak in BC is often used by alarmists as an example of bad things that can happen due to rising temperatures. However, the reality is much more complex. In this case, the pine beetle outbreak has more to do with agressive fire suppression than temperatures. Before the 20th century fires would regularily clear out older stands of pine and deprive the beetle of their primary food source.
The government forest researchers have recently announced that the pine beetle outbreak is almost over due the fact that most of the mature trees are gone:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/03/25/bc-pine-beetle.html
The pine beetle example is a good example of the one-dimensional nature of alarmist thinking. If temperature is found to be a factor in a problem then they immediately presume that it is the single dominant factor. They also always imply that the problem would not have occurred if dirty old humans weren't heating the planet up.
These kinds of arguments are often the easiest for a layperson to understand and they are very difficult to dispel once a notion becomes popular. For example, I have no idea why people claim that a warmer world will have more extreme weather events. I doubt that there is an conclusive science that supports this claim yet it is accepted as truth. It is quite frustrating.
Hydrostatic equilibrium refers to the balance of the gravitational force and the pressure gradient force nothing to do with the hydrosphere.
Re#181:
Thanks, DeWitt, I'll take close look at ARM data.
I gave up arguing with a stubborn denial of natural convection in the troposphere and a corresponding insistence on hydrostatic equilibrium.
Here is a good example of natural convection…..
Chaitén Volcano, Chile.
189 Pat,
Please educate a chem eng. What is meant by hydrostatic equil. It suggests a no flow situation. Is this correct? So how do you get a lapse rate? No flow implies isothermal conditions. Lapse rates result from upward movement of air and the relationship between pressure and temperature for a moving gas. If the column is static, conduction will drive it to isothermal. What am I missing here?
191 (Gary):
Hydrostatic equilibrium refers to a condition where the force of gravity is balanced by a pressure gradiant. It can be for a static or dynamic situation but it is where forces balance out with gravity for zero net force and hence no acceleration or change in velocities. It is a term applicable to both the solar interior which has a pure convective energy layer in constant motion and to the Earth's atmosphere.
beaker, here's the problem underlying all of the numbers, the problem that gets lost in the details of what each word means..
You can imagine the greenhouse gases as being a kind of shell around the earth. This shell absorbs and radiates energy.
Now suppose we increase the CO2. That GHG shell absorbs more energy, we can call that additional energy ∆Q. Half of that energy, ∆Q/2, is radiated out to space, and the other half goes back down to warm the earth. That's the what is called the "greenhouse effect".
Notice in this process that the greenhouse gases have warmed by ∆Q … but the surface has only been warmed by ∆Q/2. The important point is that the warming aloft is, and has to be, greater than the surface warming.
Now in the real world, we don't get warming aloft of two to one, there are losses, it's more complex … but for the GHG driver theory to be correct, the atmosphere must warm more than the surface. It cannot warm less, because heat doesn't run uphill, as we used to say.
That's the physics behind the theory's requirement that the rise in the middle troposphere has to have a positive sign. This is borne out by the overall trend of the majority of the models. It's not accidental that all the models except a couple mutants show a temperature trend rise beginning immediately above the surface and continuing to rise gradually to a peak at an elevation of around 300-200 hPa. It is required by the underlying theory.
This is why it is so significant that the observational data shows cooling. The sign of the change is not an inconsequential zero point that you can be a little above or a little below. It is a physical limitation based on the theory that the additional warmth is caused by the increase in GHGs. If GHGs are what is making the earth warm, the atmosphere has to warm faster than the earth.
So the real issue is not whether the models agree or disagree or are biased or whatever with respect to the observations. The real issue is not whether to use standard deviation or standard error of the mean.
The real issue is that the theory disagrees with the observations. For GHG to be the driver of the warming, the warming aloft must be greater than at the surface.
But the observations say it's not warming aloft, it's cooling compared with the surface. Not only that, but the higher you go, the greater the cooling.
Now as Steve Mc has pointed out, the radiosonde data has problems of its own. It has not been audited. We should not believe it just because we like it.
But if the observations are in fact correct, and the MSU satellite data seems to confirm it … then GH gases are not the driver of the warming. Because if they were, we'd see positive and increasing warming trends aloft … but we see negative and decreasing trends aloft.
Which, of course, is why we are seeing an effort to define the question as being one of the improper use of statistics … precisely because that's not the point. The point is that observations of negative and decreasing trends aloft is a direct refutation of the theoretical basis of the claim that the warming is caused by GHGs.
Willis E. #314 says:
This is wrong in many ways. ∆Q is a an energy increment, that needs to be linked to temperature by heat capacity.
But more fundamentally, your idea that the sky must be warmer than the earth is flawed. Heat is flowing from the earth at 300K to space at 3K. It's doing this right now, no matter what you think a particular model thinks. We have greenhouse gases in our atmosphere already, that help keep the surface warmer than it would be without them. The AGW is a discussion of a 10% change on what is already happening. So if the theories "required" the warming aloft, we would already be seeing it.
Do you think the inner layers of a cryogenic dewar warm to higher than the outside temperature because they are "holding" back the heat to the cold liquid inside?
192 cba
The existence of Hadley cells and other examples of convective circulation is inconsistent with the assertion that the atmosphere is in hydrostatic equilibrium.
An atmosphere in hydrostatic equilibrium has no clouds, no weather. Try to tell the poor souls in Myanmar that the atmosphere is in hydrostatic equilibrium.
191 Gary
A lapse rate would still exist for an atmosphere in hydrostatic equilibrium, but there would be no need for meteorologists: no low- or high-pressure areas to watch, no weather.
You're thinking two dimensionally. The atmosphere exists in a gravitational field. So a kg of air at 1 km contains 9,800 J (1,000m * 9.8 m/sec2 * 1 kg) of gravitational potential energy compared to a kg of air at sea level. In order to have the same total enthalpy as a kg of air at sea level, a kg of dry air must be 9.8 C cooler (9,800J/kg / 1,000 J/kg C) than the same kg of air at the surface. Add moisture, including the heat of vaporization, and the temperature drop is less.
Neil Haven
Gator #319,
Please read more carefully what Willis E. said in #314. He did not say the atmosphere should be warmer than the surface. Consider what the theory of differential greenhouse warming requires…
I suggest again that anyone who seriously wants to understand this subject needs to study advanced undergraduate or graduate level textbooks on Physical Meteorology and Atmospheric Radiation Transfer with an open mind. Cabellero's lecture notes on Physical Meteorology on line are approaching textbook quality. I think Ray Pierrehumbert has something on line as well. For radiation transfer, I can personally recommend Grant Petty, A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation. Other textbooks include: Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey, by J M Wallace and P V Hobbs, Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology, 4th edition by Holton, and if you're really serious and a glutton for punishment, "Atmospheric Modeling, Data Assimilation and Predictability" by Eugenia Kalnay.
How about this. In the atmosphere when altitude increases, the pressure of air decreases, so there's a pressure gradient force. Gravity almost balances this exactly, but not quite. Why? A bunch of reasons. The point is it's not in perfect equilibrium.
However, since there are both a pressure gradient force and gravity juggling the atmosphere, you could say it's basically at hydrostatic equilibrium I suppose one could say. Depending on where you're looking and what area you're considering.
Just don't forget the PGF is the acceleration of air from that pressure difference we have, which causes the wind. (Well, the atmosphere and its composition and how that reacts to the sun and the height and location determine the pressure difference, so it's rather recursive) And the PGF isn't the only thing that does something to the air moving; we have the coriolis effect and centrifugal force as well as friction at work here. Thermal issues also, which depends on the sun and the exact composition of the atmosphere at the location you're interested in.
Phil. #187 Of course it has something to do with the hydrosphere, the atmosphere has water in it. Part of the reason this atmosphere works like it does is due to a number of factors, one of which is how water works under different conditions. This is about a zero net force on a volume of fluid, right? Unles I'm mistaken and water's not a fluid. 🙂
I said that's how I think of it and on a macro level.
With more and more of the earth's water tied up in expanding glaciers, he reasoned, winds pushed iron-rich dust from the continents' parched surfaces, creating new phytoplankton blooms and freezing even more water – a positive feedback loop for global cooling. Martin believed that if this effect were triggered again on a smaller scale, it might even counteract the contemporary problem of global warming. "Give me half a tanker of iron," he joked, "and I'll give you the next ice age."
Nearly all scientists are concerned that if private companies or governments use Martin's research for wholesale fertilization of the HNLC zones, disaster could ensue. Poisonous algae blooms could be created, methane—a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide—could be released, and entire aquatic ecosystems could be thrown out of whack.
A mix of profit and principle. Markels is an outspoken contrarian who doesn't believe global warming is much of a threat, but he's happy to sell his services to people who think otherwise.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Giants/Martin/
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.11/ecohacking.html
Gerald Machnee
Here is a reference to an article by Chritopher Booker, then a follow-up in gristmill saying that he was mis-quoted.
Not news, but an opinion column in the UK Telegraph a few days ago:
Watch the web for climate change truths, by Christopher Booker
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/2/115552/7430
197 (Sam): Now I can't abide that. If you don't believe that AGW is a threat, how can you allow people to use your work to cuase the onset of the next Ice Age to "stop" it?
Andrew #199
Just because somebody's worried about it doesn't make it true. Just because somebody's not worried about it doesn't make it false.
The difference in this case is that if I'm trying to make money by pushing some idea on you that may or may not be true, it's not the same as letting a customer buy a service they think they need but you don't care one way or the other. I don't have to think you need a mansion to sell you one.
But how about this. Let's say the CDE (Carbon Dioxide Equivalent; the non-water vapor IR absorbing gases phrased in terms of equivalent ppmv of forcing) is .000500 of the atmosphere. Now let's say we agree that if the CDE is .000250 (half) or .001000 (double) it will make a difference in how the troposphere deals with energy; that increased IR absorbing gases make things "hotter" or "colder" in and of themselves as to levels.
If I can get things colder by dumping in iron, can't I get things warmer by going back and removing iron? Or harvesting the results as food? Or if I don't even think there's a difference in the system between a CDE of .001 .0005 and .00025 in the first place?
Raven (#186) writes,
The pine beetle outbreak in BC is often used by alarmists …
"Alarmist" probably sounds alarms among the self-styled "environmentally-conscious", much as "AGW skeptics" adamantly deny they are "denialists".
Is there a less offensive word for "alarmist" that does not presuppose enlightenment, yet is not as insipid as "warmer"?
Ran across this tonight in a book I'm reading: "…as a famous movie magnate once observed, it's difficult to make forecasts, especially about the future."
maksimovich
In the atmosphere when altitude increases, the pressure of air decreases, so there's a pressure gradient force. Gravity almost balances this exactly, but not quite. Why? A bunch of reasons. The point is it's not in perfect equilibrium.
It is far from equilibrium (the temperature gradient shows that)
Here a weak external field (gravity)amplifies the FFLTE system.This is clearly seen in Bernard convection and the mechanical sensitivity.
This is used as an example by Prigogine and Stengers 1984 and Kondepudi D.K., Prigogine I. Sensitivity on nonequilibrium chemical systems to gravitational field. Adv. Space Res. 3(5), 171-176, 1983.
Hu McCulloch says:
My original post at Tammy's did not use that word (or any of the text after the link in #186). That said, I use the term "AGW advocate" if I feel a need to be diplomatic. OTOH, I think alarmist is a relatively neutral term compared to the loaded term 'denier'.
Neil #322 and Gator #319,
Willis in #314:
Gator in #319:
This is wrong in many ways.
At this point Gator is correct, his comments after that are indeed a misinterpretation of Willis. But Willis is still wrong. The atmosphere warms faster than the surface (but is not warmer than the surface) only if the water vapor in the atmosphere increases as the temperature increases so the lapse rate decreases as the temperature increases. However, nothing in radiation transfer theory requires this. The Archer MODTRAN3 calculator, for example, uses a fixed lapse rate. However an increase in CO2 still increases the forcing and requires an increased surface temperature to bring the total LW emission back to balance. A shell model is a poor approximation to reality. The real atmosphere, unlike a shell model, is not isothermal and isotropic and LW absorption/emission varies strongly with wavelength.
maksimovich,
Do you meant that the temperature gradient is far from the equilibrium gradient or that the equilibrium gradient should be zero and the atmosphere isothermal? While in the absence of radiative cooling, an isothermal atmosphere is stable to convection locally, I don't see how you obtain further heating of the upper atmosphere once the adiabatic gradient is achieved.
Let me suggest "AGW activist" as a more neutral PC term. Anything else I would suggest would be snipped in a heartbeat.
206 macsimovich
Do you know if the Prigogine articles you cite are available online?
We already know that warmer air rises, and in the troposphere has to expend energy to do so to overcome gravity and to overcome a greater air mass at lower pressures as you go up. So this energy loss for air (yes, yes, and energy gain for other things, call it transfer if you want, the air still doesn't have it any more :)) results in lower temperatures as it goes up. How fast is that? How fast compared ot the ground. Oh, and don't forget the clouds and sun and relative humidity and and and (including the other layers, mainly the stratosphere.
So is the discussion about a layer, sublayer(s) in layers, multiple layers, or the entire atmosphere?
maksimovich 206 "It is far from equilibrium (the temperature gradient shows that)"
There is some sort of balance, at least overall. Fluctating? Remove gravity. Atmosphere goes into space. Remove pressure gradient force. Atmosphere comes closer to Earth. I suppose it depends on the definition of what is equilibrium and what is far from it. And what you're talking about.
DeWitt 208
At this point Gator is correct, his comments after that are indeed a misinterpretation of Willis. But Willis is still wrong. The atmosphere warms faster than the surface (but is not warmer than the surface) only if the water vapor in the atmosphere increases as the temperature increases so the lapse rate decreases as the temperature increases.
Is he wrong or is he incomplete or is he illustrative? Define faster and define what is faster when and how. Ground? Water? GHG? Oxygen? The atmosphere as a whole?
R #208 and #212 – **The atmosphere warms faster than the surface**.
This is a relative statement. The atmosphere's temperature may increase faster than the surface, but in reality does not "warm faster". Most of the atmospheric heating originates at the surface. Shortwave radiation is absorbed by the land and water, which then heat the atmosphere by conduction, resulting in some cooling of the surface due to this heat loss. The energy is then transferred upward by several processes including mixing and convection. Radiation cooling (longwave) also results in cooling of the surface, the land cooling much faster than the water. So the atmosphere "appears" to warm faster.
There is some absorption of the longwave radiation by the atmosphere (greenhouse gases, etc) which may result in the "warming".
Great tits are adapting to the warming in Britain. Apparently the number of great tits in Britain are increasing with the warming.
John Lang #214 (for now anyway)
That one's worth a screen capture. After all, if NBC can make Arctic penguins disappear…
Re #214;
Perhaps this is a sampling error due to the increased usage of tight t-shirts over bulky sweaters due to the warming?
Sounds like further observation is greatly needed.
Sam #212,
Let me state my argument more rigorously. The question is if the surface at 1,000 mbar pressure Ts warms by X what does the temperature at 500 mbar do? Is the change in temperature greater than the surface, the same or less than the surface? Willis appears to contend that according to radiative transfer theory the X500 must always be greater than Xs . I contend that this is not true. X500 can be less than (larger lapse rate) or equal to (same lapse rate) as well as greater than (smaller lapse rate) Xs. Each condition has consequences, though. If the lapse rate increases, then Xs is larger and the specific humidity at 500 mbar must decrease or the atmosphere won't be stable, convection will eventually correct the temperature profile. Conversely, if the lapse rate decreases then the specific humidity at 500 mbar must increase and Xs is smaller. If the lapse rate doesn't change and Xs and X500 are equal then the specific humidity hasn't changed either and Xs has an intermediate value compared to the other two cases. One further condition, the lapse rate cannot increase beyond the dry adiabatic lapse rate of 9.8 K/km. The meteorological convention is that the lapse rate is a positive number even though the temperature declines with altitude. This is for clear air. The presence of liquid or frozen water complicates things too much for my still less than complete understanding. Also it's about the annual average temperature or temperature anomaly, not diurnal or seasonal variation.
The story is about a type of bird (not "bird" but the chirp chip feather kind) Blame the BBC.
Gerald, Dewitt #213 #217 This is the issue I think. There's multiple ways to look at the "warming" (change in temperature in K from a lower to higher number)
Are we talking about how fast land and or water absorb energy from the sun versus the atmosphere absorbs energy from the sun? Or land/water from the sun versus the atmosphere from the ground? Or surface losing energy versus atmosphere gaining it? And faster per unit or faster total?
Sure there's that lapse rate, wet or dry involved, due to gravity and atmospheric pressure et al. Are we just talking aobut the top 5 feet of air versus top 5 feet of surface?
Or in other words, what exactly is gaining/losing heat where, in relation to what? When? How? What conditions? Mostly? Always? Where on the planet are we? Is the sun out? Is it cloudy? Are we talking convection or conduction or a mix or something else? If air, up or down or both?
This is a "how I think about it" kind of argument don't you think?
"Question" 1: Under most (some all) daytime conditions, does the sun heat the ground faster than it does the air, taking into account total energy level per unit, to what altitude and what depth? Or can you get either answer depending on the surface type and composition of the air and area picked?
"Question" 2: Under most (some all) nightime conditions, does the surface lose energy slower than the air gains it?
AFAIK:
Question 1: Under clear skies the sun will always heat the land surface faster than it does the air. The heat capacity and thermal conductivity of dirt isn't all that large so the solar energy is absorbed by a thin layer of the surface as opposed to near IR absorption by water vapor over several km of air. That leads to high, unstable, near surface lapse rates and local thunderstorms among other things. The ocean is quite a different story, the heat capacity, conductivity and optical depth are all large leading to small diurnal temperature variation.
Therefore it follows that the answer to Question 2 is that the land surface cools faster at night (clear sky again) than the air above it leading to a stable temperature inversion and the collapse of the boundary layer to as little as 100m compared to as much as 2 km during the day.
As ever the skeptic, this is something I would like to observe in person.
If they really wanted to know this they could simply have asked people living in a warmer climate – any bloke in Australia that spends much time at the beach could have told them that they can see many more great tits on warmer summer days than cooler winter days.
Great tits are adapting to the warming in Britain.
This was discussed in volume on Tim Blair Aussi blog:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/good_news_for_all/
A new development at RC. It seems that they put a bet on the new study of Keenlyside 2008.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/global-cooling-wanna-bet/langswitch_lang/in
My gut feeling says this isn't a sensible approach, at least not for the other side. It seems that they are going to challenge each other (rather than challenging the "sceptics"), despite the "consensus". I do not have the impression that Keenlyside and the others authors oppose against the conclusions and opinion(s) of the IPCC. I get the impression that some pro-AGW bloggers are also not in favour of new idea of RC.
If Keenlyside et all are sensible and responsible, they will not accept (and even not respond to) the bet. If they are sensible scientists, they will monitor observational data and check it with the ourput of their model. And report within 10 or 20 years.
Another observation; it seems that Gavin Schmidt is not involved.
From the Patagonia Times 8th May.
Chile volcano scenario "Similar to Pompeii"
So RC is not betting Quatloos? Good. No actual money ever has to change hands. RC is now on record with a prediction. This is how doomsday cults are finally disposed of.
Of course, you are completely correct to point out that temperature is a function of heat capacity as well as heat content. Indeed, it is possible to construct scenarios in which global warming could be occurring in terms of joules stored in the climate system while atmospheric and surface temperatures decrease! However, I read Willis' point to be simply this: If the surface is hypothesized to radiate energy q1 before increasing the concentration of a greenhouse gas, and hypothesized to radiate q2 after the increase, and if q2 is greater than q1, then the difference must come from somewhere. That difference, by the greenhouse warming hypothesis, comes from radiation from the atmosphere (considered in bulk). Although atmospheric radiation may be quite anisotropic, it is surely less than perfectly anisotropic, so any increased atmospheric radiation in a direction toward the surface must be accompanied by an increase in atmospheric radiation toward that great heat sink in the sky (perhaps this is incorrect?). Thus, for any radiative increment at the surface, there must be a corresponding greater radiative increment from the atmosphere as a whole. This does not necessarily imply a temperature increase.
That should have been 1982-1950 (backwards) and 1982-2007 (forwards) to see if a model gets it right into the past as well as into its future (as far as initial conditions of 1982 being the center). Much like seeing if a model gets surface, troposphere and stratosphere all correct or not.
Earlier posters had interesting comments on modeling ice content. About not being able to pick and choose a model you like (matches) for >the Arctic and another you like (matches) for the Antarctic. Maybe it was just that you have to average them for "global sea ice".
But why not? Or better yet, how could you not have to have different models for each? They're not very much at all alike. North is an ocean with ice, South is an ice covered continent.
North is closer to the more urbanized part of the globe, with more land around it, is a mix of ice and water (with differences between ice area, and water area, and water&ice area), and the Earth is farther from the sun during its summer. Plus there's the human influence with boats, subs etc etc.
South is closer to the less urbanized part of the globe, with more water around it, is ice covered land, and the Earth is closer to the sun during its summer. There's not much human influence.
For those of you that didn't get it yet, this is why the changed title of this post is humorous; how do you get sea ice on something that's not a sea? lol There's sea ice in the Northern. (Maybe that's where the penguins are hiding?)
Now, the real question is; what the heck does AGW or "gases that absorb and emit 2.5-70 micron infrared from the surface of the Earth" (the so-called GHG) have to do with discussion of the difference in the physical nature of the top and bottom of the Earth? Or with modeling that? Ah, you see.
I really don't care what anyone's opinions on carbon dioxide are, or if somebody agrees with me or not that more of it than 280 or 380 or 480 probably doesn't add net energy to the climate system as a whole and if it does it's a few percent at best. But if they disagree I'd like to know their reasoning, and I'm happy to tell them why they're wrong. 😀 But the carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere has nothing to do with examining sea ice at a pole.
How contaminents get to the Arctic
What happens when stuff gets into the water
kuhnkat
"Now, the real question is; what the heck does AGW or "gases that absorb and emit 2.5-70 micron infrared from the surface of the Earth" (the so-called GHG) have to do with discussion of the difference in the physical nature of the top and bottom of the Earth?"
The AGW theory says that since there is low water vapor in the atmosphere over Antarctica the CO2 effect should be much higher than, say, the tropics where water vapor masks it. A model with the AGW CO2 physics shows more warming and less ice accumulation but similar precip I believe.
Of course, valid obversations should decide.
329 kuhnkat : "over Antarctica the CO2 effect should be much higher" than the tropics. Why? It's not like carbon dioxide is some magical substance that lives in isolation from everything else. Besides the amount of water vapor as you mentioned, there's different wind patterns, different strength and length of sunshine, different ratio of land/water, different pressures, different heights of atmospheric levels and so on. No comparison.
The point is that discussing the physical differences of the geographic locations is one subject, how they specifically behave vis-a-vis any one physical process is another subject (especially sub-components of that particular process that are made up of other things, eg methane as a ghg, ghg in the atmosphere, the atmosphere compared to the entire weather process and how that's affected by land and temperature and…).
My point is that the physical realities of the two (just N/S polar regions) are very different and will behave differently. That includes energy input, weather patterns, IR absorbing/emitting gases (including also how water vapor acts both as one of those and as part of the hydrosphere) and how the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, cyrosphere and biosphere work alone and together.
Carbon dioxide is just one wheel in a cog in a machine, and is part of a part of a different subject that applies to different areas made up differently. The Arctic is an ocean near land at the top of the densely populated NH. The Antarctic is a desert, an ice-covered land mass near water at the bottom of the less densly populated SH. The Tropics well of course they're different also, more sun, (looks to be about 2/3 water), ITCZ circulation, water vapor and so on.
Plus they all share various aspects of atmosphereic circulation of course. But in different ways with differnt overlaps, and other factors impacting that.
Just one factor between the two, N/S, the polar vortex:
The vortex is most powerful in the hemisphere's winter, when the temperature gradient is steepest, and diminishes or can disappear in the summer. The Antarctic polar vortex is more pronounced and persistent than the Arctic one; this is because the distribution of land masses at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere gives rise to Rossby waves which contribute to the breakdown of the vortex, whereas in the southern hemisphere the vortex remains less disturbed. The Arctic vortex is elongated in shape, with two centres, one roughly over Baffin Island in Canada and the other over northeast Siberia.
And if you haven't seen it you might be interested in this, although their cartoon of the circulation cells in the large size appears to be broken.
Atmospheric circulation is the large-scale movement of air, and the means (together with the smaller ocean circulation) by which heat is distributed on the surface of the Earth.
The large-scale structure of the atmospheric circulation varies from year to year, but the basic structure remains fairly constant. However, individual weather systems – midlatitude depressions, or tropical convective cells – occur "randomly", and it is accepted that weather cannot be predicted beyond a fairly short limit: perhaps a month in theory, or (currently) about ten days in practice (see Chaos theory and Butterfly effect). Nonetheless, the average of these systems – the climate – is stable over longer periods of time.
If you can consider random chaotic infinite systems over space and time with random unplannable events "stable" I'm not so sure, but there ya go! 🙂
DeWitt #219
They were really rhetorical questions… 🙂
The wattage going into the ground during the day is greater than that going into the atmosphere. Now if we define faster as amount of energy per unit time, the question (I don't know the answer for) is what is the mass of the surface (dry dirt, wet dirt, ice, concrete, irrigated land, tops of trees, whatever + lakes, streams, oceans, seas, whatever) compared to the mass of the air? Then you can find out daytime if the one is absorbing more energy per unit time than the other. Or is it phrased in terms of overall rise in K of the entire system during sunlight? (Which also brings up the sticky question of if the atmospheric "warming" includes the re-radiation from the ground vs the loss of energy from the ground doing so.)
If we only count what the sun is warming, I'd pick ground is faster since it gets more wattage. What's the mass of both though? On the other hand, as soon as the sun comes out if you're on a beach, in still air you can feel it on your face before your feet start to get burnt walking around. So? I don't know.
If we count sun in warms atmosphere and ground, ground warms atmosphere back, it seems the atmosphere is warming faster.
At night there's another answer, a more simple one; because all we have (basically) is transfer from the ground to the atmosphere. So the atmosphere has to get energy faster, because the ground is losing it.
226 (Neil):
you mean isotropic or uniform in all directions for the emissions of any point in the atmosphere. If considering a thin shell then roughly half goes upward and half goes downward. It is also dependent upon only the material in that shell and its temperature. It doesn't depend upon the surface emissions. If one increases the radiation from the surface (such as the surface T increases or more sunlight is getting through to the surface), then conservation of energy applies everywhere and the T might change to accomodate it. All of the various temperatures involved will readjust so that there is conservation of energy everywhere.
An interesting factor is that for this shell of atmosphere (dz) it has an absorption defined by the contents of the shell. If an increase of IR absorbing molecules occurs, this absorption factor increases linearly for the shell. Consequently, this is directly related to the emissivity of that shell too and so it will radiate more at the same temperature than it did before the increase. This radiate more means more up and more down and it's related to the absorption/emissivity curve and to the local temperature of the shell.
For the case where the absorption is happening to a surface T radiation and where the absorbing shell is also at T and that absorption is 1, then the emission up would be 1 and the emission down would be 1 and there would be a gross loss of energy from the shell because it's radating more than it absorbs.
Now assume the air at dz is at temperature Ta and emitting and absorbing in equilbrium, pi = pd + pu, where pi is power in which must be equal to power radiated down + power radiated up or pi = 2pr where pr = pd = pu. Now increase the co2 slightly to increase the power absorption by dp so that the new radiated power = pi+dp. That must be = 2pr + dp and note that this cannot be the same as pi + dp = 2(pr + dp). The temperature Ta at dz will have to be reduced for the energy flow rates to balance.
229 kuhnkat
The AGW theory says that since there is low water vapor in the atmosphere over Antarctica the CO2 effect should be much higher than, say, the tropics where water vapor masks it.
I don't think so. First of all there is no "masking". Secondly, the AGW theory invokes positive feedback from water vapor to amplify the CO2 effect.
233 (Pat):
what they're referring to in masking is that in general, the co2 has almost no effect with typical values of h2o present while if there were not h2o present, it should contribute almost 1/4 of the normal amount with h2o. Essentially what that means is when the conditions that reduce h2o dramatically occur, only a portion of the absorption will decrease. Claiming it is masked is probably over the top but there should be a bit of effect. As for positive feedback, it's all in the hot air being unleashed at public speeches.
This 'masked' co2 effect of course is much less than the overall effect with plenty of h2o vapor. It's just a slightly larger fraction of a much smaller pie.
What I said is the temperature difference is a far from equilibrium position.
Ilya Prigogine in his Nobel lecture..
For many years great efforts were made to generalize this theorem to situations further away from equilibrium. It came as a great surprise when it was finally shown that far from equilibrium the thermodynamic behavior could be quite different, in fact, even opposite to that indicated by the theorem of minimum entropy production.
It is remarkable that this new type of behavior appears already in typical situations studied in classical hydrodynamics. The example which was first analyzed from this point of view is the so-called "Bénard instability". Consider a horizontal layer of fluid between two infinite parallel planes in a constant Gravitational field, and let us maintain the lower boundary at temperature T1 and the higher boundary at temperature T2 with T1 > T2. For a sufficiently large value of the "adverse" gradient (T,-TT,)/(T,+T,), the state of rest becomes unstable and convection starts. The entropy production is then increased as the convection provides a new mechanism of heat transport. Moreover the state of flow, which appears beyond the instability, is a state of organization as compared to the state of rest. Indeed a macroscopic number of molecules have to move in a coherent fashion over macroscopic times to realize the flow pattern.
We have here a good example of the fact that non-equilibrium may be a source of order.
"How would an external field — a gravitational field — change an equilibrium situation? The answer is provided by Boltzmann's order principle: the basic quantity involved is the ratio of potential energy/thermal energy."
Nonequilibrium magnifies the effect of gravitation. In the Benard cell, having a thickness of only a few millimeters, while the effect of gravitation on such a thin layer would be neglible at equilibrium, because of nonequilbrium, the macroscopic gravitational effects become visible. Regarding the Bernard cell,from a mechanical perspective its instability is the raising of its center of gravity as the result of thermal dilation.
Gravitation obviously will modify the diffusion flow in a reaction diffusion equation. Detailed calculations show that this can be quite dramatic near a bifurcation point of an unperturbed system. In particular, we can conclude that very small gravitational fields can lead to pattern selection.
As regards positive feedback, I was not endorsing it, merely pointing out that it was a key part of the AGW hypothesis. However, though I doubt it exists at current humidity levels, I think that a good case can be made that there is positive feedback from H2O at low humidity levels (such as in polar regions). In any event, a paper Judith Curry co-authored and cited on CA found such a feedback in one of the polar regions.
I'm afraid I couldn't follow your first sentence, on the masking issue, at all. I figure the 'normal' effect of CO2 is 15-20% of the total. With less water, CO2 has about the same effect (slightly higher because of a little spectrum-overlap), but is a higher % of a smaller total, of course. Could you restate the point in your first sentence to make it more comprehensible?
Re#229, Kuhnkat:
There is one possible explanation why GHG effect is not observed over Antarctica.
Higher concentration of GHGs, mainly CO2, leads to unproportional heating of lower atmospheric layer because of shorter path of adsorption and thermalysation of outgoing surface IR. Which, in turn, provokes higher up-going convection flux. But, according to Aristotle concept, nature does not tolerate emptiness, and whatever masses of air are uplifting at tropics and subtropics, corresponding masses of air should descent somewhere. This somewhere is, apparently, Antarctic, washed down by incredibly cold upper troposphere descending air flux.
Co2 by itself would supposedly contribute as much as 26% of the current amount of absorption. This is the high side of the range one sees quoted in the literature. In the current mix, the contribution is far less. I believe that the literature indicates it as low as or lower than 9% or so (generally as the statement h2o accounts for over 90%) but that I suspect is with cloudy sky factors included. A more reasonable value would be in the 11-16% range under clear skies. This should also help explain why one sees such a massive discrepancy in contribution values in the literature where the numbers are tossed around usually without clarification of the associated details.
The net effect of more co2 is to shorten the pathlengths for its wavelengths of absorption. It means improving the radiative efficiency at a given T, but while decreasing the 'transparency' or average distance traveled between absorptions.
I have little knowledge of the details concerning localized variations such as you mention with Curry. It would seem that localized situations can be quite unique and that only the overall average has to be massively net negative feedback. The poles are a very minor part of the whole when it comes to energy balance.
234, 238 The conventional argument for positive feedback is that warmer air tends to acquire and hold more water vapor, which acts as a GHG, creating further warmth. What do you see as the fallacy there?
IMO, the main reason for the variation in numbers is that they come from different sides of the AGW argument.
Detailed calculation indicates that it is around 18% of current levels (without feedback), and is not much different whether there is water vapor or not. There is some overlap, but changing a photon pathlength from say 2km to 1km, or from 30 km to 20km at the other end, has a negligible impact on the GHG warming effect. Changing it from (say) 10km to 5km has some impact, but there isn't enough wavenumber space where that results from the addition of the H2O overlap for it to have much effect on temperature.
It is true that the tropics are much more important than the polar regions. However, if you are interested in understanding the physics of the GHG effect, the Curry et al observation can't be blown off (or the converse observation by Lindzen et al for the tropics).
One counter-argument is that additional WV causes more cloud and thus lower surface insolation and negative feedback. You might want to read Lindzen's work in this area.
It's possible that the numbers are tied to the debate – hence the lack of context but they actually are both correct for what they are. It's just that the high values are not a real consideration for our atmosphere.
Most of the absorption begins very low down, like in the meters to 10s of meters. 18% sounds way too high for co2 in the existing atmosphere with h2o present. Once clouds come in to play as well, you can pretty well kiss co2's double digit contributions goodbye.
Fallacy? How about, more warming – more h2o vapor, more h2o vapor – more convection as h2o is 18 molecular wt vs 28,8 avg, more convection – more rising h2o, more rising h2o – more cloud cover, more cloud cover – less warming. This is essentially a simplified description of Lindzen's iris effect.
Nasif Nahle
You are correct. The atmosphere absorbs almost 14% of the radiation incoming from the Sun. However, it is not the CO2 the main absorbant of IR because it is almost transparent to the shortwave IR. It is the water vapor.
You're correct again. And additional CO2 (for example, 4×365 ppmV) causes "fog" that impeds the penetration of the solar radiation. Perhaps that's the reason of the current cooling of Earth?
Co2 by itself would supposedly contribute as much as 26% of the current amount of absorption. This is the high side of the range one sees quoted in the literature. In the current mix, the contribution is far less. I believe that the literature indicates it as low as or lower than 9% or so
ModelE runs referenced in the 'water vapor feedback or forcing' post on RC (which is also sourced from wikipedia on the subject of GHG) show that removing carbon dioxide gives that 9% loss, and an atmosphere of only carbon dioxide gives that 26% total. Clearly both are physically impossible, but removing it seems closer to reality than an atmosphere of only it, at least on this planet.
My opinion is that only by looking at the source of any changes humans have (population <–>technology) and the repercussions (urbanization, industrialization) can we get a handle on the overall view of what's going on, but a clear understanding of the net impact short- and long-term seems to elude us while the debate is focused on a trace gas that's part of IR absorbers in the great big atmosphere. I contend that without more focus on the hydrosphere, models will never get close.
What that means? Ah, that's the sticky wicket, isn't it.
Nasif #243
The atmosphere absorbs almost 14% of the radiation incoming from the Sun. However, it is not the CO2 the main absorbant of IR because it is almost transparent to the shortwave IR. It is the water vapor.
Indeed, the bulk of the warming is the re-radition of the shortwave IR from the ground by water vapor also, along with the others. Seems covering large areas of the Northern hemisphere with lower albedo surfaces like roads, cities, farms would be far more important for both absorbing more incoming shortwave and releasing more longwave outgoing radiation than any long-lived gas concentration.
But hey.
This is a question for the systems analysts on the above plot of the IMF. The declining phase of the last four sunspot cycles can be defined by what is called in stockmart charting a descending wedge. Is there a scientific-sounding term for this, and what does this shape imply about the underlying physical process? Note that the very disciplined decline of Solar Cycle 23 should take it under somebody's imaginary floor before Solar Cycle 24 kicks in.
I think its pretty close to a buy signal for SC24, but what do I know?
Leif Svalgaard
247 (DavidA): Unfortunately the Sun does not behave like the stock market. The decline stopped a year ago. The last 13 rotations the IMF has been essentially constant at 4.4 nT as it should be:
The chart is up-to-date as of today.
Stockmarket charting known as technical analysis essentially measures the behaviour of large groups of people. Any resemblance to sunspot frequency is pure coincidence.
245(Sam):
What those numbers 26% and 9% indicate are the contributions of co2 to our current atmosphere, when reasonably interpreted. Under today's conditions, under 10% of the ghg warming is caused by co2 so a small change in co2 levels can only result in a minor change in the warming. The 26% indicates that if conditions were wildly different, such as possibly in a snowball Earth situation, the effects would be a greater fraction of a smaller total.
Consider that the Earth's albedo changes significantly over time and averages a little over 0.30. Oceans (78% of surface) are about 0.03 and land is not much better at around 0.12. The net result for albedo is 0.30 = 0.26 + 0.04 where 0.26 is from clouds and 0.04 is from the surface. Basically, you're barely dealing with 10% of the albedo at the surface and over 3/4 of that is water.
Another factor is the nature of the surface on land. Nice forests may be pretty, but they're pretty low in albedo and vary by type. Icky sand dune deserts are much better with significantly higher albedos. Concrete has a nice high albedo while asphalt is low. Cities are lower albedo because of shapes mostly. Crops and plowed fields have higher albedo than forests. Plowing up the amazon rain forest and putting in a giant concrete parking lot would raise the surface albedo of that region substanitially and would be somewhat of an increase for the overall. Putting in solid solar panels there would radically decrease the local albedo there as well. In either case, it would remain to be seen what happened to the cloud cover which is responsible for almost 90% of the overall planetary albedo if either scenario were somehow acted upon.
Concerning impacts, there's always some. That 21% O2 content in the atmosphere is due to life forms on earth. However, we're not number one, or number two, or even number three when it comes to impacting the planet. Look what a beaver colony can do to an area over a few years by cutting down trees and making dams on small rivers and creeks. For an enviro whacko preservationist, beaver hats falling out of style may well have been the chernobel of the 19th and 18th centuries. What's more, agriculture on even the smallest of human scale may have had some small part in forestalling the next glaciation period. It seems though that might be quite a stretch. The anti beef crowd decided to publicize how much ch4 was produced by cattle – something like as much as the US transportation system produces in ghgs in effect. It's also almost on par with how much termites produce.
Concerning impacts, there's always some. That 21% O2 content in the atmosphere is due to life forms on earth. However, we're not number one, or number two, or even number three when it comes to impacting the planet.
I agree. All living beings impact the ecosystems. Elephants destroy large areas of forest, for example.
I disagree… If CO2 concentration is quadrupled (4 x [CACO2] current), the temperature on Earth would decrease, for example. Actually, the contribution of CO2 to the GH effect is trivial because its Pr is pretty low (0.00034 atm-m at T = 300.15 K, and Pt = 1 atm).
253 (Nasif):
Quite frankly, I don't know if 4x co2 would cause an increase or decrease in overall T. Currently though it's responsible for maybe 10% of the 33 K rise in T above 255K or 3.3K. It's not much and also each doubling going back to a fraction of a ppm is responsible for roughly the same incremental amount and there's about 10 doublings to present time.
Unfortunately, this assumes that the atmosphere and surface stay at the same T profile and that can't happen. When the extra GHG contributing co2 adds to the atmosphere, it improves the emissivity as well as the absorption and that demands by conservation of energy that the T must drop so that the new emission up plus emission down balances with the new absorption. This means there is a new lapse rate in the atmosphere because the new concentrations of co2 will raise the emissions and require the T drop to reach a balance. This doesn't include the surface which might have to rise slightly. Also, in the real world the slight rise in incoming power would likely have some additional moisture and hence cloud cover form which would create a strong net negative feedback – although again, it's an average and some areas could even possibly have a positive feedback.
As an example, Mars has 1% of Earth's atmosphere yet it has 40 times the actual amount of co2 in the atmospheric column. That's an additional 5 doublings. Estimates on the effects of the Co2 on Martian temperatures range from -10 K to + 10 K with the majority being approximatey zero. Only one avg T I've seen is in the realm of + 10K. Most are for approximately zero. Mar's atmosphere is 95% Co2.
It has been demonstrated experimentally, although the conditions could be a bit different in the whole Earth system. If the figures you're providing are correct, then the deviation of the tropos. Temp. could have been 0.04K in 1998 caused by the CACO2.
Also, in the real world the slight rise in incoming power would likely have some additional moisture and hence cloud cover form which would create a strong net negative feedback – although again, it's an average and some areas could even possibly have a positive feedback.
I Agree. Although diffuse wv above the surface could also create a negative feedback through conduction-convection. Do you agree?
It is a good example, although the martian atmosphere is 100 times less dense than that of Earth. Anyway, Anyway, Mars is running a climate change, although its atmosphere is very tenuous. Therefore, I have thought that Dr. Shaviv is correct in his hypothesis on exosolar factors of warming, although I consider it the other way around.
George M
Sam Urbinto (13)
I took a look at that paper you referenced and have a real problem with the last figure. The prevailing wind in Houston is out of the SSE to ESE, and the figure shows the heavier precipitation to be east toward New Orleans. This is downwind?? And, if you look at the small scale precipitation map around San Antonio, TX, you will see it increases exactly upwind. And since Washington, D. C. is built on a former swamp, I would suspect more effect from that than the urban effect he is attempting to develop.
could you please updateWeblogs and resources on the left column, it contains some dead links
Please also add lucia's blog http://rankexploits.com/musings/
HSWiseman #24:
a lot of plants will grow better.
243 Nasif
However, it is not the CO2 the main absorbant of IR because it is almost transparent to the shortwave IR. It is the water vapor.
No, that's what my 18% was about: around 18% from CO2 and around 82% from water vapor. The numbers depend on the actual mixing-ratio for water-vapor in the atmosphere, which is highly variable.
It would mean that the CO2 would absorb some 17.6 Wm^-2 from the shortwave ESR incoming to the Earth and the WV would absorb only 80.2 Wm^-2. Perhaps we should go through the numbers because the absorptivity of CO2 for the whole range of shortwave ER is extremely low at its current concentration.
As the CO2 absorptivity depends of its Pr, and we exclude the Pr of the WV for calculating the Pr of the atmospheric gases, the concentration of WV does not change the values of the CO2 absorptivity of shortwave IR. In a CO2, WV and O3 mixture, the main absorbers are WV and O3. The things for CO2 changes a bit if we consider the long wave ER emitted from the surface and the WV, but even under that condition the CO2 is not an important absorber of heat. What's more… The CO2 does not store extra energy for long periods.
Sorry for this link from NASA, but it could be useful. Fragment from the article:
Clear air is largely transparent to incoming shortwave solar radiation and, hence, transmits it to the Earth's surface. However, a significant fraction of the longwave radiation emitted by the surface is absorbed by trace gases in the air.
Bolds are mine…
Nasif, please take the discussion of CO2 radiation to the bulletin board.
Ok, Steve… Sorry. 😉
One reason might be that there is a problem with the physics behind weather; http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=5165
If weather is principally an electric effect, then how on earth CO2 could affect that type of system is indeed interesting.
Modelling it ignoring the laws of Maxwell and Lorentz would also cause some difficulties.
Electric universe or plasma universe theories are pretty well developed and a start is at http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/universe.html
30 (Louis) And maybe the solar link to climate is through electicalmagnetic effects on weather. Lots of room for amplifiers to play, there.
that may well be, but who is looking at it from the perspective of electricity? Not many I suspect.
George #28 Watching the satellite images today, it looks basically Easterly yes. "Downwind" meants the general area. That's my point, the effects are large, and, as far as I know, not taken into account by the models (or even considered at all!)
The data is here: http://precip.gsfc.nasa.gov/
cba 251: I'm just saying the numbers are from ModelE. ( 9% (out) and 26% (only) )
I put it 0%, since I don't even believe the anomaly reflects reality, and the concept of a global temperature is too abstract in the first place anyway.
Generically speaking, thinking abstractly of energy levels (whatever they are or doing is unimportant) does {substance X} participate in the weather/climate system? Sure. But like you mentioned in #254, I think it's far more likely that water vapor and atmospheric pressure and the lapse rate can well overcome any effects from {substance X} (unless {substance X} is water vapor!). Sun and clouds, sun and clouds.
Keith Herbert
I checked two "biographies of living people" on Wikipedia: Naomi Oreskes and Richard Lindzen. Oreskes paper asserts all scientific papers that she was able to locate on climate change support a consensus of AGW. Kim D. Peterson and William Connolley are persistent and forceful editors and insist criticism of her work must be peer reviewed in a respected publication. No self published are self-referenced work is legitimate. They further will not state specific criticism of her work as they say it belongs on the page of the person offering the criticism. Kim Peterson, especially quotes rules and guidelines for Wiki editors that they must conform to that warrants the editing of critical comments.
On the Oreskes page there is one link to Richard Lindzen that insinuates a criticism but does not state the actual criticism. The Richard Lindzen Wikipedia page is also heavily edited by both Kim Peterson and William Connolley. However there is no objection from them over the lenghthy criticism section on the Lindzen page. The criticism is sourced to Harper's Magazine, Boston Globe, PBS Frontline all very biased and non-scientific publications. They also list a wager with James Annan, and a quote to a reporter about smoking.
Clearly the standards are exceptionally different for what appropriate on the two biographies. It is legitimate to state how Lindzen may have been influenced by recieving pay for some of his work from industry. It is not legitimate to note that Oreskes will become the Sixth College Provost in 2008. Nor that she recieved an award from American Association for the Advancement of Science which is an organization she sought to defend with the publication of her study. Nor that she has greatly increased in standing in the AGW community and with Al Gore.
It is quite unfortunate, but one should seriously suspect any Wikipedia pages with editors Kim Peterson and William Connolley.
And you should read what Peterson says about me at Wikipedia just because I wrote a guide on "How to get rid of Swallows". I should tell you that in my article (no peer reviewed) I wasn't suggesting to kill swallows.
Sorry, it should have been Keith, not Kim… sorry.
I just read an attack on the validity of global climate models on another website called trendlines.ca, which approaches things from a very different angle from what is normal on this blog. I'm not going to make any follow up posts to this as I am not endorsing the content of trendlines.ca or am I connected with it in any way. Just throwing it out there as I think it is something that people on here may find of interest given it appears, on the surface at least, to be from a reasonably credible website. Freddy Hutter of trendlines.ca appears to be of the opinion that the estimates of future atmospheric CO2 levels that are used in global climate models are based on wildly optimistic estimates of future fossil fuel consumption given the fact that fossil fuels are a finite resource and peak oil, peak coal and peak gas have been predicted to occur consecutively over the next 25 years or so by many analysts. He claims that if what he would consider to be a more realistic profile of future fossil fuel consumption is factored in, the most likely scenario is a peak in atmospheric CO2 at around 408 ppm in 2025 with a steady decline thereafter to about 340 ppm by the end of the century. It almost goes with saying that this would have a huge impact on the climate change debate if it were valid.
http://www.trendlines.ca/science.htm
re: 270
As a Wikipedia editor, I know William Connolley and Kim D. Peterson quite well (and a number of other editors you did not mention). As a Wikipedia editor, I am not allowed to publicly criticize Wikipedia. The best I can say is that you should also join the effort to improve Wikipedia. I am currently working on the article titled "Global warming controversy."
Because the article is about the controversy, more citations are likely to get into the article and stay there. Or, as an alternative, you can edit for Citizendium – which was started by one of the co-founders of Wikipedia.
Your article is IMHO a pretty good start in laying out the arena(s) for the debate. Obviously people will take issue with phrasing and general conclusions, but at least you have kept the tone civil and inviting. I do think it might be worthwhile commenting on what amounts to the first open, internet-enabled debate of a science-based policy issue. You allude to this at various points when you comment on the demand for improved archiving standards and greater openness among disputants.
Many thanks for the work.
Thank you for the kind words. It still needs a great deal of work but is much improved from when I first read it. If you click the "Discussion" tab, you can read editors discussing various edits.
The only problem is that the belief that we are nearing peak oil, peak coal, etc is based on a misunderstanding of the data.
Most primarily, a belief that proven reserves is equivalent to all the oil/coal/etc. that is left.
Just look at the huge finds off of Brazil and Mexico in the last few years.
Most geologists estimate that we have more than a hundred years of oil left, and several thousand years worth of coal. (And that's without adding in tar sands and shale oil.)
You are correct for coal, for oil and gas however the annual new discoveries are lower than the annual consumption.
No discussion of oil and coal reserves please.
BTW, it has been a while since I have worked on the article. I just looked at it and see it has changed quite a bit. DLH has made some good edits. Others may not be so good. Much of the info on the controversy around the science has been buried farther down the article.
A while back I started working on a Sandbox to guide my edits on the article. Then I started adding info to the Talk page of the Sandbox to try to encourage others to participate. I lot of new research has come out since I started this. It needs to be completely reworked, but there is some interesting information on my AGW Sandbox.
New discoveries doesn't cover technologies that enable increased production from existing fields.
That's my final comment. Promise.
I'm puzzled by this chart:
Usually when one draws up distributions like this there is a rather smooth progression [as in most of the graph]. The sudden 'jump' around 10 is unusual for such distribution. Any comments?
Ron Cram,
As a Wikipedia editor, I know William Connolley and Kim D. Peterson quite well (and a number of other editors you did not mention). As a Wikipedia editor, I am not allowed to publicly criticize Wikipedia.
I really appreciate an editor at Wikipedia has reccommended our site for being included like a reference, and some authors did it. However,what could I think about those unscientific "opinions" from some Wiki editors. Just read what Tim Vickers wrote and published there wbout BIOCAB. Did BIOCAB have a chance to reply to those vulgar offenses? No, the organization is not allowed to reply those unscientific vulgarities.
Leif… No charts there. It's blank 😦
Here's something from Naples Daily News: Another Global Disaster Awaits
282 (Leif):
Form the UK Met Office.
# 282 and # 286
Leif… Yes, I have a comment. I will assume it is the plot for UK only, isn't it? I don't think the graph is flawed "deliberately", but it is seriously flawed because the UK deviations of temperature have not reached an annual average of 0.6 K. Another clue is that the UK was not under glaciers from 1850 to 1930, as the diagram suggests. They probably (I'm inclined to assure it) that they plotted the supposed anomalies derived from ∆T = α [ln (CACO2fin/CACO2st)]/4(σ)(Tbb^3), not from observation.
287 (Nasif): No this is for HADCRU Global anomalies. So is the 'real deal'
Logical… It's HADCRU. I compared that graph with the anomalies of sea land temperature reconstructed with Möeberg's data and MSU2, and I didn't find coincidences. The shift in range-10 seems to follow the lag in CACO2 records between 1904 and 1990. It could be a plausible explanation.
Graphs war… 😉 This is one of my last graphs. Notice that the line of the mean of CACO2 is almost equal to the HADCRU plot of global temperature.
286 (Leif): maybe I didn't make myself clear [and the graph is fuzzy]. It shows the anomaly for the warmest year, then for the next warmest year, then the 3rd warmest year, etc. I found the break or 'jump' for the 10th warmest year strange and atypical for such distributions.
No, you are correct; it was me who didn't understand your point. Anyway, the graph misguides to the observers.
Something odd… It didn't include 1934, which was warmer than 1998… Strange, huh?
Not really. It's in the full graph in the inset in its proper place, it wasn't warmer than 1998.
Roy Spencer – McCain's Assault on Reason – 13 May
Maybe the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher now than it has been in hundreds of thousands of years. So what. I am increasingly convinced that its influence on climate pales in comparison to the influence that natural climate events like El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation have on regional climate. Indeed, most of the warming we've seen in the last century might well be due to these natural modes of climate variability alone.
The trouble is that no one has been funded by the government to investigate such a possibility, and the mandate for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to address manmade climate change — not natural climate change.
Good to see Roy Spencer writing so lucidly and straightforwardly.
Nasif, the 1998/1934 thing was for the US. This graph is HADCRUT for the whole globe.
Leif, the apparent step may be just another indication that global warming is leveling out, not accelerating. The warmists are attempting to repackage the data to try to hide this fact, by saying that 2007 was still warm compared with the 20th century (see CRU's page full of propaganda here).
Or the step may have no significance at all.
M. Jeff
Excerpts from another editorial reference concerning the politician mentioned in #295, Reference, May 14th, 2008 at 4:39 am:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121072757568390373.html?mod=todays_columnists
… If the pace of warming or the scale were correlated in some sensible fashion with the rise in atmospheric CO2, that might suggest cause – but such correlation is lacking. …
… But the fact remains: The push toward warming that CO2 provides in theory is no reason to presume in confidence that CO2 is actually responsible for any observed warming in a system as complex and chaotic as our atmosphere. …
… Let's see: An estimate by the International Energy Agency holds that, to ward off the worst of climate change, the world by 2030 must build 34 hydroelectric dams the size of China's Three Gorges Dam, 510 nuclear plants, 289,000 wind turbines, 6,800 biomass plants and 714 fossil fuel plants equipped with unproven CO2 capture technology. None of this will happen; if it did, it would merely slow progress toward a more carbon-rich atmosphere; and (of course) any impact on climate would be purely speculative. …
The first two excerpts acknowledge some of the issues addressed at length on climateaudit.org. The last excerpt puts other aspects of the debate into perspective. Climateaudit.org is undoubtedly responsible for much of the increased awareness of problems with some of the global warming science.
Anthony Watts has a new post up on a presentation given to him by the NCDC which reports on preliminary results for the new USHCN v2 (United States Historical Climate Network) which is coming out later this year.
A poster comments that these new adjustments will again increase the reported US temperature trend (versus the raw data) by approximately 0.15C (or 0.45C in total) since 1900 (this would be the 4th adjustment increasing the trend versus 1 adjustment lowering the trend.)
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/ushcn-version-2-prelims-expectations-and-tests/
PaulM,
Nasif, the 1998/1934 thing was for the US.
Oops! I had always thought it was global, heh! 🙂 Anyway, it is a misguiding diagram. Look at this:
Nasif
re: 273,
Wikipedia requires the use of "reliable sources" to support facts that may be controversial. A reliable source is generally defined as any regularly published media, such as newspapers, magazines and TV news shows. The assumption is that editors exercise a level of journalistic oversight and fact checking on the reports. Blogs are not considered reliable sources because they are generally the work of one person. Blogs can be a reliable source regarding the views of a particular scientist, as long as the identity of the scientist is not in question. For example, ClimateAudit is considered a reliable source regarding the views of Steve McIntyre.
Criticism of people or organizations is usually welcomed in Wikipedia. If your organization is criticized, about the best you can do is get something positive published in a reliable source that will offset the criticism. Then you can make certain the positive is also included. Wikipedia has a policy of being NPOV, neutral point of view. So, if the article says something negative, it has to say something positive as well (as long as something positive has been published in a reliable source). I hope this is helpful.
Image from: High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000–800,000 years before present (PDF) – Nature 453, 379-382(15 May 2008)
Changes in past atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations can be determined by measuring the composition of air trapped in ice cores from Antarctica. So far, the Antarctic Vostok and EPICA Dome C ice cores have provided a composite record of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past 650,000 years1–4. Here we present results of the lowest 200m of the Dome C ice core, extending the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration by two complete glacial cycles to 800,000 yr before present. From previously published data1–8 and the present work, we find that atmospheric carbon dioxide is strongly correlated with Antarctic temperature throughout eight glacial cycles but with significantly lower concentrations between 650,000 and 750,000 yr before present.
This is a pretty amazing graphic. I would be interested in hearing about how independent are these two measures, i.e., CO2 concentrations and the temperature anomaly. I read the article but I have no clue as to the measurement errors thataccompany the techniques and how independent those errors are.
Ron #300
So how is an RC blog post using a ModelE run and references to Ramanathan and Coakley (1978) "a reliable source". Not to mention (for example) the mess that are the bio pages for both Oreskes and Peiser.
There may not supposed to be any POV there, but, well, I think I see one.
What do you think about the first sentence of the greenhouse effect article intro?
"The greenhouse effect is the process in which the emission of infrared radiation by the atmosphere warms a planet's surface. "
I understand your point (and dilemma perhaps) though. It's probably as close as it's going to get, also.
Oh Sam, if RC is a good enough reference for Science Magazine, why not Wiki?
The RC blog was accepted as a reference in this letter to Science. Maybe Science considered it cheaper than Supplementary Material? Maybe Science considers their Letters to be non-scholarly? Maybe Science accepts RC as a "peer reviewed" source? Who knows.
link (Subscription required).
Wikipedia's claims of "NPOV" are a joke:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
John M #304
Indicative of the mind-set and the actual discussion topic.
Since Science published the op/ed drivel about the consensus in their "Essays on Science and Society" in 2004, at least their non-scientific sections are probably not even on par with Wikipedia, no?
Look at the first sentence for example:
Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain.
Or even better, the next two points in that first paragraph
then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued
Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged
Reaches the conclusion
Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change.
Followed by the non-sequiter "proof" of no "substantive disagreement" by looking at
928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change"
Later corrected to "global climate change". Surprise.
What that has to do with "the reality of anthropogenic climate change" is quite beyond me. Nor why the 'essay' left off the search was only in the science section, and removing abstracts determined to not be actually about "global climate change" as determined by the people doing the analysis. No doubt abstracts not actually about "global climate change" due to the influence of
corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions
whatever that has to do with the scientific consensus that
Earth's climate is being affected by human activities
Warming world altering thousands of natural systems – 14 May 2008
The study, by an international research team featuring many members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a statistical analysis of observations of natural systems over time. The data, which stretch back to 1970, capture the behaviour of 829 physical phenomena, such as the timing of river runoff, and around 28,800 biological species.
Researchers led by Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York created a map of the planet with a colour-coded grid showing how much different regions have warmed or cooled between 1970 and 2004.
They then placed each of the thousands of datasets on the map and determined whether they were "consistent with warming" or "not consistent with warming". Trees, for example, might flower earlier in regions where the climate has warmed significantly.
In around 90% of cases where an overall trend was observed, it was consistent with the predicted effects of climate warming, the researchers report in this week's Nature.
Sam and not sure,
re: 303 and 305
Wikipedia has a policy of NPOV, but that does not mean it always achieves it. I was only discussing the policies Wikipedia has in place to promote NPOV. Alas, it is an imperfect world. Wikipedia also has a policy of giving minority views less space than the majority view. This policy on undue weight is found at [[WP:WEIGHT]]. Wikipedia is far from perfect. I would much prefer you guys register as Wikipedia editors and learn the policies so you can help make the articles better.
Well it started in the Renaissance, the Age of Reason that is, but I think its drawing to a close. Consider the recent push to put Polar Bear's on the endangered species list. Nevermind, that the actual data shows a dramatic increase of the population since the 50/60's. They predict that the effects of warming will eventually cause a reduction in population, hence the proclamation. Models and sims improperly peddled to the policy makers represent the new religion. I'm depressed.
Cram,
Try posting something to the climate section that is at odds with Connelly's POV. It will be summarily rejected.
Sorry Ron, I don't have the time to chase the stoat and his puppets around. I do appreciate the work you've done to try to balance the discussion, though. It has improved markedly since about 2005, which is when I first started reading the discussion pages over there.
Severian
With respect to government and outside, non-governmental agencies driving policy, the article here has an interesting take on this:
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=1161
When did allowing this much power to non-elected, unaccountable, bureaucratic organizations with their own agendas become a good idea? As the author points out, there has been an ongoing move to dismantle the twin pillars of scientific method and representative government with this whole issue.
When did allowing this much power to non-elected, unaccountable, bureaucratic organizations
It's been an ongoing trend for decades. Politicians hate to make hard decisions. No matter which way they go, somebody gets mad.
By turning everything over to the beaurocracy, the politician can claim that he had nothing to do with the decision. Even better,the politician now gets to run against the "out of control" beaurocracy.
Ron Cram:
How come Wiki does not have article on "carbon fertilization"? No takers?
Well, three or four of my articles have been quoted by authors at Wikipedia. I understand what you say about RS and NPOV; however, why to reject four of my articles which are equally based on science, not on my personal opinions. I did a work on Swallows throughout five years, and one of the editors refers to it like "crap"… From Wikipedia evaluating biocab.org:
"Crap" is a fair summary, this can't be used as a reference for anything. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Is that the way of scientific scrutiny or systematic methodology? Tim Vickers et al should say why they considered my investigations and papers unappropiate or pseudoscientific or antiscientific, if at least they had found a minor scientific error, not qualifying it like "crap".
NOAA April 2008 data is out.
'Global' warming continues to be primarily over NH land. In fact, primarily over Asia.
" … NOAA chief urges creating National Climate Service … would not take over climate research carried out by other agencies such as NASA, Environmental Protection Agency or U.S. Geological Survey …" ap dot google dot com slash article slash ALeqM5hnZbIFHRSjTCpMpR2GM-C-FA1fbgD90L0DP00
Proving there is still room left on the global warming bandwagon.
Obesity contributes to global warming: study
BTW, this is also an example of how global warming becomes both cause and effect. Obese people consume more resources; increasing temperatures cause people to be less active.
So the NYT is a reliable source, but Climate Audit is not?
Should the IPCC – the body, and process by which it functions – be reformed? Answer here.
Yes. A good start would be knocking the UN off of the UNIPCC.
There is little the UN touches that it does not corrupt, make unmanagable and/or unaccountable.
Nasif,
Wikipedia does not do scientific enquiry. It touches on scientific subjects for certain articles. The opinion of Tim Vickers does not mean much, except that he agrees the article is not RS. Whether the article is RS or not (based on Wikipedia standards) would be decided mainly on the question of whether the article was published in a peer-reviewed journal or self-published. If self-published, it is assumed not to have editorial oversight needed to achieve RS status. In my opinion, when Vickers calls it "crap" he is not denigrating your science or conclusions (because he is not in a position to judge either). He is stating his opinion that it does not meet the standards of RS.
It may not make much sense to you because a peer-reviewed article can have many flaws and even the conclusions can be wrong, and yet, according to Wikipedia standards it is a reliable source. Something else may be self-published and correct on every point but it does not meet the standard.
If you can show me that the article was peer-reviewed I would be happy to set the record straight. If it is not peer-reviewed, I can at least make a request for some civility. Let me know.
And neither is RealClimate a reliable source, except regarding the views of certain scientists/authors on RC.
My article on swallows is not a peer reviewed article, of course. It's the result of five years of observation on those birds… It doesn't need peer reviews, but only the replication of my observations by other scientists so they could say if I'm wrong or not. Regarding my article on the Biological Meaning of Death, I'm describing the function of being alive and the state of not being alive. I've spoken about it before scientific audiences through my conference on Abiogenesis, which contains the functional definition of life, and nobody has told me it is "crap". My conference is archived in libraries of well known universities. I classified the anthropogenic global warming into the file pseudoscience because it uses the language of science, but dismisses the scientific methodology, is this "crap" or a rational-theoretical way of scrutiny? OTOH, the classification of "Naturism" like pseudoscience obeys to the same roots of that healing practice. Would we resort to fire, clay, air and water for cure from any disease? Would we confide in an iridologist diagnosis? That's the kind of pseudoscience I referred to as pseudoscience.
Regarding my article on Heat Stored, which is the article in question at Wikipedia, well… It was reviewed here, in CA, and it has been reviewed by many, many physicists of the world. They pointed out my errors and I corrected those errors immediately; anyway I recognized that if some errors persisted, were mine alone, not of the reviewers.
The articles that have been published with the label "peer reviewed article" papers are not "self-published" given that BIOCAB is an organization, not the property of one person (we are four founders of BIOCAB). We have invited to other scientists from other organizations and universities for participating in the construction of the website; they have not wished to do it… Is that my fault? BIOCAB counts with a team of external peer reviewers; the only thing I know about them is that they are academics, so how could I show you the articles were peer reviewed?
I didn't include links to such articles because I don't want to use wrongly the patience of the owners of CA, but you can write me to my E-mail address. My personal E-mail is biology at biocab dot org.
As wikipedia says about themselves:
Wikis, including Wikipedia and other wikis sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation, are not regarded as reliable sources.
But on blogs
Weblog material written by well-known professional researchers writing within their field, or well-known professional journalists, may be acceptable, especially if hosted by a university or employer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_source_examples
Wikipedia and copyright
If I send an copyrighted article to Wikipedia and someone changes it, is that change made legally?
Do not all writings automatically create copyright for their author, unless stated otherwise?
Therefore, are not all changes (such as deletions) breaches of copyright?
Does Wikipedia have an exclusion clause that allows it to override copyright convention?
I recently wrote an entry for the article "Global warming controversy" regarding the controversies around the GCMs. The entry can be found here.
Of course, Kim Petersen and William Connolley immediately deleted it. But it is being discussed on the Talk page. Eventually, the article will include something on the controversies around the GCMs. I would invite anyone who is interested to join the discussion.
not sure,
Connolley has been pushing to have RC given RS status but it has not happened, despite what Connolley says.
See what Connolley wrote on my Talk page here.
Most of your questions, if not all, will be answered here.
Sorry to be annoying, but I would like to repeat the question:
Why Wiki does not have article on "carbon fertilization"?
Re #329 Ron Cram,
Thank you for your response. I don't wish to develop this theme as it is specialist, but there is some unclear text
To this end, the text contained in Wikipedia is copyrighted (automatically, under the Berne Convention) by Wikipedia contributors and licensed to the public under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
My concern is not so much modification by the public, but modification by the staff. Do staff at Wikipedia have any permissions to modify or delete copyrighted articles that the reading public do not possess? At what precise point do writers move from normal Berne copyright to the GDFL? Does any staff editing happen before this point?
Only because no one has written one. There is also no article on "Ocean heat content." I started to write one but time is short. If you would like to write an article on "Carbon fertilization," please do. I know nothing of the subject.
No, Wikipedia staff do not have any modification rights beyond those of regular editors. Copyright under GFDL is automatic and immediate.
I do hope you will join us as an editor. Wikipedia needs more editors who are sensible.
Seems that La nina could be on way back re cold waters off peruvian coast incresing rapidly?
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
re wikipedia recent changes: This is a tremendous improvement. I think with these inclusions wikipedia has become more credible. Of course they realize that temps just aint going up anymore and the tune has to change. well done in any case
Carbon Monoxide emissions blamed for early Himalayan snow melt.
http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=443633&sid=REG
First I've heard of CO having a climate role.
Thanks for the kind invitation, but I am not qualified enoght to write professional article on carbon fertilization subject. I notified "Idso Clan" about the issue, and hope that other knowledgeable readers of CA will try their best to illuminate the public on this extremely important subject on the pages of Wiki.
SCIENTIST Tim Flannery has proposed a radical solution to climate change which may change the colour of the sky.
But he says it may be necessary, as the "last barrier to climate collapse."
Professor Flannery says climate change is happening so quickly that mankind may need to pump sulphur into the atmosphere to survive.
Australia's best-known expert on global warming has updated his climate forecast for the world – and it's much worse than he thought just three years ago.
He has called for a radical suite of emergency measures to be put in place.
The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth's stratosphere to keep out the sun's rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.
More nonsense here: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23724410-29277,00.html
I thought that was what Cheiten was for?
Yiipes! I read Lovelock's interview in Rolling Stone in the DR's office(old issue), and it appears that we are doomed to die in the billions. His reasoning? Gaia is now mad at us and needs to kill us off. He says his theories are the basis of climatology, and sometimes, on my more cynical days, I think he is right.
Re 333 Ron Cram
Thank you for the implied compliment. There are several topics which I could audit or author for Wikipedia, but I shall never do even a sentence while others complain of censorship, with examples, by Petersen and Connolley.
That is Wikipedia's loss.
If you want to stay paramount you have to choose the right people. Why don't you offer the same invitation to Tim Flannery (see #338 Hoi Polloi) as you offered to me? He speaks for the self-appointed "consensus" with "settled science". As does another Aussie vegemite named David Karoly. They are both Professors, so they must be sensible, right?
Never underestimate the power or intelligence of the "silent majority".
It was not an implied compliment but a real one. You seem to be under the mistaken notion that Petersen, Connolley and I are of the same opinion. Undoubtedly, you did not read the entry I wrote for the "Global warming controversy" article regarding problems with the GCMs. I linked to it in Comment #327. Of course, Petersen, Connolley and Schultz have all deleted it at one time or another but at least the issues are being discussed on the Talk page and the issues I wrote about are gaining ground with other editors. Eventually, this will be part of the article. It would be nice if other knowledgeable people were to join the effort to improve Wikipedia.
Re # 342 Ron Cram
Yes, message understood but obstacles remain. I have read this whole thread a couple of times now and understand what you wrote. Thanks, Geoff.
ChuckC
Anyone have a reaction to this article on CO2 and methane levels being unprecedented over the last 800K Years?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=ajiBydD5EHNs
How reliable are ice-core measurements of CO2 anyway?
James Erlandson
From chapter five of William Briggs' on-line Stats 101:
This is purely a mechanical chapter, introducing R. Thrilling reading, it is not … R is a fantastic, hugely supported, rapidly growing, infinitely extensible, operating-system agnostic, free and open source statistical software platform. Nearly everybody who is anybody uses R, and since I want you to be somebody, you will use it, too.
Warm winds comfort climate change models: study
In the new study, climate scientists Robert Allen and Steven Sherwood of Yale University use a more accurate method to show that temperature changes in the upper troposphere since 1970 — about 0.65 degrees Centigrade per decade — are in fact clearly in sync with most climate change models.
Rather than measuring temperature directly, which had yielded inconsistent results, they used wind variations as a proxy.
"We take an alternative approach by using trends in winds to infer those of temperature," say the authors.
"Winds are observed by radiosonde tracking" — which relays data on temperature and humidity from a balloon via radio transmitter — "in a matter completely independent from temperature observations."
There are approximately ten times fewer discontinuities in wind than in temperature records, making wind measurements a more reliable indicator of long-term trends, notes Peter Thorne of Britain Met Office Hadley Centre in a commentary, also published in Nature Geoscience.
http://tinyurl.com/3p6paj
Cliff Huston
Oh goodie, wind-mometers. This should be fun. Sorta air-ring proxies. Much better than that silly use of thermometers.
Cliff Huston says:
Any bets that they used climate models to determine the relationship between wind and temperature in the first place?
This has to be a new low for climate science. I find it amazing that they seriously argue that temperature records derived from estimates of wind motion are more reliable than the thermometers themselves.
aurbo
Note how easily this paper sailed through Nature's peer review process. Thermal wind equations are dependent on many assumptions regarding the stability and hydrostatic equilibrium of the atmosphere and are not easily inverted to solve for temperature.
This paper from the "We don't need no steenking thermomemters" school of climate science is just another example of the prevailing view that we don't need real data when we can construct proxies, and in the absence of proxies, we can always adjust the data. I believe that Anthony Watts just posted another paper showing where USHCN historic temperatures were adjusted in a way that raises the National temperature trend. How come every adjustment is always made in away that favors rising temperatures with time?
The current mantra from across the Pond is that temperature rises are manmade, temperature falls are natural variation.
Slightly OT, but I recently posted this URL from the organization (CERES) that shows how much money ($2.3 trillion!) is being solicited to underwrite the establishment of private organizations who will profit from Federal regulations which they are proposing that are designed to control CO2 emissions and empower bureaucrats to do so. It's worth a look just to see who the signatories are. snip
Robust tropospheric warming revealed by iteratively homogenized radiosonde data
http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~sherwood/sondeanal.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/5jrwzj
anna v
Brent 350
Epicycles. We are going to see more and more of them if the cooling trend continues. They save or delay downfall of theories.
Mind you, epicycles were just a complicated coordinate system for viewing the world. With enough parameters they could fit all observations.
I think that this is the problem with climate modelers' mentality. They do not understand that their models parametrize the data that are fed into them and have little predictive power.
How do we KNOW that there are "real issues with climate"?
The only evidence we have for concern is the IPCC. As you have been demonstrating, the IPCC started out with a conclusion, then designed their report to support that conclusion.
Outside of the models, there isn't a shred of evidence to support the claim that there is anything going on in the climate that should cause concern.
(At least on the warming side, the issues with the sun and potential cooling have me concerned.)
Steve: I completely disagree with the above. Doubling CO2 is something that policy-makers should be concerned about. I'm concerned about it. I'd like to know whether it's a big problem or a little problem. If it's a big problem, I think that we might not be doing enough. I wish that IPCC and the climate science community would do a much better job of communicating how one gets from doubled CO2 to a serious problem, but their failure to do so in as thorough and unbiased a way as I would like (and I think would serve their own objectives better) doesn't mean that such an exposition cannot be done or that there is no problem. While IPCC is an institution with flaws, many serious scientists as individuals concur with their views. So of course a policy-maker should be concerned.
As I've said on many occasions, I wish to work through issues one by one and in detail. I see no purpose in trying to make sweeping declarations as you have above. I see little purpose in debating such generalities, so let's try to stick to the issue at hand, OK?
Michael Jankowski
Interesting Overpeck here http://www.nmclimatechange.us/ewebeditpro/items/O117F6670.pdf
I notice he refers to IPCC model "projections" on page 8 as "predictions," which is supposed to be a no-no.
Ron Cram said:
If you want to challenge wikipedia editors on NPOV grounds on GCMs, your strongest basis for doing so is when you are able to cite recent work by credible professionals which strongly challenges some of the basic assumptions that are involved rather than simply stating your personal opinion. I suspect work by an engineering professor at Cal Tech called Dave Rutledge and a petroleum engineer called Jean Laherrère on probable future fossil use, which contrasts markedly with what is assumed in the IPCC reports, would be particularly useful in that regard but it is probably off topic in the context of this blog so I won't be following it up beyond supplying you with these two urls:-
http://rutledge.caltech.edu/
On matters more closely related to the subject matter of Climate Audit your best bet is always to find ways to cite people like Prof. Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia, who hold academic posts but do not agree with the IPCC sort of posture. It should be noted that Bob Carter is viewed as noteworthy enough to have his own entry on wikipedia:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Carter
which contains a link to this youtube clip containing a very strong critique of global warming theory:-
so clearly it is possible to insert references onto wikipedia to material that does not conform rigidly to a Real Climate sort of standpoint, if you go about things the right way. I think you will find some material in the four Bob Carter youtube clips (the url above is to part 1) that could potentially provide you with some solid leads on the sort of recent studies that you could cite during wikipedia edits, particularly in the later clips where he talks about the various recent "torpedoes".
Folks interested in the "first-principles" demonstration of AGW should be looking at the literature cited in the BB thread, "What do people think of this new paper." It appears that disagreements about the paper resulted in a scientist leaving NASA. link.
Steve: This is not a first principles demonstration of the type that I'm looking for. It is a "skeptical" argument. I'm interested in a clear exposition of mainstream theory. I have zero interest in trying to understand controversial alternatives, until we've had a clear exposition and discussion of mainstream theory.
Steve: The "Mainstream Theory" is described therein and shown to be missing some important elements. It is pure physics, not just a "skeptical" work. See David Stockwell's analysis.
The uncertainty in optical path length T is the answer to your best question at OSU, why the confidence intervals are not narrowing.
MarkW:
In my opinion, it's becoming more and more obvious that the IPCC was following a political process, not a scientific one. To the detriment of science.
Jae:
What more does anyone need to demonstrate that AR4 is a political document, not a scientific one?
Anyone who still has any doubts about whether AR4 is a scientific document or an exercise in political spin and distortion need only compare the drafts that the scientific reviewers saw with the final published version. This is a fascinating exercise that I will write more about somewhere, if nobody else does.
Here are a few examples from WG1 SPM on temperature trends
Draft: temperature trend up from 0.6 to 0.65
Final: temperature trend up from 0.6 to 0.74
Draft: trend shows substantial variability
Final: no mention of this
Draft: compares 1910-45 trend with 1979-2005 trend (fairly sensible)
Final: compares last 50 year trend with last 100 years (grossly misleading)
Did any of the reviewer comments recommend these changes? No (though Michael MacCracken came close, saying that the first warming period was 'overdramatized'). So who made them, and why?
Finally can I plug the 'List of errors, distortions and exaggerations in IPCC AR4' on the message board – the aim is to have a fairly comprehensive collection all in one place, particularly focusing on the SPM or stuff that feeds directly into the SPM. At the moment there is not much on paleo.
On what grounds do you believe that a doubling of CO2 is something that we need to be worried about?
It can't be based on science, because there isn't any.
It can't be based on history. That shows that the earth has experienced era's with CO2 not twice, but 10 times greater than today with no ill effects. In fact life flourished during those times.
So what is your reason for this belief?
359 MarkW "So what is your reason for this belief?"
I have parsed it as we don't know if it's something to worry about or not, which is why we're looking for a mathematical scientific explanation. How much does it warm? How can you tell? These are questions that need to be answered to find out what if anything we need to do, as we know the levels of the greenhouse gases are increasing. We need to quantify it as to effect to develop plans. I think that so far efforts have been counterproductive. Or in other words, a call to action based upon emotional hype.
I've never said that thre should be no more research. If nothing else, better weather/hurricane predictions will have huge economic benefits.
My confusion stems from the fear some people seem to have regarding what might happen. If we spend all of our time worrying what might happen if we do something, we will never do anything. Without some pretty solid evidence that doubling CO2 is going to have bad consequences, much less catastrophic ones, there is no reason to fear it. I can't find such evidence. Indeed, the only scientific level evidence that I can find, all points to more CO2 being a benign, if not beneficial thing.
Chris V asks:
#26, speaking of Jupiter.
What anthropogenic source of GHGs is causing the global warming on Jupiter?
Please don't assume that the same mechanism is working on Jupiter as on the Earth.
There are more important doublings than doubling CO2 that will be crucial to the survival of our species. Doubling populations every X years? for example.
You say as a comment to 355
This is not a first principles demonstration of the type that I'm looking for. It is a "skeptical" argument. I'm interested in a clear exposition of mainstream theory. I have zero interest in trying to understand controversial alternatives, until we've had a clear exposition and discussion of mainstream theory.
But what you call the "controversial alternatives" are the basic physics numbers of greenhouse gases . See this simple summary:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
I do not think that the IPCC disputes these numbers as such.
The pure "green house" physics of CO2 in the atmosphere, as shown in many papers is due to its absorption spectrum and its extra effect, as well as for all greenhouse gases , falls logarithmically with every increase.
From these numbers there is no more fear of CO2 than of excess H2O from flooded planes.
The controversy comes from the IPCC use of this information in its complicated climate simulation models, because the modelers include feedback mechanisms. I too have been looking for a simple explanation of the IPCC feedback models, and have gotten bogged down in a lot of fuzzy logic.
It is true that the only incrimination of CO2 comes from these models, not from back of the envelope/simple physics. Mainstream theory is not able to give a clear explanation because everything is tied up in the computer models.
The way I see this, having worked for forty years with computer models in particle physics, is not to question the first principles entered in the models, from equations to parameterizations and tunings thereof, but to look at falsifiable outputs from the models themselves.
If a model gets one strike, it should be out and back to the drawing board to rethink its assumptions and parametrisations. ( a la Keenlyside et al) http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/keenlyside_nature_may_2008.pdf
I have seen many disagreements of data with model outputs, but I have concentrated on three gross, in my opinion, disagreements.
1) The postulated feedback mechanism itself is absent in the 400.000 year ice core records, which show CO2 lagging temperature by 800+/- 200 years rather than the reverse. True also of the roman and medieval etc warm periods. A feedback mechanism should not be tagging for CO2 among the greenhouse gases: any increase of them should trigger the instability if it is there.
2) The statistically stable temperatures while CO2 is happily rising the past ten years
3) The tropospheric decadal disagreement of temperature trends with the model. Nature does not reproduce the core assumptions of the model: that the atmosphere is warming the oceans due to the green house effect of CO2 feebacks.
Why do you think that one should worry about CO2 doubling if the only information raising an alarm comes from falsified outputs of climate models?
please excuse my english. that last sentence should read "outputs from falsified climate models.
Anna: It seems simple, the lazy unconfirmed explanation method of doing things, the assumption trail procedure.
Carbon dioxide absorbs longwave IR from the ground and then emits it again. The global mean temperature anomaly trend is going up. The anomaly must reflect energy levels. When energy levels go up it's warming. We are putting more carbon dioxide into the air. The lines look the same for the anomaly trend and carbon dioxide. Therefore, increased levels of carbon dioxide must cause warming. Since the lines match so well, carbon dioxide must be a major portion of the warming. A warmer planet makes animals move their habitats, causes higher oceans, makes weather events worse, has heat waves that kill people, and so on. All these things are dangerous, expensive, and wrong. We have the ability to do something about carbon dioxide. Therefore we must start controlling the output of carbon dioxide so the warming won't keep increasing so much as it's now doing. Doing that will forestall the ruining of the planet by humans. Together we can keep our planet safe for future generations.
Wake up, Joseph Fourier knew all that in 1824!
JamesG
Actually I trust Armagh observatory record too – and it's very good sunspot correlation.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/x235411815211243/
And I no longer trust the latest US48 since I read this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/a_tale_of_two_thermometers/
Was that the latest adjustment?
Nature Climate Reports has an article on buckets and SST, which I'm sure will be of interest to everyone here.
Sam Urbinto says:
May 28th, 2008 at 11:14 am 365
And you are really serious, not satirical?
Anna: I am simply detailing a notional thought process of how the factual point that Joseph Fourier showed of a greenhouse effect in 1824 turns into a "scientific fact" that "dangerous warming can be controlled by reducing the production of greenhouse gases".
If you read around, my personal conclusion pretty much stops at even accepting the idea there is a global temperature in the first place, much less that it can be tracked either meaningfully or accurately, even if the idea is valid as anything more than a concept. And that what I call "The population <–> technology cycle" is the main force between whatever rise in energy levels has happened. And that it hasn't been displayed that the anomaly meaningfully and accurately reflects that rise.
Although it's certainly possible it has gotten .75 centigrade warmer than a nominal 14 C I can't prove it hasn't. 🙂
I'd recommend the review by Freeman Dyson of "A Question of Balance" by William Nordhaus.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494
Nordhaus seems to have a good economic handle on the various proposals to deal with climate change, their efficacies and comparisons without being sidetracked by the specifics of the science or the claims. I think a note of this would fit that section of your controversy page quite well.
re: #363
Excellent point about the lack of evidence of positive feedback in the historic record and the fact that if there were such a thing it not only would have happened in the past, but it would happen due to temperature increase irregardless of the cause. My personal opinion on positive feedback is that it would lend a warming bias to the earth's climate when in fact, over millions and millions of years, a trend towards cooling seems more the norm.
The lack of specificity from the models as to how much of the current temp trend is due to CO2 forcing vs natural variability and other human causes such as land use and urban heat effects is troubling. And no mention at all of the percentage of CO2 that is our responsibility!
He was joking. But direct your question to NASA who postulated that the new spot was due to global warming on Jupiter. Maybe they were kidding too, but they said it. I think it was habit, quite frankly.
As to your worry about a doubling of CO2, think of it as simply a rising temp trend. That some of it is due to CO2 is neither here nor there. Then think of the MWP. I've seen some figures that say it was at least 3.2C warmer then than now. That would be before Mann et al rewrote history and others followed suit using some of the same proxies.
Hey, the polar bears survived.
Robin Lovelace says:
From my perspective, these data do not change the need to do something about climate change on a global level.
There are two problems here, though, aren't there.
Is climate change mainly caused by humans, or is it something that simply happens without much input from us.
I contend that we are a long way from knowing the answer to that question, and even assuming that we have some significant affect on the climate, how do we change our economies in an equitable (even to those up and coming economies that want to achieve Western levels of consumption :-).
And, in the event that we find that climate change is not (or only marginally) effected by humans, do you really think we can do anything about it for the next 100 years?
Paul Penrose
On the contrary, this effects everything to some extent because it shows that the uncertainty of reported global temperature trends and model outputs is higher than generally admitted by most climate scientists and the media. If these uncertainties were honesty and consistently reported I think the general public would be much less enamored with AGW theories, which is probably why the more politically motivated under report it.
Syl #370 The polar bears didn't survive, they're faked like the moon landing.
Thanks for the info. I look forward to reading this review.
There's a guy up in Northern Canada whose job it is to take grizzlies and bleach their fur to a bright white color. He gets scratched up quite a bit though.
Steve #16: "I've said on many occasions – most recently at Ohio State – that I've never suggested nor do I now, that policy be stalemated pending more definitive studies."
For crying out loud, if we can't tell whether human-caused CO2 is making any difference in global temps, and we can't even say a richer CO2 atmosphere wouldn't be better for mankind, then why shouldn't all policy decisions be tabled until we have a better handle on things?! My goodness, are you advocating we proceed with policy proposals as long as you get to look at all the Team's data? Why bother?
Sam Urbinto 369
Thanks for the clarification. I was not sure it was tongue in cheek. Smilies help in these international discources. 🙂
My take on Steve McIntyre's need for a 1,000 page engineer's report is this. Steve has laboured assiduously for a number of years now, has exposed a major scientific [issues] and has won justifiable fame. But in his heart, he believes that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause harmful global warming. At the same time, he may be wondering when this all will stop and he can get off the treadmill that he has created for himself. The 1,000 page engineer's report would do the trick. No argument to be entered into afterwards. The trouble is that global warming due to carbon dioxide can be dismissed in about one A4 page. Fred Hoyle dismissed it in three lines in his book "Ice". Nothing can be done about Steve's belief in global warming.
As for the treadmill, there are signs, such as the increasingly desperate voodoo from the warmer scientists (wind speed instead of temperature as a measure of temperature), that it may be going to fall apart soon.
For myself, I will get a book out before interest in global warming dies off.
NASA employee suspended for political blogging
May 28, 2008 (Computerworld) WASHINGTON — Any employee can get in trouble for personal blogging on company time, but U.S. government workers, as one NASA employee has discovered, can get into a special kind of legal trouble if they also write about politics. They risk violating a 1939 law called the Hatch Act, which requires federal employees to keep their jobs and political activities separate.
A National Aeronautics and Space Administration employee was suspended for 180 days for "numerous" blog posts about politics, sending "partisan e-mails" and soliciting for political contributions, according to an announcement last week by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC). The employee wasn't identified.
Could it be? Surely not 🙂
Re #368,
Why does my cynical predisposition wonder if the indentity of the political party may have had something to do with this particular case? Why is the employee's name protected?
Unconnected to the above, am I mistaken in believing that the time hacks on some of the posts by NASA employees to their favorite site(s) were made during normal business hours?
Steve: Gavin Schmidt has frequently done realclimate during normal business hours.
Oops! My prior post should have referred to #379, not #368. SAT.
David Archibald said:
My take on Steve McIntyre's need for a 1,000 page engineer's report is this. Steve has laboured assiduously for a number of years now, has exposed a major scientific [issues] and has won justifiable fame. But in his heart, he believes that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause harmful global warming.
I don't believe this to be the case. I think the reason he asks for a proper treatment of climate sensitivity to CO2 is to maintain the integrity of what he has already done and to put pressure on the AGW proponents to come up with more than arm waving.
382 (RS) Another reason is a little more simple. Climate sensitivity to CO2 is in fact the Holy Grail of climate at least with respect to the anthropogenic component of it related to fossil fuels. Any scientific basis for policy about climate and energy from fossil sources needs that sensitivity to be well established, 'settled', so to speak. I'm sorry to be so redundant. Are there many readers who don't understand that this bit of knowledge is necessary to proceed, rationally anyway?
378 (David): I've never heard of this book of which you speak, or this author. Who is he and what is "Ice" about?
379 (Reference): One can only hope. Or ask him yourself.
If we are drifted into sensitivity territory, I would like to remind everyone that the thread I started is still open and looking for contributions (any accepted!):
http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=128
I have to say, I don't think anything there is quite what Steve is looking for, but there are lots of studies there!
I think I screwed up and prevented my last post from going up, and now I can't put up a comment to similar. Anyway, this is kinda unrelated, but Roger Pielke Sr. has an interesting post with graphs of OHC from Josh Willis. Bsically, I see no warming in these graphs, what about anyone else?
http://climatesci.org/2008/05/29/new-information-from-josh-willis-on-upper-ocean-heat-content/
Er-hm:
Sacrifices to the Climate Gods
May 29th, 2008 at 8:21 am 383
over at junkscience.com a toy model was posted that allowed one to play with a few parameters and check the sensititivity of the temperature to CO2 or albedo or.. Unfortunately I cannot locate the link, because it is instructive of what it means to check the sensitivity of a computer model output. We will not learn anything more by twiddling the knobs of the much more complicated parameterisations of the IPCC models.
Basic physics gives the numbers in the link that I posted above. It is the feedback mechanism in the programs that creates the sensitivity, and it is put by hand, it is a hypothesis . The only route to "well establish " goes through the validation or the falsification of the predictions of the programs, and fortunately there are falsifiable predictions. See also the omonymous link in the thread t "Koutsoyannis et al"
Re#379,
It was an employee down at the Johnson Space Center south of Houston.
I twiddled the knobs last weekend and posted the result on Svalgaard #6 post 576. Rather than plaster it up again I'll simply make a reference to it.
This diagram shows OLR calculations for 70km, 100km, and 120km. It also shows the differences in power absorption for a doubling of co2 at each altitude for the values of co2 concentrations ranging from 0 to 6000ppm.
The values graphed are outputs from my one-dimensional, line by line Hitran based model for radiative transfer using the 1976 Standard Atmosphere. Compared to Modtran 3 of similar default settings, it is good to around 2% which suggests it is in the ballpark and not in gross error on an absolute basis. I don't believe there is anything radical in the nature of my model either. It's certainly not based upon some new theory or original assumptions that are likely to be dubious.
This model is based upon having a core set of GHGs plus an tau (pathlength) additional contribution of CO2 added in layer by layer at each wavelength. Everything else is held constant. Doublings and halvings from the current value were calculated over a large range of values to create the chart.
The total surface + sky outgoing longwave radiation is done for 3 altitudes. Above 70km one sees more energy being radiated. This is because there is higher temperatures higher up. One should also observe that for all cases shown, including massive increases of co2 to lethal levels, the total OLR exceeds the contribution to the planet from incoming solar and suggests that variation in cloud albedo and heat trapping of clouds both enter into the mix.
The far left side of the graph provides the results for no co2 in the atmosphere while the line labeled now indicates current conditions. Since the surface radiation is 390W/m^2 and what is transmitted up to 70km indicates an effective absorption of 130W/m^2 with co2. Without co2, that effective absorption would be about 30 W/m^2 less or 100 W/m^2. In reality, the absorption is more but there is also emission that changes due to co2 concentration. The effect of all co2 does show to be around no more than 25% of the total and this is for clear sky conditions. Cloud effects which cover approximately 50% of the surface should cut this effect by about half. Also, observing dF at present indicates that a doubling to now or a doubling from current concentration has an effect of about 3W/m^2 change on forcing. Considering the total contribution of all GHGs in the real world has provided a total of 33 K rise in T over having no GHG power absorption at all.
One also sees that the same effect in forcing is evident for the last 5 co2 doublings as well and slight less and decreasing input for more of these earlier doublings. This suggests that since all GHG influences amount to only 33K and that co2 cannot be more than 25% of the total forcing effect, suggesting it is limited to 8K rise, the generally promoted high sensitivity range cannot have been in effect for what has already happened. That is if the next doubling of co2 will cause a rise of 5 deg K, then the previous doubling should have as well – and so should several more of the earlier doublings as each will have the close to the same effect.
Assuming all co2 contibution is due only to the last 5 doublings, each of which are about 3w/m^2, that reduces what the co2 contribution to the real atmosphere T cannot be greater than 8k/5doublings. In fact, 5 doublings only amounts to 15w/m^2 and the total co2 contribution is about 30w/m^2 so there are numerous additional doublings with less influence each still to be tallied and we've just reduced the effect to 1.6 W/m^2 and have accomodated only about half the co2 effect.
Looking at this from a slightly different perspective, there's 8 deg K for co2 and 30W/m^2. This turns out to be around 0.26 K per W/m^2 change in co2 or about 0.78K per doubling at present time(or current conditions).
Considering that the 33K is based upon the real current atmospheric effect on T, it is taking into account (at least to some extent) all effects currently active in the atmosphere and it is not based upon stefan's law or changes in power output based upon an increase in T. All values were done based upon constant T and using Planck's law for the graph. It also jives closely with the expected T rise required by stefan's law to overcome an additional power absorption. An increase of 0.78 K atthe surface creates an additional amount, roughly 4 w/m^2, and consider that about 260/390 W/m^2 radiated from the surface leaves the atmosphere that again roughs out to be roughly equal to the amount of increased absorption from a doubling.
Again, we're using a fairly reasonable rendition of the actual atmosphere and its content here rather than an idealized theoretical equation with an extremely simplified set of conditions. The results are in fairly good agreement with the simplified conditions and are in serious discrepancy with the modelled range of values which would appear to be outside the range where the effects could possibly be consistant from one doubling to another and still maintain the total consequence of GHGs which we already know.
Re: Andrew (385) …
If that trend in figure 1 continues, then I worry a great deal about the future.
390 (Richard Sharpe): I'm more interest in the now, personally. Worrying about the future is not my style. So my question is, why isn't heat building up in the oceans (at least, this part of the oceans)? Isn't this a pretty basic requirement for global warming?
375 Pat: "There's a guy up in Northern Canada whose job it is to take grizzlies and bleach their fur to a bright white color. He gets scratched up quite a bit though."
Yeah, I thought about doing that once, but Al wanted to pay me in carbon credits so I said no.
#377 Anna: I thought my #365 was sufficiently witty to be taken as rather an "eye roller" type of post. Mea Culpea.
I did say: "It seems simple, the lazy unconfirmed explanation method of doing things, the assumption trail procedure."
Which I then proceded to do a "lazy unconfirmed explanation" of it using a "trail of assumptions" that would all have to be justified to equate 'GHG absorb and emit infrared and that helps keep the ground warmer" to 'carbon dioxide must be limited or the planet will fry'. Which is of course a convoluted, preposturous logical joke.
I'm against torture and assualt of data. Just say no!
Site crashed last night and has been down for about 8 hours.
I blame global warming climate change.
Let's stay with the 'global warming' epitaph while there's a consensus, on the understanding that once the data says otherwise it will be called 'global cooling'.
392 (Sam): The word you are searching for is "Non Sequitor". 😉
394 & 395 (JohnA and Reference): How about combining the two? Climate Warming, Global Change, you get the idea.
There is a meme out there that Gore did contribute to the internet. But any internet he "took the initiative in creating" was nothing like the intenet we all know and love, it was some kind of govt. controlled entity. I don't know how many of you remember when the internet was "set free", but there was a lot of opposition to free and unfettered access to domain names for commericial, or any other non govt sanctioned use. The internet Gore tried to create was the one that actually had the gatekeepers that Hillary decries the lack of.
Pat: I didn't mean to start you huffing and puffing and no it wasn't sarcasm and I certainly don't want to start any political debates, but there is no such thing as ideological truth. If you seek the truth as much as you claim to then you might have easily found out what Kahn and Cerf said about Gores contribution to the internet:
"No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the
Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among
people in government and the university community. But as the two people
who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the
Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a
Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to
our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time."
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html
Proof enough for you?
I don't agree with Gore about climate change either but to revise history to attempt to discredit someone is exactly what is so nasty about certain aspects of the climate debate and it's not any more palatable coming from you lot than it is coming from Ray Pierrehumbert, for example.
Pat Keating says:
It is true that he did not claim to have "invented" it, but his claim to have "taken the initiative in creating it" is not so very different, and is clearly an exaggeration of his role in its creation
My understanding is he sponsored the bill that funded the Internet in its early days. He also was a key player in getting research money funnelled into AGW research in the 1990s and cast the tie breaking vote required to get the ethanol subsidises put in place. So I guess the rule for politicians is fund everything you can and if one them works out you can take credit…
Is this our very own Bender?
Authors:	FAM Bender
Title:	A note on the effect of GCM tuning on climate sensitivity – art. no. 014001
Full source:	Environmental Research Letters, 2008, Vol 3, Iss 1, pp 14001
Sure sounds like one of his favorite topics.
400 (Craig): Some how it doesn't seem so:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/3/1/014001/erl8_1_014001.pdf?request-id=d5643769-b659-423a-bc1e-c99a43430273
Whoever this guy is, he has some…interesting publications:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&oi=qs&q=fam+bender+author:f-bender
Craig #400 Bender? No, what the heck is a FAM? 🙂
Raven #399 Not, no, his vision (or at least his speaches in Congress) are not usually like that. (He was chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space after all. )
So I'd give him credit for initiative in helping to create the Internet as we now know it from actions in Congress (Which was clealy his point in the interview with Wolf Blitzer)
Although he was up to his usual tactics in 1986 regarding AGW, also:
WITHIN THIS BILL I HAVE TWO AMENDMENTS, THE COMPUTER NETWORK STUDY AND THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT REPORT. THE FIRST AMENDMENT WAS ORIGINALLY INTRODUCED WITH SENATOR GORTON AS S. 2594. IT CALLS FOR A 2-YEAR STUDY OF THE CRITICAL PROBLEMS AND CURRENT AND FUTURE OPTIONS REGARDING COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS FOR RESEARCH COMPUTERS. THE SECOND AMENDMENT REQUIRES THE PRESIDENT TO SUBMIT A REPORT TO CONGRESS ON THE ACTIONS TAKEN TO ESTABLISH AN INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT.
But in 1988, plans for a 3 gigabit network were a little different then they are today, don't you think? He's not an idiot, at least as far as I can tell:
THIS LEGISLATION TAKES THE FIRST CRITICAL STEPS TO ADDRESS THOROUGHLY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN PROMOTING HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING. OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL MONTHS, WE CAN REFINE THIS LEGISLATION. BUT WE MUST ACT. THE UNITED STATES HAS MAYBE A 1-YEAR LEAD OVER OUR CLOSEST COMPETITORS IN THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING FIELD. WE CANNOT AFFORD TO HESITATE IN CRAFTING A BLUEPRINT TO ENSURE THAT LEAD FOR THE [*S16898] NEXT DOZEN YEARS OF THIS CENTURY AND TO POSITION OURSELVES FOR THE NEXT CENTURY. REPRESENTATIVES FROM INDUSTRY, ACADEMIA, AND FEDERAL AGENCIES SHOULD DISCUSS WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, USING THIS BILL AS A FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION.
And 1989
Well, we could do more and we should be doing more. I'd take a slightly different view of this question. I agree totally with those who say, education is the key to it. But I genuinely believe that the creation of this nationwide network and the broader installation of lower capacity fiber optic cables to all parts of this country, will create an environment where work stations are common in homes and even small businesses with access to supercomputing capability being very, very widespread. It's sort of like, once the interstate highway system existed, then a college student in California who lived in North Carolina would be more likely to buy a car, drive back and forth instead of taking the bus. Once that network for supercomputing is in place, you're going to have a lot more people gaining access to the capability, developing an interest in it. That will lead to more people getting training and more purchases of machines.
Certainly he gets some credit:
Gore's efforts in the mid to late 1980s to promote national networking initiatives eventually paid off, when the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 was passed by both houses of Congress. The Houston Chronicle ran an article under the headline "Data superhighway' for nation's computers approved by Congress" on November 30, 1991, crediting Gore's role:
A plan to create a high-tech "data superhighway" likened in importance to the creation of the nation's highway system has been approved by Congress and sent to President Bush for his signature.
The plan would create a high-speed national computer networking infrastructure that would link computers in the nation's research, education and military establishments.
Proponents say that this network eventually will evolve into a universally available National Public Telecomputing Network that may be the successor to the telephone system, marrying the entertainment, communications and computer industries.
The High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, which contains the plan, was approved by a House-Senate conference committee over the weekend after being stalled for several weeks because of disagreement over a "buy American first" provision.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Albert Gore, D-Tenn., does not provide funding for the effort. Budget allocations and appropriations must be made individually during each year of the program.
No less an authority than Vint Cerf, inventor of the Internet Protocol, has gone on record confirming Gore's role in U.S. Internet development.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/
Ok, Ok…. The snark against Gore was uncalled for. My thoughts were mostly: We do have a new medium for disseminating information and ideas. There must be ways to cite it.
That Gore happened to be involved in encouraging this new medium means his ardent supporters should be all for figuring out how to encouraging acceptance of this new medium. That should include accepting that material posted over the internet is "real" for the purposes of science.
Yes… I said it in a flip way. 😉
398 James G
Not nearly. That is a very weak endorsement (to keep his funding coming?) taken from a political site, and a far cry from "I took the initiative in creating" something that already existed.
399 Raven
My understanding is he sponsored the bill that funded the Internet in its early days.
No, he wasn't even in Congress during the early days.
Sam Urbinto, those Al Gore references are interesting. Essentially Gore promoted the Internet for the wrong reasons. (No implied criticism of Gore)He saw it as a means of accessing supercomputer resources – a distributed time-sharing network. Time-sharing computers were common at the time, especially in academia. Of course, the Internet we have today is nothing like that.
The internet caught most people by surprise. I was one of the few people online in the pre-internet days – my Compuserve number was in the 30000s – and the online publishing Internet model we know today was a surprise to me.
Re 384, Fred Hoyle was a prominent UK astronomer of the 1960s and 70s. Ice, the Ultimate Human Catastrophe,1981, ISBN 0826400647 was a book he wrote on the perils of the next glaciaton. One of the interesting facts in it is that there are rocks on the English coast that were blown across a frozen North Sea from Norway. There are about 30 second hand copies available on Amazon at the moment.
There is a more recent interesting book, "The Deniers", which in Figure 2 on page 82 lists more that 36 estimates of the residence time of atmospheric carbon dioxide. It seems to average about 8 years. If the anthropogenic contribution of CO2 stopped tomorrow, the oceans and the atmosphere would be in equilibrium in 8 years time. This means that the bulk of the 100 ppm increase over the last 100 years is due to the warming of the oceans rather than from the anthropogenic contribution. My guess is possibly 80 ppm. If I can find the absorption curve, the actual figure should be calculable. This means that the atmospheric CO2 concentration is a second order effect of climate, in much the same way as Holgate's sea level curve. The 2 degree cooling, driven by a 13 year long Solar Cycle 23, that I am predicting for next decade is looking more certain by the day. It may be possible to calculate the fall in atmospheric CO2 level that would accompany that.
David Archibald: I saw your talk in NY–is any of that published anywhere?
405 (DavidA): Scientific theories stand or fall with their predictions. Your solar cycle 'prediction' is not based on valid physics and can therefore not be treated as a test of that invalid mechanism [planetary influences on the Sun]. Similarly, the 2 degree cooling has not been demonstrated even as just a significant correlation and assumes a climate sensitivity to solar causes much larger than reasonable based on what we do know about the atmosphere.
#404 Philip_B
Nobody was "online in the pre-internet days" (except in the sense of making telephone calls). Perhaps you meant "pre-WWW days?" The internet certainly existed during the time you were using Compuserve, but it was still mostly a network of research institutions. The first cross country link in what would be the internet was in 1970, and by the next year there were 15 nodes from coast to coast. The concept of an internet itself dates to 1973, and it develops quickly from that point. Compuserve evolved during this same time using dialup technology and a packet switching network over leased lines. The commercial service you used began in 1979 as MicroNET. By this time, TCP and IP are already in use on the internet, and USENET starts up in 1979 two. So the two — the internet, and commercial online services like Compuserve — existed side by side.
Are you sure about your Compuserve number? The early ones all began with "7". The earliest were in the form of 7xxxx,xx (I might have had one of these, over time I went through several CIS accounts), then later 7xxxx,xxxx (I know I had one of these), then finally 1xxxxx,xxxx (I later had one of these, too).
What really caught people by surprise was not the Internet, but the "World Wide Web." The latter wouldn't exist without the former, but it is what truly transformed the Internet into the online medium we think of today when people say "the Internet." And we who were online with Compuserve in the 1980's do predate the WWW, because that doesn't come into existence until the 1990's.
Yes they do. Those numbers are way off. But I guess this is where the 95% GH effect for WV comes from?
You are assuming a uniform logarithmic effect, but the T response is not unfiormly logairthmic and breaks down at low levels of CO2. But it's a fine approximation for the middle levels we're in now and for the next few doublings.
Oh boy, here we go all over again.
Enlarge the graphic; it's a striking plot. And all the Scientific proof anyone could ask for.
Farewell, Fair Journalism.
Re 410:
Charles Blow?
Blow, blow, blow ye winds, blow.
Ok, now I understand the graphic.
Furthermore, a White House report about the effect of global climate change on the United States issued Thursday (years late and under court order) reaffirmed that the situation will probably get worse:
I got a kick out of this.
412 (Dan) I have to say it; in the context of the whole discussion of climate change and storm strength, that graphic is really no more than a cartoon, and an unconsciously ironic one at that.
For something different here's the "daily" UAH satellite-derived temperature anomaly plot for 2008. This is for the atmospheric level at 600mb, about 14,000 feet ASL, roughly mid-troposphere. The light red line is 2008 while the yellow line is the 20-year average:
The 2008 curve is plotted on a dark background and is hard to see on this reprint. A better view can be found at UAH , along with other levels.
It looks like the cool 2008 is continuing into May and it may end up roughly equivalent to January 2008 anomaly-wise.
Re: 410, 415. Mr. Blow's Biography.
David Smith #417
Ah yes, but we all know how March turned out according to GISS.
BTW David,
At the UAH site you link, I like to look at the 900 mb graph. I always assumed this one corresponded to "TLT".
Do you know what the "Channel 4" plot is?
Correction, the circulation time (individual CO2 molecule) is about 5 years, the pulse response of an excess injection is 55 years.
Very often seen confusion.
see also: http://www.john-daly.com/dietze/cmodcalc.htm and http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html#The_14C12C_ratio
417 (David)
If you check the Ch 07 250mb or 11 km level the current temperature is the lowest on record. Temperatures at this level in the tropics correlate strongly with sunspot activity. By 'correlate strongly' I mean strong positive correlation (El Nino) smoothly transitioning to strongly negative (La Nina). This shows you the Earths natural thermostat in action. To see the correlation run it on a bracket of 12 months at a time for each month across the period of record recording the correlation coefficient in the cell for the seventh month. Radiosonde data for period that is longer than the satellite record (for the tropics) can be found at http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/hadat2/hadat2_monthly_tropical.txt
409 (Boris):
Is this what you're referring to? This is what I was referring to.
You'll note it's not a perfect log graph for delta Forcing per CO2 doubling nor is it exactly what happens in the atmosphere as all other factors are held constant and this is the actual effect of the CO2 only variation. Offhand, it looks pretty much in rough agreement with what you described, although a bit more quantitative than that. It's also an OLR / dF (delta forcing) graph rather than a T vs Co2 concentration graph. That will come from an energy balance calculation run.
The assumption of a log character is associated with the Beer-Lambert Law as applied to at the individual wavelength level.
John M, here is a description of the various AMSU channels. There's no ideal channel. I like to look at a spread of plots.
#408 Basil
"So the two — the internet, and commercial online services like Compuserve — existed side by side."
True. I managed forums and chatrooms on GEnie, PeopleLink, and QLink back in the '80's but had actually 'touched' the internet in 1979 as a guest of a PhD student in a chemlab at Champagne-Urbana (did I spell that right?)
however, there was also a dial-up service I belonged to in the '80's called Portal. It was a portal to the internet and from your dial-in connection you could directly use Veronica and Archie and all the goodies to grab files, post files, and participate in Usenet.
Leif Svalgaard 407
I am not familiar with the theory of David Archibald. I have been impressed by the plots in his talks of specific locations where a correlation is shown of temperatures with solar cycle length: the longer the cycle the lower the temperatures. I think I also saw a plot like this by another author published decades before.
Are you saying the data are wrong, not to be trusted? Not enough locations?
There exist plots from other locations that show different trends?(in that case do you have a link?)
As an experimental physicist I do not need a theory behind a temporal trend to use it as a predictive tool, if the data are ok, and they do give a high probability of substantial cooling the longer the cycle lasts.
Specifially, Compuserve and other online services in the Pre-web days used x.25 as the primary protocol. The largest provider of which was Telenet. I worked for them starting in 1989, shortly thereafter they were bought out by Sprint and became Sprintnet (probably called something else by this time). Before that I worked for a small online service called The Source, based out of McLean, VA, which used Telenet for dial-up access. Compuserve bought The Source and dissolved it.
In the early 90s, there was no AOL. There was a small company in Tyson's Corner, VA which ran a couple online services similar to Compuserve, called PC-Link, AppleLink, and another I can't remember off the top of my head. I was one of the tech support guys who would test the dial-up rotaries for problems when reported. I worked a lot with the early AOL guys on specialized scripts for their software to auto-dial and login. 2400bps was screamin' back then. 9600 v.32 was just around the corner.
Then they became AOL and started a big marketing push. At Telenet/Sprintnet we increased our dial-up capacity from about 50k numbers to about 200k in about two years, and still couldn't keep up with the demand. Then the Web opened up and became popular, and x.25 dial-up started waning. Enter the era of the ISP.
I also ran a BBS out of my home during this time. Fun stuff. Was part of Fidonet, got to play around with FrontDoor apps and did some Quickbasic programming to process incoming mail files and such. Ah, those were the days.
Re 406, if you Google "Solar Cycle 24: Implications for the United States", it comes up in a number of places, including:
http://www.heartland.org/newyork08/PowerPoint/Monday/archibald.ppt
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf
428 (anna): DavidA is not 'predicting' cycle 23 [in spite of what he said – typo?], but cycle 24. Cycle 23 is long [we are almost done with it], but so was cycle 20. Cycle 20 was followed by cycle 21 [the second largest cycle on record] and temperature went up [by a lot less than 2 degrees – do I really need to show a link to this?]. So a long cycle 20 does not predict a small cycle 21 and cooling. The correlation is not there. And neither is the physics.
Re 408, ah Dr Svalgaard, you know what the most peculiar thing I have done recently is, more peculiar than winning a carbon footprint competition at Iowahawk? I have been mentioned (lead mention) in the acknowledgements of an astronomical paper that deals with the force that dare not speak its name. For your interest, one of my contributions to that paper was to suggest the mention of Dr Svalgaard's Solar Cycle 24 amplitude estimate be replaced by Dr Schatten's. As I said, it would be bad karma to unnecessarily mention the work of the world's foremost proponent of nothing ever happens on the Sun and the force that dare not speak its name is rubbish, in a paper that goes into considerable detail about how the force that dare not speak its name explains most attributes of the solar cycle.
In the interim, for anyone interested in the force that dare not speak its name, there is a Hung paper (NASA, Cleveland Ohio) kindly hosted by Warwick Hughes at:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Apparent%20Relations%20between%20Solar%20Activity%20and%20Solar%20Tides%20Ching-Cheh%20Hung.pdf
The stats are compelling and the provenance is NASA. The solar deniers are going to have a hard time digesting this one.
Champagne-Urbana
Urbana-Champaign, as in UIUC.
Champaign-Urbana is also used. I have no idea who picked the spelling. It was probably a plot to make spelling even more irregular than necessary.
432 (DavidA): Schatten's and My predictions are substantially the same stemming from the same joint paper back in 1978 so mentioning either one [or preferably, both] is fine with me. The ad-hom tone of your post is not. That something has NASA-provenance is not necessarily a positive. Hathaway's prediction [very much at variance with yours] also has NASA provenance. In spite of compelling stats, 99% or more of solar physicists are not convinced. And I happen to be among that 99% and we have very little trouble digesting [or dismissing] the Hung [and similar] paper(s).
Re 423, the average residence time of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is 5 years and the pulse response time is 55 years? This means that CO2 molecules, driven by partial pressure differentials, go in and out of the ocean 11 times over that 55 years. That does not compute. It is like saying that an axe is 100 years old when it has had three heads and five handles. The partial pressure differential can only work once, and then it is gone. From the very rapid exchange between the oceans and the atmosphere, it can be assumed that some portion of the oceans and the atmosphere are in an ongoing equilibrium with at worst a five year lag.
The references you cite seem to rely upon matching emissions for a period with the observed record, and then making up a mass balance graph to prove the relationship derived from observation.
If the average residence time of a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is five years, then the increase in atmospheric CO2 is a consequence of heating of a portion of the oceans. This was though of 20 years ago (Trabalka 1985). It seems to me that the atmospheric CO2 level and Holgate's sea level curve are following the Be 10 curve. As goes Be 10, so goes sea level and atmospheric CO2. And what has caused the dramatic change in Be 10 over the last 100 years? It is solar activity.
Roy Spencer is bringing out a paper on CO2 levels soon.
Re 424, thanks Erl and I have plotted up the data for the 200 hpa level. Indeed it is a recent dramatic plunge. Please expound further on your prediction that the current La Nina will be refreshed later in the year.
436# David
How do the 400, 600 and 900 hpa May 08 compare. Same graph as above? Just a suggestion if you have the time.
The current apparent warming in the Eastern Pacific is a seasonal effect that is with us all the time. It reflects the hangover of warm water from direct exposure of the worlds greatest masses of ocean between December and May when the Earth is also closest to the sun and irradiance is 7% up on July figures. In fact the anomaly misguides us because absolute temperatures of the tropical oceans are always highest in April- May and the whole lot is now cooling.
Why does sunspot activity drive temperature up, then down?
Here are the ingredients of the pudding: Sunspot activity exhibits marked fits and spurts. Incoming radiation in the microwave and infrared spectrum can warm water directly. The range of temperature fluctuation increases from the surface upwards. In the tropics at 9-11 km we have temperatures of minus 60°C and low moisture holding capacity. Temperature swings will relate to presence of an absorber. Temperature swings will also determine relative humidity, dew point, condensation and cloud formation. At altitudes above 11 km the tropical atmosphere is supercooled by decompression when the oceans warm in January through May and there is more precipitable moisture in the air and release of latent heat of condensation drives convection. In the 'hot pool' of the Indian Ocean and the west Pacific these cooling processes are so dominant that outgoing long wave radiation has little part to play. The heating at the 250mb level relates directly to irradiance and is always stronger in December to May when the sun is closer to the Earth. (7% higher level of irradiance in January).
Periodically there is a strong positive correlation between sunspot activity and the temperature of the air at 200-300 mb pressure level (9-11 km up in the tropics). This occurs when irradiance increases strongly. However the period of warming is always followed by strong cooling at all levels of the atmosphere where sunspot activity is negatively correlated with temperature. Temperatures at lower levels fall but temperatures at higher levels fall faster. It is surmised that once temperatures begin to fall, dew point in parts of the tropical atmosphere is reached so that latent heat is released that accelerates convection and the atmospheric column cools by decompression. Cooling at any level promotes cloud formation that reflects more solar energy thereby allowing further cooling and precipitation at lower levels. A little seed in some part of the hot pool can start an avalanche.
The tipping point may be a slight cooling of the atmosphere due to a slackening in sunspot activity allowing precipitation to begin. Once started it tends to be self re-enforcing.
So, the mechanism by which sunspot activity affects surface temperature is very probably via change in temperature in the 150-300 mb pressure level in the atmosphere at about 9-11km in elevation. Slight heating of moisture would yield a reduction in the density of reflective cirrus cloud made up of tiny crystals of ice.
Solar cycles of low amplitude and slight fluctuation produce deep La Nina type cooling. The current La Nina will continue until solar cycle 24 begins in earnest. The atmosphere is currently being wrung dry and will be in a position where total column precipitable moisture will be very low when sunspot activity begins to increase. This will tend to produce a large amplitude El Nino.
Charles D Quarles
@ Jeff A #429
Your history of the pre-WWW internet and dial-up services matches my recollection. I was an Apple sys-op back in 1990 to 1994 as well as having been online off and on from 1986 using a 300 baud modem to connect to Apple Online, The Source, and nearby BBS (typically based in Tuscaloosa, AL). I also remember the modem wars (if you upgraded your modem speed before the service did you didn't get the full value of it) and what a joy a 1200 bps modem was in 1990. I remember when Compuserve bought The Source. I got a 71xxx,xxx number for that account and when a private, think tank based BBS moved to Compuserve, I got a 75xxx,xxx number for that account. I dropped Apple Online when they were subsumed into America Online. I dropped Compuserve when AOL bought them out. I got my first unix shell account from a company whose name I cannot recall now. It offered nntp, smtp, telnet, finger, archie, and gopher, if I remember correctly. That one was replaced by a netcom unix shell account just about the time the WWW began its big bang. I've had several different ISPs since then and my usenet postings from ca 1994 should still be in the archives somewhere 😉 .
Re 424, Solar Cycle 20 was slightly longer than average at 11.6 years. The average solar cycle length from 1643 to 1996 is 11.4 years. Now that Dr Svalgaard has mentioned it, let's talk about Solar Cycle 21. It was short at 10.3 years and hot (it started at the same time as the PDO shift in 1976) and was followed by a solar cycle 22 which was shorter again at 9.6 years and hotter. According to Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory, Solar Cycle 23 should have been hotter than Solar Cycle 22, and it was, even thought it is going to be a long one at about 13 years. There is plenty of correlation, all in our lifetimes. As for the physics, Hathaway found a correlation between Solar Cycle Length and the amplitude of the following cycle. So the physics is there also. Simply saying that the physics is not there does not make it so, Dr Svalgaard.
As for Solar Cycle 23 being almost done with, those are comforting words but the observational data suggests otherwise. Jan Janssens does it best – a recent plot is above. That suggests that we have a year to go and that Solar Cycle 23 is likely to be 13 years long. This is 3.4 years longer than Solar Cycle 22 and thus with mid-latitude temperatures responding at the rate of 0.7 degrees C per year of solar cycle length, Solar Cycle 24 will be 2.4 degrees cooler than the one we are still in.
As Anna said in 428, if the correlations are reproduceable, then they are valid. For anyone interested, go to GISS and download the data. In the US, I can recommend Portland, Maine, and Hanover, New Hampshire and Providence, Rhode Island for starters. In Europe, good, long correlations are Armagh, De Bilt and the Central England Temperature. The closer to the Arctic Circle, the better the correlation.
Basil, I did mean pre-WWW days and I was referring to the Internet as most people understand it today.
I was aware of the Internet. My brother a US academic was using it at the time I was using Compuserve and even before that time. He was using it for the same things I was using Compuserve for, email and sending/recieving files. I'll have to ask him when he put up his first web page.
You are right about Compuserve numbers, but for communication with other members, I recall you didn't use the first digit. So a message sent to me would be addressed to something like 0003.5670. I stopped using Compuserve around the begining of 1993 when I started using the WWW. So my memory may be faulty. In 1993 there weren't many websites and they were mostly technology companies.
Anyway my point was that Al Gore didn't envisage the vast information resource accessible from anywhere we now call the Internet. I don't think many people did. I'd be interested in any pre-1990 visions of the Internet that accurately foresaw what the Internet would be become.
440 (DavidA):
Jan Janssens does it best – a recent plot is above.
This is what Jan Janssens actually said:
10 May 08 – The SIDC-smoothed Wolfnumbers show that a minimum was reached in September 2007 (5,9 – see graph underneath). The reason this is not frontpage news, is that 5 of the 7 subsequent monthly Wolfnumbers were lower than the smoothed September value. It is thus more likely that the smoothed Wolfnumber will decrease again in the coming months. How long depends on this summer's solar activity and thus the monthly Wolfnumbers. Some simulations for the months from May through August 2008 have shown that if the monthly R-values are between 5 and 10, a minimum around January 2008 will be reached. If the solar activity stays low and the monthly R-values vary between 0 and 5, the smoothed Wolfnumber will continue to decrease. How long will then depend on the further evolution of the solar activity. Last year's prediction by the NOAA/NASA panel of a March 2008 solar cycle minimum (+/- 6 months) seems currently still quite solid.
David also said:
As for the physics, Hathaway found a correlation between Solar Cycle Length and the amplitude of the following cycle. So the physics is there also.
You can't have it both ways:
cycle 20 long, cycle 21 strong,
cycle 23 long, cycle 24 weak.
One more time: the length of a cycle is not a good predictor of the size of the next cycle. Hathaway's 'relationship' comes about simply because cycles come in groups: several weak cycles together followed by several strong cycle. That produces a weak correlation between length and size, but not one that can be used for prediction, because it fails when it should count the most, namely at the transition from a weak to a strong group and from a strong to a weak group.
According to Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory, Solar Cycle 23 should have been hotter than Solar Cycle 22, and it was
F-L postulated [as you do – although hardly a theory] that longer cycles were cooler, so the longer cycle 23 should have been cooler than 22 and it was not. You should assume that people check up on you before making unsubstantiated statements.
Re 437, the last thirteen years are plotted. The size of the anomaly increases with altitude.
Re 437, this is to show the La Ninas of the 1970s cooling period on the same vertical scale. It seems that we are just at the start of the surface temperature response, which should go on for a year or two.
Posted Jun 1, 2008 at 1:14 AM | Permalink
last post cut #434, #444 David Thanks for those graphs. Are we assuming last data point(s) May 08? (because it looks like May 08 should come out as = or
there are two competing mechanisms:
metabolism and resorption
the metabolism turnover is far bigger than the actual storage of the excess, compare it with a leaking swimming pool that also has a big pump. the pump turnover is biggerbthan the leak, so the refresment rate is shorter than the leak decay time.
different mechnisms.
Jan Pompe
Hans 423
there seems to be a slight difference between Peter Dietze
. The half-life time of any partial pressure increment is 55·ln(2)=38 years.
and Ferdinand Englebeen
The half life time is about 5 years.
I'm betting on Peter Dietze being right. Mean lifetime in exponential decay
They could be at cross purposes of course.
Re world wide web:
I was at CERN during the development of what became the WWW for the collaboration needs of the L3 experiment. I was in a competing one, and we had also the problem of communicating efficiently between 400 or so colleagues. We solved it by using a newsgroup format over the internet.
I remember watching my first web page in a display screen set up in one of the long CERN corridors. Shortly we were all using Mozilla as a browser on our VAX work stations and were converts.
Question on adjustments to temperature series:
1. Is it possible to enumerate the complete set of adjustments to a given temperature series?
2. What percentage of them have a net effect of causing (a) an accelerating of global warming, whether by early year cooling or recent year warming (b) a better correlation to model results post adjustment?
Are these questions answerable as knowable unknowns? If not or if not to some extent, do we know within what bounds of uncertainty we don't know the actual trend?
#443, David Archibald graph, May 31st, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Why does the 200 hPa blue line in #443 appear to change from blue to black around 2008? A blue line remains but no longer fits the pattern shown in the #436 graph.
The decaytime of 5 years for a nuclear pollution isotope spike is not the same as the response time of 55 years for an excess co2 spike. The first one is purely dependent on the CO2 metabolic overturn flux, whereas the second one is the net storage flux.
e.g. For your average tree, the annual CO2 metabolic overturn is much much larger than the net annual CO2 storage.
Posted Jun 1, 2008 at 11:40 AM | Permalink
typo: turnover
How many of you remember Arpanet, or BBN? hehe. old dogs I suppose.
Posted Jun 1, 2008 at 1:59 PM | Permalink
454 (steven):
I had to dial halfway across the country via the fts to access an arpanet (or darpanet) node with the old silent 700 TI terminal which had a defective bell 103 300 baud modem straight out of the box. every now and then someone at MIT got mad at me for printing out page after page after page of crap because the stupid modem glitched the right charcter sequence to comandeer the printer. I also remember my first chat encounter with some precocious hacker type 12 yr old kid whose dad was a grad. student at some node on the west coast who like to butt in and ask stupid questions about what I was trying to do.
yup, i still remember some things from back then. I also remember how my project completed post haste after that stupid modem was replaced after dragging on for way too long because of it and also how miraculous it was to see data flowing at 1200 and even 2400 baud after years of 300 baud.
Hans (452):
Makes sense – thanks.
anna (449): i think you meant Mosaic as the original browser, not Mozilla.
Re 445, the last data point is March.
Re 451, there are quality control problems which are irresolvable in the time allotted. You will note that there are five data series in the title but only four lines. Anybody is welcome to go to the link Erl provided and do it properly.
In #449, June 1st, 2008 at 8:20, I referred to graph #443 but meant to refer to #442.
Mosaic did come first. Funding for the development of Mosaic came from the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, a program created by the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (or The Gore Bill after its author, then-Senator Al Gore).
Re 451, you are saying that the entire atmospheric CO2 content is metabolised through plants every five years. According to your theory, plants metabolise that CO2 into sugars and permanent wood over five years, and then respire the sugars over the next 50 years, thus explaining the 11 fold difference in residence time between CO2 (as determined from nuclear testing) and your pulse residence time. How is it that the sugars with high C14 from the nuclear testing don't get respired, but the others do, so that that the pulse time matches the residence time? This is one of the biggest fairy stories that AGW theory is based on. I do have a major in botany and the world's foremost botanist is visiting me next month, so I am speaking from authority.
I have a better theory – the whole of the 100 ppm increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the 20th century can be explained by a slight heating of the oceans. Let's do the math! The oceans have 50 times as much C02 as the atmosphere. Let's take that as being the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm. That makes the oceanic content equivalent to 14,000 ppm. Two thirds of the oceans are under the thermocline at 4 degrees C. Let's assume that the top third is at an average of 12 degrees C, for an average of the total column of 7 degrees C.
Between 0 and 10 degrees, the solubility of CO2 changes by 0.006 grams/100 ml per degree C. At 7 degrees, water has in solution 0.26 grams/100 ml. A half a degree increase in temperature will cause 0.003 grams/100 ml to come out of solution. This is 1.115%. Apply that to the 14,000 ppm and you get 161 ppm going into the atmosphere to maintain equilibrium. The actual rise was 100 ppm, which is 62% of that figure. So the 100 ppm rise of the last 100 years could have all come from a 0.3 degree rise in the average ocean temperature. The 5 degree rise the IPCC is talking about will put 1,615 ppm into the atmosphere from the oceans. The plants will love it.
Let's now compare that to what happened to sea level. At 7 degrees, the coefficient of expansion of water is 0.000005 per 0.1 degrees C. Apply that to the 3,000 metre water column and you get 45 mm for 0.3 degrees. According to Holgate, the rise in sea level over the 20th century was 174 mm. Holgate said that 40% of the sea level rise was due to thermal expansion. That is 70 mm equating to 0.45 degrees. So we now have a problem of missing CO2 – atmospheric CO2 should be 50 ppm higher than it is for a 0.45 degree rise in ocean temperature. Perhaps the terrestrial biosphere is simply gulping it down. Measure of the mass of the terrestrial biosphere would have a large amount of error.
Posted Jun 1, 2008 at 10:50 PM | Permalink
You are probably right. It is the Mo that confused me :).It is so long ago, and overlayed by the enormous progress since then.
cba 453
I used to log into the CERN computer from Athens Greece through a teletype, to submit programs and get the output teletyped. Yes, 300 baud or something like that.That was in the eighties.
WattsUpAuditor
Is anthony ever going to actually finish the multipart series he promised? Like the one where he discovered that what value one uses as arbitrary baseline affects the reported anomaly values, but not their trends? Or the one where he discovered reported high correlatin between two sorted series, and it was shown that the series were not in phase with each other, promised that he was searching for a method that would show a correlation?
I wouls ask over there, but Anthony has systematically removed any serious criticism from his blog, along with all past posts by anyone who leveled serious criticisms.
Steve: This has nothing to do with any posts here. The problem of spurious correlations is a serious one, as exemplified very clearly by Mann's bristlecone pines, about which I would welcome your views.
462 (Erl) Seen Quirk's work at Jennifer's?
461 (av) Thank you for your voice. What about Miscolzi?
Re 459, that is an incomplete understanding. The oceans are very undersaturated with respect to CO2. The current 50:1 partition will be maintained in the long term. Some authorities state that the oceans have 70 times the CO2 of the atmosphere. It also means that of the CO2 that mankind will produce until we run out of rocks to burn, about 2 % will remain in the atmosphere and the rest will go into the oceans. The five year residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere means that the atmosphere is in equilibrium (sort of) with a portion of the upper surface of the oceans.
The simplest math is that that humans are emmitting about 8.0 billion tons of Carbon per year right now but the atmospheric content of CO2 is only increasing at about 4.0 billion tons (Carbon) per year.
Natural processes are absorbing about 4.0 billion tons per year. So, if we stopped emmitting today, it would take about 60 years for natural processes to return the CO2 content of the atmosphere to its pre-industrial revolution level of 280 ppm (assuming natural processes continued absorbing at the same rate.)
You misunderstand what the turnover of CO2 involves, it's primarily due to exchange with the ocean, based on the C14 pulse due to nuclear testing the response time is ~14 years (1/e basis).
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0012-9658%28198406%2965%3A3%3C970%3AMTEITG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y
Your post ignores the buffer effect of the ocean and over-estimates the sink as a result.
462 (Kim)
Where do I find Jennifer's?
462 (Kim) Found it. Looks very sophisticated. I like this bit about predicting future climate:
the confidence with which the future predictions are presented coupled with the obvious mismatches with the past are an echo of the Soviet era Polish saying: "The future is certain only the past is unpredictable".
I am currently exploring the relationship between 250mPa pressure level temperature anomalies in the tropics and rainfall in the West Australian wheat belt. Temperature up, rainfall down. Currently anomalies are equal lowest at 200mPa and record lowest at 150mPa for the interval 1958 to present. This is a serious La Nina. The heavens are gushing. Believe Iowa has a lot of corn plants waterlogged.
Charles D Quarles #438
Hehe, small world, eh? If you called The Source customer service from mid 1988 until their buying out and destruction by CompuServe, you might have talked to me, there weren't many of us. I was also fairly involved in the IBMSIG forum there. A small factoid, Admiral John Poindexter, known for his involvement in Iran/Contra, was also active there. He was a halfway decent programmer.
Our primary method of testing dial-in problems was with a 300 baud acoustic coupler and phone handset. Things changed relatively quickly. By the time I left Sprintnet in 2000 we could test hundreds of different dial-in numbers almost simultaneously.
The NCEP global temperature anomaly estimate for May 2008 is in:
February: 26'th warmest since 1948
March: 4'th warmest
April: 6'th warmest
May: 7'th warmest
These quickie NCEP reanalysis estimates tend to run somewhat "warm" compared to the generally-accepted global indices. The UAH daily satellite appears to show a cooler anomaly, especially in the mid-troposphere. We'll see.
David Archibald, if the oceans were the source there would be a gradient from the oceans to land, something that Arrhenius already observed that the gradient is actually in the other direction, hence the source must be on land.
And where would you store your net production of human CO2 which is about twice the amount of the annual observed atmospheric increase?
Your mass balance doesn't equate.
Steve what was wrong with my remarks about the buffer effect on CO2 absorption in sea water and the turnover time of CO2?
Steve: Dunno. I didn't do anything but I recovered it from Spam KArma
Imagine a time with no sunspots.
Livingston and Penn paper: "Sunspots may vanish by 2015″.
It seems that Livingston and Penn can …
472 (Richard): This has happened before [many times]. Last time 1645-1715. The magnetic field of the spots will still be there, the solar cycle will still operate, the cosmic rays will still be modulated, the TSI will still be what it is. Only difference is that the spots will be invisible.
re 470(Hans)
Your mass balance doesn't equate
Neither does Keelings,they excluded oceanic biota,and left us with a "missing carbon sink"
Weird, it said it was being moderated and eventually disappeared!
Steve: Phil, Spam Karma does some funny things. It picked up this post for some reason. It's not a post that I had the faintest interest in. WordPress has quirks that people learn about – the less than sign chops off posts. One adverse commenter whose post almost certainly had a less than sign in it went into a rage accusing me of truncating the post to make him look bad, leading to Tamino commenters going into a paroxysm of bile a year later on this matter. People seem awfully quick to fly off the handle. BTW I have no interest in debating this with you.
On disappearing posts:
I had one recently, 462 refers to it as 461, that disappeared, as also a comment to it. As it was a bit critical, frustrated from trying to make sense of CO2 arguments, I believe it was an intentional delete.
Often referral numbers do not correspond to the posts, so deletes after numbering are frequent. Some of course might be mistakes.
If not intentional might be good to check for a bug or a hacker?
Steve: I discourage people from venting and complaining. I ask people not to merely complain; if you've got no information to add, there's no harm in not commenting. I don't have time to snip complaining and sometimes I'll delete posts as breaching blog rules on excessive venting. I know that many aspects of the debate are very frustrating, but sometimes just take a deep breath rather than getting overly exercised about some supposed climate science misdeed. Again I ask pepole to keep complaining down.
Hans Ehrens, 471
Can you give a link that shows these gradients? Not Arrhenius, I doubt they were really measuring well at that time gradients on land and ocean.
BTW the official CO2 plots come right from the middle of the ocean, Mauna Loa,right next to a volcano ridge. The acceptance of its representation of world CO2 argues for no gradients. ( I know i know, I have read of swaths of CO2 traveling with the winds, but that is another story, on the skeptics side)
On CO2 gradients, it would be interesting to see a map as the one for temperatures
I would expect CO2 to follow the temperature map if it is an effect : little CO2 over the poles because the ocean is cold and traps it, a lot in the tropics. Has anyone a link to a CO2/ temperature map (over land too).
Link for sea temperatures map. Did not manage to link with "image"
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html" alt="current world sea temperatures"
atmospheric CO2 = manmade CO2 + natural CO2
manmade CO2 is greater than atmospheric CO2
hence
natural CO2 is negative….
MJW
cba: The assumption of a log character is associated with the Beer-Lambert Law as applied to at the individual wavelength level.
As I've mentioned previously, the Beer-Lambert Law implies an exponential (k*[1-exp(-a*c)]), not a logarithmic relation. The logarithmic relationship is supposedly a consequence of spectrum broadening, or some such thing; though I've never seen anything beyond hand-waving arguments.
Re #465 John Lang:
About the biosphere soaking half of our emissions, the official explanation is oceans uptake. However it seems that oceans are behaving different in the summer (June-October) than during the rest of the year. If you analise the data from Mauna Loa, the ammount by which CO2 concentration is reduced in the summer is the same as in the fifties, at an average reduction of 5.76 ppm every summer. On the other hand, the CO2 concentration increase during the rest of the year has been rising, from about 6.5 ppm then to about 8 ppm now.
I cannot think of any reason why the oceans would behave different between June-October and October-June, relating their capability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, and I have asked about it in RealClimate without getting a response. So my guess is that photosinthesis in the Northern Hemisphere is doing the miracle: during the summer, although we are emitting much more than in the fifties, photosinthesis is also improved by the same ammount and as a result there is no trend in the CO2 uptake ratio. During the rest of the year we are not so lucky, as in the SH there isn't so much land with vegetation that can improve photosinthesis. It is probably improved somewhat, but not enough, and as a result there is an increase in how much CO2 is put into the atmosphere every year.
The reasons for the improved photosinthesis would be 2. One is the increased concentration of CO2, but another very important one is the increased temperatures. That's why there was a decrease in the CO2 concentration change ratio between the 80's and the 90's: we emitted more, and winter increase was bigger, but the summer uptake was getting A LOT bigger too. It is really impressive if you look at the graphs. What happened between the 80's and the 90's? There was a big warming. What is happening now? The warming has almost stopped. As a result, because of the increased emissions and, this time, photosinthesis not improving so much, winter increase rises AND ALSO summer uptake decreases.
I think that this is conveniently ignored by AGWers because it would mean that there is a negative feedback to the global warming: the more we warm, the better we trap additional CO2. No matter how much I do these claims, they are ignored by AGWers. In RealClimate they link me to papers that only prove that in specific places the alkalinity in the sea is lower than average and they conclude that they are acidifying. But they don't compare the alkalinity with a history of previous alkalinity levels in that place, and they don't take global measurements. They don't even study if the (allegued) excess CO2 is because of some kind of deep water upwelling taking place there (deeper water is colder and as a result it is richer in CO2 and will show decreased alkalinity during the warming process at the surface until the excess CO2 is put into the atmosphere). I read another press release from a certaing university that claimed that the Southern Oceans' uptake capability is reaching saturation. I would have guessed that they were measuring acidity levels change there, but no, actually they were reaching that conclusion because of ATMOSPHERIC readings of CO2 concentration in different places around the world. Because the ratio of CO2 concentration increase is rising, they conclude that oceans are stopping to trap it. They don't even look for different reasons, like the recent cooling of the SH and the more reduced warming of the NH.
So what worries me the most of all this AGW histeria is the systematic way in which important data are overlooked or dismissed as irrelevant just because they don't support AGW or they would reduce its no-longer-catastrophic consecuences. Climate science is going to suffer a major blow when time reveals all these bad practices. Quite unluckily however, people responsible for this will probably have already retired and will suffer no punishment other than being laughed at in history books.
#479 Anna V
Here's your CO2 plot.
Phil.: Funding for the development of Mosaic came from the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, a program created by the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (or The Gore Bill after its author, then-Senator Al Gore).
So, because Gore sponsored a bill that resulted in a grant that funded the developers of the first browser, he really does deserve credit for creating the Internet? snip
Try the integral over the infrared spectrum
#484 Pliny:
It would be interesting to see if the difference in the concentrations, with higher concentrations in warmer places, actually mean more CO2. I will explain. For the same air pressure and volume, hotter air contains less air (weights less) than colder air. So a 385 ppm concentration in hotter and therefore lighter air could mean less CO2 in total than a 370 ppm concentration in colder and therefore heavier air. I would like to make some numbers.
My paper analyzing the divergence problem has been accepted in Climatic Change. I acknowledge Steve M and CA. Will post a link when it comes out.
482 (MJW):
what you showed was the absorption. The transmitted fraction is merely an exp(-…) function. Perhaps I'm missusing the terminology but I refer to exp() as a logarithmic function which is definitely not linear, e being the basis of natural logs.
the broadening spreads out the lines to give them some body and without that the absorption and emission would be monochromatic and of virtually no consequence. Offhand, it sounds a bit like misconceptions concerning exactly what the cause is being attributed to. The interplay is extreme due to the overlaps. My diagram in 424 shows how co2 varies in effect as concentrations change – all other parameters held constant. The model uses line broadening and pressure shifting internally to establish the shape of the lines. You'll note there is a bit of an exponential curve there with a bit of wiggling around. I believe that is what is being called a log curve by many.
The line data base I'm using has over a million absorption lines and each has its own parameters concerning the nature of the broadening and shifting as functions of T and p and concentrations of like molecules and of the interaction of 'other' molecules. Consequently, I don't doubt one would see a lot of handwaving as to any precise descriptions of effects en masse. It would be like trying to describe temperature based on the velocity of each molecule in a container of gas rather than merely making a scaler measurement of T.
483 (Nylo)
I cannot think of any reason why the oceans would behave different between June-October and October-June, relating their capability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, and I have asked about it in RealClimate without getting a response.
If one looks at the map at #484, it is the air over coolest oceans that have the lowest CO2 concentration. In October to June the oceans are warming reaching a peak temperature in May. Sun is at aphelion in January with 7% greater irradiance and it is over the Southern Hemisphere oceans. In NH summer the oceans are cooling and taking up more CO2. There is very little ocean in the NH. No doubt the plants help a bit but there are more CO2 users below the waters than above.
Pliny 484.
Lovely, thank you.
It is a monthly average at 8 km height for July 2003, I see. One can see the heat from the tropics and the summer heat in the south, the cold in the poles, and the fuel burning like smog in the northern hemisphere. Even the Himalayas stand out.
A measurement closer to the surface would be best for sources and sinks, but still this is instructive, because it shows that CO2 maps can be made showing the gradients. I wonder whether they are used in the computer models.
487 (Craig Loehle): Aren't you also working on a paper on DO cycles with Fred Singer? When does that come out?
#489 Erl Happ:
Your explanation is very good, but it fails to address my point.
Although it is clear that the ocean's capability to absorb CO2 increases when it is colder, my point wasn't exactly that one. My point is, with the oceans capability to absorb CO2 in the fifties being also higher when it was cold, in the summer, why would the recent warming or CO2 concentration increase have ONLY affected its behaviour during the months of June-October? Hasn't the ocean warmed along all of the months? Hasn't CO2 concentration also risen for all the months too? Why would the increased warming or the increased CO2 concentration ONLY affect the sea's CO2 uptake in the summer and not in winter?
With the photosinthesis explanation, the answer is very clear. With the ocean's uptake explanation, I still have to find one. No matter if oceans are colder in the NH summer, they are still hotter than they were in the fifties under the same circumstances, and that is true for all the year, not only those months. The sea's temperature variation between months has not changed, and I shouldn't expect a difference of their relative capability to absorb CO2 compared to the one they had in the fifties. If more CO2 is absorbed now in the summer, then also more CO2 should be absorbed in winter. Temperature change and CO2 concentrations have both moved in the same direction and in the same ammounts in the summer than in winter.
In order to explain a different trend in nature's response between months, you need a process which would be affected differently by the warming and/or CO2 increase between months. If, compared to the fifties, the ocean has warmed the same in summer and winter, and CO2 concentration shows the same trend for summer and winter, and ocean's capability to absorb CO2 only depends on those 2 parameters, then it is not a good candidate.
I don't care about Al one way or the other really, but he did take initiative when he was in Congress, as VP, and since. Kahn & Cerf email It was one of his issues of interest. As it was his dad's. Again, all he was doing was trying to compare himself to a rival candidate, and he didn't say it very well, but the two guys above did, "The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening."
I'd call AOL, Compuserve et al as dial up shared computing service providers. Something like that. As far as the Internet, you could say it 'started' in 1962 when Licklider started the 'Intergalactic Computer Network' memos. And stuff with Sutherland and Taylor when he was in charge of them at ARPA. But really the first message was at the end of 1969, 'lo' (it was supposed to be login, but the system crashed….) The first four machines (IMPs running on Honeywell DDP-516) were at UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. Before that in the 50's there were only terminals on leased lines.
The first web browser was WorldWideWeb from Berners-Lee (renamed Nexus later, I think) that ran on the first web server (him too) on a NeXTcube. 1991ish. But that goes back even further, text browsers (aka hyperlinks) and that started with Maxthink around 1984ish. Hypercard in 1987 graphical web-like, on Mac. But no, it (the web) didn't become popular until Mosaic came out in 1993. At least 3 other web browsers were out at the time. Maybe it just hit critical mass from the people pushing at it.
Then the wars started. Andreessen (of Mosiac) started Netscape, and Microsoft bought Spyglass to make IE. And so on.
Anyway, so the answer depends on which question you're asking.
Nylo 492
You have thoroughly confused me. What summer and what winter?
There is southern summer and winter, and northern summer and winter.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html
The tropics are always about the same temperature.
The global CO2 oscillation http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/index.html#global
shows minima in august or so, and maxima in march. One needs the world gradients to make sense of this and for more than the month in the plot 484 above.
It could be that it is a synergy of the biomass eating up more CO2 in the NH summer while at the same time the larger volume of cold ocean absorbs CO2 from the south, and the global average falls in NH summer. In the NH winter NH has more combustion and less greenery and SH oceans warm because it is summer but there is less land mass for greenery , and thus there is synergy again, in increasing CO2.
My two lepta on this.
Sam, I tend to agree that the Al Gore comments concerning the internet frequently are used out of context and that their references are not very productive in a discussion of the internet, or Al Gore, for that matter. My take away from this situation has far reaching implications for AGW mitigations as suggested by Al Gore.
We can say that Al Gore was an internet enabler, but its success was much more heavily weighted in the direction of the entrepreneurs and technical people that took risks and put forward ideas. Al Gore, as any other politician in his position, would not be qualified to provide overrides for a free market of ideas and risks or have the proper disposition to do it. By the same token and even with my jaundiced view of politicians generally, I do not mind Al Gores populist views of AGW being espoused, or even the mainstream media's attention to it, as an informed reader can judge the merit of the writings for themselves.
My concerns come when our politicians begin to impose their overrides for ideas and risks for mitigating AGW and all the unintended consequences that can arise. In the case of Al Gore (and politicians in general) I think the internet has fortunately been able to, so far, dodge most impositions.
# 494 Ana,
CO2 is maximum in June and minimum in October. WHen I say summer I mean summer in the NH, when the global CO2 concentration is reduced.
You don't need to tell me why it goes up in winter and down in summer, I know that very well and it is not my point. My point is: why has the ammount of CO2 uptake in the summers NOT CHANGED since 1955, while the CO2 concentration rise in winters has INCREASED a lot, compared to the fifties? i.e. why the warming or the CO2 increase is only affecting ONE SIDE of the cycle? We have increased emissions both in summer and winter.
I reject the ocean's uptake because, if that was the case, I would expect both an increasing ratio in winter and a reduced uptake in the summer due to emissions only being partially compensated by the oceans. But the uptake in the summer isn't reducing. It is stable. It is the same as in the fifties. This means that the ammount of additional CO2 being absorbed by natural processes in the summer is AS MUCH AS the additional CO2 we are emitting in those 4 months.
The difference between oceans uptake and NH photosinthesis uptake is that the first one goes up and down while the second one goes up and zeroes. The first one is about-linearly affected by CO2 concentration or temperatures but the second one is not. WHen working (summer), it will work better, and when not working (winter), it will remain the same, it won't change.
We are not on the same page. Can you give me a link to the plots you are talking about?
The plot I linked to, has a maximum CO2 around March and a minimum around August/september, if we assume that the year starts in January. It also shows both the maxima and the minima rising.
As to the asymmetry in the cycles, I would attribute it to the asymmetry in the landmass/ocean between the two hemispheres.
Here is why, although Lambert-Beer itself is not logarithmic, the spectral integrated CO2 absorption behaves as such:
It is all related to the distribution of the absorption over the wavelenghts, the log behaviour is a good approximation between 150 and 1200 atm.cm
Here is an old lab observation from 1901:
Paolo M.
UAH MSU temperature released by Roy Spencer: May 2008 much colder than January, as it was anticipated by David Smith.
A lower anomaly in May than Jan? Must be getting colder.
Maybe the seasons have started working in reverse.
Jaye Bass
The "internet" started with 4 ARPANET hosts in 1968, switched over to 313,000 hosts most of which were NSFNET based. CERN started html in 1990. So either way you cut it, backbone or software, Gore had zippo to do with "inventing" anything related to the internet. Funding a project to build software to use the CERN developed hypertext language is development of a single software project only.
The switch to NSFNET was around 1990.
Mr. Gore calls the network a "information superhighway" meant to be a catalyst to cultural and industrial progress.
Yes, I remember that well. The internet and www were already thriving, and Gore's comment seemed rather a dollar late. The chronology was better remembered in 1999/2000 when he made his claim than it obviously is now, hence the sniggers at that time.
487 (Craig):
where is a good place to read about the Divergence problem – the brief executive introduction and also something with a little more meat?
BTW, congratulations on acceptance.
Re Paolo no 500 and MSU temps, as discussed a couple of days ago, I don't know how they weight these, but if you check out the 600 mb graph here, it's pretty impressive.
You'll get pretty much the same graph as David Smith showed in Comment 418, but select to compare with both the 20 year average and with last year.
Dang, link for MSU came up dead.
Gore's work on high speed telecommunications in the '70s in the House, and his work in the Senate starting in the '80s to consolidate government agencies that resulted eventually in the 1991 bill creating NERN and funding Mosaic had nothing to do with popularizing and advancing things? Hmmm.
You may think his using "creating" instead of "helping to create" or "helping to create as we know it" or some such in a leadership role in government is the same as "inventing" and that's fine. We already know what he meant, taking initiative in government, compared to Bill Bradley, to advance the technology. Like others did with other aspects (infrastructure, funding, etc etc etc). Eisenhower with ARPA, Kennedy with IPTO, Clinton with the administration that lead to the 1991 bill, and so on and so forth, and everyone else on other software and hardware.
He wasn't as clear as he could be that's for sure.
I'm just saying the dude has a claim he did stuff that helped. What's so hard about understanding he's saying he did stuff the other guy didn't, as an answer to the question of what he did compared to the other guy, in government?
"The Role of Government in the Evolution of the Internet." http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACN9-1.txt
I'll go with what Kahn and Cerf said. You know, the guys that designed the basic architecture and core protocols that make the Internet work.
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover,
there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.
There are many factors that have contributed to the Internet's rapid growth since the later 1980s, not the least of which has been political support for its privatization and continued support for research in advanced networking technology. No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort, both in the councils of government and with the public at large.
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0009/msg00311.html
Vinton Gray "Vint" Cerf (born June 23, 1943) is an American computer scientist who is the "person most often called 'the father of the Internet'." His contributions have been recognized repeatedly, with honorary degrees and awards that include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award (with Bob Kahn), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Robert Elliot Kahn, (born December 23, 1938) invented the TCP protocol, and along with Vinton G. Cerf created the IP protocol, the technologies used to transmit information on the Internet.
Re: cba #505 for divergence do a google search of CA (upper right hand on the web page)or email me and I'll send you a bibliography.
UAH satellite temperature data is posted up. May 2008 anomaly is -0.18C, the lowest level since April 1997 and virtually the same number as December 1978 when the sat temperature measurements began.
cba: what you showed was the absorption. The transmitted fraction is merely an exp(-…) function. Perhaps I'm missusing the terminology but I refer to exp() as a logarithmic function which is definitely not linear, e being the basis of natural logs.
I showed absorption since (ignoring a host of other factors) the greenhouse response to CO2 depends on the amount of absorbed energy. Lots of people confuse the terminology, but exp() shouldn't be referred to as a logarithmic function. They're, of course, related, since each is the others inverse.
Hans Erren: Here is why, although Lambert-Beer itself is not logarithmic, the spectral integrated CO2 absorption behaves as such…
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see anything in the graph that makes me believe the absorption behaves like a log function. Nor does the linked-to graph do much to persuade me. All I see is a superficial resemblance between the shape of the two graphs.
I'm not saying the response doesn't behave approximately logarithmically over some range, I'm just saying I haven't seen a convincing argument that it should, of even empirical evidence that it does.
snip – enough about Gore folks.
Below are the updated UAH plots for 1990-present
and for the last 10 years
The temperature drop-off is impressive.
My belief is that this decline-off is the lagging effect of the La Nina. If that is correct then we may have another one or two months of anomalies below about +0.10C and then a rise back to the +0.3C neighborhood. But, if temperatures remain on the low side after September, I'll then begin to wonder about the much-speculated solar/climate connection.
I thought La nina was about dead/neutral so maybe not due to La Nina? Well see how Hansen deals with this May "problem" should be interesting how the adjustments will be made LOL
Re #497 anna:
My plots were data from Mauna Loa, the representative data normally used for the whole globe, but I am happy that you found another dataset that I can include in my colection. I have made the corresponding plots using the monthly data that they provide (you have a link to it in the same page of the graph you showed to me). The data are here:
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_gl.txt
And the more complete graph I plotted from that data is here:
(Graph explanation: light blue line = CO2 concentration data for the month plotted minus CO2 concentration data for the same month in the previous year. Dark blue line = average of the previous three years of the light blue line data. Pink squares = "summer" reduction of CO2 for the previous year, calculated as the maximum value Jan-Dec (typically May) minus the minimum value Jan-Dec (typically the following September). Yellow triangles = "winter" increase, calculated as the maximum value Aug-July (typically May) minus the minimum value Aug-July (typically the september before).
This graph shows some important differences and also some important similitudes with the Mauna Loa data, for which that you can also check its equivalent plot here:
The main difference is that, using NOAA's world averaged data, both the summer uptake and winter reduction are less important than in Mauna Loa, the amplitude of the periodical variation is reduced in NOAA. Another difference is that, while in Mauna Loa the maximum is tipically found in May-June, here it happens in April-May, and the same time difference is found for the minimum.
But the similitudes between the 2 make my point even stronger than before. With NOAA data, the summer uptake does change, BUT TO THE BETTER! We are uptaking slightly more CO2 in the summer now than in 1980 although emissions have increased 40% since then. And again, the winter raise in CO2 is increasing like the plot from Mauna Loa also shows.
If oceans uptake was the explanation, we would see the winter increase raise AND the summer uptake reduce. Because the ocean's contribution to sequestering CO2 would change in the same direction for both seasons: water is hotter in both seasons and CO2 is higher in both seasons than in the eighties.
Also notice that, if there is any difference in how much carbon emissions have increased between summer and winter, it will point the summer as the main increase. Heating systems didn't exist in the 80's in a smaller ammount than now. Cooling systems, on the other hand, are more extended now and they are used mainly in the NH summer, consuming a lot of electricity which is generated mostly by burning fossil fuels. My electricity bill and the typical summer eventual power downs of the electricity companies agree with this. And the heavy industry doesn't change its activity between summer and winter.
The tropics now has 10 consecutive months of month on month cooling in the UAH dataset. May was the coolest anomaly for any month in the last 20 years.
The Earth's climate is largely a process of distributing heat from the tropics towards the poles. Cooler tropics would indicate cooler higher latitudes in the future.
I suggest to take the data from epa, apply Lambert-Beer to the absorbance, convolve it with a plank curve and plot it logarithmically on a graph.
S is the only editor I've been able to tolerate, but he, like the rest of them, deletes my best stuff. If I only knew ahead of time what would get deleted or never posted or precipitated my banning, I would have my classic already written.
I am puzzled by the labeling of the x axis of your plots. The year/month label is not in a sequence that is regular for each year and it seems arbitrary compressions/distortions are introduced.
It becomes like using random numbers. I cannot see my way to draw any conclusions.
I think in terms of something being right or wrong so I always look at both sides of an issue. A scientific theory isn't right until proven by real-world data and a political theory isn't right until proven by real-world experience. Much of the time what seems logical on paper turns out to be overly simplistic in the real world and people too easily fool themselves by believing what they want to believe. Then it's easy for them to find creative ways to present falsehoods as truths without even realizing it. I suppose that's what makes the adversarial system the best one. But I'd prefer if we could all just seek out the real truth either in science or politics, which is usually hidden behind piles of steaming dung.
From The Numbers Guy (WSJ)
Getting data, Mr. Hecox said, "is often the most difficult thing to get money for. It's very difficult to get the funds and resources necessary to do it the way the statistical community would like to do it all the time." Nonetheless, he said of the monthly reports, "It's kind of like impressionism. If you throw enough paint on the wall, in the right locations, you don't have to have perfect brushstrokes. You get a fairly recognizable picture out of it; you just have to squint a little bit."
The X axis in both plots has the form YYYY.MM and it is linear with time, showing regulary spaced months in this way: 1980.01, 1980.02, 1980.03 […] 1980.12, 1981.01, 1982.02 […] 2008.02, 2008.03, 2008.04
If you don't see all the values in the X axis it is because of lack of space. MS Excel chooses which ones to show among the 340 points in the NOAA data set since 1980, and 580 points in the Mauna Loa data set since 1960.
I can send you the excel sheet with all the data so that you can check the generated graph accordingly.
523 Nylo
Too much sophistication since my time in maiking graphs !
I started doing them by hand, back then, in the good old days. I do not need to check your numbers since I have never learned excel.
This said, I am sorry, but I cannot follow your reasoning about summer and winter increases and decreases.
I do not see as self evident that "the ocean's contribution to sequestering CO2 would change in the same direction for both seasons". There is asymmetry in the seasons between north and south. North is mostly land and south is mostly ocean . One would need a gradient map to make such a statement . Water is not hotter anyway, at least what the data says the last few years. I think you are making large logical jumps ( i.e. too many assumptions)with your argument.
It is just my opinion.
511 MJW
I showed absorption since (ignoring a host of other factors) the greenhouse response to CO2 depends on the amount of absorbed energy.
Actually the energy it absorbs compared to what everything else absorbs, and how much of that energy they all emit (and reabsorb and reemit etc) in various ways, that slows the loss of thermal IR from the surface of the planet.
I'm assuming your other factors are wind, day or night, convection, latent heat, and so on. They aren't applicable to greenhouse response, just what the greenhouse gases do to keep in heat (the "downward emission of infrared") in the radiative process.
Or so I hear. And why everything gets modeled! 🙂
523 Nylo , continued
here is an example of regional "gradients" in CO2 absorption
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003141.html
"Evidence for Increasing Negative Deviation of Southern Ocean and Antarctic Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels from Global Average: Steve Short"
Hans Erren: I suggest to take the data from epa, apply Lambert-Beer to the absorbance, convolve it with a plank curve and plot it logarithmically on a graph.
Even if after all that the result shows a log relationship, I think I can be forgiven for saying "but I don't see anything in the graph that makes me believe the absorption behaves like a log function."
The graph that follows is interesting, but I'm confused about the scale of the x-axis. Where, for instance, on the x-axis are the points corresponding to the current atmospheric CO2 concentration and thickness, and for double the current concentration?
Sam Urbinto: Actually the energy it absorbs compared to what everything else absorbs, and how much of that energy they all emit (and reabsorb and reemit etc) in various ways, that slows the loss of thermal IR from the surface of the planet.
Yeah, it's complicated. But my original point wasn't that applying the Beer-Lambert law gave a valid estimate, but rather that the supposed log relationship wasn't, as often claimed, a consequence of the law.
MJW: "Yeah, it's complicated."
And that was my original point!! 🙂 Seems obvious that in the system it would have to be log. Alone, I'm not so sure that's important, since it's in the system…..
But there are forumlas for such things. More than one applies. That's what I get out of it.
The observed 😀 log relationship, is predominantly a consequence of the molar absorptivity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molar_absorptivity
Hans Erren, I don't see anything about molar absorptivity that would imply the result would be logarithmic. The Wikipedia seems to say that the total energy absorbed is gotten by integrating the Beer-Lambert results over all the pertinent frequencies. Well, that's pretty obvious. But at each individual wavelength the function has the form Kw*[1-exp(-Aw*C)]. Certainly, the result can't be a log over the whole range, since all the functions start a zero and are bounded above, while the log starts at negative infinity and is unbounded. With the correct choice of the Kw's (which depend on the spectrum of the light) and the Aw's (which depend on the absorbing chemical) the result could approximate a log function over some limited range, but it could approximate lots of other functions as well.
PDO lovers:
I've tracked down the answer to the question: why is it called PD"O" if temperatures don't actually "o"scillate?
Nathan Mantua et al (1997) is the man to blame. Prior to that, the PD"O" was thought to be non-periodic and was even referred to as "PDV" (Latif & Barnett 1996, 1996). V=variability.
There is no consensus as to whether this eigenthing actually oscillates and what the mechanism whould be. It has no predictability. Not at all like ENS"O". PDV is the more accurate term, despite common practice to call it PDO.
Latif, M. and T.P. Barnett, 1994: Causes of decadal climate variability over the north Pacific and North America. Science, 266, 634-637.
Latif, M. and T.P. Barnett, 1996: Decadal climate variability over the North Pacific and North America: dynamics and predictability. Journal of Climate, 9: 2407-2423.
Mantua, N.J., S.R. Hare, Y. Zhang, J.M. Wallace, and R.C. Francis, 1997: A Pacific decadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 78, pp 1069-1079.
Mantua, N.J., S.R. Hare, 2002: The Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Journal of Oceanography, Vol. 58, p. 35–44.
Re #530 Wikipedia's entry for PDO appears to be Mantua-biased, in favor of "O" interpretation over "V".
Andrew 492: my paper on climate cycles with Fred Singer has been submitted about 2 weeks ago.
Hemst101
I posted a question to Tom Vonk regarding the log relationship in the BB State of Knowledge about Current Climate Changes Page 18 second entry.
Here was the question:
As quoted from an interview of Bob Carter, PhD and also said in much the same way by others (Robert Lindzen PhD, for example)
Question 1 (not relevant to MJW question but included for completeness)
"If you calculate , and this is not a disputed figure, both the IPCC -the UN body, and independent physicists agree- that if you double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from preindustrial times, then the amount of warming will be about a degree.
Now we have already put in an extra 30%, roughly, over what was there in preindustrial time, and because of the nature of the relationship between the increase in CO2 and increase in temperature, we actually already have had 75% of that 1 degree warming. So we've got a few 10th of a degree to go. Now that is trivial in the context of the climate system."
Are these statements True, False, (or a third possibilty!!) science has no way of knowing.
Here was his answer:
To 2) you need an exponential/log hypothesis . L.Motl has written a paper arguing that other forms of relationships lead to divergences and infinities what the nature doesn't like . So if there is a kind of exponential/log relationship , 2) follows necessarily .
However the argument here is not a physical law , it is more an analogy with the law of diminishing returns in economics .
Obviously you can always get then a good fit with an exponential/log function consistent with the data .
Beer Lambert is just an example of a law that is exponential/log but there are many of them .
If you prefer , the statement 2) is not a mathematical demonstration but it expresses the idea that we don't observe divergences and inifinities in the nature from which follows that the mathematical form of relationships wrt the time is generally asymptotically exponential or (quasi) periodic .
Exponentials and periodic functions play a very special role in physics and mathematics anyway (Fourrier and Laplace transforms) .
For me 1) is very probable and 2) is qualitatively certain .
Not extremely satisfying – but there you are. Do others here agree with this?
Hemst, 533: LOL. Regardless of these questions, the whole AGW "catastrophe" hinges on "water vapor feedback," which seems to be a complete figment, since nobody has come forth to demonstrate it, either theoretically or empirically. Only demonstratable with the infallable GCMs.
And Tom says that while the radiative effects of CO2 can be determined, after that it is too complex and science has no way of determining what is happening. It will not be solved by 1st principals, or empirically. So Steve Mc desire for a engineering 2000 page paper will never be written. I've given up trying to get an explanation and will just watch the data as it unfolds.
No, the log dependence on concentration arises via spectral line broadening, look up Voigt profiles, Motl is out of his field.
Dear Phil, there are all kinds of effects whose contribution has a logarithmic profile but mine – the exponential increase of concentration needed for the tropopause to move by a linear piece – is the most important one and I am confident that even those at various non-skeptic places including RealClimate.ORG who know something about these issues agree with me. Let me find a link.
At any rate, I have given a full quantative explanation, you have only offered a flawed ad hominem attack.
You keep talking of something different from me. You talk about why CO2 uptake in the southern oceans should be bigger in the NH summer, which I agree with, and I am talking about whether the ammount taken in the summer or released in winter should be CHANGING in a similar direction.
The reason that scientists use for the oceans' uptake of CO2 is that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere creates a gradient which favours CO2 transfer into the ocean. Now, let's see:
1) In the NH summer, when the Southern Ocean waters are cold and can hold more CO2, an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration should improve their capability to absorb CO2 even more. This agrees fairly well with the observations.
2) In the NH winter, when the Southern Ocean waters are hot and tend to release CO2, an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration should REDUCE the ammount of CO2 that the Southern Ocean waters release. Observations, however, DO NOT SHOW this reduction.
Looking for alternative phenomena that would be improved in the summer but not in winter, one finds the obvious answer of photosynthesis in the NH. But for some reason, this is discarded. And nobody explains why.
re 530 Bender
Chris Folland, Hadley Centre, Met Office, Exeter, UK
The Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) is (almost) the Pacific-wide manifestation of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation of Mantua et al (1997), with as much variance in the Southern Hemisphere Pacific down to at least 55oS as in the Northern Hemisphere. The IPO is a multidecadal sea surface temperature (SST) pattern quite like that of ENSO, but differing in several ways. It shows a marked amount of symmetry about the equator. It was introduced by Power et al (1999) based on work by Folland et al (1999). Power et al showed that the IPO modulated ENSO climate teleconnections to Australia. The near equivalence of the PDO and IPO and some likely independent effects of the IPO relative to ENSO on the South Pacific Convergence Zone were shown by Folland et al (2002). The concept of the IPO has recently been used in South Pacific paleoclimatic studies by Linsley et al (2004) and has been related to tropical rainfall patterns by Meinke et al (in press). The latter also compared IPO influences to those of SST on purely decadal time scales. The physical nature of the IPO is under investigation; it is still not clear, despite the above studies, to what extent the IPO is really independent of ENSO red noise and especially of SST variations near a decadal time scale.
ftp://www.iges.org/pub/kinter/c20c/IPO.doc
also http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001IJCli..21.1705S
Dear Phil & others, here is one example, by Martin Vermeer,
http://users.tkk.fi/~mvermeer/
who is a Finnish professor of Earth Sciences:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/#comment-49059
He specializes in the effects of Earth's gravity on the system so you may bet it is not a complete noise what he's writing and it's pretty much the same thing as my comments on that:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-is-greenhouse-effect-logarithmic.html
Cheers, LM
P.S.: Something is wrong with the software to submit comments here. It gets frozen. I've been trying to send this for a while.
#533 hemst101
I disagree, and I think the reason has nothing to do with logarithms. The climate sensitivities you are talking about are equilibrium sensitivities. They represent the temperature that will be attained eventually, when the heat has penetrated right into the ocean depths etc. There is no reason to believe that we have yet reached equilibrium, which takes many years.
CO2 doubling sensitivity represents the result of suddenly doubling CO2 and then holding it constant for a very long time. A good test for a model, but hard to apply to real CO2 increase, which is neither sudden nor held.
Phil.: No, the log dependence on concentration arises via spectral line broadening, look up Voigt profiles, Motl is out of his field.
Phil, you've claimed that before, but when I asked for evidence, none was offered. No doubt the response to concentration is affected both by the spectral broadening you mention, and by the fact that the total absorbed energy is a weighted sum of different absorption for each wavelength, as mentioned above. Nothing about that leads to the conclusion that the resultant function is logarithmic. Maybe it is, but your mere assertions aren't evidence.
For the record, I read Lubos Motl's explanation and found it unconvincing.
I don't know whether I accept Lubos's calculation either, but I don't think one can dismiss it out of hand either. I am reminded of a time when, in a mechanical engineering class, the problem was to calculate the length of a chain hanging from a blimp, given the unit weight of the chain and the lift of the balloon. The clear context of the problem was that we were supposed to use the hypercosine function we had been studying and integrate it somehow. However, the problem could have been solved using simple algebra figuring the lift of the balloon and the unit weight of a lenght of chain. I came to the conclusion that hypercosines were probably not that useful if that was the best problem that could be proposed. Anyway, the point is that Lubos caclulation is pre-feedback, a kind of dry atmosphere calculation that is not intended to come up with a final answer on temp and maybe we have been led down the wrong path on caclulation of the effect of CO2.
It seems like a dry atmosphere, uniform albedo calcuation based on the MODTRAN data would be a start. At least the calculation would be free of guesstimates of other effects, what water vapor will do, etc.
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